Work Text:
What knife skinned off/ that hour./ Sank the buoys./ Blows on what was our house./ Nothing for it, just row.
Carson, Decreation
1. JONGHO
As annoyed as Jongho is about Yunho permanently disabling comms, he does wish there was more to do than listening to him getting berated in the common room. He can still hear Seonghwa screaming. Unilateral decision-making continues to irk him even in the face of certain death.
Jongho glances at the corner of the control panel, hand flexing by his side. He has been unable to wipe it down for fear of messing with the gravity controls. The blood there is the thickest, seeped between the buttons. Chief engineer Lee lies in the cold room. Jongho wishes he had the good grace to take his viscera with him.
The DSS spins. Deimos, green as inside of a vein, throbs below. Jongho leaves the observatory to put an end to the quarrel.
—
They found Captain Shin in the docking bay upon arrival, next to a large jagged hole in the inner wall. He was still in his spacesuit, blood smeared on the inside of his visor. His head nearly came off with the helmet in Seonghwa’s hands. Jongho moved forward to examine the body.
“Some greeting,” Seonghwa muttered.
The slit along the throat was long, vertical, made before the helmet was jammed onto his head. Behind them, Yunho was already assembling the guns. He threw a rifle to Jongho and picked the other one up himself. Jongho examined the chamber and nodded to Yunho.
Seonghwa got to his feet, frowning. “What are you doing? There are civilians on board.”
Jongho shrugged and began moving toward the airlock entrance. “And one of them’s dead.”
He looked over his shoulder. Yunho handed Seonghwa a medium-sized serrated blade with a half smile. Seonghwa threw him a dirty look and followed Jongho.
—
“What if it’s transferable through infrared? We don’t know anything about this thing—”
“Exactly! We don’t fucking know anything and you just killed our only source of contact with any kind of help—”
“-the goddamn particle physicist is dead and you—”
“I’m capable of running simple tests, there’s no contaminant or psychotropic compound that’s—”
Jongho clicks the lock and the door opens with a quiet hiss. Seonghwa, red-faced and heaving, turns to him. Yunho takes the momentary lull to collapse onto a bench, head in his hands.
Jongho shuts the door behind him, unnecessary, more force of habit than anything. “I can hear you all the way to the front of the station.”
Seonghwa scoffs bitterly. “Not like we’re disturbing anyone.”
“I can’t do this anymore,” Yunho says, voice muffled behind his hands. “This was supposed to be a search and rescue mission, not-”
Jongho watches him, waiting for him to put a name to this. Yunho liked names, labels, cue cards. He had been a screen actor for a short time before the Enlistment Act of 2088 pushed him into the military at 23. By the time Jongho met him for the first drill under the Seoul chapter of DBA’s private security program, Yunho had hardened up but still carried a schoolchild’s propensity for categorisation.
It is strange watching him panic. He is never not in his element. Jongho sits down at the table across from him and reaches out a hand to awkwardly pat his forearm. Yunho groans.
“Sitting around isn’t going to do anything,” Seonghwa snaps, mostly at Yunho.
Jongho glances up at him. Seonghwa started out as a data analyst for the DBA. Jongho doesn’t know what brought him to the field but he is usually capable. He doesn’t have a soldier’s head so empathy still lingers in the back of it. Now, however, he is in survival mode. He will burn out quickly. At least Jongho hopes so. Proximity to death makes Seonghwa too reactionary.
“What d’you propose we do?” Jongho asks him, genuinely interested.
Seonghwa folds his arms, all judgement with his burning eyes and blazing nostrils. There is another hole in the wall behind him. The ship spins and green light smashes against the side of Seonghwa’s face like a beaching wave.
It is Yunho who speaks up. “Stop fighting it. You’ve got nothing to fight it with.”
Seonghwa slips onto the bench next to him. He passes a hand over his face.
“I’m going to kill it,” he declares and turns to glare at Yunho. “And I’m going to take us home.”
Jongho wants to tell him that he will die here on this decades old space station with his skeleton crew of friends but Seonghwa looks beautiful in his despair. Jongho can appreciate that. Contrary to his companions, proximity to death has made a poet out of him.
“I’m with you,” he tells Seonghwa. He means it.
—
The on-board AI system was dead. They had been told as much in the briefing. What they had not been told was that it had been dismantled piece by piece, methodically, with surgical precision.
