Chelen City: Chapter Six, Part Two

 Notes: Hey darlins! Here we have children behaving like, well, children, but not in the cute and fun way. Hoo-boy.

Title: Chelen City: Chapter Six, Part Two

***

Chapter Six, Part Two

 

By the time Kieron got back that evening, Elanus had retreated from brain work after a headache threatened to knock him flat. If there was one thing he despised more than the broken bones and ruptured organs he got from Elfshot Disease, it was the migraines. As a child, he’d had to be left in sensory-deprivation spaces hooked up to nutrition lines for hours, sometimes days on end before the side effects were under control. The pain was controllable, but the ways it affected his vision and balance were much less so. Aging had helped bring them under control, but days like today threatened to bring those headaches roaring back.

Luckily for him, he’d made good progress on the encryptions. He ought to be able to break through by the end of the week if he kept at it—another five days or so. Of course, he couldn’t work like this every day—he needed to show up at the office now that he was here, not to mention make some other public appearances and give his brain a break, so…

Ten days. Ten days, conservatively, until he had access to Deysan’s research. Ten days without involving anyone else, keeping the girls safe, keeping everything on an even keel and giving nothing away…he could do that.

“I would really like to kill that fucker.”

Apparently, he also needed to keep his lover from committing murder. “Really? How would you do it?”

Kieron stopped in the process of taking off his boots to stare at Elanus. Eventually he raised one eyebrow. “Really? That’s what you want to say right now?”

“It sure is.” Kieron scowled harder. Gods, he was just too fun to play with sometimes. “Because I know you actually won’t kill him,” he clarified. “You just want to imagine it in full and unsettling detail, and I want you to be happy, so this is me engaging with your interests. How would you do it? You’d never stoop to poisoning him, you’re more of a ‘mano a mano’ kind of guy, but you also aren’t likely the kind of person to indulge in repeats. So no stabbing, not shooting…hmm, choking maybe? Nah, too intimate for you, you don’t care about him one way or the other that much.”

Elanus snapped his fingers. “Blunt force trauma! A nice blow to the head in the right place, which might even be cover-uppable because of his recent stroke, you could—oh, hey now—”

“You are fucked in the head,” Kieron said as he straddled Elanus’s lap. “Do you know that?”

“Mmm, maybe.” Elanus grinned up at him. “Do you mind?”

“Mmm, maybe.”

“Liar.” Kieron’s lips found his ear, and Elanus tilted his head and practically purred as the attentions continued down his neck. “You love me in all my perversities, admit it.”

Kieron kissed his way around to Elanus’s face and pressed their lips together, then whispered, “Never.”

Holy shit, Elanus was so hard now. All he wanted to do was pick Kieron up, take him to their bedroom, and fuck him so hard neither of them woke up until tomorrow morning.

Unfortunately…

“We have to stop.”

Kieron shook his head. “I’d rather not.”

“You’ll miss the call with Xilinn if we don’t stop now.”

All of a sudden he sat straight. Elanus mourned the loss of contact and tried to pull him back down, but Kieron’s brain was already on another path. “She got permission to call? I thought I was supposed to have at least one more therapy session before that was allowed.”

“Apparently you impressed your therapist, because the go-ahead came through a few hours ago.” Elanus sighed remorsefully as Kieron got to his feet. “She and Pol should call in about two minutes.”

“We ought to loop the girls in,” Kieron said. “At least Lizzie, because she and Pol are friends.”

Awww, their baby had made a friend! “We can do that. I’m sure Catie will want to be part of the conversation to.”

Kieron reached out and pulled Elanus to his feet. “Let’s go join them, then.”

They ended up in Lizzie’s hangar, which Elanus could tell pissed Catie off if the sharp, staticky feelings she emitted were any indicator. “I said you could listen!” he defended himself.

“I waaaant to see!”

“You can look, too!”

“Do iit heeeeere!”

“No, this is Lizzie’s friend, so we’re taking the call in Lizzie’s room.”

“Noooot faaaair!”

Gods, he needed to renovate and get them into the same hangar before sibling rivalry drove him insane. “It’s completely fair,” he snapped, “and you know it. Stop acting like a spoiled brat.”

