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Craig knew when to admit that maybe he’d made a mistake. Crashing his shuttle into a desert alien planet and then realising that his communicator was scrambled and he really shouldn’t have left his ship alone? Yeah, he knew when to admit he’d made a mistake. Like, now. The mistake was the decision he’d just made.
But the Admiral was taking too long to make a decision. Going on about how important the cargo was, yet completely incapable for actually making a move. So, Craig made a move.
Wrong move, but it was better than nothing. He couldn’t help it if he was a little impatient for all the bureaucratic nonsense. Their automated mailing vessel had gone down, and he knew it was only a matter of time till scavengers appeared. Better to get there sooner.
Except, maybe not alone. Maybe taking one or two of his fellow marines would’ve been a better idea.
He sighed out as he turned his back on the smoking shuttle and began to head in the direction that he remembered the SOS beacon had dropped out. He might’ve made a mistake, but he was balls deep now. He might as well see it through.
That was his second mistake. He should’ve stayed by his shuttle and waited for rescue. He knew scavengers wouldn’t be far behind him .
“Who would’ve thought I’d run into you in the middle of nowhere on a nowhere planet?”
The voice was familiar. Familiar in an annoying way. He sucked in a deep breath and closed his eyes as he attempted to compose himself. He clenched his hands into fists and grit his teeth, reminding himself that he was on duty right now, and it wasn’t right to go throwing punches when he was in uniform.
Not until the asshole did something to deserve it, at least.
He turned round and completely failed not to fire an icy glare at the redhead that stood behind him. “What are you doing here?”
“I guess that depends. What are you doing here?”
Kyle Broflovski would be the death of him.
Sure, there were people who were crueller. People who broke serious laws and deserved equally serious punishment, but Kyle and his merry crew were like a thorn in Craig’s side. Bounty hunters pissed him off at the best of times, but Kyle was the kind who just liked to purposefully be a pest in his general vicinity.
He had his visor lifted, grin on his face as he looked down from his perch on the dunes. Despite being so far away, Craig could remember exactly what shade of brown those honey eyes were, because he had on one too many occasions ended up on the receiving end of one of Kyle’s infamous rants, having the redhead up in his face snarling and biting out words.
When he wasn’t losing control to his temper, he was trying to make nice, and Craig didn’t know which one annoyed him more.
“I’m working.”
“What work are you doing that it brings you here?”
“Official work.”
“Funny,” Kyle started to walk down the dunes towards him. “I’m here working too!”
“Great. Don’t let me stop you.”
“Wait!”
He decided against pointing out that he hadn’t even fucking moved.
“Why don’t we work together?”
“Because you’re a trouble magnet.”
Kyle had the audacity to look offended like what Craig said wasn’t completely and wholly true. “I am not!”
“Trouble follows you and your dumb crew everywhere you go. I’m not going to let you ruin my work by getting me into stupid situations.”
“I’m not going to get you into a stupid situation, and my crew isn’t here. It’s just me!”
“I don’t trust it.”
Kyle was next to him now, and those brown eyes were fully on show, looking up through red lashes. “C’mon, this planet isn’t the easiest to navigate, and it looks like you’re here on your own. It’s probably better that we explore together.”
Craig knew when to admit that maybe he’d made a mistake. Unfortunately, mistakes came with consequences, and his came in the form of one Kyle Broflovski offering the hand of friendship, and he was right. It would be better for them to explore together than alone, especially as most of his equipment had been taken out in his shuttle crash.
He agreed. Maybe the third mistake of the day.
--
They spent the vast part of the day cycle feeling like they were aimlessly wandering. He wasn’t sure if it was a blessing or a curse that the days were short, as the dusty planet was beginning to get to him, and he was not used to spending this much time on sandy plains. The rocky verges and cave systems they would come across were a blessing, a moment of reprieve. Feeling like he wasn’t going crazy moving from one dune to the next whenever he passed a spiralling rock formation that reached into the sky.
Kyle was getting antsy. The longer they wandered the worse his temper was getting, and Craig could see it. It was the only reason he decided to make conversation.
“What brings you to this place?” he asked as he watched Kyle fiddle round with his communicator, still trying and failing to find signal. “It seems a bit out of your way.”
Kyle didn’t answer straight away. He put his communicator away first before he skipped a couple of steps to fall in line with Craig. “We spotted an SOS beacon. I asked if I could stop by, to make sure that whoever sent it was okay. I’m kind of regretting it, now.”
He gave a snort. “Yeah, I bet.”
“I assume you followed the same beacon? That’s your thing, right? Responding to stuff like that?”
“Yeah,” he confirmed, leaving out the part where he knew the ship that had sent it would be void of organic lifeforms, as a standard mailing vessel. “It is.”
