Force over Distance: Chapter 18

“Contemporaneous reference frames for all!” Park lifted her cup, her voice loud and determined.

Chapter warnings: Stressors of all kinds. Loss of autonomy. Physical injuries. Boundary violations.

Text iteration: Midnight.

Additional notes: None.

Chapter 18

The smell of Brody’s double-distilled ethanol filled the converted storage room. As Young followed Rush into the small space, the hum of conversation dialed to nothing. Park and Greer, at the nearest table, got to their feet. Volker, seated between them, dropped his face into his palms. At the back of the room, James laid down her hand of cards and stood.

“At ease,” Young said.

No one moved.

“What’s wrong?” Park stepped up to Rush. “Is it the port-side sensors?”

Rush sighed. “No no, Dr. Park, everything’s fine.”

Young waved James back to her seat, then caught Brody’s eye. “You mind if we just—” He gestured at an empty table.

“You and uh.” Brody gave Rush an anxious nod. “You guys are drinking tonight? The two of you. Together?”

“Scott has the bridge.” Young grabbed a chair, pulled it out for Rush, then dropped into a seat opposite the scientist.

Wordlessly, Rush sat.

The entire room stared at them.

//Any chance you can lend me your ability to ignore people?// Young asked.

//Very possibly.//

//You serious?//

//You’re the one concerned with appearances,// Rush replied. //Under scrutiny in a public venue is, perhaps, not the ideal time for experimentation?//

//Hold that thought.//

Rush lifted his eyebrows.

“Brody.” Young beckoned at the engineer. “Let’s go.”

“Doc.” Greer draped an arm over the back of his chair. “How we doin’ on reference frames today?”

“Fully synchronized,” Rush replied.

Volker eyed Greer skeptically. “Don’t tell me you’re friends now.”

Greer shrugged.

“Do you guys even care about radishes?” Park asked.

“Oh yeah,” Greer said. “I care.”

“Uh, tell us more,” Volker added.

At the back of the room, James, Barnes, and Atienza resumed their card game.

Brody poured two shots worth of ethanol into two metal cups. The engineer passed the first to Rush, who slid it along to Young.

“Thanks.” The metal was cool under Young’s fingertips, and the sharp scent of grain alcohol rose from the cup.

He looked up to find Rush studying him.

The guy looked pretty damn good for everything he’d been through.

Young held the scientist’s gaze. //Let’s see you block the room.//

Rush hesitated.

//We gotta map this link somehow, genius, if we’re ever gonna fix it. Come on. I can feel how curious you are.//

//Map it?// Rush echoed. //It’s thought, I suppose.//

Young shrugged.

Rush fired up his focus, drew Young into it, through it, with it.

The murmur of conversation faded. The dull bronze cast of the walls disappeared. The bite of grain alcohol dissolved out of the air.

Young expected math or physics or even the music of the shields, but his mind was all connection in double-overlay: mechanical and waveform; intricate and adaptive; psychic weight and motive force, layers deep and shifting. Their link took on the appearance of a web of running light, backed by the keen edge of Rush’s interest.

Young saw the heart of a bright engine; a power source he couldn’t usually perceive, let alone draw from. Tentatively, he reached for it. Before he made contact, Rush reasserted himself and the impression shifted. It became less visual, more kinesthetic. There was an auditory component: ethereal, changing tones. The perceptual map now favored gravity over electromagnetism—a topography of resistance, of weight, of pressure—and, like a bookend to that bright source, he sensed a lensing of light around a well of stability. Young tipped them into it.

They crashed into joint physicality.

They drew a sharp, unsettled inhale. Young was well-seated in his own body—strong and solid, the mass of his biceps, the power in his legs, his back, his hands—but he felt with equal intensity the faster, lither build of the scientist, how quick his reflexes were, how much tension he carried.

As though privy to Young’s insight, Rush relaxed his shoulders.

Young lifted his eyebrows and waited.

Rush pressed five fingers against the metal table in a quick and fluid sequence, a movement Young had always taken for restless drumming, but he now understood came from scales, played over and over, on the piano. Rush confirmed Young’s insight as he slowed the movement and completed the left hand scale, crossing middle finger over thumb to play eight imaginary notes, followed by a chord.

Young hesitated. //You wanna try that over here?//

With an alien delicacy, Rush took Young’s right hand through a subtle scale, his thumb sweeping beneath his middle finger on the way up, his middle finger crossing adroitly over his thumb on the way down.

//Extremely troubling. Potentially useful.//

//Not sure this works both ways,// Young said.

//Try,// Rush invited.

Young made a cursory effort to flatten Rush’s hand against the table, but got nowhere.

//Actually try?//

//No thanks, genius. Not tonight.//

//We need to know.// The man wasn’t gonna back off until he’d mapped the implications of their eerie new skill, consequences be damned.

And the consequences usually were damned, damn it.

//Hold your horses,// Young growled. //I need to think.//

//Since when?// Rush replied.

Young sent him a burst of mental irritation and did his best to wall off his deeper thoughts while he worked the problem.

Rush quirked an eyebrow.

Young could spike the guy’s gears, no problem. But, once he’d done that, he was pretty sure he had no access to whatever fine-grained control Rush’d used to take his fingers through a scale. The energy and impetus for that little fingering job had come from the scientist. Young had merely allowed it to play out through the instrument of his hand.

The same thing had happened on the Obelisk Planet, more or less.

The problem was power.

Young had gravity. Grounding. Drag. When it came to psychic braking, his control was just as fine-grained as what Rush had with energy.

//You sure you wanna try this?// Young asked.

He got an exasperated wave of assent from the other man.

Young pulled Rush in and down, anchoring him in his physical body. Young felt the ache of the man’s wrists, the burn of his feet, the tension in his shoulders, and the sensation of Rush’s fingertip, tracing delicately the rim of his metal cup. He locked in on Rush’s breathing. The angle at which he held his hands, his head.

//This won’t work if you don’t let it.//

He felt Rush hesitate.

//Which is fine with me,// Young added.

Rush tried to lower his native resistance. It worked enough that Young was able to guide him through relaxing his shoulders, back, his neck. Instinctively, he put pressure against the spiral of Rush’s running thoughts, and felt more tension go. He synchronized their breathing. A feedback loop kicked in, pulling them closer, which relaxed Rush further, which pulled them closer, which relaxed Rush further—

Young closed his fingers around his metal cup. Across the table, Rush mirrored his movement.

Startled, the scientist opened his hand. Their delicate circuit broke.

//You okay?// Young asked.

//Interesting,// Rush eyed him uneasily. //That’s not the first time you’ve created a while loop in a cognitive circuit.//

//A ‘while loop’?//

//Do it again,// Rush demanded. //Slower.//

Again, Young grounded the scientist. This time, he leaned a little harder into the wind of Rush’s running thoughts, creating a predictable pressure. He moved methodically through each muscle group. He slowed it down. Took it deeper.

When their breathing fell into a matched rhythm, Young readjusted his grip on the cup. Rush mirrored him, but, still, Young felt resistances he couldn’t quite map. Instead of letting them slide, he showed them to Rush.

He got a wave of fascinated surprise from the scientist. And then—

All resistance vanished. As if Rush’d swept a chessboard clean.

Young tensed, straightening in his chair. Rush mirrored him. They sat forward. Young tried to tap Rush’s fingers against the table. Again, he got nothing. But when he drummed his own fingers against the table, Rush replicated the movement.

//You can break out of this, right?// Young projected forcefully enough to crack them free of the running loop.

//Not only can I break out,// Rush replied, his eyes and his thoughts carrying a satisfied, semi-fascinated gloss. //I think once you’ve set it up, I can reverse the dynamic. Y’may need to participate in the reversal; it’s hard to tell.//

//Meaning you lead, I follow?//

Rush nodded. //You’ll need t’reestablish the circuit.//

Young pulled him in. This round, he felt a clear snap into the perfect synchronicity of the while loop. Young drummed his fingers. Rush mimicked the action.

And then, in a shoulder-throw of the mind, Rush switched their positions.