The wall panel was removed and placed on the floor, surrounded with wiring and small pieces of the main circuit board. The broadcast screen was lying face up next to everything, the convex burial mound of a machine god. Two man-shaped holes flanked the empty space where the panel used to be.
Jongho glanced at Yunho. “Can you do something?”
Yunho crouched down and inspected the dissected panel. He looked up at Jongho and smiled. “I’ll see what I can do.”
“Hey,” Seonghwa called from the corridor, “come out here.”
Jongho took one last look at the holes to join Seonghwa outside. In the middle of the narrow corridor stood a shaggy St. Bernard, three feet tall, huffing in that polite way well-bred family dogs do. Jongho stared at it. Next to him, Seonghwa stood unmoving.
“Why is that there?” Seonghwa asked quietly.
Jongho made to move towards it but Seonghwa’s hand slapped against his suit arm, the sound loud and invasive. The dog turned and began trotting down the hallway.
Jongho shook Seonghwa off and began to pursue but this time, Seonghwa grabbed his shoulder and forced him back. Jongho looked up to see his eyes glassy, chest heaving as he tried to breathe.
“He’s at home,” he said thickly.
Jongho was beginning to lose his patience. “Who is? Look, I need to-”
“That’s Nuri,” Seonghwa interrupted urgently. “That’s my fucking- didn’t you see the collar, that’s my parents’ dog and he’s back home.” Seonghwa darted a glance down the hallway and took a deep breath, “He can’t be here.”
“Okay,” Jongho began, easing out of his grip. “Let me just go check. You can stay here with Yunho.”
Seonghwa had a faraway look in his eyes. “There was no dog on the list. That dog is unaccounted for.”
“I’ll go look,” Jongho patted his arm and turned to trek down the corridor.
—
Something hits the corrugated metal floor outside Jongho’s cabin, the steel clang followed by a strained curse. Yunho is talking. Something about ground control and can’t do this. Seonghwa speaks, his voice higher. The door to his cabin slams shut.
Jongho sits up in bed. He listens. They are both in the cabin next door, their voices now too muffled to make anything out. A second later something hits the door with a thud, full-bodied, soft. Yunho moans. Jongho gets out of bed to sit at his workstation, figuring now was as good a time as any to sort through the data on Deimos.
“What’s that?”
He pauses, hands hovering over the keypad console. “Is the noise bothering you?”
A beat. A sharp gasp echoes from next door.
“Not really.”
Jongho hears the plasticky crinkle of the insulated blanket, the pad of soft feet on the floor and shuts his eyes. Two arms loop around his neck, the slight weight of a chin slotting into the space between his neck and shoulder.
Seonghwa moans, low and controlled barely a wall away. Jongho breathes out. It will never get easier, he realises.
“Hyung,” he says gently, “go back to bed.”
The Seonghwa next to him hums thoughtfully. “Mm. I don’t think I will.” He glances at the display, “What’s this?”
Jongho sits back in his chair and looks at the scattered Maths, lines of equations he can only barely read. “Atmospheric data from Deimos.”
“Can you read it?” Seonghwa asks curiously.
“Some.”
Jongho pushes away from the panel and gets to his feet. Seonghwa, this Seonghwa is still wearing the cable-knit Jongho has seen him wear numerous times off duty. Cream, a muddy grey in the strange light from Deimos and the cabin’s interior. Jongho reaches out to stroke the pattern around Seonghwa’s neck.
“Are you hungry?” He asks absently, “I have um, premium food in a tube.”
Seonghwa smiles. “Wonderful.” Yunho’s muddled voice babbles something and is abruptly cut off. “I suppose asking for ambient music would be too much?”
Jongho laughs and pushes him back to bed. “Stay here. I’ll be a second.”
“You know, what if I snuck out,” Seonghwa calls. Jongho pauses to glance at him. Seonghwa shrugs.
Jongho offers him a strained smile. “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t.”
“I’m just saying. You can’t stow me away forever.” Seonghwa gives him a pointed look. “There’s nowhere to run up here, you know.”
Seonghwa and Yunho have gone quiet. Seonghwa on his bed wears the calm mask of a saint. Jongho wonders where his patience comes from then decides to halt that line of thinking.
“I know,” he says and watches Seonghwa accept it as unconditionally as the half-truth of his circumstance. “Just a little longer.”