“Iiiii’m not a braaaaat! You’re a braaaaat!”

The second the call signal lit up their implants, Kieron connected almost desperately. “Xilinn!”

“Kieron!”

Elanus did a few things with the house camera system, and a second later the image of Xilinn and Pol was displayed in front of them—and in front of Catie, not that she was acknowledging that in the middle of her huff.

“Look, Mama, it’s Lizzie!” Pol pointed at the ship excitedly. “Hi, Lizzie!”

Lizzie’s skin turned a pale pink with pleasure. “Hi, Pol.”

“I want to come see you!”

“Quarantine won’t last much longer,” Kieron assured them. “And then we’ll all be together again.”

[No,] Catie grumped. Thankfully Elanus had her muted. [I don’t want them here.]

[Catie,] he thought warningly.

[I don’t! I don’t knoooow them!]

[You’ll get to know them.]

[I don’t waaaant to. They’re stuuupid.]

Oh, for fuck’s sake. The migraine was coming in full swing. So much for picking up where he and Kieron had left off once this call was over. [You don’t always get what you want,] Elanus snapped.

[Lizzie is my friend!]

[She can have more than one friend!]

[No!] There was an immense surge of power, and all of a sudden the house went dark.

The call cut off.

And Lizzie began to cry.

Aaaand now we’ve reached the un-fun part of parenting.

Discipline.

Chelen City: Chapter Six, Part One

Notes: On time, yay! Have some pensive but proactive Elanus.

Title: Chelen City: Chapter Six, Part One

***

Chapter Six, Part One

 

There were few things Elanus disliked more than seeing the people he loved disconcerted. He didn’t love many people—he never had, not even as a child. To see them discomfited by people who weren’t him was not enjoyable.

It was the strange, liminal emotions that he hated to see them endure, too. Hatred was hot and bright and passionate—even when Kieron had loathed Elanus, Elanus hadn’t exactly felt bad about inspiring that emotion in him because, well, at least it was a strong one. Same with love. Catie’s love for him was immense, intense, and all-encompassing, and that was how he liked it. Kieron’s love was subtler but so strong, and Lizzie, sweet Lizzie, was coming around to something very like the love of the person she held first.

Those were the sorts of things he was comfortable with, but seeing Kieron off by half a step, or half a second’s worth of reaction, slightly slow with meeting Elanus’s eyes after coming back from his “therapy” session…that enraged him. Kieron didn’t deserve to be made to doubt like that—to doubt himself, most likely. He deserved to be firm in his moorings, to know where he stood, and to feel supported that way. And now that security had been breached, over and over again, thanks to Kieron coming here to Gania.

If Elanus didn’t have far too many credits tied up in this fucking economy, he would leave it all behind and take the people he loved somewhere less judgmental. Unfortunately, that wasn’t an option right now. The best cure for the kind of distraction Kieron was enduring right now, one that couldn’t be fixed by letting him meet with the refugees yet or distracting him with their daughter ships, was making sure he was doing something that gave him a sense of purpose. Something concrete with a measurable outcome.

Something like being put in charge of Ryu as he recovered.

“I know what you’re doing,” Kieron said right after Elanus made the offer that afternoon.

“Of course you do, you’re not an idiot.”

“You don’t need to manage me.”

“I would never dare.”

“You’re doing it right now, jackass.”

Elanus had smiled as charmingly as he knew how. “But you don’t mind it so terribly much, do you?”

It was a testament to just how tired of everything Kieron was that he didn’t react by pulling away. He just sighed and looked down at their joined hands, and for a moment it was all Elanus could do to hold his implant in check and not go hunting through Gania’s web for a way to infiltrate everything in Delilah Farraday’s life and start taking it over. Preemptive vengeance is nothing but being a bully. That didn’t mean he didn’t want to do it, though.

“You win,” Kieron said, and as he leaned in for a kiss, Elanus was acutely aware of just how intensely fortunate he was to be winning. He’d won a hell of a lot lately, and it was down to this man. Kieron had nearly liquified himself from radiation to save Catie, Elanus’s heart, and Elanus wasn’t going to forget that.

