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Wow, hi, and holy damn, people. Three months? I'm so sorry! Sheesh. At last, though, eh? And i'm pretty sure that there is only one more chapter after this one, so - here it is, the penultimate chapter of my rather 'epic' Space AU!
*does a little dance*
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darkhavens of course did the beta-ing. :) She's awesome.
So, here we go, thank you my so-patient readers, we are almost there!
Also at AO3.
Feel her bow rise free of Mother Sea
In a sunburst cloud of spray
That stings the cheek while the rigging will speak
Of sea-miles gone away
She is always best under full press
Hard over as she'll lay - Stan Rogers, 'Bluenose'
Jared was sure that, to his dying day, he would remember the way the Tiamat had moved. How gravity had crushed them back against padded walls or dragged them feet-first, his heart laboring to keep his blood flowing where it needed to go, his lungs wheezing. How gravity had suddenly stopped doing anything at all, and Jared was sure his whole body was going to fly apart. The drone of the engines coming through the hull, through the air; the very fabric of the ship itself groaning and creaking and thumping. The Nephilim shouting, not in terror or anger, but for the sheer joy of it. Yell, scream, shout, tell the 'verse you're alive, fight it, win! pouring through him from Jensen, who was shouting as loud as the Angels, grinning and triumphant when the hum suddenly changed pitch and the wild maneuvers settled into a steady push.
"Got 'em! Got the Jos," Jensen said, touching his ear, the com unit he still wore, and Jared grinned, his hands shaking, knotted in the webbing.
There was a wild scramble of crew and carts and supplies, then, everyone gulping down squeeze-packs of some liquid that, to Jared, tasted mostly like salt, sugar and fake-lime, disgusting, but somehow satisfying. Some crewman - sweat rings on his coveralls, and a new bandage on his cheekbone - passed out extra in little mesh bags that clipped to the safety webbing, and then handed out wrapped syrettes to Jared and Jensen, marked all over with warnings and medical jargon.
Jump pack, from Jensen, and Jared was nodding, looking it over. Familiar, at least, from his own time with the Company. Drugs for jump, since most people couldn't - shouldn't - go through it awake and aware, though the crew came closer than most, having to at least marginally monitor the ship as they went.
But Jared, and Jensen, the Angels and most of the crew would ride it out in the warm dark of the drug, until the Tiamat decelerated into the field at Tripoli, becoming real again, after the ghost-ride of the Between, the nether world of jump. Meeting up with the Diomedes, with Doc and Raleigh and all the other Diaboli who'd gone on before, they’d leave Axis, and the displaced Angels, and everything else...months in the past.
Over jump, Jensen offered, and Jared looked over at him, working on securing the jump-pack in a pocket of his jacket.
"What?"
"We're going to over-jump them. Tiamat's a lot faster than that merc ship. We'll beat 'em in by a week, probably."
"Are you fucking kidding me?" Jared said, and Jensen laughed. Kane did too, faceplate up and the armor hissing as he did some kind of diagnostic test, various plates and foils lifting and settling, ruffled feathers.
"She goes, Jared. She goes like nothin' you've seen."
"Under full press, hard over as she lays," Jensen said, a low, soft sing-song to his voice, and in the 'net an image of Kee, singing as the jump-pack took hold, a song old as Earth, ships and the sea none of them had ever seen, incomprehensible but full of excitement. We go, we fly, into the dark, ride the bubble, skip the line-
"Bluenose," Kane whispered, and something shivered through the 'net, making Jared's heart ache and his eyes sting, even as he struggled to understand.
"Twenty minutes 'til skip-out; hit the head now if you need it," the crewman said, giving the cart a shove out the door, past two figures who stumbled in. The Jos, looking rumpled and sweaty and a bit green, hung with their gear and with Jared and Jensen's, too.
Jared took in a long, shaky breath and rubbed roughly at his eye; blinked and grinned and started to pop the buckles on the safety web. "Damn, good to see you! Glad you made it," he said, reaching for normal, intent on finding the head, getting a sweater out of his bag, getting comfortable for the long jump. Tucked away for later was the strange, shivery image of sunlight on (water ice steel) and vast, pearly sails open against the endless, star-spangled black of space.
