Chapter Text
Gally wasn't surprised when he heard his ship's connection hatch hiss open. Since Minho flew him back to his ship, they had been orbiting each other as their engines became stable again, so Gally had been expecting Minho to board sooner or later.
He turned on his kettle and got out two mugs, ready for company. When the sound of heavy, familiar boots came into focus, he moved away from the kettle and turned around, leaning back against the counter. "Hey, Min—"
Lips pressed against his fast, silencing him, and he instinctively closed his eyes. A bit taken aback, but not wanting to miss out on the moment, he felt Minho's hands on his waist and grabbed the shorter guy's arms, squeezing them. Minho's mouth was hot and his tongue was already moving, but he redirected himself to Gally's neck and started up there.
Gally grunted and tightened his grip on Minho's arms, climbing his hands up so they were instead anchored on Minho's shoulders, "Jeez, Minho." They stumbled to the side a bit and knocked over one of the empty mugs carelessly.
Minho didn't back away, painting Gally's skin with his mouth. When his teeth grazed against it, Gally snapped out of his trance and gave Minho a small shove.
"Minho? What's wrong?" Gally stared at Minho's face in confusion. Minho was never like this — immediately pushy without any words beforehand. Usually, he could never get Minho to stop talking. All he got was a shrug and Minho's blank expression before Minho was trying to hungrily attach himself to him again. Gally shoved him harder, "Minho!"
Scoffing, Minho put his hands up and stepped away, "Sorry." and his tone was clipped with annoyance.
"Are you okay?"
"'M'fine." Minho's arms dropped and hung loosely by his sides, "It's nothing."
"Well it's got to be something." Kettle completely forgotten, Gally lightly pushed himself away from the counter and stepped cautiously towards Minho. He looked him up and down, "Talk to me."
His persistence seemed not to phase Minho one bit, because Minho only took his hand and shifted backwards, tipping his chin towards Gally's room.
It was the same as always. Their clothes were thrown aside and they ended up flushed and tired. As they sat up on Gally's twin bed, heads resting on shoulders, Gally hardened his grip around Minho with his arm. "Talk."
"Gally."
"You're upset about Thomas. Right?"
Minho's eye twitched, but he didn't protest or try to run. "Am I that easy to read?"
"No. It's taken me a while to perfect it." Gally's sarcasm was lost when he exhaled slowly, "Now, don't get me wrong, I have no idea what the deal between you two is, but you obviously care about him."
"And now he's hallucinating shit. Do you think he's finally lost his mind? I know Newt's death effected him a lot, but he had just been starting to show signs of recovery—"
"How do you know he is hallucinating?"
Minho groaned and nestled his head further into Gally's shoulder, breathing in the warm skin and faint scent of honey Gally carried around with him, "Don't you start."
"I'm just saying, what if Wicked are doing some more crazy crap we don't know about? It wouldn't be the first time." Gally's eyes fell from the wall ahead of him to Minho's crown, which caught the light of his eye-burning led lights. He ought to replace the striking white with something warmer.
Slowly, Minho kicked away the thin duvet that was keeping them decent, "I should go." He shuffled off the mattress and stood, crouching to find his boxers. Whilst his back was turned, Gally triple tapped a small keypad — which he wore like a watch most of the time, but had thrown into his nightstand half an hour ago.
Every lamp in the ship dimmed by twenty percent and the exterior doors all locked. Minho froze at the faint clicking sounds from the surrounding hallways, the muscles in his back tensing. He looked over his shoulder at Gally, and Gally merely raised an eyebrow, "I think you should stay."
Minho? He was left without a choice. Even if he groaned some more or complained, he kept his words and actions mostly tame. It wasn't like being stuck with Gally was a bad thing, because Minho could certainly name three or four people worse than him, but he just couldn't talk. If he did, it meant he had to acknowledge all of these problems, which he didn't want to do. "I hate you."
"Don't care."
They were hovering around Gally's main kitchen table. Minho hadn't spoken yet, but he was being patiently waited on. Fidgeting with the hem of Gally's robe sleeve that he had thrown on out of spite, Minho watched as Gally poured out water from the kettle, having boiled it again, as he stood in a pair of shorts only.