Allowing the transition was difficult, but Young was good at ridding himself of tension in muscles and mind alike. Bone-deep relaxation hit like a wave.

Rush switched his grip on the metal cup.

Young mirrored him perfectly. No lag.

In a single fluid motion, Rush knocked back his shot. As he did, Young’s bicep curled, his spine arched, he tipped the contents of the cup into his mouth, swallowed, flipped the cup adroitly, and slammed it, rim down, against the table.

In perfect synchrony, they shook out aching right wrists.

And it was. Satisfying. As hell. They both felt it. They both felt that they felt it.

Rush broke the circuit.

Young looked away.

The converted storage room was dead silent, other than the sound of Atienza’s muffled coughing. The airman seemed to have choked mid-swallow.

Yeah. Okay. As a visual, what they’d just done had, probably, been a little much.

“Um, that was really synchronized,” Park said, her voice small.

No one spoke.

//Wonder how long we were deadass staring at one another before we did that,// Young projected, without looking at the scientist.

//Probably quite some time.// Rush righted his glass.

//You just had to add that little cup flip, didn’t you?// Young growled.

//So, you’ll find, the thing about ‘ignoring a room—’// Rush began delicately.

//Yeah yeah.//

“Did you guys practice that?” Brody asked, point blank.

“Long day.” Young tried to keep his unease off his face.

“And on that note,” Rush looked up at Brody, “I suggest you keep pouring.”

“Maybe leave the bottle.” Young kept his voice mild.

Brody took a step back. “We don’t have a lot of bottles.”

“If you’re thankful,” Rush began, with a spun-sugar tone that crept down Young’s spine, “that your temporal reference frame is in continuity with the hull of this ship, and hence, reality itself, y’will, at a minimum, keep pouring.” The man’s thoughts spiraled back into their usual fiery cyclone.

Young slid his cup in Brody’s direction and did his best not to look at his chief scientist.

With an uneasy expression, Brody poured them another round.

“Contemporaneous reference frames for all!” Park lifted her cup, her voice loud and determined.

“Yeah, baby.” Greer touched his cup to hers with a subtle click. “It’s how we do.” He angled his cup toward Rush.

Rush nodded in acknowledgement.

A little life seeped back into the room.

“C’mon man,” Volker said, looking at Greer. “You do one time loop with the guy and, what, you bonded?”

“Twenty-eight rounds through asynchronous reference frames with partial spatial tethering’ll leave a mark,” Greer admitted.

Rush shot Greer an impressed look.

Volker frowned. “That doesn’t sound real.”

Greer clapped Volker on the shoulder. “Don’t you worry, man. You got a literal piece of me. Nothing comes between us.”

“Promise?” Volker asked.

“Oh yeah.”

Young lifted his cup. Rush met him halfway. This time, Young waited for Rush to down his shot before he followed suit.

“So,” Volker said, his voice pitched to carry, “is physical mimicry one of your new creepy skills, or did the colonel finally figure out how to brainwash you?”

“People who inconsiderately activate Ancient devices,” Rush said, laser-focused on Volker, “should count themselves lucky they’ve not been assigned night shifts for the foreseeable future.”

“We’ve been known to share a drink from time to time.” Young tried to diffuse the tension.

“Fun,” Volker said mildly. “And was that before or after the civilian mutiny?”

“Who says it wasn’t during?” Rush hissed.

Greer leaned back in his chair and tapped Volker on the shoulder. He shook his head, then gestured between Rush and Young with two fingers. “I like this. This is gonna be good. Better.”

“Oh yeah,” Volker agreed. “Start of a whole new era. Someone get a kino.” The astrophysicist sipped his grain alcohol and looked pointedly at Rush. “That way we can record this for posterity. Or use it as evidence.”

“Y’can fuckin’ fuck right fuckin’ off, Volker.”

“That’s nice. You know where you can go?” Volker gave Rush a pleasant smile.

Greer snorted.

Young projected a wave of wordless calm at the scientist and got a low-level glare for his trouble.

“Cheers.” Rush saluted Volker with his empty cup, then slid it across the table to Brody.

Brody slid it right back to him. “Did you eat dinner?”

“Don’t insult me.” Rush pushed his cup toward Brody. “I’m from Glasgow.”

//You realize you might be less Scottish than Ancient, at this point,// Young observed. //How good were they at holding their alcohol?//

//I’m certain they were fuckin’ fantastic at it,// Rush shot back.

“I know.” Brody slid his cup back. “And that’s great. I’m happy for you. Did you eat dinner?”

“Yes.” Rush set his cup in front of Brody.

Brody didn’t move. “No offense, but you don’t seem like you’re in the best shape right now.”

“Yeah, or ever,” Volker muttered.

“I'm fine.” Rush eyed Volker with cool-burning superiority.

“Doc, did you come here directly from the infirmary?” Greer asked.

//Genius, they’re getting after you because they’re worried.// Young laced the thought with a thread of calm.

With an effort, Rush ground some of the edge off his tone and focused on Brody like a laser. “Y’can’t cut me off. You’re not a bartender. This isn’t a bar. You’ve no authority here.”

“True,” Brody admitted, “but an argumentum ad hominem won’t change the fact that you’re out of luck for the next twenty minutes.”

On the other side of their link, Young felt the scientist pour his frustration into himself, collecting it for a coming, massive effort. And this, this right here, was why the guy drove him crazy. Because for all his faults, and he had many, Young had more than a little bit of a soft spot for people who swung for fences. Who tried like hell to pull solutions out of fires.

Unfortunately, about ninety-five percent of what Rush chose to pull out of any given fire was complete bullshit.

“Out of luck?” Rush purred. “Un-fuckin-likely.” He leaned back in his chair, shook his hair out of his eyes, and finished with, “Colonel Young and I are commandeering this bar.”

Then there was the other five percent.

Young crossed his arms and looked at Rush from beneath lowered eyebrows. The scientist radiated confidence. He didn’t so much as glance in Young’s direction. He kept his gaze fixed on Brody.

“Okay. Sure. Why not,” Young said.

“There’s no way this could go wrong.” Volker sipped his grain alcohol. “Last time I, personally, left you two alone? Someone ‘died’ in a ‘rockslide’.”

“Everyone out.” Young made a spiraling motion with one finger, then pointed at the door. He caught Brody’s sleeve. “Leave the bottle.”

Park stood and pressed her hands to the surface of the table, as if she were about to say something. Rush shook his head at her. She picked up her cup and headed for the door.

“Doc, you radio me if you need a gun,” Greer said.

Rush gave the sergeant a fluid, two-fingered salute.

Volker sighed and reluctantly got to his feet. “If you two kill each other, we’re putting Eli in charge.”

“Scott's in charge,” Young replied.

The room emptied.

Rush grabbed the alcohol and poured a third shot. To Young's relief, he didn't knock it back right away. He picked it up, considered it, then took a small sip.

“Can’t believe you just did that,” Young said mildly.

“Can’t believe you let it stand.”

“It had style.” Young drained his cup and set it on the table with a quiet click.

“Appreciate such things, do you?”

“Here and there.”

“First I’ve seen of it.”

“Yeah,” Young admitted. “Probably.”

Rush didn’t look at him.

The room was dead silent.

“They actually like you,” Young said. “The Science Team, I mean.”

Rush shrugged, repositioned his glasses, and swirled his alcohol. “Yes well, it’s not all Machiavellian schemes and cowardly self-interest.” He narrowed his eyes at Young. “Just, y’know. Most of it.”

The guy was vibrating with the need to start a fight.

“We gotta do this differently, you and me,” Young said.

Rush propped his elbows on the table and pressed two fingers to the space between his eyebrows. “Oh yes?”

Young didn’t move. He said nothing. He did his damnedest to think of nothing, except for Brody’s double-distilled ethanol.

“Usually,” Rush said, with ironclad control, “this’d be where you lay out your demands.”

“I did say ‘differently’.”

“Not sure that’s possible.” Rush traced the rim of his beaten metal cup. The fringe of his hair brushed the tops of his glasses.