They came out of the Between like surfacing from underwater: a sudden rush of weightlessness, and then the tug of gravity, a gasp, a groan, a sigh. Jared thrashed for a moment in the webbing, and Jensen leaned over to catch a flailing hand, squeezing tight. Jensen pushed his own awareness onto Jared, translating the running monologue from com, identifying the noises, the smells, the aches in their bodies. He smoothed the tangled mess of emotion and impulse that was the jump-pack's doing; that decaying surge of adrenalin and endorphins and opiates, of the drugs just for jump that Jensen couldn't name, though he knew what they did: flattened you out, made you so open...you had to focus down and orient yourself.
Jensen felt Jared's hand flinch in his as he poured out instructions, explanations. Sorry, sorry, sorry, Jensen thought, and Jared just breathed next to him, eyes blinking slow and a little uneven, his heart thumping, pinging through the 'net, his joints aching. All clear and we'll get cleaned up, eat, they'll make something hot, feels good, hot water, clean clothes, safe, safe….
He pushed out memories of post-jump in the Angel quarters, everyone warm and steamed clean in the showers, fed and sleepy and close, curling together in bunks and on the couches, touching, talking, feeling; reconnecting. Unless they had to come out ready, armored and bouncing and up up up, go-packs with the jump-packs, almost awake, almost aware as the ship skipped out of time and space and flew.
"Jen...Jensen," Jared murmured, rush of dizzy, sick, and Jensen throttled the 'net down again.
"Get a drink, Jared, can you? Reach over and make you feel better, you can do it get a drink," Jensen said, showing him in the 'net, careful this time, just a trickle of impulse and images. The drink would help with the nausea, help with the shaky-cold feeling, the disorientation. Jensen could feel Jared putting everything into that, in the twist and reach after the net bag, dragging out one of the squeeze-packs, giving the straw that hard little tug to make it pop the seal. Jensen could feel it when the liquid hit Jared's mouth and he groped for his own drink, fumbling a little, as shaky as Jared was. They both drifted, drinking in long sips the fake-lime and then a fake-lemon, but no fake-orange because Tiamat crew knew just how much most of the Angels hated it. Something in the chemical mix that was supposed to achieve 'orange' mostly just tasted like poison.
"Fuck," Jared muttered, and stuffed the last empty container back into the bag. He took a long, deep breath and looked around, blinking. More clear, in the 'net, and better color, too. The Angels over in the armor moved a little, faint hisses and creaks of joints and webbing, getting their post-jump fix via the port in their spines, umbilicals to the suits, standard procedure. Mainline straight to the blood, so they didn't need the drinks but...everyone had one, just the same. Give you something to do, something to focus on, a way to wake up and function when sometimes that was the hardest thing in the 'verse.
Kane was looking at Jensen, a little frown on his face, and Jensen cocked his head, waiting. "You good? I can't… You both all-go?"
"I'm good," Jensen said, "we're good," pushing his fingers back through his hair, grimacing at the lank feel of it. Strands of it came loose in his hand, and he made a face, twisting the hairs up into a little ball and shoving it down into a pocket. Didn't want that just drifting around.
"Next time...next time, we...we'll figure something. So you can hear the story," Kane said softly, and Jensen smiled, though a sudden, low ache flared in his chest.
"What story?" Jared asked, quiet, and Jensen closed his eyes, conjuring it for Jared; conjuring Kee and her melancholy songs, remembering Sinna telling them a story before jump. Telling them about the first Angels, centuries ago: Captain and the Soldier, close as any ANGELS could be. The first extra-humans, they'd lived in the cold of never-where, something like jump before jump had ever existed, and woke up to fight, to protect. Almost a joke, but not quite; figures of legend, a tether to history, just like the gladators and the Komanshee, Devil Dogs and Kam-kaze, Samurai and fighting Irish, the Martian Firsts, the Jump-light Brigade, the Second Sacred of Thebes... Angels were all those and more, all of history tangled up in their making, and first Sinna, then others, as they learned, would tell their stories in the dim warmth of the barracks, before the Between and the long cold. Stories to keep them warm, stories to make them dream sweet.
Jensen took a hard breath, lost in remembering, finally blinking out of it to see Jared looking at him, tears standing in his eyes, making them luminous and huge, his lashes wet, sticking together. Something fragile and wanting and hurt throbbed in the 'net. "Jared?"
