by Lyn Gala
When abandoned in the desert, Shan had walked out like some hero from a ballad, but Temar didn’t have the physical strength to do that. Shan and Naite were both imposing men. When Shan had been a priest, Temar had never noticed it, but now, he could see that Shan had a strength, a surety in his movements, a physical presence that Temar couldn’t match. Not only was Shan six inches taller, but Temar had a beauty that tended to make people dismiss him, and fair skin that would be dangerously burnt within hours of being on the desert. So, would he have given up and died in that base? Would he have tried to walk out?
The thoughts circled, a sandrat in a pipe trap, always circling until the poison seeps in so much that the animal dies. And Temar didn’t know how to escape. The worst part was that he knew Shan would do anything he asked to relieve this pain… so would Naite and Tom and Hannal, and even Cyla had made a few awkward attempts to offer sympathy. It wasn’t an emotion she did well, but he appreciated the effort.
Now Hannal knew how to do sympathy. Tom’s wife had found excuses to be over to his farm several times a week, her children exploring every nook of it as she sat and shared lemonade with him. He didn’t remember his mother, but he could imagine from the stories people told that she was a lot like Hannal, with her soft voice and her willingness to sit and stare out a window as she waited for whatever pieces Temar chose to share. All these people would shovel sand dunes one spadeful at a time if he could only tell them what he needed, and he didn’t know.
Even Dee’eta Sun had offered him her apologies with tears in her eyes, up to the point where she’d left the room, too emotional to talk to him. All these people cared about him, and he felt like that should be enough. He should be able to take all that support and turn it into an ability to simply move past this maelstrom that buffeted him. But he couldn’t. He obsessed over the “might haves” and saw ghosts in the shadows.
“You want some dinner?” Shan asked, still poking away at the computer.
“I’m fine,” Temar said. His stomach tightened at the thought of eating.
“Well, I’m not,” Shan pushed himself back from the computer. “I’m going to have to replace circuits on the tower. I should start apologizing to God now for the cursing I’m about to do.”
Temar’s guilt knotted his stomach. “You don’t have to do this. It was a stupid thought.”
“Eventually, I have to get all this up and running, but you know me. I’ve been spending more time on the mechanical systems. I understand them better.” Shan stood up and stretched his back. “Right now, though, I need food. I have a potato stew going.”
“That sounds good,” Temar said, even though he really didn’t want anything that heavy. He followed Shan into the living areas, leaning against a wall as he watched Shan gather bowls and fill them. “Why would they have let the communications systems fail? I mean, if I was planning on flying into a war zone, I would want to know if I was likely to get shot down.”
Shan carried the bowls to the table and headed back for something else. Spoons, maybe. “I don’t know,” Shan admitted. “I know the inner planets have ways to monitor the systems, so maybe they were afraid that they’d get caught stealing water.”
“Great. Some inner world would know that someone stole water. What difference would that make?” If the inner worlds couldn’t bother with their contractual obligations to finish the terraforming, he couldn’t see them showing up to arrest Ben and his co-conspirators for theft.
Shan turned around, bread and silverware in hand. “I have no idea. I do know that they were obsessed with their secrets. You would have to be, to keep a secret that good for fifteen years.”
Temar shrugged. “They knew what would happen if anyone found out. That’s a lot of motivation to keep your mouth shut.”
“True.” Shan headed to the table, sitting down and giving Temar a concerned look. Temar supposed he should probably try to eat instead of standing against the wall, staring at the food.
“Looks good.” Temar didn’t sound convincing, even to himself, but Shan simply pulled off a chunk of bread and soaked it in the stew before eating it. “Do you think they knew they’d get exile?” Temar blurted out.
Shan seemed to think for a long time. “Ben must have,” he said slowly. But then Ben hadn’t just stolen water, he’d committed rape. That wasn’t a crime that the councils had any patience for. “The others should have. If they’d succeeded, people would have eventually died.”