His eyes wandered to the whole recreational room. He hadn't been on this craft in a good while, so he was trying to commit every corner to memory. His gaze found a shelf.
"You don't like marmalade."
Gally hummed questioningly, then peered up to a broken cabinet to the side of him. "Yeah."
"Then why..?" Minho crossed his arms, leaning on the counter with his elbows as his legs swung slightly from the high bar stool he was sat on.
Only using this conversation as a reason to take the jar down and set it next to the empty porcelain plates he had ready to use, Gally didn't turn to look at Minho and instead reached for a pack of bread in one of his drawers, "But you do."
"I do." Minho echoed quietly, more in confusion than anything else. "So?"
"Someone was selling it cheaply when I went for a pit-stop so I just grabbed some. Don't think too hard about it."
The lamp above them flickered, so Minho decided to pin his attention onto that. Gally placed the two cups of steaming liquid between them, staring directly at Minho's face. Minho tried to drag out the silence for as long as possible before he couldn't hold back any longer. "Newt is dead. When me and Vince arrived to rescue him and Thomas, he was nothing more than a pile of dust. Maybe Thomas' brain switched off, 'cause sure, it was traumatic as fuck, but that spear pierced his chest and he disintegrated."
Gally nodded along, slicing some bread and putting it in a built-in counter toaster.
"I miss him. We all miss him. But Thomas can't act like this is just his problem. I love him, he's my best friend, but I wish he would just talk to me properly instead of raving about theories. If he saw Newt, fine. I don't not believe him fully, but he has no right to get upset with me when I tell him how impossible that is!"
"You're right." Gally exhaled slowly, thinking, and his knife spread both butter and marmalade onto the newly toasted bread slices he had, "Yet.. what if he is telling the truth? And he's just as scared and frustrated as you are?"
"You're gonna make me feel worse. Stop."
Huffing a laugh, Gally took a sip of his drink, shaking his head after he pulled the mug away from his face. He placed down a plate with two slices of marmalade toast in front of Minho, nudging it closer to him.
Minho sighed and dragged himself back to reality and the crippling present. "What is this?" He asked mindlessly, holding his cup and swirling its contents around whilst he picked up and bit into a slice of the toast.
"Herbal stuff. I'm not too sure, but A3 gave me it and it's apparently great for your throat and voice."
"Fry? You know him too?" Minho's small glimmer of natural friendliness was then swiftly masked by something more feral, "Good for the throat, eh? Just what you need after earlier."
"Shut up."
"Am I wrong?"
"I'm trying to have a civilised conversation with you here. I don't need you being horny. Just eat your food."
"One more round." Minho murmured, taking a long sip of the remedy. It tasted good, like lemon and sugar, and he held strong eye contact with Gally.
It was amusing how Gally swallowed and adjusted how he was sitting, "Minho, c'mon, we've got things to do. Vince wants us out on the edge of Trappist-1 by the morning."
Glancing up at Gally's clock behind him, which read twelve, he snorted, "We've got plenty of time."
"Considering how you jumped on here at nine and took us all the way to half past eleven, no. We don't have time."
"Please?"
Minho rarely says please of all things.
Minho was also a liar through and through, because Gally was soon face to face with a clock reading Five. A. M. and cursing from how much his head was pounding. Shoving Minho's clothes at him, he gave the guy a quick kiss goodbye before throwing him back onto his own ship and rearing up the engine system.
"Motherfucker." He whispered to himself, shivering from the cold as he perched on his pilot seat. Minho had ran off with his favourite jumper, the bastard, so now he was left with a thin pair of shorts and a vest only. Typing in coordinates, he kick started the navigational system and listened to the engines roar to life, sending his craft catapulting forwards with urgency.
He was leaving Minho to his own devices back there, but he was sure the guy would catch up. And if he didn't, at least Gally could save his own arse from Vince's anger by not being late. Seeing Vince tell someone off was always funny.