Young wanted to argue that they could change, that they already had, that everything would be better because of it. He wanted to make that argument. He wanted to win that argument. He wanted Rush to admit that he’d won it.

Never gonna happen.

Not a goddamned chance.

All the same. He wanted to try. Not only for the sake of the crew, which’d always been true, but now he wanted to try for the sake of the man in front of him. That was some kind of progress. It had to be.

“I saw a memory when you were in the chair,” Young said.

Rush glanced at him.

“We used your dream interface,” Young admitted.

The scientist’s shoulders tensed. “Why.”

Young was losing the guy. He had, for some reason, been losing him since the moment the room cleared. Maybe since the moment they’d done their shot in tandem. He wasn’t sure why it always played out this way: a moment of accord, followed by explosive conflict.

He’d intended to lay it all out for the scientist, everything he’d missed, the whole experience of the past twenty-four hours, start to finish.

That was probably a shit idea.

“Last time you sat in the thing you got bolted through the hands and feet,” Young replied, abandoning every plan he had.

Rush buried his face in his hands and fought down a complex wave of anger, of anxiety, of indignation, of shame.

Young grimaced. “Would it help if I apologized?”

“No.” Rush dropped his hands, shook his hair back, and rallied. “No, it would not. What did y’see in there, then?”

“I saw the day you cut out your SGC transponder,” Young said. “The day Telford came to get you anyway.”

Rush sighed. “Y’know, the thing about a dream interface is that since it takes its cue from your own subconscious processes, it’s pretty much a guaranteed terrible fuckin’ time.”

“Yeah.” Young tried to keep everything he’d experienced behind his mental wall.

“Out with it then. Whatever it is you’re doing your shite brick-job on.” Rush made a fluid circle in the air near his own temple.

“‘Shite brick job’?”

“You’re holding something back. Tell me or don’t. I don’t fuckin’ care.”

“We found the AI within the memory.” Young doubled down on his “shite brick-job.”

“Right. An’ where else is it supposed t’be if you force dream-structure onto its digital environment?”

Young didn’t say anything. He mortared his brick as best he could and projected a wordless stream of his intention to de-escalate.

Rush lifted three fingers from the rim of his cup and spread them in wordless acknowledgment. He nodded.

Young dialed back his projection. “In the interface, the AI tried to convince you it was Gloria. Do you, uh, remember that?”

Rush made an equivocal hand gesture. “Some.” He sighed. “It’s not the first time.” Through their link, came a flash of Gloria, pale against hospital sheets, late afternoon sun pouring through windows.

“Does it understand what it’s doing to you, when it does shit like that?”

The scientist ran fingertip along the rim of his metal cup. “I don’t believe its intentions are bad.”

“Oh yeah? Why the hell does it wear people like clothes?”

“What an image,” Rush whispered.

Young stared at the bronze cast of an Ancient wall and tried not to turn a conversation into a mission objective. “How much does it talk to you?”

“The AI? A fair bit.” Rush sipped his grain alcohol.

“Why Gloria?” Young asked. “Why Emily?”

Rush’s there-and-gone eye contact hit like a knife in the dark. “You see Emily?”

Young nodded.

“I assume it pulls the mnemonic representation with the widest range of expression to draw from. Think about the scope and texture of emotion you’ve seen Emily display, as opposed to, say, Camile Wray. Or even Eli. Chloe.” Rush ran a hand through his hair, pushing it out of his eyes. “It wants to speak to you with nuance. It wants the full available range. You know, exactly, what Emily sounds like when she’s upset with you. When she thinks you’re being stupid. When she thinks you’ve done something brilliant.”

“Not sure about that last one,” Young said, “but, yeah. All right. I get you.”

Rush took a sip of his drink. “First time for everything,” he said philosophically.

Young snorted.

More than anything, he wanted to drive the conversation forward. Question the man about his project with Telford, about what the hell had happened in that lab. He wanted to work through the whole damn thing. Slowly. Methodically, Start to finish.

He said nothing.

“What else did you see?” Rush asked. “In the interface.”

Young cleared his throat. “I saw a room. Goa’uld on the walls. Ancient crystals in the floor. You were standing in gel. No shoes.”

Rush looked away.

“I saw what happened between you and Telford.”

“All of it?” Rush asked.

“Yup. I think so.”

Rush nodded.

“Genius, what the hell were you doing in that lab?”

“Y’think there’s a pithy answer to that, do you?” Rush asked.

Beneath Young’s boots, the subtle hum of the FTL drive vibrated through the deck plating.

“Start at the beginning, maybe?”

Rush hesitated, conflicted as hell. Young could see it in the set of his shoulders, the split wind of his thoughts.

Young tapped the table. Startled, Rush’s gaze flicked to his fingers, then to Young himself. 

“C’mon,” he said. “Just this once. Twenty minutes from now you can go back to setting the world on fire.”

Rush smiled faintly. “Twenty minutes?”

“Bet you could do in fifteen, if you put your mind to it.”

Rush sighed. “Daniel Jackson told me my mathematical work was well-suited to crack a cypher embedded within an ancient artifact. He invited me to learn more about a top-secret governmental program.” He paused. “I said no.”

“You said no?”

“Yes well, it was fuckin’ ludicrous.” Rush smiled a humorless smile. “And I had other problems.”

“Gloria?”

Rush nodded. “Jackson didn’t try to convince me otherwise. Made no effort, really. He told me—”

The scientist stalled out, staring at his hands, his eyebrows pressed together, his shoulders tense as hell, like he was on the verge of giving up, of ending his story after three goddamned lines.

“He told you what?” Young said.

“He told me nothing,” Rush said reluctantly. “Gave me his card. Left it at that.”

“He knew about Gloria?” Young asked.

“I told him, yes.” Rush ran a hand through his hair. “Colonel Telford showed up a week later. Waited next to my car during my Set Theory midterm. We had a short conversation. He gave me a flash drive full of classified material.”

“He what?” Young growled.

Rush gave him an unimpressed look. “It was the cypher set. They thought it was one. One cypher. It was nine. Once I knew that—” The scientist opened a hand. “I was on the hook. I agreed to consult, part time. Paperwork went through. I picked up Ancient. Very quickly. It annoyed the piss out of Jackson.” Rush’s mouth quirked. “I spent a few months working through cyphers. Knocked four of them out in short order, met Dr. Perry during the process. And David—well he was tremendously helpful.”

“Oh yeah?” Young asked mildly. “In what way?”

“In all ways,” Rush whispered. “He was single-minded, aggressively positive about—” Rush trailed off, shaking his head. “Almost certainly, he prolonged Gloria’s life. He looked for clinical trials. He was good at it. He had better stamina for it than either of us. Better connections. And then. He told me about another project. One I’d be uniquely suited for. Of course I said I would help him. I even wanted to. At first.”

“What was the other project?” Young asked.

“It had to do with genetics,” Rush whispered. “Never a good start.”

Young nodded.

“Telford had obtained permission,” Rush continued, “t’screen a selection of government-sponsored tissue banks for a panel of Ancient genes. The idea was to identify members of the population that might be useful for his project. I had five of the fuckin’ things.”

“Five genes?” Young asked. “You have five?”

“Well, I had five. Now I have something like five thousand.”

“Shit, yeah.”

“But, in short, yes. Two copies of ATA. Two copies of LTA. One copy of a third gene.”

“So you think that was why Telford tracked you down?” Young whispered. “All along?”

“I think that was how Telford and Jackson found me.” Rush leaned back in his chair and looked up at the ceiling. “Incredible as it seems—I honestly don’t think it had anything t’do with the math.”

“You couldn’t have been the only one they found that way,” Young said.

“I wasn’t,” Rush confirmed. “But I was the best ‘candidate.’ I was also unlocking the gate. An all-around coup for the SGC. Jackson wanted me on Icarus. Thought I might balance David’s monomaniacal drive, maybe?”

“Okay. So, he hadn’t met you, at that point?”

