by Amy Lane
“I’ve… we didn’t have anything like this,” Anderson said, standing up and gesturing to his jeans—a lot like C.J.’s, with different holos etched on. He had a tight-fitting cardigan on, and a slim white undershirt. He looked good. Without the jumpsuit or C.J.’s bulkier clothes, he looked slender but not defenseless.
C.J.’s smile softened a little at the edges and felt more real at the center of it. “You look fantastic,” he said with feeling. “Here, let me go change….” He trailed off—he had to. Anderson kept moving up to him, three steps and he was across the room, where C.J. stood at the washroom entrance.
C.J. blushed. He was used to nudity. His quarters were damned spacious now, but very often workers had to share on the station. He’d spent his first three years sharing quarters this size with two men and two women, and although not everybody had ended up in bed together—one of the men and one of the women were exclusive to each other—everyone else fucked like bunnies when they had the chance. They’d gotten used to undressing and showering and whatever in all stages of undress. There just wasn’t enough room for modesty, but this was different.
For one thing, Anderson had just gotten close enough to close his eyes and scent along the hollow of C.J.’s neck.
For another, C.J. had just jacked off dreaming of that soft, pouty mouth on his prick and of a thick, meaty cock in his ass. He’d jacked off dreaming of Anderson, after seeing the man as a vulnerable child, and here he was, an alluring adult coming close—coming sensually close, barely grazing C.J.’s tender skin with his nose and lips. He stopped for a moment and opened his mouth, touching a tongue to C.J.’s shoulder near his throat.
“Mmm…,” he said softly. “I’d forgotten the feel of steam, or that skin had a smell. I haven’t smelled a person’s skin since….” Anderson flushed, darkly and hotly, and C.J. could feel the heat radiating through his clothes. “If I’d known how good it smelled, I would have tried harder to add it,” he murmured, and then he took that liberty of tasting C.J.’s lower throat again.
If I’d known…. Shit. Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit.
C.J. took a deep breath and backed up, looking wistfully into Anderson’s dark brown eyes. “Anderson, this, uh… this isn’t really….”
Anderson took two steps back and flushed. “I’m sorry. I… I forget. All the men I’ve met… I mean, the ones programmed on the ship, they were programmed to be bisexual. I… I mean, I didn’t mean to make a pass when I didn’t even know if you liked….”
Oh crap! “No, I like!” C.J. protested. “I told you that! I’m totally bi, and you’re totally hot, but, uh….” Oh, God, he was blushing all over his body, right down to his cock, which was growing longer and thicker under the towel. “Anderson, you haven’t known me for more than a week, and normally that wouldn’t be a problem….” He had to grimace. Total honesty—God, it made him sound cheap!
He took a deep breath and started over. “Anderson, you’re still in a shitty relationship, and I’m the first guy you’ve gotten to, uh, smell, since you stopped being locked in a little tiny space with your shitty relationship. I, uh….” He closed his eyes and banished all thoughts of that pouty mouth where it didn’t belong but maybe did, to some other part of his brain. “I wouldn’t be a very good friend if I let you, uh… explore my skin before you sort of….”
Anderson looked away. “How did you know about Alpha?” he asked, probably his entire body about the same color as C.J.’s at this point.
“For one thing, he sort of laid claim to you today when I was on the ship. For another”—C.J.’s voice grew hard—“we could all see the marks on your neck when you got here.”
Anderson raised a slender, pale hand to the throat of his new shirt. “He’s not real,” he said weakly. “He’s not real.” It sounded like he was trying to convince himself.
C.J. shook his head, got a good grip on the towel around his waist, and took the two steps in to Anderson, this time pulling him in for as platonic a hug as he could possibly manage. “He is to you, baby, and there’s not a soul here who isn’t going to treat him like he matters. He’s real, and he’s still hurting you, and until we get rid of that, doing what you’re thinking about could only fuck you up.”
Anderson shuddered in his arms, leaning against him limply, soft like a child, and all of C.J.’s hot fuck-me thoughts dissipated like shower steam. “That’s not going to stop me from fantasizing,” Anderson confessed with a weak little giggle, and C.J. had to smile.