He would make it up to Kieron. He would make this better. And he was going to start by putting him in charge of the man who’d caused him so much consternation recently. Whether Kieron wanted to admit it or not, he would feel better knowing that Ryu was safely under his thumb. He would probably be able to get a fair amount of information out of him when it came to the way Gania worked as well, and Kieron—who liked his independence—would love having someone else to extract data from.

Now Kieron was gone, Elanus had decided to forward all his company’s work to home, and once he’d gone through the bulk of it, he dedicated himself to his newest puzzle—Deysan’s data. It was…

Well. It was complicated. It took a huge amount of mental power to even begin scratching the surface of it. Deysan had encrypted everything in at least a hundred different ways, and Elanus ended up having to divert a huge number of his company’s computational resources into breaking that down. It was going to reduce his overall efficiency by almost twelve percent for as long as this ridiculousness lasted, but it would be worth it if he got through to the data in the end.

Fucker. How Deysan had gotten this kind of quantum access in so many dimensions in the first place was infuriating. He had to have borrowed government resources to do it, and Elanus really needed to look into that more deeply…

[Daddee?]

Elanus smiled. “Hi, Catie.”

[What are youuuu doing?]

“Working, baby. Just working.”

[This iiiisn’t like your wooork.]

“This is special work.”

[Can I heeelp?]

“No!” Elanus sat straight upright out of the chair where he usually settled for his heavy thinking. Abso-fucking-lutely no—“No, baby,” he said, pulling all his calm together. “I’ve got this.”

[It looks haaaard.]

“It is, but that’s part of the fun,” Elanus insisted.

[I want to have fuuuuun!] Catie whined.

[I-I would like to have some fun too,] Lizzie put in, and fantastic, now he’d done it.

“Girls. I promise we’ll do something fun a little later, okay?” He just had a few more relays to set up before he could let the computations run. “We can go for a flight, I’ve got special clearance to spend some time darting in and out of the atmosphere if you want to get some Gs, but for now I need you girls to focus on your art and not worry about this, all right?”

Catie made a suspicious-sounding hum. [You don’t waaaant our help?]

“I love getting your help with things,” Elanus said in perfect honesty. “But in this particular instance, I don’t need it. I’ve got this, okay? I’ve got this.” I’d better have this. God, it would go so much faster with Catie and Lizzie’s help…but he had to keep his word to Kieron.

[If you say so, Elanus.]

[Okay, Daddeeee…]

“Thank you, girls.” Phew. Disaster averted.

Probably.

Hopefully.

Chelen City: Interlude 1

 Notes: It's time for a Kieron POV, yay! Have some therapy fun ;)

Title: Chelen Cty: Interlude 1

***

Interlude 1

 

For his first therapy session, Kieron was given the option of going to the therapist’s office or having her come to Elanus’s house. Elanus had been all for her coming to his place—“so she doesn’t get a chance to fuck with you on foreign territory”—but in the end, Kieron opted to go in to her office. It felt wrong to bring someone who intended him…whatever she intended…into his safe place.

Kieron knew the idea behind therapy. It was an ancient practice intended to help people heal traumas and come to a new understanding of themselves and the things they did, or that had been done to them. He’d had therapy before, on Trakta, and it had been awful. Culturally-specific therapy was not generally condoned within Federation planets for incoming refugees, but Trakta had always done things their own way, and it had taken a few sessions for Kieron to figure out why he felt so much worse coming out of therapy than he did going into it.

Eventually he learned to say what they wanted and, once he accepted himself as a lesser being and swore that he would leave Trakta at the earliest opportunity, his therapy was stopped. Kieron had promise himself that that was the last time he’d ever be subjected to this kind of bullshit.

And yet here he was.

“Privacy is enforced pretty heavily, but if you push hard enough with your implant I’ll know,” Elanus had assured him before he left that morning. “I’ll come and get you, no matter what. And Lizzie is monitoring you too, and she’s got way better reach than I do, so—”

“This isn’t a hostage negotiation,” Kieron had told Elanus. “I won’t need extracting. I’ll be fine.”

“You say that, but that’s not your ‘fine’ face.”

“Stop extrapolating from my face.”