“I’m surprised that you are here alone,” Kyle mused. “Don’t you guys normally travel in pairs?”
Craig felt embarrassment begin to bubble in his gut. “Normally. But I like to work alone.”
“I can see that.”
“What about you? Where’s the rest of your motley crew?”
Kyle gave a low hum. “Well, I may have...fallen out with Cartman.”
“You...fell out with Cartman, and that’s why you’re here alone?”
“It’s not that surprising.”
“Falling out with Cartman is, but there’s four of you in that crew. You could’ve come with one of the others.”
A wry smile tugged at the corners of Kyle’s lips as he looked down towards his feet. “I don’t think they like to deal with me, when I’m angry. I don’t blame them, I...know I’m not the easiest person on the planet.”
“I guess that makes us well suited, then.”
The smile became something a little more playful as honey brown eyes looked up, eyes crinkling at the corners. “You think we’re well suited?”
“In this case,” Craig corrected as he turned his attention ahead of him, struggling to control his heartbeat. “I’m here because I grew impatient waiting for the Admiral to make a decision.”
“I never said I disagreed with you. I think we’d make a pretty good team, if you weren’t a mindless cog in the machine.”
He rolled his eyes at that, lips tugging upwards. “How could I forget about your problem with the Council?”
“I have an issue with more than just the Council.”
Craig came to a slow halt as his eyes drew in on the sun. It had finally sunk enough so it was half covered by the skyline. The conversation that had been building was quick to die off as they both focused in on the next issue that they were going to have to deal with.
“We can’t keep going like this,” Craig muttered. “The temperature’s due to drop, and the atmosphere gets more intense. We need to find a safe place.”
“I have one?” Kyle offered. “It’s not far from here. I’ve been using the cave system as a base. I’ve got a stabiliser set up to keep the atmosphere at human-suited levels.”
“What, one of the Universal Corps ones?”
“Exactly!”
He bit back his smile, but didn’t bite back his words. “I thought your issue was with more than just the Council.”
“Uni-Corp has enough resources that when a box of their products go missing, they don’t even bother to investigate where it went missing to.”
“Wait, did you-?”
“Don’t sweat the difficult questions,” Kyle advised as he spun on his heel and walked with a bit more purpose than before. “Just follow me!”
He let out a low sigh and promised himself that it just wasn’t worth getting into semantics with someone who walked a fine line between ‘law-abiding’ and ‘criminal’.
--
Kyle had been right. His base wasn’t far. They entered the bubble of synthetically altered space that the stabiliser created, and Craig felt himself breathe a breath of pure, almost-Earth air for the first time since he left his shuttle. His muscles relaxed. The tension buzzing in his brain began to fade.
It was easy to forget what subtle shifts in atmosphere could do to you.
“My supplies are running a little low,” Kyle confessed as he reached the bag that he had left in his base. “But there should be something in here for us both.”
“I don’t mind sharing,” Craig offered as he withdrew the packeted food he had salvaged from his shuttle. “You had a fire going?”
Kyle turned to the pit in the centre of the stabiliser. “I tried.”
“You tried?”
“Yeah. My fire starters just – look, there are some things that I’m good at, and there are some things I’m not, okay?”
Craig snorted, but held out a hand for the fire starters in question as he crouched next to the pit that Kyle had created. “I’ll do it.”
They ate in silence, leaning against the walls of the cave sat side by side as the smokeless fire created by the fire starters warmed the space, and Craig gave himself time to fully relax into this simplistic base he’d been welcomed into.
“How long have you been here?” he asked finally once darkness had fully fallen outside. “If you’ve got all this set up and ready?”
“I arrived yesterday. We had the last point the SOS beacon was active, but whatever it was that set it off has moved since. The lower you get on the planet, the more scrambled signals like that become.”
Craig nodded his head, eyes not leaving the only light in the cave.
“You know, I panicked when I saw your shuttle. I thought, great, here I am on this damn planet all by myself and now the Council’s shown up to make my life even worse. I’m glad it was you, and no one else.”
“When have you ever been glad to see me?”
“When you’re on your own?”
Craig snorted.
“Seriously! It’s when you all appear en masse to ruin my day I hate it.”
“You do work as a bounty hunter. If anyone’s ruining anyone’s day, it’s your ruining mine. Which you have done. Repeatedly.”
Kyle nudged their shoulders together. “Don’t be a dick. I like my job. It’s...better than what the alternative was.”
“Why?”
“I didn’t want to end up like my dad.”
Craig finally turned his gaze to Kyle, taking in the bitter look on his face as he glowered into the flames.
“Some official bureaucrat type, that time’s turned into a jaded, morally corrupt man. I hate what’s happened to him, and I refuse to let it happen to me.”