“Me neither,” he admitted, backing up. “But here, let me go put on something practical and ugly, and then you can keep your hands off the package.”
Anderson shook his head. “Put on something pretty and hot and let me dream.”
C.J. should have blown him off. He really should have. But he didn’t. He put on his tight pants and a tight sage-green T-shirt that looked really good with his light green eyes, and a dark brown overshirt that set off his light brown skin, and brushed his coiled, nappy curls into a little crest running down the center of his head, added a light splat of aftershave on his cheeks, and went into the living room to ask Anderson to model his new clothes.
It was a bad idea. A really bad idea. Even if they didn’t have sex this night, it was a horrible, horrible idea.
C.J. told himself over and over again that he was stupid, and this was dangerous, and that Anderson was going to get hurt. The problem was he was pretty sure Anderson could survive almost anything. C.J. was starting to think he wasn’t anywhere nearly as strong.
It didn’t matter. He got back into the living room and fixed them something to eat. It was simple soup from rations, but it was quality and tasty, and Anderson ate it and told him about his day.
“The current pool felt awesome right up until I got out and everything felt like all wobbly like….” He poked his soup. “Noodles. These are noodles. I haven’t had anything like this since the rations ran out about two years ago. But my muscles felt like noodles, and my bones felt all hollow. Michelle was great, though, and took me to eat. It was a different place than you took me to. I like it. We can eat there, and I’ll show you.”
C.J. nodded, knowing the kiosk Michelle preferred but willing to let Anderson lead since he was so excited about it. “We can go for dinner tomorrow,” was what he said, and Anderson beamed. C.J.’s heart flipped over, and that terrible, implacable attraction to Alpha became less than a memory.
“So I came back and took a nap, and then Michelle took me shopping.” He flushed. “I spent a lot of your money, but I wanted to go back for more.”
C.J. chuckled. “No worries, Anderson. Money I’ve got. Or, well, Marshall’s got. We can go back tomorrow. Meet up here, go out and eat, hit the shops. Find you something you can wear in the hub and get down to the clubs one of these days. What do you say?”
Anderson looked at him with shining eyes. “Really? The hub? With the rides and the dancing and the… the people? It sounds almost as good as an amusement park!”
C.J. laughed outright. “Yeah. We should probably wait a while. You’re getting tired already. We want you to have your strength all built up for dancing, right?”
Instead of smiling back, Anderson narrowed his eyes. “I’m not a child, Cyril.”
Wince. “Oh Christ, where’d you hear my full name?”
“Your sister uses it all the time. So does Michelle. Why do you hate it?”
“Because it sounds like a grown-up, and I still feel your age.”
Anderson looked at him gravely. “But you’re going to be the second in command at the station, C.J. That’s a grown-up job, isn’t it?”
“Oh God.” C.J. shook his head and stood up, taking Anderson’s bowl from him and washing it up in the tiny sink. “That’s it. You have got to stop talking to other people.”
“Why do you hate the idea so much?” Anderson asked curiously. C.J. looked up and Anderson was, oh holy shit, taking off his new pants and putting on another pair, this one skin-tight and black and coming up about t
hree inches below Anderson’s navel. Anderson hadn’t groomed or shaved, and the peek of curly pubic hair coming up above the line of the pants themselves sent a little laser bolt of longing right to C.J.’s groin.
He breathed out hard from his nose. “When did you stop wanting to change in the other room?” he asked thinly.
Anderson looked up and his smile was not sweet in the least. “When you came out of the shower.”
Oh. Well, hell. C.J. turned back to the four dishes that he needed to wash with extreme concentration and answered Anderson’s question, trying not to see the long, pale torso that Anderson was revealing as he pulled out more clothes.
C.J. shrugged as he said it, because the answer to that question sounded like such a copout. “Cassie was always so much better at being a leader than I was, you know? I didn’t need to prove myself or do anything spectacular because Cassidy? She wrote the book on being perfect. I figured I’d just write another sort of book, you know?”
Anderson was staring at him. “If that’s true, how’d you end up here?”
“See! That’s exactly it! I had two other jobs planetside, right? Both of them were analyzing space data to improve our interplanetary travel policies, and the thing is? I rocked at those jobs. I loved them. I could have done them forever.”