“They may anyway,” Temar pointed out. The extra water would give their farmers more time to develop drought-resistant crops, but in the end, Livre wasn’t terraformed. It didn’t have enough water to permanently sustain itself without help from the inner worlds. And the fact was the inner worlds were more concerned with war than a dying colony. Shan didn’t answer that. Livre children learned the truth young and lived with it their whole lives, had been for three generations now. Eighty-two years. Eighty-two years, and the inner worlds hadn’t shown up to fulfill the promise they’d made to the first settlers.
“Did you know Naite went out to watch?” Temar changed the topic.
“Watch what?”
“Ben.”
Shan’s spoon hesitated halfway to his mouth, and Temar pulled off a bit of bread and focused on dunking it in the pale stew.
“He… he watched?”
Temar nodded.
Shan sighed and put his spoon back down. “I sometimes worry about my brother’s soul.”
“I’m glad someone saw him die,” Temar disagreed. Part of him wished he’d been out there on a hauler watching Ben walk the dunes in bare feet. He wondered if Ben sat down or if he fought the whole way, struggling against the Livre desert. Naite refused to tell him.
“Part of me did wonder if he had some other plan, some way of saving himself,” Shan said quietly. “I’m not sorry to have the proof, but to stand by and watch while a man dies….” Shan fell silent. His sense of morality had always had seemed more developed than Temar’s. Cold anger still dominated Temar’s thoughts about Ben.
When Temar didn’t answer, Shan turned to his meal. Temar tried eating what he could, not wanting to waste food, but the discussion of Ben had pretty much ruined his appetite. After getting out of Ben’s house, Temar had been so proud of himself. He’d fought back, he’d demanded respect, he’d helped bring down a conspiracy against his world. He’d been okay. Now he could feel little parts of himself unraveling. He’d left Dee’eta Sun’s after the cooled punty had caused the piece to fall to the ground and shatter, but he hadn’t finished the story when he’d talked to Shan.
After Dee’eta Sun had tried explaining how to recycle scraps, Temar had confronted her, demanded to know why she couldn’t respect him enough as an apprentice to hold him accountable for his actions. That had been the general question, although the tone had been a good deal more angry. He’d stormed out of the tent, knocking over another piece of glass and leaving Dee’eta, two assistants, and another apprentice staring at him in shock. Temar had always wanted to work glass—he’d never had another dream in his whole life—but the very act of watching the glass grow and form on the end of a blowpipe, the sight of glass bending to Dee’eta’s will, annoyed him. Angered him. It was the most illogical reaction Temar could imagine, and yet he couldn’t escape it.
The stew settled poorly in his stomach and Temar listlessly poked at the chunks of potato and pork.
Chapter 5
“TRY now.” Shan’s voice came through the computer, and Temar could admit the technology made him a little uneasy. He flipped the switch Shan had showed him.
“Done,” he answered. He looked at the open manual and tried to understand the explanation of subspace communications relays. It was beyond him, but at least it provided a good distraction.
“Did anything change colors?” Shan asked.
Temar looked at the line of lights. “The top row is all blue now. Is that good?”
An inventive string of curses came through the computer speak
er. “Lord, forgive me, but even you would be frustrated by this machine,” Shan added at the end. Temar smiled. Even if Shan managed to get the communication system up, Temar figured there was a good chance no one was on the other end, yet he was up there working to fix this only because Temar had asked. He’d never had anyone willing to put everything aside for him like this.
“The top lights just turned green,” Temar said loudly into the microphone. Micro. Small. Phone. Sound. He eyed the device and tried to figure out the logic of that name.
“Yes!” Shan called out triumphantly. “There has not been a machine built that I can’t fix.”
Temar doubted that. The first colonists came in huge ships with subspace drives and folded space generators and fusion reactors, and those had little to do with life on Livre, but he did imagine Shan could fix anything on Livre.
“The line of lights below are all blinking blue and green,” Temar said, hoping that he wasn’t destroying Shan’s joy with some bit of news that meant the whole system was on the verge of blowing up.
