A Solid Core of Alpha

by Amy Lane

  “Yeah, baby,” Cass said. She sounded quiet but composed. “I’m back. Why?”

  “It’s my turn.” Spots danced in front of his eyes as C.J. bolted for the head.

  Chapter 13

  Shouldas

  WHEN everything played out, C.J. had a long list of things he should have done from that point on. He should have called Jensen and shipped Anderson straight planetside. He should have pulled himself from the situation entirely and devoted himself to Anderson’s side. He should have done the exact opposite and pulled away entirely, allowing Anderson to heal, sending Anderson to people who could help him, while C.J. waited, hoped, and prayed that eventually, Anderson would be ready to embark on a relationship—a healthy, clean relationship, with C.J. at his side.

  C.J. should have left, gone to another planet, another solar system, and maybe the two of them could have forgotten about each other completely.

  C.J. would recite the shouldas incessantly for a little while, make a flog out of them, and flay himself repeatedly, but none of the shouldas could have changed the one fact, the one true thing that made them all completely irrelevant, completely impossible, and completely out of the question.

  C.J. was far too involved in Anderson’s life by now, far too entwined in Anderson’s happiness, to leave. The only thing that had sustained C.J. in his horrible voyeuristic mission so far had been knowing that the real Anderson, who seemed happy, healthy, and laughing, would be waiting for him when he was done reviewing the shuttle recordings at the end of the day. Anderson had started to bring home dinner, and videos, the occasional friend, if the person knew C.J. first. He had Chips singing the lyrics to perfectly filthy songs, and he liked to clean and make the kitchenette and bedroom neat if he had too much time on his hands. He’d accessed the station’s libraries, and he always had a new book—mostly fiction, surprisingly enough—cued up on C.J.’s computer book tablet. They’d take turns reading them, and then talking about them, and then finding other books by the same author.

  They watched every comedy vid C.J. could access and then used some of C.J.’s copious credits pulling some up from planetside that neither of them had seen before.

  C.J. could clearly remember one night when they’d been sitting on opposite ends of the couch, laughing hard at a comedy, and suddenly it had hit him and hit him hard. He had watched Anderson as much as the video, waiting to see that sudden delight cross his face when something was funny. C.J. had waited, just a moment, as Anderson’s head had tipped back and he laughed, before C.J. had laughed too. The video wasn’t as funny if Anderson didn’t enjoy it too.

  C.J.’s snug little quarters weren’t his if Anderson wasn’t in there too.

  So that entire list of shouldas that C.J. listed in the painful aftermath weren’t really options. Not one of them had even crossed his mind.

  Instead, he was sitting numbly on the couch when Anderson got home on another day during which the violence had erupted on the holo-vids, his legs curled up underneath him and a big icy glass of fruit juice in hand. He was seriously wishing the fruit juice were something stronger, something more potent, something that would smash his brain into oblivion and leave only the breathing, moving parts to function.

  Anderson walked in, and the smile that stretched C.J.’s face felt alien—and life sustaining. Anderson was here. The real Anderson. Not the twisted, torn commander who had made the hard choices against his will, allowing himself to be beaten for them because that was what he thought he deserved. This Anderson smiled back and then looked concerned.

  This Anderson sat cross-legged in the corner of the couch and said, “C.J., Jesus. You look awful. What happened?”

  C.J. took a slug of fruit juice and said, feeling loopy and drunk on grief as he said it, “It wasn’t murder.”

  Anderson blinked, and then his face… settled. The smooth youth that C.J. was used to seeing in his quarters sagged, lined, became old and hardened and resigned. It was a frightening transformation. If the face Anderson assumed in this moment hadn’t been the face C.J. had seen on the video screen for the last week, he might have been frightened by it.

  Now it just made him sad.

  “Yeah, it was,” Anderson said calmly. “I killed my friends so I could keep the holodeck illusion. I killed them so I could—”

  “You were trying to survive,” C.J. said, looking at him truly. Not flirtatiously, not surreptitiously, but face forward, seeing all of him—the frightened child, the abused spouse, the hardened commander. C.J. knew him, from age twelve to age… God. He’d be twenty-three in a matter of days. They’d take him out, C.J. thought, drinking more juice. They’d take him to the hub and let him play like the young man he was, the young man he’d never had a chance to be.

