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Aiden’s breath turned ragged, but the training facility’s locker room was in sight. He slammed through the door as the tension under his skin turned into violent tremors.
Each breath felt like he was forcing too much air through too small of a passageway. His face burned with heat as he stalked down the side of the locker room, past the lockers in the thankfully empty changing area, past the toilets and sinks, and into the large shared shower.
He turned on the closest of the six showerheads and stepped under the bitterly cold water, still fully clothed in his workout gear.
The water stole his breath entirely, but it snapped him to the present. his singlet grew heavy and constricting around his shoulder and across his stomach. He yanked it over his head, but it caught on his elbow. Seams popped, but he gave a wordless shout and yanked harder.
Why couldn’t something just be easy?
As it came free, he flung it across the room. It hit the tiled wall with wet smack and plopped down to the unused drain. He yanked his sopping shoes off and hurled them as hard as he could in the same direction. Balled up socks followed.
The compression leggings were a nightmare to get off most of the time, so he didn’t bother, ducking under the icy shower stream anyway and letting himself shake.
His body quickly went numb, and he’d let his mind follow by the time the locker room door opened in the distance. He pulled his head out of the water and swiped over his eyes. The rage that had consumed him so quickly and completely had been doused, and he watched the doorway apathetically.
Someone was going to catch him and the evidence that he’d lost control.
Just like Jad had said he would.
He shuddered.
A locker opened and closed, but Aiden turned to his wet clothes scattered across the shower. He should gather them up. There was still time to hide the evidence or at least pretend to be polite to whoever was coming in, but moving was too much effort. He’d rather stay still and let the water pound against his back.
“Aiden?”
He lolled his head to the side and met Lambert’s gaze with a weak smile.
Lambert’s frown deepened. “That bad?”
The self-deprecation in Aiden’s laugh startled them both, but Aiden was too worn to let it show. “Yeah.”
His voice sounded like gravel, and he had to look away. His eyes drifted back to his sodden shoes. He hadn’t meant to let it get so bad.
Lambert made a soft noise in his throat, and Aiden closed his eyes.
He’d forgotten Lambert had been training in the neutral buoyancy tanks today. Varin had changed Lambert’s schedule late last night from an afternoon gym session to an early morning series of simulated repairs with the full spacesuit in the tank.
It didn’t matter that Lambert had passed the same skills tests several times already or that he knew more about the astronaut life than most with two brothers currently on the space station or that he was the best chemist the program had likely ever seen. The higher-ups heard one profane and opinionated rant on someone else’s fuck up, and they decided he wasn’t ready to follow orders.
Aiden preferred the way Lambert cut through the bullshit.
“Jad again?” Lambert asked.
Aiden snorted, shaking his head. “Yeah.”
“Bastard.”
Something plastic hit the ground, and Aiden looked over at Lambert’s plastic shower caddy on the floor beside Lambert’s bare feet. He’d stripped off his shirt and stayed in the doorway in his own compression leggings. Sweat beaded on his temples from the confined spacesuit and the exertion of going through repair drills for hours.
“Can I come closer?” Lambert asked.
Aiden’s chest twisted. Lambert shouldn’t have to ask him that, but part of him was glad for the caution too.
Or perhaps the water was starting to feel cold again.
“Yeah,” he said. “‘Course.”
Lambert hummed and crossed the tile, reaching for his face but he yanked his hands back. “Jesus fuck, Aiden.”
He lunged for the taps, one of them squeaking harshly, and the water started warming immediately.
“I…” The trembles built in Aiden’s hands again, and he could only watch helplessly. “Lam.”
Lambert’s arms came around him, one cradling the back of his head, Aiden’s arms trapped against the wall of heat of Lambert’s chest. Lambert swayed them a little under the warming water. As the tremors turned to violent shakes, Aiden buried his face in Lambert’s neck.
The shakes stopped as abruptly as they’d started, and Aiden sagged, letting Lambert take too much of his weight.
“Sorry,” he murmured. Heat burned in his cheeks, and he wasn’t sure if it was the hot water steaming around them or embarrassment.
Lambert scratched at his scalp. “Nothin’ to be sorry for. Let me wash your hair?”
Aiden took a long breath and let his hands drop. “That’d be nice.”
Lambert took a step back and gave him a once-over, then pressed a quick kiss to his mouth. He stepped back before Aiden had even registered the movement, turning away to collect his shower caddy.
Alone, with the heat easing him, Aiden tried to focus. He bounced on his toes, careful of the slick tiles, swinging his arms to get his muscles to loosen up again.