Rush’s gaze slid from the ceiling to Young, then back to the ceiling. “He’d met me. Not only that but he fuckin’ liked me. Still does, last time I checked.”

Young tried to tamp down on his incredulity, but Rush picked it up anyway. The scientist smirked at the ceiling.

“Sorry,” Young muttered.

“I think he likes everyone,” Rush said. “He’s not discerning.”

It made some sense, Young supposed. He knew only a few things about Daniel Jackson: he’d come from academia, he’d lost his wife—

Shit. Young cut the thought off before it gained traction.

“You're terribly restrained over there,” Rush said, without looking at him.

“You’re pretty sensitive right now,” Young said mildly. “Maybe the alcohol?”

“Yeah, or maybe it’s that I’m payin’ attention to you, which usually I try, very hard, not to do.”

“Let’s keep it that way.”

Rush dragged a fluid checkmark through the air with the tip of his finger.

“So. Telford’s project wasn’t Icarus?”

“Correct. Telford's project was related. Unnamed.”

To Young, that hit as ominous.

“Too fucking right,” Rush sighed.

//Stop that,// Young sent.

Rush opened his hands, then sat forward and poured them both another shot.

“So you ended up as the chief scientist on two separate projects? Seems like a lot to ask of someone who’d never seen a stargate.”

“Jackson ensured it was a joint appointment.” Rush smiled faintly. “Bit of a power play.”

“Really? From Jackson?”

“I’m not saying the man’s not as pure as the driven fuckin’ snow, but he’s more sophisticated than I gave him credit for. I learned a fair few things from him.” Rush leaned a little harder into his native accent.

“So what was Telford's project?”

“I find it quite unlikely that y’haven't guessed.”

“Ascension,” Young said.

“Yes.”

They downed their next shot simultaneously. Rush flipped his cup, and it clanged against the table rim down. With a hint of self-consciousness, he righted it.

“It wasn't at all clear where the nine-chevron address led,” Rush continued, “but there was some evidence it might allow one to connect to another plane of existence. Much like the city of the Ori, which Jackson had visited. But, t’gain full access, certain ‘benchmarks’ had to be met.”

“Benchmarks?”

“Electrophysiological requirements.”

“Don’t do that.”

“What, use words with more than four syllables?”

“Don’t hide behind things you know I don’t understand.”

Rush looked away.

“What the hell do you mean by ‘benchmarks’.”

“Alterations in the electrochemistry of the brain. Seen in Dr. Jackson before he ascended. Seen also in the clone of Anubis that was studied by Stargate Command.”

“So Telford's project was what? Altering someone's brain?”

“Not someone’s,” Rush said delicately, his eyes fixed on the nearest wall.

“And you agreed to this?” Young growled.

“Th’fuck are you upset about?” Rush snapped. “The correct response, for your bloody information, is ‘thank you’.”

“Why the hell would you agree to let your brain be altered? Your brain is like—” Young trailed off.

Rush eyed him with predatory amusement. “Yes?”

Young glared at him. “Your brain is pretty good, as brains go. So I hear.”

“It has its uses. You might consider employing your own brain to better effect. Can y’not imagine exactly what kind of fuckin’ inescapable pitch David Telford might’ve made t’—” Rush’s throat closed. He took a breath. “Fuck you. I’m—”

Young reached out and grabbed the man’s wrist before he could get up from the table. “Gloria. That was his pitch.”

“Yes,” Rush whispered, staring at Young’s bruised and taped fingers. “The fuck did y’do to your hand, then?”

“Nothing.” Young let the guy go and tried not to think about when and where and why he’d driven his fist into a bulkhead. “Don't worry about it.”

Rush looked up, picking up on the brief flash of memory. “Y’hit a wall?” The scientist frowned. “Why?”

Young withdrew his hand. “We were talking about you.”

“Were we? Or were we talking about your profound intolerance for every choice I’ve ever made an’ will ever fuckin’ make?”

Young took a breath and refocused himself. The man was just so goddamned—

Nope.

No.

“Sorry,” he ground out. “But whatever his pitch was? It couldn’t have been what I saw.”

Rush sighed and looked away. He drove the heel of his hand into one eye, his thoughts an evasive mass. “In the interface, y’mean? What did you see?”

“I saw you cut out your transmitter,” Young said evenly. “I saw Telford take you anyway. I saw you beam down to the lab. With Perry. With Telford. I saw you send Perry away. I saw the device discharge.” Young paused, gathering himself, trying to seal the experiential memory away from the words that described it. “I saw the gel rise. And I saw Telford hold you under.”

“Oh,” Rush said weakly. “Right then. Guess there’s not much more t’say.”

Young leaned forward. “Not much more to say? I watched Telford try and murder you with his bare hands. I don’t know how you can so much as look at him.”

“He wasn't trying to murder me,” Rush sighed, “as y’could, presumably, plainly see. Obviously the experience was disturbing, but ultimately—”

“You can't twist this one around, Rush. I was there.”

“No, you weren’t.”

“Semantics. I’m gonna go ahead and call this one murder.”

“Yes well, Colonel Telford’ll find himself in good company then,” Rush’s voice turned artfully artless. “Obviously I can’t cut off relations with everyone who tries to kill me. From a professional standpoint, it’s not practical. There are simply too many of you.”

“How can you equate us?” Young growled. “It wasn’t the same.”

“True.” Rush sipped his double-distilled ethanol. “Y’didn’t apply the same kind of psychotic personal touch, and, certainly, y’had reason to be angry, so congratulations there, but ultimately, for me? It was your attempt that was worse.”

“How could it possibly have been worse?”

Rush sat forward, his expression concerned, his fingertips pressed to his temple—

He’s soaked, on a table, in a lab, under lights bright enough to sterilize. Whatever they’re doing, they want him to survive. The raw agony they’ve poured into his mind for hours is framing itself with the structure of their plan. He’s almost got it now, he’s almost taken it from them. It forms in the mental clarity layered atop physical, visceral pain. It’s a relief as they crack his ribs, because they’re out of his mind. He has David to thank for this trade he’s forced them into, David, because without David—

Rush shattered the memory.

Young lurched forward in his seat, overturning his cup, his hands flying to his chest at the remembered sensation of his ribs splitting open, of something cold and metallic sliding into the space next to his heart.

He felt like he might be sick. “God damn,” he breathed.

“Well, how’d you suppose it got there?” Rush swept grain alcohol from the tabletop with the blade of his hand.

“I—” Young righted his cup. “You were conscious for that?”

Rush wiped his hand on his jeans and didn’t bother to answer.

Young poured two shots.

“Don’t worry about it,” Rush said. “No harm done. Other than the pain, which was considerable. And the psychological trauma. Also considerable. The abduction of Chloe. Her pain and her psychological trauma, which continue. To this day.” He paused, sipping his drink. “Then, of course, there was the eventual mutiny of the civilians against your command. We can call that directly related, I suppose. The genetic transformation of a crew member. The—”

“You’ve made your point,” Young growled.

“Yes, well,” Rush murmured, “I’m sure leaving me on that planet seemed like a good idea at the time. There’s relatively little advantage to the kind of retrospective analysis you’re continually subjecting yourself to. Do it once and shoulder the consequences, which, in your case, include but are not limited to,” he paused, counting off on his fingers, “mutiny, snide remarks—” he stopped.

“Don’t stop now.”

“Honestly tha’ pretty well covers it. Where you’re concerned.”

“I can think of a few more.” Young stared at the clear liquid in his beaten metal cup. “You’re pretty philosophical about all this.”

Rush gave him a fluid shrug. “It’s called perspective. I recommend you invest.” The scientist’s thoughts were a bright, settled swirl.

Young was impressed. He didn’t want to be. He couldn’t help it. The scientist was every bit as ruthless as Young’d given him credit for, but he had a purity of focus and a depth of drive that combined—

“Stop that,” Rush said, annoyed. “Don’t fuckin’ think poetic thoughts about me. It’s absurd.”

“I wouldn’t call them poetic,” Young muttered, looking away.

