Cloverleaf Station: Chapter Thirty-One, Part One

 Notes: Here we go! The penultimate chapter! Enjoy the emotional turmoil, friends!

Title: Cloverleaf Station: Chapter Thirty-One, Part One

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Chapter Thirty-One, Part One

 

“Shouldn’t I—”

“Nope.” Elanus’s hand was firm on Kieron’s shoulder as he turned him in the direction of a doorway not far from the landing platform.

Kieron briefly tried to resist. “But I have to take care of the—”

“It’s all taken care of.”

He huffed with exasperation. “You don’t even know what I was going to say.”

“You were going to say you needed take care of something for Pol, or for Xilinn, or for the other refugees, or you needed to make sure Lizzie is all right or reach out to Catie or pack up your stuff.” The door opened automatically as Elanus got close, and he shepherded Kieron in briskly, never letting go of him. “Right?”

Actually… “Yes,” Kieron said, a little sullen about being so transparent. Elanus smirked at him, clearly seeing it. Stars, if he was this easily readable then he had to be exhausted.

“It’s all taken care of. Hand to heart, it is.” The strange, cylindrical room they were standing in suddenly began to move down a see-through hallway. Kieron glanced down and his eyes widened. They were…very, very far off the ground.

“Don’t worry, it’s safe,” Elanus added, and Kieron didn’t even have the energy to be properly annoyed at him this time around. He was just happy for the reassurance. “And Pol and Xilinn have to get a whole raft of medical checks before they’re allowed anywhere, not to mention Ganian IDs in their implants. Same for the rest of the refugees. Lizzie has instructions to fly back to my private hangar as soon as she can, and Catie is waiting for her there—she’s gotten into opera recently, so get ready for some truly incoherent music over the next few weeks. She has plans to drag Lizzie into it as well, so while they both love you and are happy you’re here, they’re set. It’s all right for you to take care of yourself for a while instead of putting everyone else first.”

“My things,” Kieron began, admittedly weakly but it was all he had.

“As soon as Lizzie lands, they’ll be taken to your room. Which, coincidentally, is also my room, isn’t that convenient?” The platform shifted directions, moving toward an immense, slightly familiar-looking skyscraper in the distance. “So everything really is taken care of. Everything except for you, and that’s where I come in.” When Elanus tugged Kieron into his arms this time, it was easy to go—easier yet because it gave him a good excuse not to glance over the side of the platform. Kieron had never been acrophobic before, but maybe spending all that time on Cloverleaf Station had changed that. After all, it was hard to be afraid of heights when there were none, whereas here it seemed like that was all there was.

A wave of vertigo almost knocked him over, and Kieron leaned harder into Elanus, who held on even tighter. “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know.” Except he did. It was hitting him all at once, now that he was in a place where he could let go of responsibility and just exist without having to be on it, be competent, be alert.

Everything had changed. Everything had changed. The life Kieron had spent the last five years living on Cloverleaf Station, a life that had become laser-focused ever since losing Zakari three years ago, was over now. Everything he’d become accustomed to, the rhythms and rituals of his day that he hadn’t recognized the importance of until now—it was all over.

The adventure he’d had with Lizzie rescuing Pol and Xilinn had staved off this harsh realization, giving him a new crisis to focus on. Now he was here, with the man he loved, in a beautiful city on a beautiful world, and he was suddenly falling apart. Kieron tried to slow his breathing, but his lungs seemed intent on disobeying him, fluttering fast and hard in his chest until he could barely get any air in at all. His heart raced and tiny, swirling stars glimmered in front of his eyes no matter how hard he squeezed them shut.

“Okay. Shit, okay.” Elanus held him up with one arm around his waist while the other rubbed circles between his shoulder blades. The lift stopped, and Kieron was suddenly swept off his feet, but he couldn’t even bring himself to care that someone might see it, might think him undignified, might wonder what was going on. He buried his head against Elanus’s chest and let himself be carried away, laid down on a soft bed in a quiet room, let his jacket and shoes be taken off without a fuss.