"Is that..that's you...all of you," Jared said, glance flicking to Kane and the rest, and Jensen shook his head.
"That's us, Jared. You and me, all of us." Angels, our history, our stories, our ghosts "I'll teach you."
Jared sniffed, scrabbled out a wad of dingy cloth from a pocket and scrubbed at his nose. Then he grinned shakily over at Jensen, the feeling in the 'net changing, the hurt fading, replaced with warmth, and awe, and love, and Jensen grinned back.
"Brace for de-cel," ship-com said, and the Tiamat shivered, half into the Between and back again, shedding velocity, jump engines winding down, all that energy dissipating in shuddery pulses. Jared's hand found Jensen's and just held on.
The corridors of the Tiamat were scored with streaks of carbon where laser fire and projectiles had done damage; were smirched with smoke and blood and other things that made Jensen flinch, that made him angry and sad and horrified, all at the same time. A haze of burnt plastics hung in the air and the overloaded atmo systems worked to flush it clean, producing little distressed whines from time to time, as the fans and systems went triple-time. To distract himself, Jensen kept up a steady flow of information for Jared as they walked on shaky knees down the grey-painted corridors, on grey tile, endless plex panels and muted light-tracks showing the way to the command deck, quarters, drop-ship hangar, the mess…. It was bewildering, to Jared; all of it an ugly sameness that Jensen had long-since learned to ignore.
Crew decks, Suit decks, Jensen dismissed, anxious and brimming over with anticipation, knowing where they were headed. Angel quarters here, down here, our place, our space, no officers, no Suits.… As they walked, the soldiers and crew mopping up stood aside, watching as the Nephilim marched through, armored feet clanking and thumping, the suits themselves humming as hydraulics and oil-gears synched and flexed and hissed. Jensen and Jared were tiny in their midst, but noticed, just the same. They went through an open pressure-seal door and turned hard left, and ahead of them was an archway, and a sort of blue-green dimness, and color....
"What is-? What is that? Jensen, what-?" Shock, astonishment, awe in the 'net, and Jensen grinned hard, seeing quarters all over again, for the first time, through Jared's eyes. On the walls, lines and swirls, explosions of pale color, names and words and something Jared puzzled over, the picture-words so many illiterate Angels used, refined and perfected over decades. It covered every inch of the walls, of the ceiling, even looped over some of the floor. It climbed and crawled and twisted around everything, and Jared was remembering, a stuttering flash, Jensen's bolt-hole down in the Axis Mundi, the old and new graffiti there.
This is us, this is Nephilim, Jensen thought, showing Jared the names, the shapes that meant Us, Angels, safe, home, welcome…..
"It's so bright," Jared said, though it wasn't, exactly. It was all just more vivid than it had been, back in the rest of the ship. The etchings and engravings on the armor all around them took on extra dimension and the colors of the armor themselves seemed to glow, deeper and more saturated.
The light, less of some, more of others, better for our eyes. Five knows, Malik, I don't remember, this is how we see, in the armor. All in a jumble of images and contrasts, bits of conversation from down-times, and Jared put a hand carefully, carefully, up to a five-pointed, red star on the wall, that was outlined in fractured rays.
"It's…amazing, beautiful."
The Angels were filing through another door, and Jensen and Jared leaned there, watching as umbilicals and cables depended down from the overhead and the armor was hooked up, and then unseamed, and the pale-glowing bodies of Angels slid free. They moved with purpose, standing in clumps around shower nozzles, washing away the gel saline, helps conduct, helps you talk to your suit, slim, muscled bodies given an almost unreal aura in the overheads to Jared's eyes. They had nearly three hours of de-cel, crossing the elliptic to Tripoli, going slow, as stealthy as a carrier the size of the Tiamat could be which was, surprisingly, damn near invisible. So they had time, to clean up and eat, to relax and figure out their next moves. To just...be, for a little bit, while the Tiamat hurtled through the dark, deadly shadow.
Watching the Angels, Jensen couldn't help letting slip the visceral memory of himself sliding free of his armor, chilled and slick; scrubbing down, warming up, anticipation, longing. Of hands on his skin, and skin under his own hands, soap-slick and warming, touching. Confirming and affirming that they were each whole, safe, there.