  “That doesn’t change what I did to make that happen,” Anderson said, keeping that calm, quiet resignation about him. His narrow, rounded chin had never seemed so vulnerable.

  “It does,” C.J. said, finding that he was crying. “You didn’t kill them. You… you put them on hold. I could call them up at any moment.”

  “I deleted them,” Anderson said, his face growing even harder—and that chin quivering more alarmingly. “You haven’t gotten there yet. I had to. We needed to buy time to put the archives on the screen. It was happening so fast. I killed them. I decided that their existence was less important than mine, after I brought it about.”

  “They weren’t real,” C.J. said, wiping his face miserably. “You know that. I saw your face when….”

  “That doesn’t count,” Anderson said, losing his own battle. He wiped his face silently. “It doesn’t count. Because I knew what he was. I knew what he was and I let him into my bed and into my life, and I treated him like he was real. Everyone else was under the rules, don’t you see that? You can’t just say he was and they weren’t or the other way around. You can’t. That’s—”

  “Don’t tell me that it’s cheating!” C.J. stood up and took two steps forward in the modest space of his quarters. “Don’t tell me that it’s cheating. You did what you had to, Anderson. You lived. God….” He turned around, wiping his face with the palm of his hand. “Don’t you see? I’m so glad you made it. I love… I love having you here. My life… it would be so much less if you hadn’t made it, if I’d never known….”

  C.J. couldn’t finish that thought. He couldn’t. He shook his head and remembered that he was the strong one, the healthy one, and that he was the one who would help.

  “You needed to survive,” C.J. said at last. He was in the corner of the room, staring blindly at a print he’d put up of the ocean, planetside. The sea was brilliant blue and green, and the violet kelp had washed ashore, and the sunset had turned the horizon shades of apricot and rose, and the sky was purple and indigo. The three moons were all aligned and in various stages of shadow, bright as opals, with the colors the sun was throwing off the landscape shifting in their faces.

  He’d taken the picture on a trip he’d made after the breakup with Jensen, when he’d decided that when he settled down, it would be with someone who loved him for him, not who he should be, or might be, or could be. The photo had all his favorite colors in the world in it.

  Except for the brown of Anderson’s eyes.

  “I’m damned glad you survived.”

  He felt Anderson’s hands on his shoulders then, felt the heat from his body seeping through their clothes. Anderson was shorter by half a head, and he pushed himself against C.J., and C.J. could feel the muscles, the heft, the weight he’d put on working out this last month, eating healthy, being around people, and generally recovering. Mostly, though, C.J. could feel that he was solid, and warm, and real. Suddenly, bleakly, he wondered if maybe Anderson needed to go out into the world and be with other men, just to know that there was more than one solid, warm, and real person in the world.

  Still, that didn’t stop C.J. from leaning back into Anderson’s arms, just for a moment.

  “You know I’m that person you saw on the scr
een,” Anderson said, and it was heartbreaking, the way he expected that knowledge to turn C.J. away.

  “I know you were brave,” C.J. said softly, feeling it. “I know you were brave, and you were making the only decisions you could, and you didn’t deserve what happened to you, any of it.”

  Anderson made hushing noises and smoothed the backs of C.J.’s shoulders, and C.J. wanted nothing more than to turn into his arms, kiss that pouty mouth, and make it all better. But he was conscious, so very conscious, that he shouldn’t. Being with Anderson after seeing that, when he was Anderson’s only tether to reality. How many nights had he heard that broken voice echoing in the dark, after he’d comforted that silent screaming?

  How fucked up am I, C.J.?

  We don’t know yet, baby.

  Well C.J. had an idea now, didn’t he? And there weren’t any words for what had happened inside of Anderson’s head in that hells-long ten-year journey. With a wrench from what he wanted to do, C.J. turned and pulled Anderson into his chest in the sweet, platonic, brotherly hug he’d been giving him in bed when the silent screams broke their sleep.