“That’s normal. The system is trying to connect with a subspace broadcast. Fair warning, it could be that no one is sending updates our direction anymore. This system has been off-line for years.”
Temar ran his fingers across the little indicator lights. All this might be for nothing—it could be that no one out there cared enough to even watch one little colony on the edge of the universe, but still, Shan had spent all of twilight and a good deal of the night battling the equipment. That meant more than his awkward, aborted attempt to suggest that they get married. Married. That was such an odd thought, Temar had never entertained it. He had always been the shy one who never fit in, so he’d resigned himself to being the same as an adult.
“Thank you for trying, either way,” Temar said into the microphone.
“You’re welcome. I’m coming back down. Can you turn on external lights?”
“Got it.” Temar hit the switch for the outside lights. The speaker made a strange sort of clicking sound and then the light above it faded from green to black as the system powered down. Temar wondered if they were draining the solar systems, running this many machines. If so, he would have to make it up to Shan. He could definitely make it up. Coming over, Temar had been nervous about sex, but now that he’d felt Shan shudder and come under his hands, he was eager to try again. Leaving the control board and the confusing manual, he headed through the living space into Shan’s sleeping area.
One side was taken up by a table covered with a thousand small parts that Temar didn’t recognize, and the bed dominated the other side, the blanket on the floor at the foot of it and the sheets rumpled. Temar could see the sun-shaped wrinkles where Shan had fisted the fabric. Stepping forward, he let his fingers glide over the sheets as his body remembered the way it had felt to reach out for someone, to feel warm skin under his hand, and to feel safe in a bed. He could definitely repay Shan for his time and effort.
It took several minutes before he heard Shan call out, “Temar?”
“In here,” Temar answered.
In a second, Shan appeared in the doorway, a long streak of dirt or oil down one cheek and his hair sticking up at odd angles. Temar smiled.
“Are you laughing at me?” Shan asked with a sort of mock indignation.
“Yes,” Temar agreed, his smile growing even wider.
Shan reached up and ran his fingers through his hair, which only made the direction of the clumps change without fixing anything. “I had to hang over the edge of the platform to reach the burnt circuits.”
“That explains the hair,” Temar said, a laugh in his voice as he stepped closer. Shan immediately stilled, his eyes darkening. Despite the clear interest, he slowly lowered his arm and waited for Temar. Taking one more step, Temar stopped right in front of Shan and reached up to smooth down his hair. Shan reached up and ran his thumb along Temar’s jaw, his expression turning soft.
Temar caught his hand. “This time, I want to explore,” he said. He brought Shan’s hand up to his lips and kissed the knuckles. Shan yielded as Temar took a step backward and pulled Shan toward the bed.
“Making up for time we lost because I was acting like an idiot?” Shan asked.
“Yep.”
Shan laughed. “That’s fair. I should warn you that I can be an idiot on a fairly regular basis. I mean, I liked you from the time you started coming to church, and I wasted all that time.”
“You did?” Temar was surprised. Back then, his father’s drinking had been spiraling out of control, and he’d been showing signs of liver failure, and Cyla had been angry all the time. The church had been a refuge, and Shan had been just a priest. Temar hadn’t really thought of him as a man having hopes and lusts of his own.
“I was careful to not spend too much time around you, because you did tempt me,” Shan admitted. “And every time someone else tried to catch your eye, I could feel a very unpriestly sort of jealousy.”
Temar sat on the edge of the bed and pulled Shan down next to him. “Very few people ever tried to catch my eye.”
“Oh, quite a few did. More than you noticed, clearly,” Shan disagreed.