He was trying not to overload Jared with it, but Jared was crowding up close behind Jensen. One hand pressed into Jensen's waist, curling into the layers of clothing there, shivering, bone-deep tremors that Jensen could feel through the 'net, could hear in the uneven huff of his breathing. "Jared?"
"C-can we...if you want, we can-" Cold, cold, want to warm up, clean up, want to know, need to feel…. "They would...they want you, don't they? With them. And it would be okay, I w-would be-"
Jared was embarrassed, in the 'net. Embarrassed and curious and...wanting. Not sex, not anything sleazy, just… Overwhelmed, lost, cold, and Jensen understood that. He knew that, down to his bones.
"Yeah, okay." We can, family, Angels, they're us, we're them, it's all right. "C'mon," Jensen said, and got Jared's hand in his, squeezing a little and tugging him forward, past the ranked armors, up to the edge of the showers. Stripping off, boots to shirts, showing Jared where to put their clothes, laundry chute right there, they'd get them back. Moving into the steam and spray and warmth, Kane making space, and Malik, Five and Sous grinning over from their spots at the next cluster of shower heads, both women giving Jared a slow and lascivious once-over that made Jensen laugh out loud, head back, just so fucking happy to be back, to be there. He looked over at Jared, not sure what to expect, but Jared was soaping himself unselfconsciously, face turned up to the water.
Hell, Jared was showing off, Jensen could feel it, preening just a little, flexing a thigh and bending to scrub at his knee, showing off a flank and ass that, Jensen had to admit, was damn fine. Jared looked up at Jensen, water beaded on his long, long lashes, sending him images, a flurry of memories, only a little jerky, a little confused. Getting better - getting good at that.
Been here, done it, not ashamed, Jared thought, showing Jensen Company barracks and schools, orphans riding the physical hell of newly implanted ports and the first, chaotic growth spurts of nascent ANGEL systems. Alone and scared and hurting and desperately - furiously - longing for family, and connection. Taking whatever physical comfort they could, crowding into couches and bunks together, touching skin on skin. Although the Company tended to keep the sexes apart, to keep them all a little dosed on this or that, so hormones and puberty didn't run amok in their carefully stilted, regimented lives.
Jared's unexpected ease, his happy desire to be there, to be part of, felt so good, to Jensen, he just moved, stepping right into Jared's space and pulling him close, one hand up in all that ridiculous hair, the other on his hip. He Kissed Jared for all he was worth, while the Angels around them erupted into whooping cheers and whistles, catcalls and laughter.
Love and family and yes. Jared was laughing against Jensen's mouth, looking over Jensen's shoulder at the Angels, taking their suggestions and frankly filthy innuendo all in his stride, not caring at all when Kane crowded into him, swiping at him with a towel, or when Five patted his ass on her way past.
In quarters, when they were clean and warm and dressed, Jared sitting cross-legged on a padded bench, dressed like everyone else in the soft, navy-blue down-time uniform of the Angels…. Jensen wanted to laugh, and to cry. Jared looked…right. He looked like one of them. Sous was fiddling with his hair, and Malik was too, running their fingers through and through it, braiding and twisting and just playing, a sensation Jensen could feel in the 'net, tingly and good.
Kane was doing the same to Jensen, just a slow rub of his fingers through the shorter hairs of Jensen's nape, and the slightly longer spikes on the crown. Jensen had never seen Kane other than he was, shaved smooth and slick for the armor, and Kane was all but purring, eyes half-shut as he ran his fingers through and through and through the drying strands.
"Gonna rub it all off," Jensen murmured, half asleep, warm and comfortable, tucked up against Jinx and Perin and Kane, his hand on Jared's knee, blinking slower and slower. Jared was content happy warm, belly full of the soup the mess had sent up, and the little savory pancakes smeared with tart cheese.
"Feels like...cross grained, like…." Kane didn't finish, saying it in the 'net, Jensen was sure, and Jinx murmured agreement, those pale, pale eyes of his blinking up at Jensen, little flecks of ic-blue and grey, ringed in black.
"Glad you're back, Quemuel," Jinx murmured, and Jensen rubbed the back of his hand over inconvenient, wet eyes, and sniffed. He looked over at Jared, who was looking right back, close as Jensen's own skin - wound up and snugged down, right into Jensen's heart.