“That’s why you hate us.”
“I don’t hate you,” he defended. “I hate the company that you work for.”
“I work for the Council, not a company.”
“Even the Council is just a glorified company at the end of the day. People pay them to tell them what to do and make the laws and uphold the peace. It’s not different.”
When brown eyes met his, he fought to keep the contact.
“I don’t hate you. Honest.”
“You sure act like you do,” he muttered. “I’d describe your attitude towards our crew as antagonising, at best.”
A sly smile touched at the edges of Kyle’s face. “It started as nothing personal, I swear.”
“But now?”
“You’re pretty fun to wind up.”
Craig rolled his eyes, but felt inclined to give Kyle something back. He knew that Kyle wasn’t the secretive type; when he felt something he let you know, so it wasn’t surprising he was willing to share his feelings on his father, but...
Craig still felt obligated to admit something vulnerable.
“I’m not here because I like to work alone.”
He heard Kyle shift, but didn’t dare look at him.
“I took the shuttle while the Admiral was trying to decide what to do. He was taking his sweet ass time, and I got sick of waiting. And I don’t know if you saw what happened to the shuttle, but...”
“I didn’t see, exactly, but you were approaching at some speed.”
Craig glared at the fire, as if it was the reason he’d fucked up. “Don’t drive when you’re in a rush.”
Kyle laughed, and it was enough to get Craig’s attention back on him. With his visor and helmet discarded, it left his whole face unobscured. From the wild red curls, to his square jaw and angular features. To those warm brown eyes that looked up at him, lopsided smile luring him into a false sense of security.
“I guess it’s a good thing I headed over to where I saw the shuttle land?”
“Yeah,” Craig admitted. “It probably is. It’s made it a lot easier to stay sane with someone else.”
The brown eyes twinkled with trouble as his smile widened. “I always knew you had a soft spot hidden in there, somewhere.”
Craig glared. “Don’t read into it.”
“Okay, okay. I won’t make you have too many emotions for one night. We should rest at some point. I’d like to find the beacon tomorrow, and then figure out how to get off this damn planet.”
They fell asleep not far from each other, watching the fire die out until the embers were creating a nightlight, lulling him to sleep.
He went to sleep feeling more relaxed than he thought he probably ought to, and wondered if he’d made another mistake. It was easy to forget who Kyle was when it was just the two of them. Easy to let himself get lured in by those welcoming eyes. If he was honest with himself, which he hated to be, he would admit that the frustration Kyle brought out in him with his teasing and his competitive nature was something a little less frustrated and a little more along the lines of desire.
--
Watching how excitable Kyle got when he spotted the foreign vessel on the planet was nothing short of adorable, Craig had to admit. He gave a loud cheer as he pointed them out at the bottom of their dune. Craig laughed as Kyle dropped down to his side and slid down the sandy slope, following his lead as requested.
The Council’s symbol was emblazoned across various boxes and crates that were scattered, and Craig checked inside the damaged hull of the ship to see if he could spot the malfunctioning beacon. It was long since dead, snapped in half with sand in places it shouldn’t be.
His victory was short lived as he turned to see Kyle riffling through their findings, closing a box that he had been peering into and holding it high.
“Finally! I found it!”
Craig lurched straight back into work mode as he reminded himself exactly who this was, handsome features be damned.
He withdrew his pistol and lowered his stance as he approached the bounty hunter with narrowed eyes. The movement was enough to get Kyle’s eyes on him.
“Put it down.”
Kyle was still, staring down the barrel of his gun, but didn’t move to drop the cargo, either. “I thought we’d bonded, and you’re here pointing a gun at me?”
“Yes, I am. That belongs to the Council of Human Interests.”
“Finders, keepers.”
“What are you, twelve?!” Craig hissed. “It’s got our mark on the side!”
“How do you know that I wasn’t hired by the Council to get it?”
“Because they would’ve notified me if they did.”
“Would they?”
Maybe not. “It doesn’t matter, it’s coming with me.”
“I thought we’d bonded?”
Craig snarled. “If we bonded, then why are you being so fucking difficult?”
“You’re the one who’s gut instinct was to pull a gun out on me.”
“You’re not the most trustworthy person in the world.”
Kyle let out a low sigh, before placing the cargo back on the ground. “Look, maybe we should make some kind of deal.”
“What kind of deal?”
“First, put the gun down, please? I don’t want you to shoot me.”
Craig huffed out, but did as he was asked.
“So, my communicator is working.”
“You mother fucker-?!”
“Hey!” Kyle raised his hands. “Gun!”
Craig growled as he shook the gun he’d raised up again. “Why shouldn’t I shoot you after the shit you’ve pulled?”