—
They collected the bodies and piled them in the cold room one by one. Seonghwa hauled the final corpse. Blood from its arm streaked across his cheek when he put it down.
Jongho, kneeling by the floor vent, looked up. His hand twitched. Seonghwa sniffled and wiped his face with the back of his wrist. The thin line of blood fattened on his cheek. Yunho entered the cold room after his final check, looked at Seonghwa and strode forward with his suited hand raised.
“Come here,” he muttered, “you’ve got something.”
Jongho looked away and pushed the corpse’s limbs off the vent. Cold air hit him square in the face. He heard Seonghwa thank Yunho and got to his feet.
“That’s everyone, then. Let’s report to ground control. Yunho?”
Yunho looked away from Seonghwa and blinked. “Hm? Oh, yeah. I’ll go do that.”
Seonghwa leaned against the wall and sighed. “I didn’t see the dog.”
“I think that’s the least of your problems right now,” Jongho replied. He folded his arms, gaze straying toward the corridor, long smears of blood on the formerly spotless floor. “I wonder if they knew. There’s no way they didn’t suspect something was off.”
Seonghwa aimlessly prodded the sheet covering the captain’s body. “This place is old. I don’t think anyone gives a shit, really. Some family member lodged a complaint because Shin hadn’t cleared the standard wellness check.” His lip curled in distaste, “As far as I know, this station was set to be decommissioned.”
He fell abruptly silent. Jongho declined further comment. Minutes passed. Seonghwa began shifting from foot to foot, eyes nervously darting around.
“Where is he?” He said, agitated.
From his place near the opposite wall, Jongho spotted fur. The collar jingled. Seonghwa straightened up. “Motherfuck-”
The dog was already halfway down the hall by the time they emerged out into the hall. Seonghwa cursed and broke into a sprint. Jongho followed. The dog ran down the main corridor and turned into the work area. The observatory lay at the very end of the hall, its pneumatic door ajar. The dog ran straight through, Seonghwa hot on its heels. Jongho heard a sharp gasp seconds before he burst into the room, gun raised.
Yunho stood in front of the window, haloed in sickly green. Deimos spun serenely on its orbit, its surface watery. Alive. The dog stood by his feet, wagging its tail, its eyes fixed on Seonghwa who was paused unnaturally in the middle of the room.
Slowly, he called out. “Yunho?”
Jongho saw Yunho’s body twitch before he turned, his eyes blown wide. The dog began looping circles around his motionless legs.
“Sorry,” said Yunho softly.
Jongho’s eyes flit from him to the console in the corner, removed and broken piece by piece. He exhaled slowly as Seonghwa strode forward and punched Yunho in the face. Yunho’s knees buckled backward over the main console. The dog yelped and ran past Jongho back outside. Seonghwa grabbed the front of Yunho’s suit and punched him again.
“I’m going to fucking kill you.”
Yunho’s nose was already bleeding. Jongho counted four punches before he moved forward and pried them apart. Yunho staggered and collapsed on the floor. Seonghwa retreated to a corner, rage pounding against the veins in his forehead. Jongho looked down at Yunho, blood flowing freely from his nose, an eye inflamed and on the verge of swelling shut. He took another breath to calm himself before he spoke.
“Look at me,” Jongho ordered. Yunho slowly raised his head. “Why did you do that?”
Yunho looked at him blankly. Jongho crouched down to look him in the eye. Yunho’s lip quivered. “It’s okay, just tell me.”
“He fucking freaked, that’s why,” Seonghwa spat from behind him. “I’m going to kill him.”
Jongho looked at Yunho. Yunho took a long, shaky breath. “I didn’t do it,” he whispered.
“ Bullshit -”
“Hyung!” Jongho snapped over his shoulder. Seonghwa pursed his mouth and left the room. Jongho turned back to Yunho, “Comms were working fine when we removed the engineer, Yunho. You can’t expect me to buy that.”
Yunho’s eyes darted to the corner of the room, then back to Jongho.
“You won’t believe me.”
‘Try me.”
A beat. Then:
“My mother is here,” Yunho whispered, terrified. He reached out and gripped Jongho’s shoulders. “My mother. She’s here. She made me do it.”
“So you did do it,” Jongho said flatly.
Yunho’s eyes grew wide, desperate. “Are you listening to me? My mother is on this ship -”
“Well, where is she?”