"Me, too. We both are," Jensen said, and it was so.
Part Seventeen.
Thanks again, my dears!
*does a little dance*
darkhavens of course did the beta-ing. :) She's awesome.So, here we go, thank you my so-patient readers, we are almost there!
Also at AO3.
Feel her bow rise free of Mother Sea
In a sunburst cloud of spray
That stings the cheek while the rigging will speak
Of sea-miles gone away
She is always best under full press
Hard over as she'll lay - Stan Rogers, 'Bluenose'
Jared was sure that, to his dying day, he would remember the way the Tiamat had moved. How gravity had crushed them back against padded walls or dragged them feet-first, his heart laboring to keep his blood flowing where it needed to go, his lungs wheezing. How gravity had suddenly stopped doing anything at all, and Jared was sure his whole body was going to fly apart. The drone of the engines coming through the hull, through the air; the very fabric of the ship itself groaning and creaking and thumping. The Nephilim shouting, not in terror or anger, but for the sheer joy of it. Yell, scream, shout, tell the 'verse you're alive, fight it, win! pouring through him from Jensen, who was shouting as loud as the Angels, grinning and triumphant when the hum suddenly changed pitch and the wild maneuvers settled into a steady push.
"Got 'em! Got the Jos," Jensen said, touching his ear, the com unit he still wore, and Jared grinned, his hands shaking, knotted in the webbing.
There was a wild scramble of crew and carts and supplies, then, everyone gulping down squeeze-packs of some liquid that, to Jared, tasted mostly like salt, sugar and fake-lime, disgusting, but somehow satisfying. Some crewman - sweat rings on his coveralls, and a new bandage on his cheekbone - passed out extra in little mesh bags that clipped to the safety webbing, and then handed out wrapped syrettes to Jared and Jensen, marked all over with warnings and medical jargon.
Jump pack, from Jensen, and Jared was nodding, looking it over. Familiar, at least, from his own time with the Company. Drugs for jump, since most people couldn't - shouldn't - go through it awake and aware, though the crew came closer than most, having to at least marginally monitor the ship as they went.
But Jared, and Jensen, the Angels and most of the crew would ride it out in the warm dark of the drug, until the Tiamat decelerated into the field at Tripoli, becoming real again, after the ghost-ride of the Between, the nether world of jump. Meeting up with the Diomedes, with Doc and Raleigh and all the other Diaboli who'd gone on before, they’d leave Axis, and the displaced Angels, and everything else...months in the past.
Over jump, Jensen offered, and Jared looked over at him, working on securing the jump-pack in a pocket of his jacket.
"What?"
"We're going to over-jump them. Tiamat's a lot faster than that merc ship. We'll beat 'em in by a week, probably."
"Are you fucking kidding me?" Jared said, and Jensen laughed. Kane did too, faceplate up and the armor hissing as he did some kind of diagnostic test, various plates and foils lifting and settling, ruffled feathers.
"She goes, Jared. She goes like nothin' you've seen."
"Under full press, hard over as she lays," Jensen said, a low, soft sing-song to his voice, and in the 'net an image of Kee, singing as the jump-pack took hold, a song old as Earth, ships and the sea none of them had ever seen, incomprehensible but full of excitement. We go, we fly, into the dark, ride the bubble, skip the line-
"Bluenose," Kane whispered, and something shivered through the 'net, making Jared's heart ache and his eyes sting, even as he struggled to understand.
"Twenty minutes 'til skip-out; hit the head now if you need it," the crewman said, giving the cart a shove out the door, past two figures who stumbled in. The Jos, looking rumpled and sweaty and a bit green, hung with their gear and with Jared and Jensen's, too.
Jared took in a long, shaky breath and rubbed roughly at his eye; blinked and grinned and started to pop the buckles on the safety web. "Damn, good to see you! Glad you made it," he said, reaching for normal, intent on finding the head, getting a sweater out of his bag, getting comfortable for the long jump. Tucked away for later was the strange, shivery image of sunlight on (water ice steel) and vast, pearly sails open against the endless, star-spangled black of space.