Relaxing into his chair, he checked the course map and left the ship to drive itself, scurrying off towards his bedroom and bathroom. He needed clean clothes and a shower as fast as possible before he turned into an ice cube. His radiating system hadn't been working for a while, so he was gonna have to sort it soon, but there was always so much more to do.
"The rings are looking nice today." Gally's voice crackled through the comm in Minho's ear. Minho huffed with his chin resting on his hand, and stared out of the front window in his cockpit. Gally was right, the thousands of dusty lines all surrounding one of the planets they were passing did look beautiful in the light of Trappist-1.
Minho hummed and stretched his arms out, all of his bones aching with exhaustion, "Are you aware that you're only meant to talk through these channels on topics and matters related to work, right?"
He could sense Gally's smile through his voice alone, "Shush. I know you're bored in there."
"No I'm not."
"Likewise."
There was a pause, then Minho groaned, "Well, you can't just leave a conversation like that."
"Oh, but I thought we weren't supposed to use the comms unless—"
"You're such a pain." Minho yawned and wrapped his arms around himself, sinking further back into his chair. There was faint music playing from Gally's end of the connection, and Minho closed his eyes to try and focus on it, "What're you listening to?"
"Uh.." There was some crackling, and Minho subconsciously raised his fingers to touch the headphone, worried if one of their connections were faltering, "I got that junk we found on Kepler from that dead Earth colony working. I think it's meant to hold stuff that make music, but it has a radio setting. I connected it with one of Wicked's pay-to-access channels and am just listening to that."
It was nice to hear Gally so focused and proud about something. Minho smiled to himself, twirling his finger around one of the strings of the hoodie he was wearing, "Yeah? Who's the music artist?"
"Some ancient dead guy from Earth. Sinatra?"
"Odd name."
"Meh, compared to mine, not really."
Minho laughed quietly at that, "True." he lifted the hoodie string to his mouth and chewed on the end mindlessly, then paused, realising this wasn't actually his jumper. "Do you want this hoodie back? Or can I keep it?"
"It's my only one. Fucker."
"That's not a no."
"It is a no. I need it."
"God, it's not like you're gonna freeze to death."
"Hm, I'm not too sure about that. You got me to fix your heating, but mine's still broken. So whilst you're all warm and snuggled up in there, poor old me's gonna be toiling away in the engine room as my fingers fall off from frostbite."
"It'll be good for training you up in case Vince asks us to patrol on Enceladus or Sedna again. Wait— we should definitely take some pictures on Enceladus next time. There's apparently gonna be a snowstorm there for a few months."
"Great. On an ice planet scarily close to Wicked's boundaries, whilst also being in a blizzard."
"With me."
"With you. Even worse."
"Aren't you from an ice planet?"
"Kinda. I was born on Ganymede, but I think I found out my parents were from an arctic region on Earth, so I'm not a proper Ganymede native."
"Earth? Did your parents work for Wicked or something?"
"Maybe. I'll never know, though. Does it matter?"
Feeling the topic going sour, Minho cleared his throat, "You know where I'm from, right?"
"Yeah. Your mother's side of the family had been on Mars' Scorch Strip for generations. But I don't know about you dad. Do you?"
"No." Minho left it at that. Gally understood, not saying anything more. Minho had never talked about his father once, which wasn't surprising, because the memory swipe a few years ago from Wicked's original takeover of over fifty exoplanets prevented a large number of people his age from accessing memories of life before that. Yet it always seemed like there was something Minho knew about his father, and didn't want to discuss.
It wasn't any of his business. It was actually shocking how much he did know about Minho, however, because the guy was certainly the more reserved type. It was only because they'd fallen into a bed accidentally after a drunken group night out that they first interacted, and with Minho's ship being so close to his in the entire registry of Right Arm crafts, Vince had allowed them on patrols together where they could.
Gally liked it this way. He enjoyed the company. And even though Minho was definitely an asshole in the beginning about anything and everything, Gally liked him. More than he truthfully let on.
Gally landed down on the star Trappist-1's planet e for fuel a while later, leaving Minho to continue orbiting the star alone. Most of the planets here, d, e, f and g all had thriving republics and colonies inhabiting them. Each had Wicked influence effecting it, but only f to a large extent, being the only planet to have willingly voted Wicked into power. For the rest, Wicked was just one other political party campaigning for control.
