| The
Change of Things |
Disclaimer: To my eternal regret, the boys don't belong
to me and I am making no
money on this fic.
Dylan stopped on the threshold of the room Rhade used for a bedroom. The
space was dark and cool, the low bed unmade, and there was a stillness that
spoke so much to him.
Dylan turned slightly and watched the dark figure slumped in the only chair in the place. The well-built man had his eyes closed but Dylan knew that Rhade was aware of his presence. He never underestimated the Nietzschean’s enhanced senses. Years of having one of them as a lover taught him that.
Even back in the days when he shared his bed and his life with Gaheris, he could never tell if the man was awake or asleep. Just like his ancestor, Telemachus had absolute control over his body. Not a single muscle tensed, not a breath left his lungs unchecked to betray his state of wakefulness.
Dylan watched the ruggedly handsome face, the absolutely perfect body, and couldn’t stop himself from remembering all those nights when he and Gaheris shared themselves. Even making love, his Nietzschean lover had tried to teach him something, forced him to battle for dominance. Each breath with him was a war, each touch a battle, each night a battlefield. And although it was against his nature, he stood up to the constant challenge, because he needed Gaheris. Because he loved him. And, in the end, it seemed that Gaheris loved him too. But not enough to stop himself from betraying Dylan, thus forcing the Captain to kill his First Officer.
And now he had Telemachus. What an irony of fate. Three hundred years later and he met Gaheris’ descendant, with his face and his incredible body, thanks to the famous Nietzschean genes, but so very different.
Telemachus was all the things that Dylan so desperately wanted to see in Gaheris, yet never found. He had the courage to be not merely loyal to his blood and blindly follow the need to survive; he had the courage to go beyond the survivalist nature of his species, courage and strength to overcome instinct.
And he loved. Telemachus did what Gaheris never really learned to do. He learned to love with all that he was, love deeply and completely, and grieve.
It took Dylan some time but he finally recognized why Rhade suffered so much on Seefra. Why he started drinking so much. Stripped of his lifestyle, stripped from Pride and place, cut off from his species, from his history, the only thing that was left to him was grief.
It took Dylan so long to recognize it because it was quite some time since that had happened. Since Rhade’s wife and children died. He was probably the only one among his crew who knew about it. Well, aside from the Ship itself of course. It was only natural that he would check all the available info on his new crewmember.
He never told a soul about it. He knew only too well what it was like to wake up one day and find out that everyone you loved is dead and buried while you are drifting in space. Each man has his own way of dealing with things. He had sat long hours on the observation deck and thought about the past and all the things that could have been, remembered the good and the bad times. Rhade never showed any weakness, not a single sign of pain, but neither did he take a lover among the crew. Dylan knew that in his own hard, survivalist way, Telemachus Rhade was dealing with loss.
Until Seefra happened, until Rhade was without a cause, without aim in his life. Then all the walls crumbled and the man turned to the bottle. And Dylan could not blame him. After he was pulled from the black hole that had held him captive for three hundred years, he kept his sanity only because he had a cause to live for: rebuilding the Commonwealth. Without it, he would have shattered and crumpled to the ground like the broken shell of a human that he felt like sometimes.
So he stood silently and watched as Rhade sank lower and lower, his sarcasm turning into bitterness, his immaculately kept façade turning into one of a dangerous, ragged man mocking death and laughing with a slight edge of insanity. And he couldn’t blame him for that, because deep down, Dylan knew, that in the end it was his fault that they ended up in this cursed system.
“Are you going to stand there the whole night, Captain Hunt?” asked a quiet, sarcastic voice, giving the sound of his name a strangely mocking ring.
Dylan watched the powerful man shift on the chair, the naked chest catching the wan lamplight, forcing Dylan to watch the mesmerizing shift of muscles under the golden, perfect skin. There was something to be said about genetic engineering; it certainly gave Nietzscheans a perfect physique.
“You told them, didn’t you?” asked Dylan softly, his hand going to the pocket of his pants and fingering the flask Rhade gave him that evening on the Andromeda, after they saved Trance. The Nietzschean proclaimed that he was quitting drinking in that moment and there was no question that he would keep his word. He wasn’t like Gaheris; he always kept his word, which was rarely given anyhow. And in that moment, watching Rhade stalk out of Command with Harper hot on his heels, concerned and confused, Dylan knew that Rhade had told Beka and Harper what was eating at him so severely those past few months. It meant that now the pain had a way to get out; he would start to heal.
Hunt watched the warrior shift and rise with the smooth grace of a feline predator, all power and deadly strength, and could feel warmth seizing up his body, his reaction to the dark man in front of him more powerful now than ever. Dylan suspected that losing everything for the second time made him slightly insane also, leaving the walls firmly in place, but shocking the fundaments.