“Why didn’t you?”
C.J. frowned. “Because the dumbest fucking people get put in charge of places like that. I’m not kidding. One guy took a look at my work and said, ‘Well, yes, it would cost us some money to increase trade five hundred percent. Nice work. But we’re going to go another way because I hired my wife’s nephew and he’ll become a bazillionaire if we use a different idea that won’t last three years.’ That company is now out of business by the way. The other guy looked at my work and said, ‘Well, I understand your concerns about product safety. I’ll talk to my engineers.’ Well, I knew the guy’s engineers, so I talked to them, and he was never planning to talk to them, so when the engineers went on strike because they didn’t want to fucking die, guess who got blamed? I’ll give you three guesses, but you only know four people on the station, so I’m betting you can get it in one!”
Anderson laughed as C.J. went off, and C.J. realized that his voice had gotten loud and he’d stopped doing dishes and started talking with his hands. He put his hands deliberately on the counter and sighed. “I just didn’t want to be the guy in charge because the guy in charge always seemed like an asshole, and I didn’t want to be that guy.”
Anderson’s face suddenly went very still. “Yeah,” he said softly. “I can see how it would suck to be the guy in charge.”
Shit. Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit. “Shit,” C.J. said succinctly. “Yeah, Anderson, let’s cut the crap, okay? I know you’ve been making decisions and hard decisions and harder decisions since you were… Christ. How old were you again?”
“Twelve,” Anderson said, his mouth twisting a little in response to C.J.’s no-nonsense tone. “I was twelve.”
“Yeah,” C.J. sighed. “You were a baby. Hell, Chips was older than that when I got him, okay?”
In the corner, Chips said, “C.J. stop fucking around!”
C.J. rolled his eyes. “The thing is….” For a moment C.J. floundered for his words. “The thing is, were you the kind of person who would have wanted to do that at the beginning, or did you have to really fuck yourself up to become that person?”
To his surprise and relief, Anderson burst out laughing. “My vote is on fucked myself up, you think?”
C.J. nodded and laughed a little himself. Then he sobered, and he allowed himself to look at Anderson in the new outfit. He looked… God. Hot. Sweet. Spicy. Beautiful. His appreciation must have showed in his eyes, because Anderson blushed and ducked his head.
“You like?” he asked, doing that thing again where he looked at C.J. from under his lowered lashes. C.J. couldn’t help himself. He did the same thing.
“Yeah, I like,” he said softly. “I like a whole lot.”
Anderson’s smile widened, and he tilted his chin back so that he was looking at C.J. straight on, and C.J. was the one pulling back. “Good. It’s good to be liked.
C.J. didn’t resist the shiver of awareness and desire that raced through his bloodstream. He’d acknowledged it, right? He’d beat off to it, right? So it was there, and he knew about it, and if he knew about it, he could control it, right?
He looked at Anderson again, whose expression had gone faintly predatory as he started to strip off his new holo-decorated jeans to the plain white cotton briefs beneath. He saw C.J. watching, and C.J. cursed himself, especially when that predatory grin widened and Anderson reached unselfconsciously into his bag of purchases. What had happened to the kid who had run into C.J.’s room to change? C.J. didn’t know, but he almost wanted that Anderson back.
“So, Mr. I-don’t-like-authority, how do you like me now?” Anderson stood there in his underwear alone, looking at C.J. over his shoulder with such wicked humor that C.J. was completely sucked in.
C.J. tightened his stomach like he was fighting off a punch to the gut and shook his head, backing up. “Better with clothes on, my man, better with clothes.”
Anderson obeyed and tried on his next purchase, but his laugh was low and a little dirty, and C.J. wanted to know which hologram had taught him bad-boy, because he had that down pat.
That night, C.J. skipped the part where Anderson went to sleep on the couch and put the kid in his bed instead. Cliché? Yes. But necessary too. Anderson hadn’t gotten enough sleep the night before, and C.J. was tired of sleeping sitting up on the couch. This way would cut out the middleman, and C.J. hoped it would make him more aware than ever of his role as Anderson’s caretaker.
It helped that Anderson wanted to talk as they drifted off. He asked C.J. questions about his friends.
“How was Bobby today? And Kate? Do they miss me?”
