He hadn’t kept it for sentimental reasons.
There was no sentiment to be had.
It just happened to be the right size and shape. That was all.
He would probably toss it in the incinerator tomorrow.
Along with the embroidered handkerchief he’d carefully washed and tucked away. The initials were starting to come loose, anyway, from Jun rubbing his thumb over them.
Giving Theo his full attention, Jun cleared his throat, crossed his arms, and leaned back in his chair, knees splayed. “Proceed.”
Jun would have to ignore the way Theo mimicked his deeper voice with a little sneer of his rosebud lips, murmuring the word back to himself before continuing.
He would have to ignore the way it made his body buzz and hands ache, wanting to reach out and grab Theo by those skinny arms. To throw him on the bed and show him the meaning of the word “proceed.”
To have Theo gasping and begging beneath him, stripped down to his most essential self. As brilliant and beautiful as any star.
Jun’s fingers dug trenches into his triceps as he restrained himself, listening intently to the lilting tenor of Theo’s voice as he chattered a mile a minute.
“As I was saying, this word occurs multiple times throughout this passage, and I couldn’t quite make it out. I was thinking that it couldn’t be ‘rock,’ yet that was what it said, and that doesn’t make any sense at all, does it? Not in the context of the phrase. But—”
He broke off to tap furiously on the pad, brow scrunched low as his loosely buttoned shirt started to slip unnoticed down the crest of his shoulder. Jun swallowed against a suddenly dry throat at the sight. He could envision him in candlelight, wearing nothing but that shirt, shoulder decorated with marks in the shape of Jun’s mouth.
He nearly fell out of his chair when Theo exploded into motion, limbs flailing in every direction as he scrambled off the bed and trampled over Jun to get to the door. “Mineral! Of course it means mineral! I need to access my notes on the bridge.”
He cast an irritated glance behind him as he paused in the open doorway, hair sticking up on one side and shirt still twisted around his waist. He looked edible. He looked like something that was going to eat Jun alive from the inside out. “Please get a wiggle on, Jun; we have work to do!”
Jun followed him to the hallway and watched as Theo trotted to the lift, still tapping at his pad and muttering to himself and generally being a beautiful, oblivious, brilliant menace. And Jun…just.
Wanted.
Craved.
Needed.
Lethally inconvenient.
Chapter Fifteen
Theo shuffled through his notes, ignoring the papers that flew and fluttered to the floor of the bridge until he found what he was searching for. “It appears to be some sort of recipe. Only, instead of dry goods, it calls for powdered minerals. Oh, on second consideration, it isn’t a recipe at all. It’s a chemical formula. Unfortunately, quite outside the realm of my expertise.”
Jun took the pad from under Theo’s arm and quickly scanned the translated Standard.
Peering over his shoulder, Theo had to rise up onto his toes in order to see the screen. He pointed at a sentence that had given him particular trouble, riddled with modern language difficult to translate from ancient text. “See, here it says something about an excessive amount of tantalum. I’m not sure if you’re aware, but that’s a mineral that’s been banned in the Core.”
Jun, still focused on the translation, made a short, stilted bob of his head that might have been intended as a nod. “Yes, I know what it is. Keep talking.”
It took concerted effort not to wriggle with joy over hearing those words in Jun’s voice. “Well, isn’t it lovely to hear that for once rather than the reverse? Alright, then, there’s this word, which I am unfamiliar with, but I could surmise from the context to be another type of mineral. I’m sure Ari could tell me everything about the blasted rock from its weight to its favorite way to take tea, but I’m at a bit of a loss. We could search for it on your stream to find out more about it.”
Theo’s heart stopped in his chest, then picked up double time when Jun reached for his hand. Holding Theo’s hand in his, he jabbed Theo’s finger at the pad.
“Point it out to me.”
After underscoring the word in question, Theo then turned his hand to circle Jun’s wrist lightly, just to hold him for a moment while he was too distracted to notice the presumption.
Jun cursed softly in Patch, knuckles whitening as his grip tightened on the pad to the point that Theo began to worry for the quartz screen.
Jun held it back out to Theo, breaking Theo’s hold on his wrist. He wiped a hand down his face with a long, shaky inhale, and then returned to his station and flicked on the coms. “Crew to the bridge. Now.”
Theo followed just behind his heels, bursting with curiosity. “It means something significant to you, doesn’t it? I’ve made a bit of a breakthrough in whatever you are planning. I knew I would prove a valuable member of your endeavors. If you would share more about it with me, I could be an even greater benefit.”
Jun’s hand landed softly on the center of Theo’s chest, large and warm and just edging beneath the (whoops) open edges of his shirt. Ari would have been scandalized to see Theo in such a state of disarray. Jun glided his hand over to Theo’s shoulder, then let go with a quick squeeze that sent an echoing squeeze through his chest. “Quiet, please, Theo. Just for a minute.”
It was the use of his name, as much as the pleading, that gave Theo pause. The raw, weary note in Jun’s voice that scraped down his spine like a rusty knife. He never wanted to hear that defeated tone creep into Jun’s usually strong voice ever again.
Perhaps