His ship touched down onto stone and he left the control system to its own devices as he exited the cockpit, heading to grab his artillery belt. Just in case. A number of people here respected the Right Arm and all they did to try and keep the peace in the known universe, but there were also Wicked extremists who always loved a good fight.
With his coat tails flapping in the breeze of his opening door, he took a deep breath and stepped out, letting the oxygen filter into his lung. There was a fuelling station down the road that he wanted to fly to in a minute, but he wanted to go to the nearest shop in order to buy more fresh food.
In the past, he'd stuck to the same diet as everyone else, relying on canned goods to get him through his travels, but he was too sick of them now. He had decided that blowing money whenever he landed was worth it. As he neared the shop's door, he put his hand into his pocket and counted the coins he had. There were a few, so he'd be able to purchase a handful of things—
Something pressed against his back.
"I'm hoping I've got the right person, or I'm gonna have to take you out to remove witnesses."
All of the hairs on Gally's arms stood up but he didn't flinch. He recognised who this was. "Long time, no see." He slowly turned to look at them, "A13."
Winston's face grinned back at him and the slightly shorter guy put his weapon away, " I don't go by that anymore, y'know. Me and Jeff both. We're no longer associated to the Right Arm."
"Because Vince kicked you two out for causing trouble."
"He's just afraid of a little fun." Another voice joined them, and Gally tilted his head to look at Jeff, who had appeared a few feet away.
"A little fun? You guys have raided over nine planets this month. Why the hell are you here? There are Wicked border officers here and you guys are both wanted criminals."
"You're a part of the Right Arm, so you should be wary of those officers too." Winston shrugged, stepping closer to Jeff and leaning against him.
"I never said I wasn't. I'm just worried about you guys."
"Why? We're doing better than well. We're rich, and all of the money we've stolen has been from people who didn't deserve to have any in the first place." Jeff chuckled, flashing a few cards at Gally from his sleeve. "Like.. seventy percent's gonna go to people who need it. So we're only doing good for the solar system."
"Not all of it?"
"We don't work for free, Gally. Thirty percent is good pay."
Smiling, Gally looked between the pair, noticing how close they were now stood together, "Have you heard what the media was saying about you guys? Everyone thinks you're dating."
"Ha, yeah, we've heard. They're not wrong." Winston jokingly ruffled Jeff's hair, and Jeff pulled away from him with a groan. Winston didn't look away from Gally, eyes adopting a menacing gleam, "What's the deal with you and A7?"
"What are you talking about?"
"The kid who is a ship driving prodigy. I've heard some stuff about you two. Is he about?"
"He's just outside of the atmosphere. But I'm still confused by what you're talking about. There's nothing going on with us."
"Really? Consider me shocked." Jeff snorted.
Gally rolled his eyes at them, "Okay, okay, damn. Are we done here? Can I go buy my food now?"
"Sure, go ahead." Winston waved his hand, turning away.
Jeff but an arm around his partner, then called back to Gally, "Be safe!"
"You too."
Gally got what he wanted in no time and was at the fuelling station quicker than expected.
He felt his comm buzz as he stood watching the numbers on the pump tick up, and smirked when Minho's voice infiltrated his ear, "Hurry up."
"You're so impatient."
"No. You're just slow. I would be done five times over already."
"You don't have to wait for me. Go and do a lap of Trappist if you're bored."
"Vince wants us by Gaia BH1, so I'm gonna head towards it in five."
"Gaia? But I don't wanna go near a black hole today."
"All we need to do is measure and compare it's size to the last group's visit. He isn't asking us to go into it."
"If it wasn't for you, I would have energy today, so quit complainin' at me."
"Stop being so dramatic. It's not like I forced you back into bed. Now. Hurry. Up."
"Fine!" Gally yanked out the pump and hooked it back to the machine he'd taken it from before speed-walking towards the pay block a few metres away. He typed in the amount of fuel he'd taken and swiped his card before jogging back to his ship. "What's his problem?" He muttered to himself as he pressed his wrist tablet to close the door, shaking his coat off.