He believed Yunho and yet, something about him like this, frantic and on the verge of tears, invited a certain cruelty that Jongho rarely had to contend with. He looked so young, younger than Jongho, someone who had never looked death in the eye or wiped blood off the face of his friend with the nonchalance of a lover brushing stray bits of food off the corner of a parted mouth.
Jongho grabbed Yunho’s arm and hauled him to his feet. His knees gave out immediately. Jongho grunted impatiently and began dragging him to the door.
—
Take your teeth out as a precaution against choking, your eyes out, like Gloucester, to save you sight of the cliff and the greater gods who keep their ‘dreadful pother’ above your head. Your life out as a precaution against living
Frame, Owls Do Cry
2. SEONGHWA
Seonghwa raised his hand in front of his face and examined his bloody knuckles. The dog trotted by in his periphery. He glanced at it and then back at his hand, flexed his fingers.
Jongho emerged, Yunho leaning heavily by his side. Seonghwa pushed off the floor and stood up. Jongho looked at him warily and he raised both hands in surrender. Jongho nodded and began heading toward the common room.
“He says he saw his mother,” Jongho reported once he had settled Yunho down at the bench. “I don’t think he’s lying.”
Seonghwa looked from Yunho to Jongho before his gaze settled on Yunho’s rapidly swelling eye. “Yeah?” He asked casually. Yunho’s head remained bowed. Seonghwa grit his teeth.
“Yeah,” Jongho affirmed. He put a hand on Yunho’s shoulder, “You’re not crazy. Something’s going on up here.”
Seonghwa glanced at the open doorway. The dog stood watching him, wagging its tail, tongue hanging out. For a moment, Seonghwa grappled with the intense desire to snap its neck.
Jongho was talking again. “I think we should cool off a little. Sit down, think about our options-”
“We don’t have any options.” Seonghwa cut him off, “Comms are down, so is the AI. The whole team’s dead for god knows what reason. We’re circling a rock in space and there’s things on this ship.”
He glared at the dog again. It was still wagging its tail. Seonghwa walked over to it and it stayed put, jumping into his arms when he beckoned it forth. He ignored when Jongho called out to him, scooped the dog up and began walking.
The docking bay lay at the far end of one arm of the station. Seonghwa entered and locked the door behind him, surveying the pods lining the walls. He walked past the Captain’s blood and unlocked a pod. The dog curiously tottered inside. Seonghwa looked at its wagging tail, a knot forming in his throat. His hand moved to the control panel above and clicked the pod closed, then the hatch. The airlock sealed up with a whisper.
He took a step back, eyes wide. The dog came up to the window and thumped its paws against the glass. Its tail continued to wag.
It took hardly a few seconds. The pod began to jettison. The dog disappeared from the window.
Seonghwa sank to the floor, a loud ringing in his ears. His head felt detached from his body. Something was thunking insistently against it. It took a few minutes to realise it was Jongho, banging on the docking bay doors, screaming Seonghwa’s name.
—
Green light shines off the curve of Yunho’s back before the room dips into semi-darkness. Seonghwa chews on the sidewall of his thumb and observes the raised knobs of his vertebra.
“How long has it been?” Yunho asks eventually.
1, 2, 3, 4-
“I don’t know,” Seonghwa replies. 5, 6, 7- “How long d’you think it’s been?”
Yunho does not answer. Seonghwa goes on counting.
-8, 9, 10-
Yunho looks over his shoulder. Green lights up the room again. Seonghwa moves forward as Yunho twists completely around. They kiss. Yunho’s hand finds its way to Seonghwa’s waist and he is eased back as Yunho climbs on top, familiar in the way it shouldn’t be.
Seonghwa pushes against his bruised nose and Yunho makes a low noise of pain.
“What if you put your visitor in a pod,” Seonghwa says.
Yunho pauses and pulls away. After a moment he says, “That’s murder.”
Seonghwa examines his face. It is swollen and inflamed. There is a tiny cut above his eyelid, likely where Seonghwa’s nail had grazed skin.
“That would make me a murderer,” says Seonghwa. Yunho pushes off and turns away. Seonghwa sits up. “You just fucked a murderer, then. How does that make you feel?”
“Please stop,” Yunho says weakly, refusing to make eye contact.
“They’re not real,” Seonghwa continues. Air fills his chest, a balloon pushing outward, and he feels like he is running out of breath, “That wasn’t my dog. And that thing isn’t your mother.”