When he finally managed to open his eyes, all he could make out was Elanus beside him. It was almost—almost—like being back in Cloverleaf Station. Kieron’s heart began to slow, and his breathing finally calmed.

“What the fuck,” he croaked out once he could make his throat work again. Elanus grimaced and held a bottle of water up to his mouth. He drank, and it made his throat feel better but sloshed uncomfortably in his stomach.

“I think you had a panic attack.”

“I don’t get those.”

“Oh, sweetheart.” Elanus’s eyes were a little sad—not pitying, but filled with a melancholy compassion. “I think if anything, you’re overdue for them. That’s not a criticism,” he added quickly, “I’m not saying anything bad about you and you’re very tough and smart and everything admirable and you know you can believe me because I would never leave you in charge of one of the girls if you didn’t have your shit completely together. The thing is, you’ve lived almost your entire life under immense stress—life or death, do or die stress. Obviously you’re going to do in that situation, because you don’t want to die. You’ve managed yourself and everyone around you like a fucking pro for years, and now…you’re here. With me.”

“Why should that make me panic?” Kieron didn’t understand. “I’m happy to be here with you, I swear I am.”

“I know! I know you are, you think I don’t know that? I’m fully convinced of just how amazing I am, you don’t even have to tell me because I know it.” That look on his face said he well and truly did, and Kieron relaxed a little bit further. “But for the first time in years, you don’t have any major responsibilities. There’s no one to save, there’s no station to keep running, no concrete goal to pursue. You spent five years living on a fucking death trap in one of the deadliest corners of space humanity has ever been stupid enough to attempt to colonize, you think that didn’t leave some marks in your psyche? It did.”

Elanus tapped the side of Kieron’s head with two fingers. “And that’s fine. It just means you’ve got a few bumps in the road ahead of you when it comes to learning to live without constantly looking out for ways you could die.”

It made sense. Kieron hated that it made sense. “Bullshit,” he muttered.

“Aw, listen to you and your quaint, old-fashioned swear words. Do you even know what bull looks like? Also, why were ancient humans so concerned with different kinds of shit—it’s so redundant. They could have been far more creative with their cursing, as far as I’m concerned. Then again, I’m not a historian, so for all I know there are plenty of ancient cultures with a lot more imagination than that, but I don’t know the examples personally and clearly neither do you—”

“Please shut up.”

“Tell me you get it first.”

Kieron sighed. “I get it.”

“Will you see a psychologist for it?”

“I…” Kieron hated, hated, hated psychologists. He’d been forced to see them at several critical junctures in his life, and had always felt that they were looking for reasons to tell him he was broken. Who the hell wasn’t broken in some way? But the glimmer of concern in Elanus’s eyes was enough to sway him. “Fine. But I refuse to be locked up.”

“Why the fuck would you be locked up?”

Kieron laughed. “Are you kidding me? I’ve been the primary subject of several scientific papers. I was in a psychiatric hold on Trakta when I first arrived for three months, they were so excited to investigate my psyche.”

Elanus’s lips thinned. “That won’t be happening here.”

“Swear it.”

“I swear. I will ruin entire GDPs if anyone tries to do that to you.”

Kieron laughed again, and this time it felt easier. “You’re so dramatic.”

“Only when it comes to the people I love.” When Elanus reached for him, Kieron went, letting himself be pulled until he was lying half on top of Elanus. He traced the lines of the man’s immaculate facial hair, the swirls and curves, the plane of his jaw and down his neck.

Elanus inhaled sharply. “Sooo,” he drawled, “are we starting something here? Because it’s fine if we’re not, I just want to know so I don’t make the wrong move, which I know seems impossible but lo and behold it does happen sometimes, and—”

Kieron leaned in and captured his mouth in a fierce kiss. “Yeah,” he breathed when he finally pulled back. “We’re starting something.”