They came out of the Between like surfacing from underwater: a sudden rush of weightlessness, and then the tug of gravity, a gasp, a groan, a sigh. Jared thrashed for a moment in the webbing, and Jensen leaned over to catch a flailing hand, squeezing tight. Jensen pushed his own awareness onto Jared, translating the running monologue from com, identifying the noises, the smells, the aches in their bodies. He smoothed the tangled mess of emotion and impulse that was the jump-pack's doing; that decaying surge of adrenalin and endorphins and opiates, of the drugs just for jump that Jensen couldn't name, though he knew what they did: flattened you out, made you so open...you had to focus down and orient yourself.
Jensen felt Jared's hand flinch in his as he poured out instructions, explanations. Sorry, sorry, sorry, Jensen thought, and Jared just breathed next to him, eyes blinking slow and a little uneven, his heart thumping, pinging through the 'net, his joints aching. All clear and we'll get cleaned up, eat, they'll make something hot, feels good, hot water, clean clothes, safe, safe….
He pushed out memories of post-jump in the Angel quarters, everyone warm and steamed clean in the showers, fed and sleepy and close, curling together in bunks and on the couches, touching, talking, feeling; reconnecting. Unless they had to come out ready, armored and bouncing and up up up, go-packs with the jump-packs, almost awake, almost aware as the ship skipped out of time and space and flew.
"Jen...Jensen," Jared murmured, rush of dizzy, sick, and Jensen throttled the 'net down again.
"Get a drink, Jared, can you? Reach over and make you feel better, you can do it get a drink," Jensen said, showing him in the 'net, careful this time, just a trickle of impulse and images. The drink would help with the nausea, help with the shaky-cold feeling, the disorientation. Jensen could feel Jared putting everything into that, in the twist and reach after the net bag, dragging out one of the squeeze-packs, giving the straw that hard little tug to make it pop the seal. Jensen could feel it when the liquid hit Jared's mouth and he groped for his own drink, fumbling a little, as shaky as Jared was. They both drifted, drinking in long sips the fake-lime and then a fake-lemon, but no fake-orange because Tiamat crew knew just how much most of the Angels hated it. Something in the chemical mix that was supposed to achieve 'orange' mostly just tasted like poison.
"Fuck," Jared muttered, and stuffed the last empty container back into the bag. He took a long, deep breath and looked around, blinking. More clear, in the 'net, and better color, too. The Angels over in the armor moved a little, faint hisses and creaks of joints and webbing, getting their post-jump fix via the port in their spines, umbilicals to the suits, standard procedure. Mainline straight to the blood, so they didn't need the drinks but...everyone had one, just the same. Give you something to do, something to focus on, a way to wake up and function when sometimes that was the hardest thing in the 'verse.
Kane was looking at Jensen, a little frown on his face, and Jensen cocked his head, waiting. "You good? I can't… You both all-go?"
"I'm good," Jensen said, "we're good," pushing his fingers back through his hair, grimacing at the lank feel of it. Strands of it came loose in his hand, and he made a face, twisting the hairs up into a little ball and shoving it down into a pocket. Didn't want that just drifting around.
"Next time...next time, we...we'll figure something. So you can hear the story," Kane said softly, and Jensen smiled, though a sudden, low ache flared in his chest.
"What story?" Jared asked, quiet, and Jensen closed his eyes, conjuring it for Jared; conjuring Kee and her melancholy songs, remembering Sinna telling them a story before jump. Telling them about the first Angels, centuries ago: Captain and the Soldier, close as any ANGELS could be. The first extra-humans, they'd lived in the cold of never-where, something like jump before jump had ever existed, and woke up to fight, to protect. Almost a joke, but not quite; figures of legend, a tether to history, just like the gladators and the Komanshee, Devil Dogs and Kam-kaze, Samurai and fighting Irish, the Martian Firsts, the Jump-light Brigade, the Second Sacred of Thebes... Angels were all those and more, all of history tangled up in their making, and first Sinna, then others, as they learned, would tell their stories in the dim warmth of the barracks, before the Between and the long cold. Stories to keep them warm, stories to make them dream sweet.
Jensen took a hard breath, lost in remembering, finally blinking out of it to see Jared looking at him, tears standing in his eyes, making them luminous and huge, his lashes wet, sticking together. Something fragile and wanting and hurt throbbed in the 'net. "Jared?"
"Is that..that's you...all of you," Jared said, glance flicking to Kane and the rest, and Jensen shook his head.