"..I can still hear you."
"Shit—"
Minho's cackle was cut off as Gally terminated their connection, hissing as he launched himself into the cockpit. Fingers flying over the controls, he grabbed his steerer and drove his ship up and away. He was irritated at Minho, but also wasn't gonna try and argue with him further.
The A7 came into sight just beyond the blue haze of e's ozone layer, and Gally reluctantly turned his comm back on, "Minho?"
"Let's get going, dipshit."
"Okay." Gally watched as Minho's craft pulled away, and followed after it quickly, acting like a shadow until his navigatory system ensured there were no obstacles. Then, he pulled up the side of Minho's ship and moved alongside him. "How long's the journey gonna take?"
"A while, 'cause you're a really slow driver."
"No I'm not."
"You are."
"Prove it."
"Are you asking to race me?"
"..No. You'll win."
"Because you're terrible—"
Grumbling, Gally cut Minho off in an attempt to flip around the subject to a direction that wasn’t to do with his driving skills, "I met a couple of friends down there."
"…Who?" It was a good for Gally thing that Minho was nosy.
"The two bandits Wicked have been hunting recently."
"No way — you saw Son and Hill?"
"Jeff and Winston, yeah. They used to be in the Right Arm. They know about you."
"Nah, you're kidding. That's awesome!"
"You say that about anything that pisses Wicked off."
"And?"
Checking that his miles per hour were syncing with Minho's properly, Gally propped his hands behind his head, "Nothing. Just pointing out the obvious."
Conversation going cold, Gally left his comm on, listening to Minho's breathing, and he watched distant stars and galaxies all pass him outside. The specs of whites and blues and yellows and everything were nothing new, but were never the same. The universe didn't rest — always changing and warping into something new and hypnotic.
"We're only a minute away."
Hearing Minho again, Gally sniffed, "Alright. Is your scanner working?"
"Positive."
"Cool. How much d'ya think it's grown? Enough for any evacuations?"
"God, I hope not. Remember the last time I had to participate in one of 'em? Or were you not there?"
"I don't think I was."
"Huh. So, I must've been with Tom then. We were moving people away from a volcanic eruption, and then I got distracted by how the smoke looked and was almost drowned in ash. Fun times."
"You idiot."
"Mhm. Mary wasn't happy with me at all."
"Mary?"
"Second in command up in the Right Arm Headquarters. She's Vince's advisor for a lot of stuff, but pulled out of most her responsibilities a few months back. Tom took me to her because she's one of the Right Arm's best medics and she called me stupid in about a hundred languages."
"That sounds deserved."
"It was. You know, I feel bad for stressing her out so much over the years."
"Why don't you buy her some flowers as an apology?"
"Nah, she doesn't really like flowers that much. Maybe I should buy her some new crystal glasses for her bar."
"She owns a bar?"
"On Aristaeus."
"The fuck is that?"
He heard Minho laugh from down the comm, "It's good to hear that answer. It's an off-grid planet Wicked and most of the universe hasn't discovered yet. Thomas.. and Newt… they had been thinking about settling down there one day."
"Ah. You too?"
"Me? Oh, hell no. They have lightning storms all the time. Not my thing."
"Whoa. I never though you'd be scared of storms. Are you being serious?"
"Deadly."
"I learn something new about you every day."
"What can I say. I'm so mysterious."
"Sure you are." Seeing Gaia's upcoming presence pop up as a warning on his screen, Gally slowed his ship down, and pinged a signal over to Minho's to do the same, which his friend did.
"Damn. She's definitely grown."
"You think?"
"Yep. By a hundred miles or so is my guess already."
Gally clenched his jaw, "How far is it from the nearest colony?"
"The distance is.. yeah. It's too risky. I say we notify the Right Arm higher-ups and see what they want to do about it."
"Got it." Gally focused down onto his keyboard, already grappling to find Vince's contact on the system, "Can you measure it? I'll send Vince a message."
"'K. See-ya in a bit."
"Bye."