Cloverleaf Station: Chapter Nineteen, Part One

 Notes: Oooh, things are starting to come together! We might even be in the final third of the book now! 

In other news, I'm getting eye surgery this Thursday. Not "OMG EYE SURGERY" but not "oh hey, now you can see perfectly, great" surgery either. I'll probably be blurry for at least a week, and unable to tolerate screens for several days. Soooo...I'm taking next week off from everything. Yep. All contracts, editing, writing, proofreading, regular reading, EVERYTHING. Except my family, and even that, my honey's going to be stepping up while I recover.

And then I'll be back and we'll all celebrate and YAAAY it'll be delightful. Be well, my darlins!

Title: Cloverleaf Station: Chapter Nineteen, Part One

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Chapter Nineteen, Part One

 

It took a combination of probes, guide lines, and tricky maneuvering on Catalina’s part to get the piece of Zak’s ship close enough for Catalina to latch onto. Towing it out of there wasn’t an option—the chances of it getting taken out by an asteroid were too high, and Kieron hadn’t come this far just to trip at the very end of the race. Five hours of painstaking patience resulted in the safe attachment of the ship fragment to their roof, and then Catalina spent another three hours getting them back to the station as safely as she could.

Kieron spent most of that time in silence. His mind was both racing and not, a hundred different thoughts flooding through it every minute, but none of them sticking for long. All of the implications of this find, everything he’d be able to say to Xilinn and Pol and Dagny, what it would mean for them to have him back home, what it would mean for Kieron for Zak to be home again…

That last part was the stickiest thought, the one that lingered longest. Kieron had dreamed over and over about what it would be like to recover Zak’s body, to be able to give him back to his family. He had never thought about what he himself would do next. Why would he? What future was out there for someone like him? He’d brought misery to Zakari’s family—not that Xilinn had ever blamed him. She wouldn’t, she wasn’t that kind of person. But he was to blame. He’d encouraged Zakari to pursue goals that weren’t in line with Traktan tradition, he’d enabled him to leave the planet and take up a very dangerous profession, and he hadn’t been with him the day it all fell apart.

If he had been, could he have helped? Would he have made it worse? Would they simply have died together, the way a part of Kieron had always hoped they would? Not that he’d wanted Zakari to die—he just wanted to know there was something for himself beyond solitude at the end. Selfish. So selfish. Thoughts like that had made contemplating the future nearly impossible, because what could it possibly hold for a man like him? Emptiness, loneliness, those were what he deserved. What he was destined for. All he should ever want or expect, and now…

Now he wanted more. Kieron wasn’t sure exactly what that meant, but sitting here surrounded by Catalina, enveloped in her warmth and color and care, with Elanus absently reaching out to touch him every now and then as his hands flew across the control panels—not that his guidance was necessary for Catie, but it gave him something to do—made him want more. With them. Which didn’t seem…impossible.

But it’s not a good idea. At least, it wasn’t right now. Not while he still had to figure out how to get Zakari’s body back home, not while he was still working at the station, definitely not while he was Elanus’s employee. It was bad enough they were sleeping together. And there was still the issue of Deysan Moritz to cover, which…

It wasn’t like Kieron didn’t know where Elanus had shoved him, or the tech he’d shoved in there with him. It was more that he had given himself permission to forget as long as he was still on the hunt for Zak; permission not to fuck with a good thing while it was still beneficial to both himself and Elanus. But now that he had Zak back…and now that Elanus and Catalina were both safe…soon, he was going to have to confront Elanus over what he was doing to his former business partner.

Not yet. Not yet, no. Kieron didn’t like the fucker, after all—he’d tried to kill him and he’d kidnapped and tortured Catalina, which made him fucking scum as far as Kieron was concerned. But legally, there was more to it than that.

Deysan Moritz had his own set of allies, even now. Elanus Desfontaines had enemies who would use any hint of wrongdoing on his part to diminish his standing on his home planet and make life harder for him. Returning Deysan there, even with all the wrong he’d done, would damage Elanus. Doing whatever he was doing to Moritz right now was probably damaging Elanus—he was determined and strong, but he lacked the instinct for causing pain that had been beaten into Kieron as a child.