  “Do you hear me, baby?”

  Anderson went boneless against him. “Just calling me ‘baby’ doesn’t make you want me any less,” he pointed out, and C.J. closed his eyes.

  “Don’t you think you have enough to worry about without taking a total fuck-up like myself into your bed?” he asked, begging Anderson to hear his tone and follow his lead and smile.

  Instead, Anderson pulled back a little and surveyed C.J. soberly in the dim light from the front room lamp. “I meet people, real people, during the day, C.J. I meet people who spend all their money at the hub, and people recovering in physical therapy because they’re clumsy or didn’t think something through. I sit at the kiosks and watch relationships that make my time with Alpha look like a country picnic.”

  C.J. pulled one corner of his mouth up. “Your point being…?”

  “Don’t patronize me, C.J. You’re not a fuck-up, and I know exactly what it is I like about you and why I want you.”

  C.J. closed his eyes and pulled Anderson to his chest again, because he couldn’t do this when they were face to face. “Why is that?”

  Anderson’s voice was muffled against him, but he didn’t struggle. Not this time. “I want you because you’re kind and you’re real,” he said softly, and C.J. squeezed his eyes tight, and that still didn’t stop them from burning. “And because you care enough to think that sleeping with me is wrong, even though you really, really want to do it.”

  C.J. had to chuckle, and again he tried to lighten the moment. He thrust his hips at Anderson a little, just enough for the man to tell that C.J. wasn’t unaffected by being close, by being intimate, and Anderson pulled back, surprised.

  “If you’re not going to use that, grinding on me is just mean,” Anderson complained, but he was smiling kindly back, and C.J. nodded, although he didn’t let Anderson go.

  “You want to go out dancing?” he asked, out of the blue. “Julio is getting some people together next week to go out dancing. It’s your birthday next week. You want to go down to the hub and hit the clubs and go dancing for your birthday?”

  Anderson’s smile was… God. It was beautiful. It was blinding. It was healthy and whole and strong.

  C.J. looked at him and smiled back, and felt that strengthening body against his, and tried to block out the memories of seeing that body brutalized, abused, and violated. Desperately, he tried not to wonder at the emotional fracture hidden beneath that new growth of joy.

  JENSEN never looked this worried. He hadn’t looked this worried when C.J. broke up with him, when he blew out his kneecap throwing disc on the beach, or when he asked Molly to move in with him. C.J. had known Jensen for eleven years, ever since their first year in university together, and he had never seen this level of concern even exist on his friend’s emotional range.

  “Send him down planet now,” Jensen commanded, and C.J. grimaced.

  “Now? Jen? Do you really think now’s a good time? He’s still visiting with the other holos once a day, and I’m the only person he’s really attached to. I mean, now? Can’t we wait until my break, until we get this project done and then send him—”

  “Now, C.J.—don’t tell me you don’t see how dangerous this is to you!”

  Wince. “Well, really, Jen, I’m mostly worried about Anderson. You’re the one who said I needed to hang in there through the long haul.”

  Jensen groaned and thunked his head against his desk in front of the computer console. “I didn’t mean for you to self-destruct with him, you moron!”

  C.J. had to crack a smile. “I’m fine, Jensen,” he said gently. “Truly. All good. Cassie and I made a pact—we haven’t gotten drunk in almost two weeks now, and, well, we hold each other up while we’re screening the recordings.”

  Jensen groaned again and looked up at C.J. with weary eyes. “The fact that you’re even watching this shit is fucking you up, Cyril.”

  “Aw, crap, you’re not calling me ‘Cyril’ too!”

  “I’ll call you whatever the hell I need to in order to get you to ship that boy planetside, and if you really loved me, you’d come with him and send your I-know-all-sorts-of-bullshit sister too. This is bad. Bad, bad, bad, bad, bad….”

  “Six different degrees in abnormal psychology—”

  “Three!”

  “And all I can get from you is ‘bad’?” C.J. shook his head and tsked with his tongue. “Really, Jensen, I’m surprised at you. I expected better. Really did.”