“Its range is limited! I’ve only been able to get a few spots of signal on this planet, I’ve got to find somewhere really high up. It doesn’t work one hundred percent of the time! It probably wasn’t working when I told you it wasn’t.”
“Why did you even lie?”
Kyle bit down on his lip, letting go with a pop as he mulled on his answer.
“No bullshit.”
"I thought maybe you’d prefer just having me, than having me and my crew.”
“I could’ve contacted my crew.”
“Yeah, and then they would’ve come in, and I would’ve been left to the side, or taken on board while you carried out your little mission. I guess I wanted an excuse to be involved, not shoved to the side to make way for the boys.”
Craig narrowed his eyes as he lowered his gun.
“And this is what I’m here for. Whatever it is that your moving was important enough that someone out there is willing to pay a pretty penny for it. I’m not gonna come all this way and give it up like that.”
“What’s your deal, Broflovski?”
“Give me what I came here for, and you can have the rest.”
“Not happening.”
“I guess you don’t want to use my communicator, then?”
He clenched his jaw as he shot daggers across at Kyle. The asshole knew he wasn’t going to put him in danger; wasn’t going to force his communicator off him. He knew exactly how many cards he was holding, and was more than happy to flaunt it.
He felt that familiar flare of frustrated desire that he’d felt in the cave, and finally holstered his gun.
“You know I can’t let you just walk away with it,” Craig said, failing to keep the regret out of his voice. “To sell to the highest bidder? I’m not the only marine looking for it.”
“So you’re just gonna hope they find you in time to save you?”
“Yeah. I am.”
Kyle looked away as his brows pulled together and he took a few moments to contemplate his options.
“I’d rather pay you for helping me, than let you walk away with it.”
“There’s no way you’ll be able to pay us what our buyer was going to.”
“No, but it keeps you out of trouble, because if your buyer is willing to pay that much, the Council is probably willing to chase you down for stealing it.”
“Fine,” Kyle grit out as he fished out his communicator. “But I expect half.”
“You’ve made the right decision, Kyle.”
He felt a flare of annoyance once he reached the top of the dune they had been on to realise just how good Kyle’s communicator was. He should’ve expected it. He may have been a bounty hunter in job, but Craig had seen him deal with technology. He knew what he was doing and he always had the best.
Once he’d made contact he found Kyle where he’d left him, stacking the cargo together to make it easier to transport once the help arrived. Craig was quick to help as a wave of guilt washed over him.
He hated it, but he didn’t like the expression Kyle wore when he was disappointed. He didn’t like the fact that he’d caused that.
It was his final, and biggest mistake.
He was too distracted. Kyle had stacked boxes in his arms, keeping his hands occupied and sending him off in the direction of where the rest of the cargo they’d been organising was. He was nearly there when he heard the sound of a ship arriving. He was at least in his right mind enough to know that it didn’t sound like a Council mandated vessel.
His blood ran cold when he saw the craft, lowering down to the dune with an escape rope dropped. When his eyes locked with Kyle’s across the distance he was hit with a rush of red-hot anger.
“Sorry!” Kyle shouted out over the sound of the thrusters as he grabbed the rope that had been dropped for him, modest box with the Council’s symbol on the side in his hand. “Something’s come up, you can handle the rest, yeah?”
“Kyle,” Craig tried to keep his tone level. Warning. “What the fuck are you doing?”
“At least this way you’re not just letting me walk away, right?”
He dropped the cargo he’d been carrying as he broke out into a run and withdrew his pistol. He was too late. Kyle was in the air, precious prize clutched tightly in his hands as the rope he held began to raise. Even as he trained his gun on the man he knew he wouldn’t be willing to actually shoot.
“Thanks for helping me find it, though!” Kyle called out with a grin. “I’d send you a cut, if I didn’t think you’d get in trouble with your superiors!”
“You fucking rat!” Craig bit back.
“Hey, it’s just business. No hard feelings, right?”
“I’m going to tear you to shreds next time I see you!”
“I look forward to it!”
The pure rage that filled his bones began to subside as the hanger shut, hiding Kyle from view. He swore loudly and threw his gun into the dust as he began to accept that Kyle had won. He’d successfully got out with his stupid fucking trinket, leaving Craig waiting for the Admiral to pick him up. Whenever they decided to grace him with their presence.
He wasn’t sure if he wanted picking up so soon. As much as he loathed to admit it, seeing that mischievous, proud smile if victory and dazzling red curls disappearing didn’t just fill him with intense anger.
It would help him hate Kyle if the motherfucker didn’t look so fucking good when he won.
“God damnit!”
Craig knew when to admit that maybe he’d made a mistake. He was pretty sure that he made one every time he saw that fucking asshole bounty hunter, because there was something about him that just made Craig go stupid.