Yunho’s head whips back to him, his jaw set. Seonghwa wants to punch him again.
“Stop acting like you know what’s happening. You’re not in control.” Yunho’s lip curls with contempt, “Not here.”
—
Jongho sat with him until empty space next to Seonghwa’s knee attained its own gravitational field. He stared straight ahead at the blood. They should have cleaned that up.
He got to his feet. His hands trembled. Why did this innerwear not have pockets? He looked around, looking for something to wipe the blood with.
“What are you doing?” Jongho asked. He had been so calm since they had arrived. Seonghwa looked down at him.
“Who’s your visitor?”
Nothing moved on Jongho’s face. Seonghwa clenched his jaw and waited for his answer.
“I haven’t seen them yet,” Jongho said.
Seonghwa looked away. He needed a bucket and a mop. Would there be a bucket and mop on this ship? Surely they needed to clean sometimes. What else was one to do with one’s hands in deep space? He exited the docking bay and walked the length of the hall. At the fork, he paused to look down the observatory corridor. He moved on.
Yunho was still in the common room, sitting on the floor, Nuri between his legs. Seonghwa pushed back up against the door, breath coming too fast. Yunho scrambled to his feet with the dog in his arms, eyes wide and terrified.
“Please,” he began. The dog struggled to get out of his grip but he held on, “Seonghwa. Hyung, please-”
The dog broke out of his hold and bounded over to Seonghwa. Seonghwa shrieked and clawed at the door. Soft weight pressed against the backs of his shins, winding between his legs. He heard a bark. Then another.
“Get it away from me,” he said hoarsely, pressed to the door. His heart felt about ready to burst. “D’you hear me, Yunho, get it the fuck away from me!”
The door began to slide open just as Yunho took the dog away. Jongho stepped in, brow furrowed at Seonghwa before his eyes landed on the dog.
“We can lock it in one of the rooms,” he said immediately. Seonghwa saw Yunho nod in his periphery.
—
Seonghwa pauses in front of Jongho’s room. He knocks.
Jongho opens almost immediately. They stand looking at each other for a few seconds before he moves out of the way.
“Come in.”
Jongho looks guileless. Seonghwa can’t tell if he is being baited. He steps into the room.
There is a person at the other side of the cabin. Jongho shuts the door. Seonghwa stares. The person watches him with a parted mouth, a hand raised halfway to their chest. Seonghwa backs away until his hip nudges into the corner of Jongho’s workstation. A dream seems to weave itself around the cabin.
“What is that?” Seonghwa whispers.
Behind him, Jongho breathes softly. “My visitor.”
Seonghwa watches it move forward. His hair, his sweater, his face. A thick pain throbs in his skull. He gasps and slides to his knees. Jongho is by his side. Above his shoulder is the concerned face of his visitor. Seonghwa shuts his eyes.
“Can you even tell who’s who?” He manages to ask.
There is a beat. Then, “I’d be a fool not to be able to.”
There is a hand on Seonghwa’s face, the pad of a finger brushing over his cheekbone. He thinks his head will explode in a shower of blood and viscera.
He takes a deep breath. “We need to kill it.”
Slowly, he opens his eyes to see Jongho staring back at him. He shakes his head. “We can’t.”
Seonghwa sneers. “If this is some sick attachment to my body-”
Jongho backhands him. The visitor flinches. Jongho gets to his feet and sits down at his workstation.
“Deimos has been gaining exponential mass since you got rid of your dog. There’s evidence in the physicists’ data that suggests this is common when a visitor is removed from the ship. There were 7 crew members-”
Seonghwa stares at a spot on the floor until it blurs. Jongho’s voice floats around the room on birdwings.
“-stabilised by a Higgs field. A beam of anti-bosons was the only thing that proved effective-”
“So there’s a way to kill them,” Seonghwa cuts in, “on this ship?”
His eyes settle on Jongho’s visitor. He has been looking out of the window, watching Deimos spin.
“You’re not listening to me,” Jongho snaps. Seonghwa looks up. Jongho leaves his chair to crouch in front of him again. “Deimos’ gravitational field is going to suck everything in. The Higgs device drained the fuel cell reactors.”
Seonghwa’s eyes stray toward the visitor again. Jongho holds his face between both his hands and glares at him. “We’re going to die up here.”
