Chapter Text
Kuna's Tooth is an unremarkable planet. It doesn’t take Jeonghan more than half an hour on its surface to deduce this. He decides it before they land, hovering around the shipyard that orbits it until they figure out a spaceport on land that’ll take them. Kuna's Tooth is an unremarkable planet. He tells Joshua so.
“Maybe,” Joshua replies, eyes flashing. “But it’s not like anyone drops by just for the scenery.”
Jeonghan suppresses a laugh. “Right.”
As usual, Joshua’s right. The three-hundred kilograms of rokna fungus in their cargo hold tell them exactly what they’re here for. The Kuna natives have a penchant for building on otherwise barren, uninhabitable land with the kind of scrappiness and ambition known only to the Outer Rim, and setting up shop. Jeonghan could laugh. Only in the Rim would they pull shit like this. Kuna’s Tooth: an unassuming low-brow mining planet, and galactic front for a drug empire.
Or, the bare bones of one. Business is slow, but a slow start is understandable after a practically-overnight, galaxy-wide political upset. The overthrowing and total genocidal eradication of the galaxy’s most dogmatic army of warrior-knights, coupled with the emergence and complete domination by its replacement, the shiny brand-new Galactic Empire, doesn’t really bode well with maintaining trade routes. So maybe Kuna’s Rokna Blue cookhouses aren’t as prosperous as they’d intended when they started hiring smugglers to import for them. Jeonghan still has faith. Jeonghan sees these type of things.
And anyway, Jeonghan is only here to import the fungus.
“Why’s it called Kuna’s Tooth, anyway? This planet.” Seungcheol’s voice crackles in from the cockpit. “Where’s the tooth?”
“The constellation,” Jeonghan replies, through the ship comms. “Kuna. She also has an eye, and a fist. A tail? Maybe a finger, or something. And tooth, of course.”
“And a horn,” Joshua supplies.
“And this planet is the tooth? In the constellation?”
Jeonghan shrugs, even though Seungcheol can’t see him. “Guess we got lucky.”
Joshua raises an eyebrow at him from across the cargo bay. “Can planets even form constellations? Aren’t those stars?”
“The shape,” Jeonghan gripes back. “Whatever. Don’t get smart on me, Shua.”
“Hold onto something. The fog. I can’t get a clear glimpse of the landing strip.”
“I told you,” Jeonghan mutters to Joshua, “We should have gotten a droid five fucking years ago.”
Joshua laughs to himself, but he reaches up and takes a handhold on the side of the bay door to steady himself. Jeonghan snorts.
“Some smuggler,” he jokes, even while Seungcheol can’t hear him, “Some pilot.”
He takes a handhold too.
The Tooth’s unremarkability makes itself apparent once Seungcheol clears the fog. The ship shakes as its legs hit the ground. Seungcheol’s landing isn’t too bad, all things considered, and anyway, Jeonghan can just blame the terrain. He’s not in the business of putting Seungcheol in a sulk just as much as he doesn’t have a stake in these drughouses. Leave that kind of thing to the professionals.
But Jeonghan, at least when it comes to Seungcheol, is kind of a professional.
Joshua dusts himself off, pink Zeltron skin glowing even more than usual in the evening Kuna gloom.
“Ready?” he asks, glancing over at Jeonghan. Jeonghan nods. Peeks behind them at their cargo as if it could disappear in the minute that’s passed since he checked on it last.
“Ready.”
Joshua hits the switch to the bay doors, which start to shudder open with a steady, rolling grumble.
“This piece of shit,” he groans, watching the sliver of sky grow bigger and bigger through the widening crack of the door. “We need a new ship.”
“Tell that to Seungcheol,” Jeonghan says, dry, but he agrees. They needed a new ship five years ago. It’s a piece of shit, but it’s Desevrar. The last piece they have of home.
The ship comms crackle to life above their heads. “I told you to wait,” Seungcheol’s voice protests, panicked. “Don’t do the handover without me. I’m coming.”
Jeonghan rolls his eyes, fumbles for the button against the wall.
“Hurry up, then,” he says listlessly into the mic. Seungcheol responds with a loud clattering noise, and then pure static. Probably doesn’t even realize he transmitted a signal.
Jeonghan laughs to himself, fondness coursing through. Then he steels himself, and waits for Seungcheol to descend.