“Very much,” C.J. told him truthfully. “We can take you to visit tomorrow, after you go work out with Michelle. How’s that?”
Anderson made a satisfied sound, and C.J. smiled, feeling warm and fuzzy as they sank into the bed. “That’s great. Thanks, C.J.”
“It’s not just me,” C.J. felt compelled to protest. “We all want you to be happy, Anderson. I mean… you just lived through something huge. The fact that you’re not a raving maniac sort of speaks well of the whole damned human race, you know? People want to reward that. They’re sort of hoping that all of that good human-ness will rub off on them.”
Anderson was tired. He’d stumbled into his night clothes—he was still wearing C.J.’s old shorts and a T-shirt for that—and practically fallen into bed, but suddenly his shoulders twitched, and he pushed himself upright in agitation.
“I’m nothing to admire, C.J.,” he said unhappily. “I’m… I’m so flawed. I… you can’t let them think I’m good, you understand? I did bad things on that trip. I….”
C.J. knew what he was talking about. “I met him, Anderson,” C.J. said softly. “I’ve met him. Don’t worry. Don’t worry. The world doesn’t have to know about Alpha.”
“I don’t even want to know about Alpha,” Anderson murmured, and C.J. was glad when Anderson’s shoulders relaxed after that and he could hear the even breathing of sleep through the quiet room.
ANDERSON popped him in the cheek with his elbow as he sat up in bed for his horrible, soundless scream, so C.J. ended up going to work with a shiner.
The worst part was trying to explain to Cassidy how it had happened and enduring her censuring look of pity.
“God, Cyril, you’ve got no sense at all, do you know that? He’s not a gamma bird. You’re going to have to give him back, you know that, right?”
“I know he’s not a gamma bird, dammit!” C.J. snapped. “Look, can we just go in and watch his life some more? Because, you know, I can’t get enough of seeing absolute fucking misery, okay? God knows seeing him sit up in bed and scream isn’t enough fun in person that I have to relive it a thousand tim
es via holographic 3D photography!”
Cassie surprised him then. Without another sharp word, she threw herself into his arms for a sisterly embrace that had none of the awkwardness of their initial cling-together the day before. “You’re going to get hurt, C.J.,” she whispered. “He’s living in your quarters, sleeping in your bed, and you’re seeing him suffer every day. You’re going to want to help him, and he… he might be too damaged to help. Baby, send him to Michelle’s quarters, ship him downside… look at you. You’ve got a black eye, and you don’t look like you’ve slept in three days. Please, Cyril? Please?”
C.J. shook his head and gave her shoulders a squeeze and then stepped back. “I’ll be fine, Cass,” he said at last, not looking at her. “You know me, I never take things too seriously. We’ll wrap this up, get Julio in here to break down the holo-science, and I’ll ask him if he wants to go stay at Jensen’s clinic for a while. He’ll like it there, and Jensen’s dying to get a crack inside his cranium, I can tell.”
“Oh, God, C.J., you’re… you’re already attached.”
C.J. shrugged. “Naw, I’m too superficial to get attached. Ask Jensen. He’ll tell you.”
Cassie sighed. “Yeah, if he was smart, he’d tell me you broke his heart before he had a chance to break yours.”
Wince. “That wasn’t quite his version of events.”
“That’s because for all his so-called brilliance in the field, he never got my little brother like I do. Let’s go in, Cyril. I can’t listen to you lie to yourself anymore, and we need to get a move on.”
They went in and watched Anderson program Kate. They kept the vids in real time and hit record to send the info to Julio and listened to Kate’s caustic commentary behind them.
“Really, Anderson? You couldn’t have given me the delicate features of a supermodel and some knowledge of how to give myself a manicure? Jesus, I could have done a better job myself!”
C.J. was about to make a sarcastic remark, but he looked behind him and saw two things. One was that Kate had perfectly manicured nails with a demure coat of pink glitter paint on them, which was so out of keeping with what he was seeing on the screen as her programming that he realized she must have done that herself—right down to learning how, since all of the holograms were programmed to synthesize human behavior right down to an algorithm that sent them to the bathroom every so many hours. The other was that Bobby was looking at her fondly.