—
She stood in front of the docking bay doors, looking in. Yunho inhaled sharply and made to approach her. Jongho held out an arm. Yunho stopped. She turned towards them and her eyes settled on Yunho.
“I don’t know how I got here,” she said.
Seonghwa took a step forward, another, and placed himself between Jongho and Yunho. The woman took a lost little step.
“Get back inside,” Seonghwa ordered. Yunho did not move.
“Yunho,” the woman called. “What is this place?”
“I’ll take her,” said Jongho and advanced forward without another word.
Seonghwa turned and shoved Yunho back inside the common room, taking care not to touch the dog. Yunho stumbled across the threshold. Seonghwa shut and locked the door. Yunho had his arms around the dog, nose pushed into its fur. The dog wriggled and he reluctantly set it down. Seonghwa took a seat at the bench, ignoring the dog when it brushed up against his leg.
After a long time, Yunho spoke. “I thought if I disabled comms she’d — I don’t know,” he wrung his hands, “not cross over.”
“That’s stupid,” Seonghwa said, mostly for the sake of saying something. He wasn’t sure if he wouldn’t do something similar in that situation.
Yunho rubbed both hands over his face, through his hair, and locked them behind his neck. Seonghwa drummed his fingers on the table. Jongho hadn’t returned yet. Seonghwa darted a glance at the door and took a deep breath.
“I’m sorry. I’ve been… sorry.” He reached a hand across the table, fist closed, “Come with me?”
Yunho looked up and frowned. Seonghwa looked away. The dog, finally tired, went to settle down.
—
They have put Jongho’s visitor in another crewmate’s cabin. Jongho sits at his work station and Seonghwa is once again relagated to observing someone’s back. He wonders if Yunho is asleep next door. There wasn’t much else to do.
“Have you told Yunho?”
“Don’t you wanna be the one to do it?” Jongho asks without turning around.
He isn’t wrong. Seonghwa toys with the corner of his blanket. The visitor had been here, slept in this bed.
“Did you sleep together?”
There is a long pause. “Why do you think I did anything to him?”
“Why was it your visitor, then?”
Jongho turns around in his chair. “Why is anything happening on this ship?”
“You’re so slippery.” It comes out meaner than intended. Seonghwa pushes on, “Am I supposed to be okay with the fact that you were sleeping with me and never bothered telling me about it?”
Jongho gives him a long, hard look. “But he isn’t you, is he?”
Endless circles. Seonghwa gets up off the bed and goes to stand in front of Jongho. Jongho’s shoulders are relaxed, his face calm.
“If there’s something you have to tell me,” Seonghwa says softly, “tell me now.”
For a moment, everything is still as stone. Seonghwa stares Jongho down, the back of his neck growing hot from the strain. Jongho shifts his legs and leans back. The chair squeaks.
“I didn’t sleep with him,” he says at last, no trace of emotion in his voice. “We didn’t do anything.”
“But you would,” Seonghwa prods, “with me?”
Jongho’s mouth moves but his gaze remains steady. Seonghwa takes a step forward and his knees bump into Jongho’s. Carefully, Seonghwa folds his legs and slides onto Jongho’s lap. Jongho is stock still, his face a noh mask of indifference. Seonghwa puts one arm around his neck, then the other.
“Would you?” He asks again.
Jongho breaks with a barely a whisper. His hands come to rest around the bend of Seonghwa’s waist, his forehead against Seonghwa’s sternum. Jongho takes a long lungful of air and Seonghwa almost pulls away with shame. He pries Jongho’s head away from his chest to kiss him.
“You’re not thinking straight,” says Jongho before his mouth moves to Seonghwa’s jaw.
Seonghwa wedges a rough hand between Jongho’s legs. “Shut up.”
Jongho holds on to his waist as Seonghwa drags his cock on Jongho’s thigh, hands clawed into his shoulder. Jongho grunts. He is stiff as a bone. Seonghwa whimpers, unable to look at his face. Jongho doesn’t try to kiss him again, head lowered to the point where Seonghwa is trying to crush his cock on Jongho’s thigh.
An intervention would be welcome, but Jongho is too smart to give in to the urge. Seonghwa ruts harder, takes his cock in his hand and jerks himself off. His wrist smarts. There isn’t enough air in the room. A great wave of eyes crashes on top of his head. Jongho makes a small noise caught between anger and despair and pushes Seonghwa off his lap. Seonghwa stumbles to his feet, eyes flying open.