  Jensen slammed his fist down on his desk, and C.J. popped his head back, even though they were only interfacing through the computer screen. “Don’t fuck with me here, C.J.—I’m not bullshitting you. This is bad shit. It’s bad for you and Cassie to watch it, and it’s bad for Anderson to deal with, and you are all going to need my help. You need it now, not a month from now, not when your leave is due, but now, or one of you is going to completely melt down, self-destruct, and maybe, if you’re lucky, it won’t be you, and if you’re really lucky, and it’s Anderson, he won’t bring down the entire fucking space station. Do you fucking understand me?”

  C.J. did. He pulled in a big breath and let it out and allowed some of his bravado to slip out with it. “Jensen, I don’t want to yank him away from the shuttle and me at the same time, okay? I hear you, but don’t you think a sudden break might be worse than, say, a prearranged vacation? I can take him down, show him the sights, and make a prolonged stop at your clinic, one that maybe goes past my leave, until you’re ready to send him back up.”

  “Why would he want to come back up if he’s better, C.J.?” Jensen asked, his voice hard, and C.J. stopped and flushed suddenly, so badly that he started to sweat too.

  “In case he wants to,” C.J. replied, his throat so dry that his voice whispered out. “You know. He’s got friends here. He can work about half a dozen jobs up here, if he wants. It’s a place to—”

  “Do you love this kid, Cyril?” Jensen asked, so baldly and so gently that C.J. could only look away from the screen.

  “Yeah,” he confessed.

  “Then you’re going to have to, at some point, leave him alone and let him come to you. Do you understand me?”

  C.J. nodded. He’d had that thought about six billion times himself. “Yeah.”

  Jensen sighed. “Look, I’m not trying to break your heart, but….” He paused, and C.J. hated himself, because Jensen paused because C.J. was wiping his eyes on his sleeve, feeling like a total asshole. C.J. pulled himself together, and Jensen continued. “But you need to know it’s coming. His feelings for you could be very real, but he’s not going to be able to feel them, really feel them, and know that they’re true, unless he and I work out some shit, okay?”

  C.J. nodded. “I know. You know I’m good with it. I’m not normally such a pussy about my feelings, Jen, but….”

  “But you’ve been watching this kid get abused six ways and si
deways in a really fucked up situation, and your heart is breaking for him. I hear you. That’s why I’m saying that you can’t wait much longer here. One of you is going to do or say something that’s going to trigger an emotional bomb here, and I don’t know if you’re ready for the fallout.”

  C.J. nodded again. “Can you give us a week, at least?” he asked, feeling pathetic. “We’re taking him out for his birthday, and he’s really looking forward to it.”

  Jensen nodded. “Of course. Of course. I’m not a total hard-case—give the guy a birthday with real candles, right?”

  C.J. grinned, trying very hard to lighten things up. “And a dance night at the hub. We are on the space station. We should do it up right!”

  Jensen groaned and went back to thunking his head on the table again, but C.J. managed to smile through the horrible oppression that had begun to dog his every hour since they’d reached the “abuse section of the Anderson program,” as Cassie had called it.

  “Come on, Jen, some dinner, some dancing, let Anderson have his fun. I’ll tell him tomorrow that we need to take him planetside. I’ll make arrangements with Marshall, spend a week or so there, and then come back at the break.”

  Jensen looked at him soberly. “You sure you want to commit to all of that? It’s going to be a long haul, CJ. It’s going to take more than one cycle.”

  C.J. looked away. “It’s not like… it’s not like I’ll even feel like seeing anyone else in the meantime, okay? I….” Suddenly, he had to be real. “You’re right,” he said softly, looking at Jensen through the computer. “My chest is shredded, I can’t sleep, and I’m crying all the fucking time, man. I’m too fucked up to get involved with anyone else, and I sure as shit am not going to blow off Anderson for a fuckbuddy just to prove that I’m all right, okay? But… we’re his home now. He needs to know we’re with him on this, and he needs to know he has a place to come back to when it’s over. You feel me?”