Bare-chested, only his leather pants hugging his figure with the possessiveness of a lover, Rhade went over to the sink as if to get a drink of water, then, catching sight of himself in the mirror, closed his eyes with a sigh, leaning his forehead on the cool glass.
“We were drinking, and talking about all the things we could be doing in some other, alternate reality.” Rhade’s voice was quiet and calm, tired almost. And it was the first time in months that Dylan heard it without a sneer, or sarcasm or some kind of mocking quality to it. Just simple hurt and weariness.
Silence between them stretched, and Dylan was aware of his interest in the man, aware also that Rhade knew. With those enhanced senses of his he had probably known it from the very beginning, but neither of them ever acknowledged the fact so it stayed like that, quiet in the daylight, buzzing to life during those still and hot days, like a third presence in the room. Intense, distracting, yet already so very familiar...
Rhade turned his head ever so slightly, the longish hair falling over his eyes, leaving only the barest of glimpses of his brown gaze, but Dylan already knew what he would see in those haunted eyes.
“How did you ever manage to forget?” The whisper was hoarse and so low, Dylan barely heard it.
With a sigh of his own, the human leaned back against the wall, wishing he could go over there and touch Rhade, tell him that everything would be okay, but he couldn’t. Nothing would ever be okay, ever again.
“I never did. I just learned to live with it; and sometimes I can even remember the good times. It helps.”
Rhade snorted and turned sharply, going to his low bed in three long strides that made his muscles shift in a way that caused Dylan to take a deep breath and force his eyes to Rhade’s face. Sometimes he wondered just how much of those incidental times when Dylan saw Rhade half naked and just barely out of reach was an actual accident and how many were carefully planned traps, battles, games that Rhade’s ancestor was so good at.
“You are an optimistic fool, Dylan.”
Dylan smiled almost gently at the surly man now lying sprawled on the bed in a false pose of relaxation. His eyes locked on the boneblades now in their resting posture. He knew just how much damage those boneblades could do, knew also something that Harper and Beka weren’t aware of. That Rhade kept them poisoned. A little secret of Rhade’s line. Rhade was like a jungle cat--relaxed, almost purring one minute, and ripping your throat out the next.
Telemachus Rhade was the man Dylan was starting to fall for. And it terrified Hunt, because he --more that anybody-- should know just how stupid it was to give his heart to a Nietzschean for a second time. He barely survived the first one. The second betrayal would shatter him, destroying him or turning him into the monster Dylan knew he could be.
“I may be a fool, Rhade,” said Dylan gently, “yet I survive, therefore I can not be wrong in my way of thinking.”
There was a long silence between them. Dylan was the epitome of everything Nietzscheans considered weakness. He was idealistic, he had higher priorities than his own survival, he cared about people and was prepared to give everything he had to save not only those close to him, but any innocent. He believed in justice and in equal rights for everyone. By Nietzschean standards, he should be long dead, yet he was still standing, which could not be said about most of his enemies.
There was a tired and bitter snort from the bed.
“I really should hate you...” mused Rhade, touching his stubbled cheek, probably thinking about their fight in the bar the second day Dylan came to Seefra. Dylan still remembered the feel of his fist connecting with that hard jaw, the painful blows that finally left him the winner. For the second time, a Rhade tried to kill him, and for the second time he won. This time, however, they both got to survive.
Dylan flashed to the toast they shared afterwards, beaten and bloody.
‘I can’t hate you; it’s just too much effort.’
Dylan looked at the figure stretched over the soft-looking bed, the way Rhade’s chest kept rising and falling in deep breaths, making Dylan think about all the things he could do to *make* that chest heave, all the sounds he could coax from that body...
“Am I still too much effort?” asked Dylan gently, a smile in his voice.
“More than ever, Dylan, more than ever,” came the tired reply.
“Sleep, Rhade. Let me stand guard over you this night,” Dylan proposed quietly, knowing that with his senses, Rhade would hear him perfectly.
His former Weapons Officer looked at him from the bed, his dark, haunted eyes watching him from the protective cover of shadow and wild hair. For the longest of moments he said nothing, but Dylan could feel him watching, assessing, measuring the truth of his offer. It was something very rare for a Nietzschean to let somebody besides his immediate family watch over his sleep.
Still without a word, Telemachus Rhade turned on his side and pulled one pillow under his head. His body relaxed into sleep quickly and easily, like only a trained warrior’s would.
Dylan watched the smooth expanse of powerful back and the gold skin as the night drifted around them and thought about all those things that were, could never be again, and all those roads that lay ahead.
The End