Jun set his jaw and turned back determinedly to his screen, each of her words salt in the wound of his guilt. “It’s none of your business. Keep your mind on security, and you’ll get your cut.”
Boom sneered as she leaned into Jun’s space, her augments whining with the building charge. Half his size and not an ounce of fear. Although that was probably because Boom was, arguably, his best friend.
If Jun had the time for friends.
Or the disposition.
“Me and Marco don’t want a cut if it comes out of Doll trading. Either you set him free, or you admit that you’ve started a collection here on our ship so I can go ahead and slit your lying throat.”
Closing out of the surveillance projections to give his hands something to slap away, Jun snarled, “My ship. And you’re dismissed, Valdez.”
Boom hopped down from the console, nose to sternum with Jun and eyes ready to set him on fire. She held a hand to his throat, weaponized fingers resting against his windpipe. “Get stuffed, Park.”
Boom glanced pointedly down at the knuckles of Jun’s Honor hand while he silently counted to ten and then twenty and then gave up and growled, earning only an unamused glare in response. “Not terribly honorable, is it? Taking advantage of a scared little Doll under your authority? I’m disappointed in you, Captain.”
She removed her hand with a low drone of it charging down, and Jun turned to walk over to the navigations console. He pulled up their trajectory in an attempt to make it look less like the retreat that it was. “I’m devastated.”
Boom’s silence was worse than her angry tirade, weighing down the center of Jun’s chest while he waited for the hammer to drop.
“I saw his face,” she said finally.
Jun didn’t have to look up to know her expression had hardened, to see her mouth set with fury.
“What happened? Did he try to resist? Disobey orders? Too much backtalk for big, bad Captain Park? He can’t weigh half what you do, you prick.”
Jun snapped his head to the side, matching her furious tone with a hard stare. “I didn’t hurt him.”
Jun would have loved to have been able to say he hadn’t touched him at all, but—
That ship had sailed, at fucking hyperspeed.
Because Theo was a beautiful, brilliant brat. And Jun was an asshole with, apparently, no self-control despite years dedicated to building it up.
All of that hard work, and his control melted like candy in the rain under Theo’s slightest advance. Jun had never met anyone who could have such a profound effect on him.
It was terrifying.
Boom lifted her chin, her heart-shaped face sharp with challenge. “That bruise says you’re a liar.”
With a breath of frustration, Jun turned to give Boom raised eyebrows. “That bruise says his seat on the dinghy collapsed into spare parts.”
Fury melted away into consideration on her face, the steel loosening from her spine, vertebrae by vertebrae. “Oh. Yeah, Marco mentioned you brought it back in pieces.”
Jun’s expression said “no shit,” but he kept his words civil. “Barely made it back across.”
Boom stared at him with that weighted, expectant silence, and Jun leaned back against the console with a sigh.
“You know I don’t run Crew with a raised fist, Boom.”
She nodded and slid a small blade from her thigh holster. Picking at her fingernails with it, she made a perfect picture of threatening nonchalance. It made Jun grin like an idiot, his lips curling up at the corners before he could tame them down again.
“Yeah, but I also know you used to run with the big boys. You learned your leadership skills at the knee of a fucking sadist. I’ve seen you take down a man for looking at you wrong. Why would you be different with some Doll?”
Jun dropped his poker face, overcome by a rare wave of vulnerable honesty. “I’m different with you. And Marco. And even Axel, which is a daily struggle.”
Boom shrugged, slipping her blade back into place. “Well, yeah, but we’re—” She closed her mouth around words that might have started to veer too close to sentimentality for comfort, both of them relieved by the restraint.
An unholy light started to gleam in her eye; her full lips stretched into an evil smile. “Oh, I see. He’s not just some Doll, is he?”
Jun tried to cut that line of thought off as quickly as possible, standing up straighter in alarm. “I told you; he’s here to work.”
Boom examined him up and down as if she might find clues written out across his body. Jun resisted the sudden urge to check his fly, arranging his face back to antagonistic blankness.
“Not just that,” she continued, not giving him a chance to continue. “You’ve picked up another stray for your little ragtag band of misfits. Our ugly little family. You like him, don’t you? You like-like him. Look at your face. That’s adorable, Park. Really cute.”
Jun pushed away from the console, opting for a strategic retreat. “Fuck off.”
As he passed, Boom patted his cheek with a throaty laugh. “Adorable!”
Jun refused to respond as he made his way down the hall to the makeshift brig.
The fact that it was really just the first mate’s cabin with three extra layers of security helped to alleviate the guilt of putting Theo under lock and key when he had done nothing wrong.
Among the endless line of dead philosophers Jun had been made to study, there was an ancient scholar who’d said something about ends justifying means.
Jun’s end was so important it could justify far more than locking an innocent professor away for a few weeks.
According to Jun’s moral compass anyway. Which he’d been assured was in very poor condition, but fuck it.
When he weighed destruction and death for countless, faceless innocents against unwarranted upheaval in the life of one man, he chose the lesser of two evils. No matter how appealing the man had turned out to be.
Seven hours, four minutes.
Jun had never