"That's us, Jared. You and me, all of us." Angels, our history, our stories, our ghosts "I'll teach you."
Jared sniffed, scrabbled out a wad of dingy cloth from a pocket and scrubbed at his nose. Then he grinned shakily over at Jensen, the feeling in the 'net changing, the hurt fading, replaced with warmth, and awe, and love, and Jensen grinned back.
"Brace for de-cel," ship-com said, and the Tiamat shivered, half into the Between and back again, shedding velocity, jump engines winding down, all that energy dissipating in shuddery pulses. Jared's hand found Jensen's and just held on.
The corridors of the Tiamat were scored with streaks of carbon where laser fire and projectiles had done damage; were smirched with smoke and blood and other things that made Jensen flinch, that made him angry and sad and horrified, all at the same time. A haze of burnt plastics hung in the air and the overloaded atmo systems worked to flush it clean, producing little distressed whines from time to time, as the fans and systems went triple-time. To distract himself, Jensen kept up a steady flow of information for Jared as they walked on shaky knees down the grey-painted corridors, on grey tile, endless plex panels and muted light-tracks showing the way to the command deck, quarters, drop-ship hangar, the mess…. It was bewildering, to Jared; all of it an ugly sameness that Jensen had long-since learned to ignore.
Crew decks, Suit decks, Jensen dismissed, anxious and brimming over with anticipation, knowing where they were headed. Angel quarters here, down here, our place, our space, no officers, no Suits.… As they walked, the soldiers and crew mopping up stood aside, watching as the Nephilim marched through, armored feet clanking and thumping, the suits themselves humming as hydraulics and oil-gears synched and flexed and hissed. Jensen and Jared were tiny in their midst, but noticed, just the same. They went through an open pressure-seal door and turned hard left, and ahead of them was an archway, and a sort of blue-green dimness, and color....
"What is-? What is that? Jensen, what-?" Shock, astonishment, awe in the 'net, and Jensen grinned hard, seeing quarters all over again, for the first time, through Jared's eyes. On the walls, lines and swirls, explosions of pale color, names and words and something Jared puzzled over, the picture-words so many illiterate Angels used, refined and perfected over decades. It covered every inch of the walls, of the ceiling, even looped over some of the floor. It climbed and crawled and twisted around everything, and Jared was remembering, a stuttering flash, Jensen's bolt-hole down in the Axis Mundi, the old and new graffiti there.
This is us, this is Nephilim, Jensen thought, showing Jared the names, the shapes that meant Us, Angels, safe, home, welcome…..
"It's so bright," Jared said, though it wasn't, exactly. It was all just more vivid than it had been, back in the rest of the ship. The etchings and engravings on the armor all around them took on extra dimension and the colors of the armor themselves seemed to glow, deeper and more saturated.
The light, less of some, more of others, better for our eyes. Five knows, Malik, I don't remember, this is how we see, in the armor. All in a jumble of images and contrasts, bits of conversation from down-times, and Jared put a hand carefully, carefully, up to a five-pointed, red star on the wall, that was outlined in fractured rays.
"It's…amazing, beautiful."
The Angels were filing through another door, and Jensen and Jared leaned there, watching as umbilicals and cables depended down from the overhead and the armor was hooked up, and then unseamed, and the pale-glowing bodies of Angels slid free. They moved with purpose, standing in clumps around shower nozzles, washing away the gel saline, helps conduct, helps you talk to your suit, slim, muscled bodies given an almost unreal aura in the overheads to Jared's eyes. They had nearly three hours of de-cel, crossing the elliptic to Tripoli, going slow, as stealthy as a carrier the size of the Tiamat could be which was, surprisingly, damn near invisible. So they had time, to clean up and eat, to relax and figure out their next moves. To just...be, for a little bit, while the Tiamat hurtled through the dark, deadly shadow.
Watching the Angels, Jensen couldn't help letting slip the visceral memory of himself sliding free of his armor, chilled and slick; scrubbing down, warming up, anticipation, longing. Of hands on his skin, and skin under his own hands, soap-slick and warming, touching. Confirming and affirming that they were each whole, safe, there.
He was trying not to overload Jared with it, but Jared was crowding up close behind Jensen. One hand pressed into Jensen's waist, curling into the layers of clothing there, shivering, bone-deep tremors that Jensen could feel through the 'net, could hear in the uneven huff of his breathing. "Jared?"