A Human man is waiting for them on the ground when the bay doors finally extend enough to become a ramp, accompanied by an empty cart and nothing else. After glancing him up and down, Jeonghan takes stock of the rest.
This small stretch of Kuna’s Tooth reveals little from its shipyard. The terrain is flat and the fog doesn’t lift. The air tastes clean and is, all dirt and dust beneath the ground. It is a mining planet, after all.
Jeonghan almost wishes they could disembark properly, walk around, if only just to wander, find refuge on a ninety-percent standard gravity planet and breathe in a climate temperate enough to feel like they had bodies that were actually made for this galaxy, after all. It’s warmer than he’s used to, better. Jeonghan had never quite gotten used to Desev-system-typical subarctic temperatures, and then they had left. Saved up for a ship and taken off, just like that. Nothing but the memory of damp cold.
It never strays too far from him, though.
Joshua starts his descent from the ship early enough so that his boots hit the ground just a second after the ramp does. He doesn’t look back. Tilts his head up and crosses pink arms over his chest, unmoving, watching the Human watch him.
Jeonghan doesn’t move either, eyeing both of them from his position at the top of the hold. He’s keenly aware of the cargo behind him, almost impossible not to be. On their way here, every turn and dip of the ship through space had revealed the extra weight stored in its underbelly, its crawl three-hundred kilograms slower and heavier than usual. Even with their piece of junk accelerator. Every smuggler knew exactly and intimately what their ship felt like, how it flew. Like an extension of themselves. Cargo load was always noticeable. Jeonghan felt it weighing him down.
The man tears his eyes away from Joshua and glances at Jeonghan. Crosses his arms and uncrosses them, gaze darting between them as if combined they would be able to better clue him in.
“Are we doing this? Or—”
Joshua puts up a pink hand. “Wait.”
The man frowns. “For what?”
Joshua’s hand stays up. “Wait.”
The man falls silent with a stifled scowl. Smugglers aren’t exactly the patient type, neither their clients.
Ten long seconds later, Seungcheol appears next to Jeonghan. Jeonghan doesn’t hear nor see him any more than he feels the weight of him materialize beside him. No shuffling or complaining, only his sudden presence. For all of their teasing, Seungcheol is silent when he wants to be. He’s a damn good smuggler.
“Okay.” Joshua relaxes. “Let’s do this.”
They leap into motion. Seungcheol hauls all three-hundred kilograms of fresh rokna fungus out of the hold and down the ramp while Jeonghan counts the credits. Joshua watches.
“Does it really take all three of you to do this?”
Joshua doesn’t blink. “Yes.”
Seungcheol starts loading the cargo onto the Human’s cart without asking, dark hair falling into his eyes with the effort. Jeonghan tries not to let anything too obvious well up in his face.
Seungcheol will ask him to cut his fringe soon. Jeonghan will tuck the longer strands behind Seungcheol’s ears and run his hands through his hair until it gets messy and Seungcheol complains. But he won’t stop him. He never does.
The Human swallows. “You speak good Basic,” he tells Joshua, who only narrows his eyes.
“Zeltrons are bilingual.”
“Oh.”
Seungcheol takes pity on him. “Is it all there?” he calls to Jeonghan, and Jeonghan answers, short, “Yes.”
“Right, then.” Joshua straightens. “Thanks for your business.”
Seungcheol drops a heavy hand onto the Human’s shoulder from behind, making him jump.
“We’ll get out of your way, now.”
The Human eyes his cart for a few seconds, then nods. Then he reaches into his pocket. All three of them stiffen. Jeonghan reaches into his pocket and feels the cold brush of metal against his fingers before being hit with the reality of what shanking an only-potentially-manned trader in the Zuma sector of the Outer Rim would mean.
But the Human only comes out with a little tin. He tosses it to Joshua, who catches it with one hand.
He narrows his eyes. “What is this?”
The man grins. “Just a little something for the road. Zeltrons have two livers, don’t you? You can handle this.”
Jeonghan sees Joshua trying to suppress a smile. His worst-kept secret—that he isn’t actually all that mean.
“See you around,” the Human says. Jeonghan clears his throat.
“Probably not.”
He grins with all his teeth, and hits the switch for the bay doors. Both Joshua and Seungcheol clamber up before it swings fully closed, that same slow crawl. Jeonghan breaks eye contact with the trader at the last second and turns back to his crew, expectant.