Jongho gets out of his chair. His knees hit the ground before Seonghwa can think of an appropriate reproach.
“Sorry,” Jongho mutters and takes Seonghwa in his mouth. He lets out a breath. His cheeks hollow out, hands digging into the trembling meat of Seonghwa’s thighs. Seonghwa gasps, fists both hands in Jongho’s hair and comes.
—
Yunho carried the dog to its intended prison. He hesitated before setting it down on the floor. The room used to belong to the physicist. Seonghwa took a look around from the doorway, cataloguing anything the dog was likely to mess with. Yunho shut and locked the door behind them.
Seonghwa took him to the captain’s quarters, indistinguishable from the other cabins in any way. Yunho stood in the middle of the room, looking awkwardly around.
Seonghwa closed the hatch and walked up to him. “Sorry,” he muttered, pulled Yunho forward by a forearm and pressed a kiss to his mouth. When he pulled away, Yunho was breathing slowly, eyes downcast. Seonghwa observed his face. His hands strayed to Yunho’s cheeks, brushing the edges of the tender swelling around his eye and nose.
“You don’t have to apologise for that,” Yunho says quietly.
“I’m not,” Seonghwa replied and kissed him again.
Yunho’s back hit the thin bedding with a gentle push. Seonghwa briefly wondered if circumstance had taken the fight out of Yunho. Maybe he had always wanted this.
“D’you want this?” Seonghwa asked as he clambered his way on top of Yunho.
Yunho blinked. “You? Yes. Yes, I want you, I—”
Seonghwa squeezed his cock over his innerwear and placed his mouth on it. Yunho went quiet with a shocked sigh. It felt strange when Seonghwa wrapped a hand around his cock. He had never seen Yunho in anything other than his uniform. The dark of it had begun to look like the underside of shed skin.
Yunho looked up at him and spread his legs, his mouth parting with a whisper. He looked silly with his white-putty face and its swollen accoutrements. Seonghwa raked his tongue around his mouth and let his spit drip onto Yunho’s cock.
“You should really ice that,” he told Yunho before taking him in his mouth.
It didn’t take long for Yunho to get his bearings. He was himself after all. Seonghwa allowed himself to be pinned to the bed by the neck as Yunho fucked his mouth and came down his throat. Seonghwa sat up and gripped him by the hair until he grunted with pain and apologised.
—
"Well, they get banana fever. It's a terrible disease."
"Here comes a wave," Sybil said nervously.
Salinger, "A Perfect Day for Bananafish"
3. CODA: YUNHO
They are gathered around in the observatory, greener than ever before. Deimos is outside the window, ocean wave to beach. He had gone earlier to free the dog and had heard voices from the other room, soft knocking, a plea, Seonghwa’s voice begging to be let out. For once, Yunho had not felt guilty about leaving them there.
The dog stands by Seonghwa’s feet, relentless, waiting. Yunho watches Seonghwa give with a sigh and reach down to pat the dog’s head. He sits down and crosses his legs. The dog piles itself on Seonghwa’s lap.
They had debated earlier about taking the Haetae back. There was a chance that she would be able to escape Deimos’ gravity as the DSS fell. Jongho had offered to stay behind.
“I’m tired,” he had said and Yunho had only then become aware of the figs in his bones, weighing him down. He wanted to go to sleep. Why pilot a ship when there are beds to sleep in on the station?
Jongho takes a seat next to Seonghwa in the shade of the control panel. His head settles into the crook of Seonghwa’s neck. Yunho turns to look at outside one last time. There is a sea coiling on Deimos’ brow, writhing like a thing alive. It is frighteningly close. There is a faint call over the sound of the station structure straining against the gravity. This is where they all go, Yunho thinks, and in the moment, it feels right, scientific, even.
“Yunho.”
He turns around. Seonghwa is holding his arm open. Between the dog and Seonghwa’s free side, there is just enough room. Yunho feels sleep swimming in his marrow, the anticipation of a good rest spreading doily-like across the back of his neck. Seonghwa beckons again. Yunho presses himself into his embrace. His arm finds Jongho’s shoulder behind Seonghwa’s waist.
From the back of the ship comes a cry like the ocean folded up to dry. Yunho yawns. Yunho sleeps.