"C-can we...if you want, we can-" Cold, cold, want to warm up, clean up, want to know, need to feel…. "They would...they want you, don't they? With them. And it would be okay, I w-would be-"
Jared was embarrassed, in the 'net. Embarrassed and curious and...wanting. Not sex, not anything sleazy, just… Overwhelmed, lost, cold, and Jensen understood that. He knew that, down to his bones.
"Yeah, okay." We can, family, Angels, they're us, we're them, it's all right. "C'mon," Jensen said, and got Jared's hand in his, squeezing a little and tugging him forward, past the ranked armors, up to the edge of the showers. Stripping off, boots to shirts, showing Jared where to put their clothes, laundry chute right there, they'd get them back. Moving into the steam and spray and warmth, Kane making space, and Malik, Five and Sous grinning over from their spots at the next cluster of shower heads, both women giving Jared a slow and lascivious once-over that made Jensen laugh out loud, head back, just so fucking happy to be back, to be there. He looked over at Jared, not sure what to expect, but Jared was soaping himself unselfconsciously, face turned up to the water.
Hell, Jared was showing off, Jensen could feel it, preening just a little, flexing a thigh and bending to scrub at his knee, showing off a flank and ass that, Jensen had to admit, was damn fine. Jared looked up at Jensen, water beaded on his long, long lashes, sending him images, a flurry of memories, only a little jerky, a little confused. Getting better - getting good at that.
Been here, done it, not ashamed, Jared thought, showing Jensen Company barracks and schools, orphans riding the physical hell of newly implanted ports and the first, chaotic growth spurts of nascent ANGEL systems. Alone and scared and hurting and desperately - furiously - longing for family, and connection. Taking whatever physical comfort they could, crowding into couches and bunks together, touching skin on skin. Although the Company tended to keep the sexes apart, to keep them all a little dosed on this or that, so hormones and puberty didn't run amok in their carefully stilted, regimented lives.
Jared's unexpected ease, his happy desire to be there, to be part of, felt so good, to Jensen, he just moved, stepping right into Jared's space and pulling him close, one hand up in all that ridiculous hair, the other on his hip. He Kissed Jared for all he was worth, while the Angels around them erupted into whooping cheers and whistles, catcalls and laughter.
Love and family and yes. Jared was laughing against Jensen's mouth, looking over Jensen's shoulder at the Angels, taking their suggestions and frankly filthy innuendo all in his stride, not caring at all when Kane crowded into him, swiping at him with a towel, or when Five patted his ass on her way past.
In quarters, when they were clean and warm and dressed, Jared sitting cross-legged on a padded bench, dressed like everyone else in the soft, navy-blue down-time uniform of the Angels…. Jensen wanted to laugh, and to cry. Jared looked…right. He looked like one of them. Sous was fiddling with his hair, and Malik was too, running their fingers through and through it, braiding and twisting and just playing, a sensation Jensen could feel in the 'net, tingly and good.
Kane was doing the same to Jensen, just a slow rub of his fingers through the shorter hairs of Jensen's nape, and the slightly longer spikes on the crown. Jensen had never seen Kane other than he was, shaved smooth and slick for the armor, and Kane was all but purring, eyes half-shut as he ran his fingers through and through and through the drying strands.
"Gonna rub it all off," Jensen murmured, half asleep, warm and comfortable, tucked up against Jinx and Perin and Kane, his hand on Jared's knee, blinking slower and slower. Jared was content happy warm, belly full of the soup the mess had sent up, and the little savory pancakes smeared with tart cheese.
"Feels like...cross grained, like…." Kane didn't finish, saying it in the 'net, Jensen was sure, and Jinx murmured agreement, those pale, pale eyes of his blinking up at Jensen, little flecks of ic-blue and grey, ringed in black.
"Glad you're back, Quemuel," Jinx murmured, and Jensen rubbed the back of his hand over inconvenient, wet eyes, and sniffed. He looked over at Jared, who was looking right back, close as Jensen's own skin - wound up and snugged down, right into Jensen's heart.
"Me, too. We both are," Jensen said, and it was so.
Part Seventeen.
Thanks again, my dears!
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