It was a conundrum, one that Kieron was going to have to face sooner or later. But not quite yet.

They had to take special protocols re-entering the station, thanks to the incredibly radioactive object that was accompanying them. In the end, Kieron used the station to grab onto the piece of his old ship and very carefully winch it into a different hangar, then run decontamination protocols for the whole thing while Catalina went back to her normal berth. Her skin ate radiation for breakfast, so to speak, so compared to the rest of them, she was positively sprightly as they docked, already planning her latest show and projecting pictures across the walls that were so realistic Kieron felt like he’d stumbled into someone’s dream.

“Darling,” Elanus said, one hand shielding his eyes as Catalina’s door opened, “I love you, you know I love you and all your magnificent creativity, but I beg you, please. Less sparkle, or I’m not going to be able to focus my eyes for a week.”

“Sorrrry, Daddee!” The glare diminished, and both Kieron and Elanus sighed with relief.

“Can I have a status check on Hangar Eight, Catie?” Kieron asked as he walked down her ladder. He was itching to go and see the remains himself, to get what was left of Zak into stasis before it decomposed further, but he also wasn’t about to irradiate himself again.

“Yes, Keeeeron. Decontamination protocooools should have the piiiiecess ready for piiiickup in two-point-four-five standarrrd houuuurs.” She shared the timeline with his implant, which included a nice visual component that showed the ship fragment’s radiation levels fading from bright white into a mellower yellow color.

“Thank you.” He set a mental timer to that approximation, then added another one thirty minutes after that after verifying that it would be mid-morning on Trakta. “You’re the best.”

The air turned even pinker, like the walls themselves were blushing under the weight of her regard. “Nooo, youuuuu!”

Kieron chuckled, then headed for his room. He wanted to shower and do some meditation, to get himself ready for handling what was left of his best friend. He didn’t object when Elanus fell into step behind him, keeping his pace leisurely so he didn’t speed right past Kieron. There was a time not so long ago that Elanus would have been delighted to make Kieron hustle to keep up, he knew.

It was nice that they’d come so far. Together. It made him happy and nervous all at the same time, because he honestly didn’t know what he was going to do with himself once it ended.

They showered together in silence in Kieron’s bathroom, close but not cloyingly so. Once they were clean and dry, instead of settling into meditation Kieron tugged Elanus onto his bed and tucked his head into the crook of his lover’s neck, holding him tight around the waist.

“How are you right now?” Elanus asked, running his free hand slowly up and down Kieron’s back.

“I’m…” Kieron thought about it for a second. “Happy. Tired. Excited. Anxious. Disappointed with myself. Angry.” He sighed. “A lot of different things.”

“Mm.”

“That’s it? Mm?”

“I mean, I could talk about how all that’s natural or that confusion is only to be expected or be a real bitch and say you should focus on the positive, but.” He kissed the top of Kieron’s head. “I’m trying not to overstep. This is a big deal for you, a big…moment. I don’t really think my opinion has much bearing on it.”

He was right, but Kieron kind of wished he wasn’t. If his emotions could be improved by advice, he’d be demanding it constantly, but they couldn’t. He had to figure out and fight through whatever he was feeling by himself. “I couldn’t have done it without you and Catie.”

“Well, we wouldn’t be here without you, so thank yourself.”

Kieron nudged Elanus hard with his chin. “I’m trying to be nice.”

“So am I. You give and give and then get surprised when someone tries to give back. Let it happen. Let us appreciate you. Let us indulge in you while we can.”

Because eventually it’ll end, Elanus didn’t have to say. Kieron knew he was thinking it. He tilted his head up so they could kiss, warm and so, so soft, then resolutely shut his eyes. “I’ve got an alarm set for when—”

“I know. Sleep until then if you can.”

It turned out, Kieron could.