“That went well,” Seungcheol says, blinking, cargo bay empty, wallet full.
Jeonghan gestures at Joshua’s gift. “What’d he give you?”
Joshua only laughs. “What do you think?”
He uncovers the lid, they peer into the little tin and are met with bright, offensive blue. Seungcheol whistles.
“Fresh from the Tooth.”
Jeonghan rolls his eyes. “You guys have fun. I’m going to get in that cockpit before Seungcheol smashes us into Doestes on the way out.”
“It was the fog,” Seungcheol protests. Jeonghan makes a gesture over his shoulder, disappearing up the ladder. He can hear the two of them making their way up behind him as he slides into the pilot’s seat, starts the engines, puts the shields up, and lifts off. The Tooth is unassuming and gray as it grows smaller beneath them, and Jeonghan can just make out the rest of Kuna on the horizon. The full constellation is only visible from a certain planet in the system, Jeonghan doesn’t know which, but it certainly isn’t this one—from Jeonghan’s current vantage point, they all just look like rocks.
He performs a cursory inspection of the ship’s sensors. Their airspace is clear. Not a single soul in sight.
No real destination in mind, Jeonghan sets a few scattered coordinates and sends them straight into hyperspace. Immediately, the ship clouds over with that characteristic blue. They’ll pick up jobs anywhere, wherever they end up or wherever they get sent, so all he does is angle them vaguely southeast, unthinking. Any direction away from home.
Kuna's Tooth is an unremarkable planet. But it beats the chill of Desevro.
Their informant never tells them who or why or how, and they’ve long stopped asking. Joshua says that if their intel wasn’t to be trusted they would know by now, would be in the bottom of a pit with only rancors for company, teeth gnashing and whatever sunlight they could glimpse only serving to reflect the saliva off of the creatures’ tonsils, and he never gets farther than that before Seungcheol shudders, complains, and whacks Joshua hard enough for Joshua to gasp and hit back, halfway to being genuinely affronted. Zeltrons are just like that, exaggeratory, or so Joshua says, not that Jeonghan’s ever met another to be able to counter him. And anyway, Joshua is just Joshua, Zeltron or not.
The real Zeltron stereotype is that they’re emotional. All that latent Zeltron telepathy, all that pheromonal power, their ability to project and transmit their emotions quicker than a sand-snake. Joshua says that there’s some truth in it. But he also says that the real mush is Seungcheol.
Joshua and Seungcheol bicker than most. To their credit, it hasn’t changed since they met, or so Joshua says, in that decade or so ago after the two of them had barely acquainted themselves in the smoking urban sprawl that Seungcheol had had the misery to call his home planet and Joshua had the even worse luck of stumbling across. Jeonghan had called Desevro home too, long before he really understood what the word meant, but only after meeting Seungcheol and Joshua did he learn what life on Desevro could really be like.
And the bickering. So much bickering.
Seungcheol and Joshua are still arguing about their informant, Seungcheol rubbing his arm as if what Joshua would categorize as a light tap could have possibly even hurt. Joshua only scoffs at him disbelievingly, incredulous, pink Zeltron skin tinged dark with amusement. He always hated the way Jeonghan poked at it when it reddened, the farthest thing from a Human blush, and Jeonghan still does it, to this day. Joshua says that his is a mild case of Zeltron flushing, that his mother’s was much worse, and Jeonghan’s never met another to be able to refute him, anyway.
“Bumzu isn’t even a real name,” Seungcheol retorts, and Joshua pinkens even further.
“Neither is Seungcheol.”
He says it with equal contempt, eyes wide, and it makes no fucking sense except that Seungcheol gapes, clearly offended, and Jeonghan can’t help but laugh at the both of them. He doesn’t escape notice. They swivel, twin hawks, and Jeonghan gets the sense that, Bumzu or not, he might have just fallen into the rancor cage himself.
“Are we taking this job or not?” he snaps, if only to get them off his back. “We’re not getting anywhere like this.”
Seungcheol at least has the decency to look a little sheepish.
“I don’t know,” he says, releasing his grip on Joshua’s arm in favor of standing up and shuffling over to Jeonghan instead, hooking his chin over Jeonghan’s shoulder to better peer down at the hologram they’ve been standing over.