“They had a momentum trending heavily that way.”

“Uh, okay, well, I’ll take your word for it, I guess.” Young cleared his throat. “So what happened between you and Telford?”

“I confess I wasn’t feeling very well disposed toward him after the episode you witnessed. We didn’t see one another until he gated to Icarus after y’finally got around t’refusing the command.”

“I meant before,” Young said quietly. He knew he should stay quiet, but he was unsettled and frustrated and unsure about everything. And so— “You two seemed pretty close.”

“So what if we were.”

“How close,” Young pressed him.

“Well, I followed him to a godforsaken underground alien lab and let him experiment on me,” Rush said, dry and unimpressed. “It’s what I do with all my favorite people. Chloe and I had a notable experience in an alien lab, y’know. Arguably this improbable little heart-to-heart we’re currently engaged in is a direct consequence of yet another foray into—”

“Were you sleeping with him?” Young asked.

Rush stared at him. The scientist’s thoughts spiraled in on themselves.

“Interesting,” Rush said coolly. “So that’s your first fuckin’ thought, is it?”

“Tactically, I need to know—” Young began, uncomfortable.

“Oh, so it’s a tactical question, is it?” Rush’s tone was pure satin.

“I’m trying to understand Telford’s—”

“Right.” Rush snarled. “As if this is about David Fucking Telford. Y’know, my often criticized and ‘heartlessly’ pragmatic approach to dealing with situations requiring cost/benefit analyses between two frequently terrible alternatives does not translate into a complete lack of every human sentiment. I,” Rush continued, spite running through his words like raw current, “am not the kind of person who would ever, ever step out on his wife. Who was fucking dying, if y’failed to notice. Unlike you—”

“That’s enough,” Young growled.

“You certainly seem to have no problem with it.”

“Rush, I don’t care if you slept with him or not—”

“Yes, y’do. It’s all over your fucking head. Y’absolutely care. This is so—so fucking you. T’be explicit, because I know from first hand experience that you’re incapable of grasping subtlety, the answer is no. I didn’t sleep with him. He’s oriented toward discovery. We have that in common.” Rush gripped the edge of the table, slowly levering himself to his feet. “He, unlike you, knows his way around a fuckin’ circuit diagram. He, unlike you, is capable of accurately assessing relative risk.” Rush stood, leaning over Young. “In point of fact,” he hissed, staring straight into Young’s eyes, staring straight into Young’s head—

“Oh this is interesting,” the scientist whispered.

“Back off.”

Young buried thoughts of Emily before they had the chance to take hold, but she kept coming into his mind. The way she’d held a bedsheet around her after that terrible drop from FTL. That day in the kitchen, when he’d found them together. Emily. Telford. Over and over he buried them. Over and over they unearthed themselves. It wasn’t gonna work; he couldn’t stay ahead of it.

“You’re envious of him.” Rush slid the words though the air and through their link. They hit like silk-covered steel. “Envious of Telford. Of his drive, of his ambition, of his understanding of science. His ability to speak Ancient. His ability to fucking work with his fucking mind. You hate that I like him better than you, and that’s true, by the way, that’s absolutely fuckin’ true and will be true until—”

Young lost his grip on his own emerging memories and they came up like a wall to meet every bladed word that Rush drove at him. Emily in tears in the semi-dark, the bedsheet clutched to her chest. The way she’d put herself between him and Telford in their own goddamned kitchen—

Rush’s poisonous monologue shut off.

Young clenched his jaw, looked away, and tried, like hell, not to think about what Rush had just seen.

The scientist lifted his hands, palms out, and dropped back into his chair.

Young poured them each another shot.

Rush sat forward, knocked his back in a single go, then leaned back in his chair. He lifted his left foot onto the table went back to contemplating the ceiling.

“Genius,” Young said. “This isn’t worth the alcohol poisoning.”

“Matter of opinion,” Rush said. “I can barely fuckin’ stand it.”

“Yeah. I know.”

“How th’fuck. Did David Telford. Manage. Whatever’n th’hell that was. He’s—what.”

“Yeah. They’re ‘together’ now,” Young whispered. “I guess.”

“How though?”

“The stones. The drop out of FTL. It’s when he saw her. He and I used to switch. All the time. He’d wait by the communications array. For hours. Pulling double, triple shifts. Eventually he figured out a way to—” Young shrugged.

“Does sound like him,” Rush whispered.

Young nodded.

They sat in silence.

“So I just—” Young said finally, “I need to know where you stand with him.”

“I try not to stand with anyone,” Rush said.

“Well,” Young said, “you’ve done a great job of that.”

“Thanks,” Rush whispered hollowly.

“Not a compliment.”

Rush shrugged. “The fuck y’need t’know where I stand with him for?” He gave Young a rebellious side-eye, then returned to staring at the ceiling. “Next time he has a good idea I’ll listen to it. Y’can count on me for that. Across the board. Must confess though, I’haven’t exactly heard one out of ‘im for a’while.”

“He built an IOA coalition. He tried to pull you out on the stones. It nearly killed you.”

“Mmm, I noticed,” Rush said.

“I don’t know how to spell this out for you any clearer. He’s planning something. He’s making a move. Currently.”

“So?” Rush asked, exhausted. “He’s not exactly fuckin’ here, is he?”

“If you don’t lay this out for me, I can’t protect you.”

“Protect me?”

Young looked at him steadily.

“Oh god,” the scientist whispered. “You’re absolutely fuckin’ serious, aren’t ya? I can feel it.”

“You’re damn right I’m serious.”

“I need a cigarette,” Rush whispered.

“You can have water,” Young said.

Rush, very delicately, moved in on his thoughts.

Young held steady.

The scientist traveled like lace over the grinding dread Young’d carried for days, running a wordless search. Unbidden, Young recalled TJ’s eyes, full of unease in the dimness of a ship-wide power outage, Rush’s silhouette, dark against the forcefield he’d coaxed from nothing, the feel of Telford’s body, restrained at the SGC, the taste of an orange. Rush went deeper, not looking at thoughts themselves, but tracing the relational patterns of those thoughts.

He withdrew gently, and Young’s mind stilled like a plain without wind, like a shore without waves.

Apparently unaware of his own profound cognitive afterimage, Rush sighed, crossed his ankles atop the table, bridged his fingers and studied the ceiling like he was reading the damn thing.

Young shook himself. “What the hell was that?”

“Bit of a—” Rush lifted a hand and made an elegant gesture, as though conducting an invisible orchestra.

“You get what you need to get?” Young asked.

“No idea,” Rush sighed. “I think y’might be an optimist? Tha’s’fuckin’ odd.”

“Yeah, well, I think the alcohol’s catching up with you, genius.”

“Turn it into a mission objective, why don’t you?”

“Sure,” Young growled. “No problem.” He stood, steadied himself against the edge of the table, and grabbed what remained of Brody’s ethanol.

“Where are y’takin’ that?” Rush called after him.

Young replaced the alcohol behind the bar, filled an empty bottle from a canister of water, and returned to the table.

“You,” Young said, shoving the bottle at Rush, “need water. Drink that whole thing.”

Rush looked at the bottle, unimpressed. “That’s like—fuckin’. Three days.”

“We stopped rationing water a while ago, genius. If you spend tonight throwing up, TJ’s gonna read me the riot act. She might anyway.”

“Tamara should be in charge of this mission,” Rush said. “Can y’jus’ step aside, maybe? Take up some kinda sport? Teach people t’run around injured in the dark? Your favorite hobby?”

Young poured Rush a generous shot of water, and the scientist knocked it back like it was grain alcohol.

“Sorry about the Telford thing,” he said. “I didn’t mean to get derailed.”

“An’ isn’t that just like him?” Rush sighed.

“So, did it work?” Young asked. “Your electrophysiologic benchmark, or whatever. Did you reach it?”

“Well.” Rush pulled his feet off the table and sat forward. “Tha’ was an open question. For a while. Consensus was ‘no.’ An’ it fucked me up. I mean, you’ve seen this, right?” He gestured vaguely at his own head. “Whatever this is? It’s so fuckin’ far from your solidly methodical approach that you’re as bloody difficult for me t’follow as I am for you.”