“They had me on the treadmill with the mask and all the monitors.” He gestured to his chest where the sensors had been taped down, even though there was no evidence of them anymore. “Jad kept needling and needling.”
“As he does,” Lambert growled, slipping his shower caddy over the hook next to the taps and pulling out a bottle.
“They don’t usually let it go so far, though.” He cocked his head as he thought back to the trainers and staff in the room. Normally, someone would’ve kicked Jad out of the room long before he got to the crueler comments about Aiden’s worthiness in the program.
How he was going to get everyone on his team killed if he didn’t try harder.
Lambert stilled. “They were testing you, same as they were testing me.”
It made too much sense.
He and Lambert hadn’t made the last flight crew over trumped up concerns that Lambert couldn’t control his mouth and Aiden couldn’t control his emotions, even though the scientists were begging to get another chemist and botanist up there.
So, the trainers had him do physical activities while someone tried to provoke a reaction out of him. Then they could say he was too volatile to take the risk on and shut down the scientists’ requests.
Lambert popped open the bottle, and the sharp pine scent of his shampoo filled the room. It wasn’t going to do Aiden’s curls any favors, but he didn’t care when the scent was such a comfort these days.
He let Lambert move him in the water stream and sunk into the strong fingers working over his scalp. It made his knees weak in a way he appreciated.
“Varin kept giving me the wrong instructions, so everything took four times as long,” Lambert said softly. “I don’t know if he was hoping I’d snap or ignore his orders to do it the right way.”
“But you didn’t.”
“No.”
“And I didn’t strangle anyone.”
Lambert laughed. “What more can they ask for?”
Aiden tipped his head back into the spray and worked the suds out of his hair. “I guess I should tell Guxart about this.”
He didn’t particularly want to tell anyone that he had let his emotions get the better of him, but it could be important. As a retired astronaut and Aiden’s self-appointed mentor, Guxart would know if he was a danger to potential crewmates.
If he should be undergoing yet another psych eval.
He grimaced and stepped out of the water.
Lambert stood frozen at his caddy, studying the bottle of body wash clutched in both hands, his bottom lip caught between his teeth.
“Lam?” Aiden asked.
Lambert startled and looked up, guilt written on his face.
“What is it?”
“When I got here,” he said slowly, “Guxart was standing in front of the door, reading something on his tablet. He looked at me for a long time, then nodded me through without sayin’ anything.”
Aiden turned toward the door as if he could see if Guxart was still there through tiles and lockers and several layers of cinderblocks.
“Seemed odd at the time.”
It would have to Aiden too, but Guxart’s motives were shockingly straightforward most of the time. If he was keeping people out of the locker room, then Aiden hadn’t done as good of a job hiding his reaction as he’d hoped. And to let Lambert through?
They hadn’t made a big announcement or filed any of the official paperwork when they started sleeping over at each other’s allotted houses more often than not, but they hadn’t tried to keep it a secret either. When they were here at the training facility, the job simply took priority.
They both understood that.
“Is that… alright?” Lambert asked, tossing the body wash from one hand to the other with uncharacteristic nerves.
If Guxart had noticed, then Lambert’s own self-appointed mentor Vesemir probably had too, but either Guxart approved or he was willing to give Lambert a chance.
Aiden would still have to talk to him about losing control, but maybe that wouldn’t be so bad. Guxart had always had his back before.
“Yeah,” he said. “That’s fine, right?”
Lambert’s shoulders dropped as a tension ran out of him, and he nodded. “Yeah.”
Smiling, Aiden stepped around the spray and curled his hand carefully around Lambert’s wrist, stilling his restlessness. “Are you finished for the day?”
He should be, given how strenuous the drills in the tank were, but apparently the higher-ups were conspiring to make them fail. It was something else to mention to Guxart, on the off chance he hadn’t already noticed, but that could wait until Aiden felt a little less brittle.
“Yeah.” Lambert bumped his forehead against Aiden’s jaw.
Aiden smiled into his cheek. He wanted to burrito him in blankets in his bed and not let him up until tomorrow, but first things first— “Wash my back, grab lunch to-go from the canteen, and get out of here?”
“I can get behind those orders.”
Aiden’s laugh was a little more solid as he pulled back, dragging Lambert under the warm water.
The stars could wait for them a little longer. He had a bed and a lover and hopefully a bag of tacos to enjoy, just as soon as they managed to get out of their wet compression leggings.