The message is as standard as the commissions they usually get, Bumzu as usual, back straight, hooded, voice distorted, and providing them with bare bones of a job: where they need to go, when they need to get there, his risk assessment, their pay. The image flickers; the hologram starts over. Bumzu’s message repeats.
Jeonghan turns his face a fraction. “Well? What do you think?”
Seungcheol only frowns, head still a weight on Jeonghan’s shoulder.
“We need a new holoprojector,” is all he says, finally. “These graphics suck.”
“Of the job, Cheol.”
Seungcheol frowns harder. “I don’t know. It’s—vaguer than usual. Something doesn’t sit right.”
Joshua is beside them then, peering down at the hologram with thoughtful eyes. Jeonghan presses.
“Shua?”
“I mean—” Joshua runs a finger through Bumzu’s image, watching as the hologram flickers blue. “He did get us the Tooth job. And all the ones before that.”
Jeonghan hums. To Seungcheol’s credit, it does sound fishy. Fishier than usual, anyway. Jeonghan prides himself on catching things that the others don’t, and something doesn’t feel right about this.
It’s a cargo job. They get them all the time. Easy enough for one smuggler, let alone three. But, the specs. Vague, as Seungcheol said. Jeonghan shakes his head, trying to clear it.
“It’s just—” Seungcheol glances at Jeonghan as if to confirm. “He didn’t say anything, really.”
Seungcheol is right. Bumzu has a job for them, to move cargo from somewhere in the Mid Rim to somewhere in the Outer. The haul is hefty, sought after, and hard to get. They’re under a heavy time constraint, should they choose to accept. There’s some amount of risk, a high possibility of danger. They need a ship faster than the one they’ve got, Bumzu’s already given them a recommendation. Jeonghan shifts uneasily. But—
“But the pay.” Joshua’s voice is low, nearly disbelieving. “We’ve never worked a job this big. This could feed us for months, Cheol.”
“So you’d think he’d be able to give us a little more info,” Seungcheol huffs. “How are we meant to agree?”
Joshua scrunches his face up and purses his mouth like he wants to say something, but Jeonghan lets out an exasperated sigh before anyone can get a word out.
“We’re getting nowhere.”
He jams his finger into the holoprojector’s call button. Bumzu picks up immediately, like he was waiting for them to do just that.
“Yes?” His image flickers blue. Same hood, same voice modulator, same ramrod-straight posture.
“Is this value real?” Jeonghan demands. “This number?”
“The credit reward, you mean? Yes, it’s real.”
“How? What are we even moving?”
“I can’t tell you that.” Bumzu’s voice crackles. “I can tell you more, but not that.”
Jeonghan feels his face twist in annoyance. “What does that even mean? And why didn’t you say so in the message?”
Bumzu’s image shifts, glitches, then jumps back to normal. “Not safe. Not if you weren’t on the line directly to receive me. Like now.”
Jeonghan sees Joshua raise an eyebrow through the flickering image of Bumzu’s transparent hood.
“How confidential could this possibly be?” he asks, dubious, but Bumzu sounds more serious than he’s ever heard him when he replies, “The most.”
Jeonghan spies Seungcheol to his left, who seems to be wearing a frown more often than not, these days. He wants to take a thumb and press it between Seungcheol’s eyebrows until it softens. He doesn’t. Not the time.
Jeonghan asks, then, “Why us?”
“You three have been in the business nearly ten years. You’re a team. You trust each other. I trust you.”
Bumzu’s image shifts again, but it’s him this time instead of the crappy video, twitching uncomfortably under his hood.
“Trust is in short supply these days. You of all people should know that. And as Imperial rule doesn’t get any easier, that’s not a thing likely to change. What’s the Outer Rim saying?”
Jeonghan answers, “The same.”
“Then you know why I’m choosing you.”
Jeonghan glances up, exchanges a look with Joshua, then Seungcheol. Joshua’s dark eyes tell him all he needs to know.
Seungcheol, though, looks hesitant. Jeonghan sees the apprehension there and wishes they were alone.
“And you’d get us the money?” He turns back to Bumzu. “That many credits?”
“When have I not? Minus my cut, of course.”
“Of course,” Jeonghan echoes, monotone. Then, “We’ll get back to you.”
He switches off the call. The cockpit dims immediately without the blue light of the hologram. Cast in fresh darkness, Joshua barely lets the silence linger before he starts.