This wasn’t the conversation Temar wanted to have. Actually, he didn’t want to talk at all. He leaned closer and caught Shan by the back of his neck, pulling him close enough to kiss. He liked kissing Shan. Shan’s lips parted, and Temar quested deeper with his tongue. Shan’s hand came to rest against Temar’s hip, his fingers pressing without bruising and his breathing growing more labored. Temar pulled back, and Shan looked utterly adorable with his eyes half closed and his mouth still slightly open. Temar had been so afraid that touching another would bring back the ghosts of Ben, yet those very fears and ghosts scattered every time he looked at Shan.
“Bed?” Temar suggested, scooting farther up the mattress.
“That works,” Shan agreed. He got up and moved to the side of the bed, where he kicked off his shoes before getting in. He reached out for Temar, but Temar intercepted his hand.
“You distracted me too much last time. This time I want to explore,” he said.
Shan swallowed so that his Adam’s apple bobbed as he settled his weight down onto his side. “Explore away.” His voice was low and rough, and Temar realized he’d done that. He’d reduced Shan to this hard need that left his voice gravelly and his cock pressing up against his pants. Reaching down, Temar ran a finger over Shan’s trapped cock, and Shan sucked in a fast breath, but he didn’t protest. Temar shifted closer, pressing on Shan’s shoulder to urge him to lie on his back. Once Shan had settled, Temar moved to straddle him. He looked down into warm, brown eyes that looked up at him with trust.
“I like making up for lost time,” Shan said. He rested his hands against Temar’s legs, sliding them up and down as he waited. Before, Temar had been driven to finish, to prove something, and to ease the growing lust that drove him out to the relay station. Funny how his anger with Dee’eta—with the world and even Shan—had turned into a lust that motivated him to confront Shan. But now that the anger had faded, he wanted something slower. He wanted to feel every second of this.
Temar rested his palms against Shan’s waist, slipping his fingers up under his shirt and then sliding up to feel the warm skin. Shan’s muscles tensed, his stomach growing firm as Temar stroked up the skin, feeling the texture of the chest hair under his fingers. Sliding up farther, the hem of Shan’s shirt grew taut just as Temar’s questing fingers found the nipples. He ran fingernails lightly over the pebbled skin. Shan arched his back and thrust up so hard that he pushed Temar a few inches into the air, but Temar rode it out, playing with the nipples and watching as Shan gasped for breath. He gave one a slightly harder pull, and Shan hissed loudly. When Temar finally stopped, Shan collapsed back onto the bed, his chest rising and falling with each loud gasp of air. Temar had done that to him.
“Good?” Temar asked.
Shan’s eyes came open. “Very,” he agreed. “I could show you.”
“Another time,” Temar said as he pulled on the bottom of Shan’s shirt. Shan lifted himself to allow Temar to pull the shirt off, and then Temar could see the strong body under him. Shan’s right forearm had a streak of blood, and Temar traced it back to a cut just inside his elbow. He let his finger gently trace the new scab.
“I cut it on the access panel side,” Shan explained before Temar could ask the question.
“I’ll have to make that up to you.”
Temar pulled his own shirt off, tossing it to the side before he started to lean in closer, but Shan’s hand caught him on the shoulder, holding him off. “You don’t have anything to make up to me,” Shan said, his seriousness annoying Temar. He wanted this to be about hot lust and need, not about words. He’d never been good with words. Numbers he understood, glass he understood. He’d sat in his room doing equations to calculate water use for the whole valley, but it had been Cyla who tried to explain what he’d found, because he never had been comfortable with words. He truly wasn’t comfortable with his lover’s guilt looking him in the eye.
“I don’t have to do anything,” Temar agreed. “But I want to, and I really don’t want to stop for conversation,” he pointed out.
Shan’s smile was slow, but genuine. “I’m being an ass again, aren’t I?” he asked, lowering his hand back to the bed.
“Yes,” Temar answered, and then he leaned in and nipped at Shan’s earlobe before moving down to kiss his neck. Shan shifted under him, making small, hungry noises. Temar shifted down and tasted the skin at Shan’s collarbone, tasting salt and musk. Pushing himself up, he blew across the damp skin, and Shan shivered, the hairs on his arms standing up.