Elanus had huffed. “What else am I supposed to extrapolate from? You could be held at knifepoint or about to be kicked out an airlock and you’d probably still try to bullshit me about being mm-mmmpphh…”

Sometimes the only way to shut Elanus up was with a kiss. It was especially satisfying to grab him by the shoulders and drag him down to Kieron’s height unexpectedly—Elanus loved being manhandled, probably because it was so novel for him. “I’ll be back,” he said after breaking the kiss. “Make sure we get our open channel with Xilinn after this, okay?”

“I will,” Elanus had promised, and so…

Kieron went. He followed the directions laid out in his implant, turned where he needed to turn, took different tubes here and there and generally was as unnoticeable as possible, easy to do when you were surrounded by giants. By the time he got to the therapist’s office and knocked on her door, he was just on time.

She opened promptly for him. “Mr. Carr.” The woman smiled gently. “Thank you for coming today.”

Kieron didn’t say anything for a moment, just looked at her. Delilah Farraday—unmarried name Chester—was a golden-haired waif of a woman, shorter than he was by a foot. She must look positively childlike next to her Ganian wife, but whatever worked for them. She had large brown eyes that glittered even in the low, soothing light of her office—implants of some kind, he’d bet on it. Her skin was free of all blemishes except one, the lines of an old and familiar brand pale against her dark brown arm.

Eventually Kieron nodded, which was all his therapist seemed to expect. She ushered him into her space, a single large room filled with so many real plants he could feel the ambient humidity change around him. She gestured for him to sit in an ergonomic, size-adjusted chair and sat across from him on a stool. “You might not remember me, but—”

“I do.”

“Ah.” She looked pensive. “I wondered.”

“If that’s all you wanted to know, you could have just asked me about it in a casual setting, not played an elaborate game to get me alone.”

Delilah Farraday shook her head. “This isn’t a game, Kieron.”

“Mr. Carr.”

“I prefer informal address in a therapy setting.”

“I don’t.”

“Yet this is my office, Kieron.” She smiled and gestured around them. “And as a patient accepted into my practice, abiding by some of my simple rules is one of the terms. Surely you read that in the paperwork you signed.”

Kieron let his eyes narrow slightly. “I didn’t realize you’d make such ridiculous rules. How else do you plan on infantilizing me?”

“Using only last names can be construed as confrontational. First names are more casual and yet more intimate at the same time.” She sighed. “Please.”

Oh, what the hell. “Fine. Delilah.”

“Thank you.” She seemed genuinely pleased, too. “Tell me, how are you finding Gania so far?”

“Acceptable.”

“Expand on that.”

Ugh. Two minutes in and he already preferred the kind of therapy where he was browbeaten into spewing bullshit. “I’m happy to be back with Elanus.”

“Yes, you and Mr. Desfontaines began a relationship at your last posting, didn’t you?” It was phrased as a question but Kieron knew it wasn’t one, so he said nothing. “Your files show only one significant relationship prior to this one, with a Traktan citizen you went to great lengths for. He and Mr. Desfontaines seem like very different individuals. What was it that drew you to them?”

“Why do you want to know?” This seemed like random, prurient inquiry.

“I can’t establish a baseline for our sessions without getting some more information on the biggest influences in your life, Kieron. And since I know you won’t share them without a little prodding, I figured turning it into a part of our session would be a good way to break the ice between us, so to speak.” She tilted her head a bit. “I’ll share too, if you’d like.”

“If you feel like it.” He didn’t care, but she seemed to want to. Anything that will end this faster.

“When I was brought to Gania after Hadrians’ Colony, I was very unsure of myself. I didn’t know the rules or what to do here. Learning those rules, or rather the lack thereof in many cases, made me feel safe. Gania is a civilized world, an accepted member of the Federation.”

“Ganians condone high-level assassination as an attention-getting scheme.”

Delilah chuckled. “They do, but that’s one of those thorny cultural issues we sometimes trip over, isn’t it? Heavens knows the first time I heard a bugle here, I immediately dropped into parade rest and startled the hell out of my roommates.”

Oh, the bugle call…Kieron remembered that. He hadn’t thought about it in years—regimented calls that required immediate obedience or brought down a terrible punishment.

Delilah clasped her hands. “Mm, I see I’ve struck a nerve. Shall we talk about that too?”

What the hell. “Fine.”