Young frowned. “So your brain was altered? In a way you could detect?”

“Yeah.” Rush shot him an annoyed glare with no fire behind it. “I mean look at this.” He gestured to his temple. “Like, fuckin’ jus’ look, y’know? I mean, you know. You really fuckin’ know. Jackson was, like. Jackson was—”

“More water, genius.” Young felt none too steady himself.

“Jackson felt sorry for me. He’s a right bastard.” Rush poured himself a shot of water, only spilling about half of it in the process. “But he knew—I don’ know if he could tell or he jus’ guessed, but I turned into this.”

“What?” Young asked, confused.

“This,” Rush gestured dismissively at himself. “This, tha’ y’all fuckin’ well know. Ninety percent intuitive bullshit, ten percent explanatory gloss. Like a fuckin’ fired glaze. Y’think I’d walk around not explaining things on a disintegrating starship if I could explain the things an’ not have the ship disintegrate? I don’t wan’ it to disintegrate. Even if your whole bloody bullshit psychologizing was correct an’ I didn’t care, lit’rally at all, about any member of the crew, even then, I’m still not gonna want to fuckin’ rip apart by tidal forces while I’m burning t’death, right?”

“Uh,” Young said. “Right.”

“Right,” Rush agreed. “An’ I certainly don’ know how the fuck I’m supposed to tell Volker or Eli or you especially about power drains showin’ up at the marginal edges of multiple systems but like—” Rush’s voice faded to a whisper. He closed his eyes, reaching into midair to touch something Young couldn’t see. “Mostly in my head. As a thing I can fuckin hear.” He opened his eyes and glared at Young. “I still don’ fuckin’ know. Could happen tomorrow and I’d be jus’ as upset. Except not that lit’ral thing. Because obviously—”

“Genius,” Young said gently.

“An’ don’ fuckin’ patronize me, all right? Because that’s all Jackson ever did. ‘Nick, this kind of intuitive bullshit you’re demonstrating is actually extuitive manifestations of an evolving consciousness, semicolon, give it time.’ That man,” Rush snarled, crossing his arms, “does not understand quantum mechanics. ’m not even a physicist. Did y’fuckin’ ever even know that?”

“Know what?”

“That I’m not a physicist.”

“Uh,” Young said, “I think you’re doing a great job.”

“Th’fuck did I jus’ say? About patronizing.”

“I’m not patronizing you,” Young said.

“Well good, because it’s not my fucking fault,” Rush said. “They should’ve waited until I fuckin’ opened th’thing before they put me in that gel. That is on. Them.” Rush shot him a fiery, righteous scorcher of a glare. “That is on them.”

“You’re damn right it is.” Young downed a shot of water.

“Do it after,” Rush said.

“What? No.”

“Righ’, I get your point, but, I’m jus’ sayin’ if you’re gonna do it, do it after. Please. Because I lost the ability t’solve the problem of getting there. I knew it. Everyone involved wi’ David’s project knew it. An’ they fuckin’ felt sorry for me, the bastards.”

“And now?”

“And now it’s bloody well worse. Higher math’s dead instinct. I cannot impersonate a calculator. I cannot explain operator theory t’Chloe. But I can manipulate shield frequencies, and generate force fields and—fuck, why’m I telling you this anyway?” Rush pressed the heel of his hand into his eye socket.

“You’re telling me,” Young said, “because you’re drunk, and I’m asking.”

“Bang t’rights.” Rush sighed.

Unbidden, Young recalled the sight of scientist, working late nights at the Icarus base, his hair a mess as he stood in front of his whiteboard, one hand on the back of his neck, looking utterly defeated.

“Aye,” Rush murmured, seeing Young’s memory. “No one understood why I could rebuild the mathematical structure tha’ defined the entire problem and code it into a virtual interface, but I couldn’t keep myself on track t’jus’ solve th’fuckin’ thing? And it was a code. I mean I fuckin’ knew it was a code, didn’t I? Eli was right. I knew—I—well, I couldn’t explain it to them. I can’t explain it now. I don’t have much insight into what happened on that planet. In that lab.”

Young didn’t reply.

He tried to think of nothing, of space, of the inside of a star, of anything except the terrible pity that rose up to drown his memories of Rush on Icarus. The man had been falling apart. And no one had noticed. He was feeling his own alcohol too much to keep the idea from his thoughts.

“Fuck you, anyway,” Rush sighed, and the words were almost friendly.

“TJ told me more than half the crew has Ancient genes,” Young said.

“I know,” Rush murmured.

“Figured you might. You know why?”

“Well y’can’t just sent one fuckin’ guy to the final fuckin’ frontier, right?” Rush whispered. “Have y’not seen Star Trek? There’s a whole right mess o’them.”

Young nodded. “Yeah, including a Scottish guy who likes engines.”

Rush nodded. “S’like our cultural heritage. James Watt n’such.”

“Drink water,” Young said. “James Watt?”

“Pick up a fuckin’ book. He’s an inventor. Was an inventor. Dead now. Worked at the University of Glasgow. Enjoyed tea. Made the steam engine do some real fuckin’ mechanical work. You’d’ve hated him.” Rush smirked, saluted, presumably, the ghost of James Watt, and knocked back his water shot. “An you,” he said. “It was always ‘wrong people’ this. ‘Wrong people’ that. They weren’t the wrong people. They were the ‘right’ people, mos’ly. Telford stacked th’whole project. They just didn’t have, like, their luggage.”

“Oh yeah? Is that why you brought us all here?” Young asked, dry and mild.

“I mean how unprepared, really, are a group a’fuckin’ space professionals?” Rush asked. “Everyone there took a day job on a planet so full of naquadria it was threatened by its own geology. In the middle of a firefight? Fuckin’ forget it. Planet takes a hit and y’annihilate the alpha site. Like not the site site. The entire planet. The other one. Both, actually. Two of them.”

“What?” Young said, confused.

“You want me t’annihilate two planets on a Wednesday? Kill everyone? Fine. Next time. McKay did that, more or less. Everyone still likes him.”

“Rush, the crew was not equipped for a mission like this.”

Rush pressed a hand to his chest, looked at the ceiling, and did his best impression of Dale Volker, which included what was probably supposed to be an American accent. “‘Gosh, I joined the fuckin’ Stargate Program an now I’m so far from home, how could that possibly’ve happened’?” He dropped his hand and glared at Young. “Th’only one I ever felt sorry for was Chloe.”

“We’re gonna agree to disagree on that one.” Young poured the guy more water.

“We just disagree,” Rush said. “It’s our baseline state.”

“Yeah, probably.” Young took a shot of water. He cleared his throat. “So, if you knew you’d been modified by that damn gel, why didn’t you want to sit in the chair when we found it? Why get Franklin to do it?”

“Okay, right, and, by the way, the only influence I ever had over Franklin was when I told Sergeant Greer t’shoot the man? So I’ll thank you t’stop giving me credit for every morally dubious occurrence that’s ever taken place on Destiny.”

Young rolled his eyes. “Why bother with firewalls? Why not sit in the chair? Just go for it?”

“Like,” Rush said, side-eyeing Young, “how much a’that murder thing did you actually see?”

“You mean Telford pushing you under? All of it,” Young said darkly.

“Whole thing. Start to finish?”

“Yup.”

“Right, an’ so did it look like a fun time to you? Did it seem like an experience you’d just go and maybe sign up for again?”

“Uh, okay, good point,” Young said.

“Also,” Rush shut his eyes, “that chair has complicated properties and can see the crew possessed of certain arrangements of aperiodic crystal, by which I mean DNA. It can see them. The crew with the genes? It can see. I don’ know what happened to Franklin, but he had a fair fuckin’ few handful of the things. An’ I was concerned. It does have a baseline pull. I could feel it from the first. Y’could tell I could feel it. If I sat in the chair, with no firewall, I was worried—”

And, without warning, Daniel Goddamned Jackson was perched on a nearby table, arms crossed.