“Months, Cheol. We could do anything with that much.”
“I know,” Seungcheol insists. “I know it’s good. But—”
He glances up, meets eyes with Joshua, then Jeonghan. “Trust? What’s he talking about? Is that not strange to you?”
“It is,” Jeonghan agrees, and he does agree. It is strange, and so unlike Bumzu to not be forthright. Trust is a two-way street, and they rely on him just as heavily. Put their lives in his hands every time they follow his coordinates. It’s how they’ve built up the kind of working relationship they have. Jeonghan looks up.
“We can always back out. Once he gives us the specs. We can reassess. There’s nothing he can do about it. Shua?”
Joshua glances away from Seungcheol at the sound of his name. “Right,” he says, relaxing. “We can do whatever we want.”
Both of them look to Seungcheol, examining his expression.
“Alright?” Joshua asks, gentle. “Is that okay?”
Seungcheol meets Joshua’s eyes and sighs, but eventually, he nods. “Yeah. Yes. Sure, Shua.”
Jeonghan taps a few buttons on the holoprojector, and the camera engulfs him in blue.
“We’re in,” he says, into the mic. “Send it over.”
He ends the recording. As if he had been waiting, Bumzu sends them the specs.
While they’re in hyperspace, a metallic blue cast through every window of their ship, Jeonghan follows Seungcheol back to their quarters. Seungcheol takes a seat on the bottom bunk, and, looks for a moment, so small.
Jeonghan walks over and nudges his way in between Seungcheol’s legs, reaching down and carding a hand through soft, dark hair. He can’t help it, touching him like this. Seungcheol leans into it, quiet, head a warm, heavy weight.
Jeonghan hums. “What’s going on in that head of yours, Seungcheol-ah?”
“I don’t know,” Seungcheol grumbles, but he presses into Jeonghan like a large dog, head tilted up to meet Jeonghan’s eyes. He frowns, eyebrows creasing, and this time, all the galaxy can’t stop Jeonghan from pressing a thumb in between.
Seungcheol’s eyes fall closed. “It’s just suspicious, is all.”
Choi Seungcheol is the kind of person who is distrusting by nature. All three of them are. It’s a learned necessity, for smuggling under Imperial rule. Not that the Republic was any kinder to them, to any sort of backalley trading in general, but the Republic at least had bigger things to worry about: riots and invasions, planetary civil wars, dark-side Force users, the comings and goings of the many voices in their Galactic Senate.
None of that exists anymore. Now it’s just the Empire.
“It is suspicious,” Jeonghan agrees, still carding a hand through Seungcheol’s hair. “But that kind of comes with the job description.”
Seungcheol frowns. “Right.”
He reaches up to hold a hand over Jeonghan’s, which has slipped behind Seungcheol’s head to toy with the shorter, darker strands at the nape of his neck. Jeonghan tries not to still too much, at the warm touch of Seungcheol against the back of his hand, but his fingers stutter, anyway.
Seungcheol doesn’t move, just rests his hand over Jeonghan’s and doesn’t break their eye contact. His face is open, and hesitant, and he’s looking at Jeonghan.
“The job description,” he repeats, mostly to himself. “The job.”
Jeonghan tangles his fingers in Seungcheol’s hair and lets him sort out his thoughts, as Seungcheol so often needs to. Jeonghan does what he does best, and waits.
Seungcheol swallows, finally. “What do you think of it?”
Seungcheol tends to speak in circles, just edging for a reaction, and Jeonghan, once he’s gotten a handle on something, has never known how to do anything but go straight through.
“Cheollie,” he sighs. “What’s going on?”
Seungcheol shifts, mouth pursed, and his eyes drop from Jeonghan’s but dart right back up again.
“Don’t you get tired? Jeonghan-ah?”
Jeonghan asks, emphatically, “Of what?”
Seungcheol blinks, then uses his free hand to gesture around their quarters, Joshua’s bunk, Jeonghan’s, then his own, which stays empty more nights than it isn’t.
“Of this. All of it.” He hesitates. “Hannie, don’t you miss home?”
Jeonghan looks down at Seungcheol tiredly, but he doesn’t remove his hand, letting Seungcheol hold onto it.
“Cheol-ah, you know I don’t.”
“At all?” Seungcheol insists. “Not any of it, not in the slightest?”’