“What the hell,” Young shouted, half out of his seat.

“Well this is new,” Rush said, eyebrows raised. “Nice outfit, sweetheart.” He slouched back in his chair, crossed his arms, and re-propped his feet on the table. “Wha’s the fuckin’ occasion?”

“Is that—” Young said, recovering himself, “—the AI?”

Rush nodded.

“Nick.” It frowned at him. “The colonel is poisoning you.”

“It’s called alcohol,” Young said, hearing the devensive slur in his own words. “We drink it on purpose.”

“An’ I’m sure you’ll find we’re both poisoned,” Rush said patiently.

The AI narrowed its eyes. “Not equally,” it said. “You’re more poisoned than the colonel.”

“Right but whose fuckin’ fault would that be?”

“The colonel’s fault?” The AI asked, doing a dead-on impression of Jackson.

“No,” Rush said, with an even-tempered patience that hit as really damn bizarre. “It’s your fuckin’ fault. Because you fuckin’ changed m’fuckin’ genes, y’know? I used to be able to metabolize this stuff—much more. Better. I could have drunk this one under the table.” He pointed at Young. “No problem. On m’worst fuckin’ day.”

“Wellllll,” Young said, skeptically.

“Is this a valued skill in your culture?” The AI looked perplexed.

“Yeah, it’s a fuckin’ valued skill. More valued than math, isn’t it?” He looked to Young for confirmation.

Young paired an equivocal hand gesture with a skeptical expression.

“That doesn’t make much sense to me.” The AI frowned at them.

“Yeah, well, me neither,” Rush muttered. “Anyway, y’can’t jus’ come in here right now. We’re not done. Your politeness index’s in the basement. You’ll bring tha’ up if y’wanna be fuckin’ conversed with.”

“You aren’t thinking clearly,” the AI said. “Stop letting Colonel Young interrogate you.”

“It’s called a conversation,” Young growled.

Rush looked at the AI and pointed at the door.

“Drink water,” Jackson hissed. Then it paused. “Please,” it added, before vanishing.

Rush looked down, hiding a smile.

“Did it just show up because we were—” Young began.

“You,” Rush said forcefully. “Are not smart.” He glared at Young, powerful unease echoing across their link. //Leave it. Alone. Stop asking about the chair.//

Young cleared his throat. “I hope that thing sticks with Jackson.”

“That’d be nice,” Rush said. “She has a fair point though.”

“About what?” Young asked, pouring him another shot of water.

“Ah y’fuckin’ know what, don’t ya?” Rush snapped.

“You’re getting increasingly Scottish over there,” Young said mildly.

“Fuck,” Rush said, with delicate precision. “I hate that. But. She is correct.” He sighed. “You’ve to tell me something.” Rush steepled his fingers. “I told you all this shite because I’m fair fuckin’ wrecked, and—” again, Young felt him make an effort to sharpen his accent back up, “—an’ she’s right. This isn’t a conversation. You’re getting me smashed and interrogating me, and I don’t—”

“Whoa.” Young grabbed Rush’s crossed ankles, currently propped on the table, and shook them for emphasis. “Not true, okay? Definitely not true. What do you want to know? Ask me something.”

Rush took a breath, steadying himself.

Young tried not to think about anything but the full cup of water he was pushing across the table.

Rush picked up the cup, took a sip, and said, “Why’d you turn down Icarus?”

“I wanted to fix things with my wife. I fucked everything up by sleeping with TJ, and Emily—well, she asked me to stay. I knew that if took the command, I’d lose her for good. But I lost her anyway.”

“I wanted you to take it,” Rush said. “I was fuckin’ furious when you didn’t. But that was b’fore I knew you.”

“Yeah,” Young said softly. “Drink water.”

Rush glared at him, downed the entire cup, and set it on the table out of Young’s reach.

“What else you got, genius?”

“Okay another thing I wan’ t’know. At the beginning. Did y’actually fuckin’ think,” Rush said, squinting at him, “that I sent a fucking shuttle, loaded with supplies, to a fuckin’ planet, for a handful of people to scrape out a miserable existence, on some bare fuckin’ rock, for—I don’t even know. Fun? Show? The pure pleasure of pissing into the wind?”

Young grinned down at the table top. “Not my best moment,” he admitted. “But yeah. I did think that.”

“D’you understand you’re not rational?” Rush whispered.

“You’re not rational either,” Young said, defensively.

“Right, but m’point is that I fuckin’ know I’m not rational? Jus’ made a whole passionate bloody speech about it, didn’t I?” Rush crossed his arms. “An’ another thing.”

“Yeah?” Young stood, reached across the table, grabbed the rim of Rush’s cup and dragged it back within reach.

“I’ve wondered about this for a long time. It’s insulting, I admit that, I was never planning t’explicitly ask it but I will ask it, because y’fuckin’ asked me—”

“Let’s go, genius,” Young said, simultaneously bracing himself and fighting down amusement.

“D’you think your ideas are good?” Rush whispered, his expression pained. “Or d’you know how bloody terrible they are and jus’ try an’ do them out of, like, fuckin’ tradition, or somethin’?”

Young looked away and, very heroically, did not laugh. “Tradition?”

“Oh god,” Rush whispered. “Y’think they’re good. Right.” He straightened in his chair, regrouping.
“Okay. Well, some of them are. I suppose Like—like—ah. Sometimes when y’listen to Wray. Sometimes, that’ll be a good decision.” The scientist finished strong. He nodded, leaned back in his chair, and shook his hair out of his eyes.

“‘Sometimes when you listen to Wray’,” Young repeated. “Thanks, Rush. Thanks a lot.” He poured the scientist another full cup of water. “Anything else you wanna know?”

“That was most of it that I can think of.” Rush pulled his feet off the table, sat forward, and propped an elbow on the tabletop. He pressed a hand to his head. Young felt the ache down his own forearm.

“You wanna be done for the night, genius?” Young asked.

Rush nodded. “I’m pure dead wrecked. Fuckin’ genetic modifications. Who the hell’re you, anyway, tha’ y’can put away half a bottle of, I don’ know, some grain alcohol equivalent an’ still be so bloody coherent?”

Young stood, and the room spun around him. “Not sure how coherent I am,” he said, pulling on Rush’s arm. “Let’s go back before I have to carry you. Again.”

“Dinnae fash yersel’—ye wilnae hae t’do i’.”

“Getting very Scottish, over there, genius. Unless that was Ancient?”

“You can get,” Rush said, with delicate, near-perfect elocution, “straight to fuck. I’m fine.”

“Sure,” Young said. “Sure you are.” He pulled Rush up, drew the man’s arm over his shoulder, and handed him a metal crutch. Rush looked at it as though he weren’t sure what it was for. Young pulled him along for a few steps, trusting he’d get the idea.

In the hallway, they stopped at the sight of Eli, sitting on the floor, his eyes glued to his laptop.

“What’re you doing here?” Young asked.

“I relieved Greer about twenty minutes ago,” Eli said. “He thought you guys might need an escort.” He glanced up at them.

“Mm. Nice of ‘im,” Young said.

“Wait a second. Are you drunk? Is he? You got Rush drunk?”

“Uh,” Young stalled, not sure why Eli was asking.

“Eli,” Rush said, aggrieved, “do y’hae to state the obvious like its a fuckin’ revelation? It’s every fuckin’ day with this shite. Too right we were drinking. That’s what people do in storage rooms converted to distilleries. Like, what. Is in that room. Other than alcohol.”

“Dear God,” Eli whispered, his hands clasped, his gaze directed toward the ceiling. “Thank you. Thank you so much.”

Young looked at Rush. Rush looked at Eli, perplexed and unimpressed.

Eli shut his laptop and pushed himself to his feet. “This is amazing.” He zeroed in on Rush. “Let’s go. Seriously, top five desert island movies. You owe me this one.”

“If I were on a desert island, I’d sure as fuck be tryin’ t’get off it, not watching films.”