Jeonghan says firmly, “No.”
“We’ve been gone ten years, Jeonghan.”
“And?”
Jeonghan straightens his back, hand falling away from Seungcheol, who seems to chase the loss unconsciously, torso swaying forward.
“Everyone has a homeworld,” Jeonghan says, dismissive. “Shua hasn’t set foot on Zeltros since he was a child.”
Seungcheol’s mouth purses. “That’s not fair, Han-ah.”
“This isn’t fair.” Jeonghan steps away from Seungcheol, blinking hard. “Why are you telling me this? What do you expect me to do?”
“There are other ways to make a living.” Seungcheol’s voice is low. “We have enough credits to start.”
“Barely. Maybe enough for a few months. We need food, fuel—Cheol-ah, why do you think Shua wants this job so bad?”
“I know,” Seungcheol pleads. “I know the pay is good. But—this kind of work—living job to job, living out of this ship—what about family?”
“You’re my family,” Jeonghan tells him, bitter. “You and Shua. You’ve always known this. And you’re the one who’s never wanted to sell this ship.”
Seungcheol laughs brokenly. “It’s Desevrar. So are you, even if you’ve forgotten. And I’d sell this thing in a heartbeat if it meant enough credits to live at home.”
“There’s nothing there, Seungcheol,” Jeonghan says, disbelieving.
There really isn’t. Nothing beautiful nor worthwhile in a planet so covered in stink and swamp that someone could trek the whole freezing coastline and never reach the end of the city Jeonghan had the misfortune to call his birthplace, dying and decaying just like the rest of the planet. When he thinks for too long, Jeonghan can still see the smoke rising.
“You never saw all of it,” Seungcheol says, quiet. “Not you, or Joshua.”
Right. Jeonghan was born in the city of Maslovar, where if there weren’t city ruins, because nothing was functional, then he would have had strayed too far south, where the Swamplands lay, where natives never brought their children, because the winged lajune would fly right over, and eat them right up. When he was younger, Maslovar Terminal was as close to the shore as Jeonghan dared to venture, too afraid of the folktales, but he got braver as he grew older. Between the security stations and the estates littered around the tiny islands that made up the Swamplands, he found ways to traverse the swamps themselves, the Washes. By circling the Near Wash, sticking to both the Inner and Outer Washes, and avoiding the East Wash entirely, Jeonghan could make his way out to the very edge. It was the best of the wetlands, the Far Wash, as long as he could avoid any lurkers at the South Security Station. If he had to, he swam. It was the one of the only clear views of the water past the coast. He could think there. Even if he could hear all the hundreds of kilometers of Maslovar sprawling behind.
Seungcheol, though. Seungcheol is from the true south. Across the water, past the city. When he manages to lower Jeonghan’s inhibitions enough, he tells him about Desevrar mountains and tundras with the kind of wishful fondness that makes Jeonghan want to blow the whole planet to bits. Seungcheol can’t understand. It’s a different world to him, their home planet. Even when Jeonghan took him along the Washes, when they were older, Seungcheol would only ever look across the water, eyes sparkling, glancing his direction home.
Joshua is more sympathetic to Seungcheol, if only for the utility of missing a homeworld at all, but he doesn’t harbor any more love for Desevro than Jeonghan does. His attachment to the planet barely consists of the luxury of calling it an unfortunate landing spot. When Joshua gets to talking, he speaks of Zeltros.
Jeonghan tries to lighten his voice. “You could be anywhere in the galaxy, you know?”
“But we’re not anywhere, right now.” Seungcheol swallows. “We’re here.”
Hyperspace blue spills across the walls of the room.
Seungcheol takes Jeonghan’s hand again, plucks it out of the air and holds it between his own, tight against his chest as if Jeonghan would snatch himself away again. Jeonghan lets him, and doesn’t run.
“Seungcheol,” he says, slowly, carefully, “You know I won’t go back.”
“I know,” Seungcheol responds, looking up at him. “I would never make you.”
Jeonghan knows that Seungcheol would never go without him. Him and Joshua. Seungcheol is stuck with them forever.
Joshua keeps them steady from the cockpit. The ship doesn’t so much as shudder. Like this, Jeonghan could be convinced that they weren’t lurching through space at all, parked, landed, settled, onto firm ground.