“Top five things you miss about Earth,” Eli said, not missing a beat.

“Hmm,” Rush squinted at him. “Coffee.”

“Eli, you’re supposed to be helping.” Young pulled Rush forward. “Not playing twenty questions.”

Eli shot Young a rebellious glare, took Rush’s crutch and pulled the scientist’s arm over his shoulders. “Uh huh. Coffee, what else?”

“Cigarettes,” Rush said. “Paracetamol, having loads of those little fucking notebooks, playing the piano, pencils—”

“You play the piano?”

“All civilized people do.”

“Love the intense accent, by the way,” Eli said.

“Shut it.”

“Do you think I’m smart?” Eli asked, without missing a beat.

“Obviously.”

“How smart?”

“Pure dead brilliant. But y’know that already, I should think.”

Eli’s eyebrows drew together, but he came back with a cocky, “Duh; of course I know. I just wanted to hear you say it.”

“Okay,” Young said. “That’s enough.”

“Oh come on,” Eli said. “Like you didn’t do the exact same thing.”

Young didn’t have much of a defense against that, so he just continued down the hall, listening to Eli, with his characteristic exuberance, gently draw Rush out, question after question.

“Top five people on Destiny, other than me and Colonel Young.”

“As if either of you’d be in my top five.”

“Well you don’t have to worry about that, do you?”

“Chloe.”

“That’s it? Your top five is ‘Chloe.’ That’s weak, man.”

“Brody, James, Tamara, Greer, and Wray.”

“Was that in order? Also, if you count Chloe, that was six.”

“No.”

“Okay. Can you quote any line from any movie.”

“I can’t rewrite what’s perfect.”

Eli gasped with friendly melodrama. “That sounds like a quote! What’s it from?”

“Ask Volker,” Rush replied.

“Oh god,” Eli laughed. “Okay. I will. What was it? ‘I can’t rewrite what’s perfect’?”

“Tha’s the one.”

“Is it going to mortally offend him, somehow?”

“S’very very likely,” Rush said. “Be sensitive about it.”

“Oh my god this is killing me.” Eli looked to be on the verge of weeping. “Have you ever seen Star Wars? Planet of the Apes? The Matrix. Alien? Back to the Future??”

“No.”

“I knew it. Why? Have you lived in a cave your whole life?”

“No,” Rush said, defensively.

“You work. In space. You haven’t seen Star Wars?”

“He’s seen Star Trek,” Young offered.

“Wait, really?” Eli asked. “Well, that’s something I guess.”

“Star Trek has a culture of excellence,” Rush said coolly. “As opposed to magical fuckin’ genes.”

“Uh, they’re called midichlorians, actually,” Eli said, “and they’re not genes, they’re like, space mitochondria? But, yeah, I get it. Star Wars is too on the nose for you.”

“Never said tha’,” Rush slurred.

“Awww, yeah, you didn’t have to,” Eli said solicitously.

They paused at a corner where two of Destiny’s hallways intersected, Young heading one way, Eli the other.

“Um, his quarters are this way,” Eli said.

“Yeah, I know. We’re going to my quarters.”

“Um, why?”

“Because.” Young replied.

“I don’t know if that’s such a good idea.” Eli inched forward, then stopped again. “I think we just take this as a win. You guys went drinking together and no one died. Yaaaay. Let’s quit while we’re ahead.” 

“Eli,” Young growled.

Still, Eli hesitated. “What are you gonna do in your quarters?”

Young tried not to be distracted by the dry amusement in Rush’s thoughts.

“It’s fine, Eli,” Rush said, eyes half-closed. “We cannae separate. That’s all.”

“Since when?” Eli asked.

“Since Telford swapped me out and the ship lost power.” Young sighed.

“I guess that explains why you’ve been MIA from—well, everywhere.”

“Yeah.” Young fought down a stab of guilt. “I’m still not clear on how things are going to work if we can’t get more than fifteen feet away from each other. People’ll start to notice.”

“Well, they’ve already noticed, but it’s only going to get more obvious when you guys aren’t just sitting in the infirmary all day,” Eli murmured, “Especially since before, like, two weeks ago, you avoided each other like the plague? Word’s already spread about the drinking thing.”

“So people are talking?” Young asked.

“Forget ‘talking.’ They’re taking bets on which one of you survives until morning.”

Young rolled his eyes.

Rush sighed. “Did anyone bet on me?”

Eli laughed, short and delighted. “Uh, yeah, actually. A bunch of people bet on you. Most, actually. I’d say most.”

“What else are people saying?” Young growled.

“There’s a rumor going around that the chair did something horrible to Rush, and now he’s dying but doesn’t want anyone to know, except TJ figured it out anyway, and then told you, and so you’re trying to be nice to him.”

“He’s not dying,” Young said flatly.

“I never said he was. Well—okay, I may have helped that rumor along, but it makes sense, if you think about it.”

“He’s not dying, Eli.”

They came to a stop in front of Young’s quarters. For a long moment, no one spoke.

“Technically, you’ll find tha’ everyone’s dying,” Rush clarified.

“I hate hanging out with you guys. I really do.” Eli looked edgily at the pair of them. “Y’know what? I’m going. Enjoy your sleepover.” He ducked out from beneath Rush’s arm, backed up a few paces, then asked, “Are you gonna be okay?”

“You’re a nice fuckin’ kid,” Rush replied.

“Thanks? You’re a complete jerk, but I kind of like you anyway. Kinda.” Eli turned and went back the way they’d come.

Young hit his door controls. “C’mon.” He tugged the scientist forward, toward the bathroom. “You need help?”

“Hardly,” Rush said, raising his eyebrows. “You can jis’ stop dragging me about. I’m not that smashed. I only had—what? Four point five shots? Or five? Six or six point five or seven at the most.”

“You’re pretty damn smashed, over there, genius.” He pulled back, experimentally abandoning Rush as the door of the bathroom. The scientist made a grab for the doorframe to stay standing, but missed. Before Young could restabilize him, the automatic door shot out to meet his grip.

“Neat trick.” Young leaned against the doorframe as Rush pulled himself over to the sink.

“Y’can stop fuckin’ hoverin’. Ah’m no for havin’ it.”

Without warning, the door to the bathroom swished shut, closing a few inches in front of Young’s face.

//You’re a lotta work. You pass out in there, you’re waking up in the infirmary.//

Rush ignored him.

Young sat on the edge of the bed to remove his boots, belt, and jacket. After a few minutes, Rush emerged and Young took his own turn. When he made his way out of the bathroom he found Rush lying on the floor next to the bed, still fully clothed down to his boots. The man was curled on his side, mostly asleep.

“Why do you do this?” Young asked. “You know I’m not gonna let you sleep there.”

Rush made no move to get up. “The deck plating heats up for me.”

“Seriously?” Young looked down at him with raised eyebrows. “How does that work?”

“Energetic transfer in accordance with the second law of thermodynamics. Y’ know, you have alarming deficiencies in your basic—”

“Shut up, Rush. I’m familiar with the concept of heat.”

“Then fuck if I know what you’re on about.”

“You’re not sleeping on the floor. Not now. Not ever. I’m done arguing about it. Next time you try this, I’m gonna deadlift you off the deck plates.”

Rush squinted up at him. “I didn’ know ‘chain-of-command’ could be a type of personality? But it is, and s’yours.”

“Uh huh. Young used the man’s jacket to sit the guy up. Carefully, he pulled off the scientist’s glasses. “You sleep with these on?”

“D’ you hae to criticize every fuckin’ thing?” Rush sounded more plaintive than irritated, though Young was sure that wasn’t the effect the scientist’d been aiming for.

“Yes,” Young said. “For you, I do it on principle.” He hauled the guy up by his jacket and shoved him onto the bed. Once the other man was situated, Young sat down next to him. “You gonna be okay?”

“Yes,” Rush murmured. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.”

“Look’t how well we’re doing,” Rush said. His eyes were closed. “Civilized as fuck.”

“Oh yeah,” Young agreed. “We’re doing great.”