“I’ve heard Haidoral Prime is nice this time of year,” Seungcheol says quietly, like he’s apologizing, for upsetting Jeonghan, for opening his mouth, for saying anything at all, and Jeonghan wants to drop to his knees so he can look up at Seungcheol in turn and apologize for the job, for the work, for setting Seungcheol off, instead.
He doesn’t do any of that. He squeezes one of Seungcheol’s hands in his own.
“That’s somewhere near here, isn’t it?”
Seungcheol says nothing.
Jeonghan says gently, “Maybe if we have time. We can visit.”
“Yeah,” Seungcheol echoes, distant. “Maybe.”
Jeonghan chances a glance out of the small porthole against the wall of their quarters, his hand in Seungcheol’s, and wonders if there’s a world, any kind of world out there, where he would be okay with going and never leaving, not ever, not once in his life.
Phorsa Gedd, according to Joshua’s research, is just another nothing planet. Small, hot, breathable. Besides the scattering of miscellaneous factory-deserts across a dry, arid surface, Phorsa Gedd is absolutely nothing at all.
There’s nothing to be found there. Desert, sand, barely one sun. A single glance at Seungcheol’s face sends Jeonghan to him.
“There’s no rebel movement on the surface,” Jeonghan says placatingly. “Not even a whisper. And the Imperial post there is so sparse they probably won’t even notice us coming. At the very least, they won’t care.”
“He’s right,” Joshua sighs, but his teeth bite into the inside of his mouth as he surveys Bumzu’s map. “The Empire doesn’t care about dumps like this.”
Seungcheol looks up, clearly hearing something in Joshua’s voice.
“But?” he asks. Joshua meets his eyes.
“But—” Joshua frowns. “Imperial or rebel—there’s barely any movement here at all. It’s all industrial ruin, or old militarized zones. Unmanned. Practically just the plains.”
He looks up at Jeonghan, then back to Seungcheol. “Why does Bumzu want us to get a faster ship?”
Jeonghan swipes away the hologram of Phorsa Gedd to pull up Bumzu’s instructions.
Go to Malastare in the Mid Rim. Nearby. Minimum 90 MGLT, 85 with a good gunner also fine. If need a rec, find THE8. 8’s good by me.
“Ninety megalights per-hour?” Seungcheol reads out loud, eyes widening. “He wants a ship going ninety?”
Joshua purses his mouth. “It is a lot.”
“Is he serious?” Seungcheol asks disbelievingly. “Does he know how bad it is right now? How are we meant to find an engine that fast?”
Jeonghan shrugs, pointing back to the message. “There, probably.”
Seungcheol squints. “THE8? What the fuck even is that?”
Joshua sighs, turns back around to slip into the pilot’s seat. “I’ll change course to Malastare.”
Seungcheol shoots Jeonghan another disbelieving look, Jeonghan can only shrug.
“At least we’re out of the Rim.”
“Yeah, the Outer.”
It was where most smugglers did their work, the Outer Rim, enough so that the standard was to just call it the Rim. They knew every major system by heart. But it was always a relief to get a break from it.
That was one of the good parts of smuggling. The job took them everywhere.
Without a word, Jeonghan tangles their fingers together. Seungcheol visibly loosens up. Jeonghan closes the gap between them and leans his head onto Seungcheol’s shoulder purely because he knows it’ll work.
“It’s no Haidoral Prime,” he murmurs, “But I heard one of those Gran colonies settled there. On Malastare.”
Seungcheol laughs, surprised, a deep, warm thing that Jeonghan can feel vibrating through their point of contact. “Why do I care about the Gran?”
Jeonghan shrugs. “They’re similar enough to the Saheelindeeli, right?”
Desevro’s native species. The two are nothing alike. Seungcheol laughs again because it’s a ridiculous claim, and also because it’s Jeonghan saying it. Jeonghan feels Seungcheol shake, and shoves down the thing that wells up.
“You joke,” Joshua starts dryly, eyes forward in the pilot’s seat, “But the Gran aren’t too dissimilar from the Zeltrons. They can sense each other’s emotions, you know?”
“I didn’t know,” Seungcheol says, equally dry, tilting his head back and letting it hit the hull. “Why the fuck would I know?”
Joshua jerks the rudder and rocks the ship just to make him yelp. Seungcheol only hums, crossing his arms behind his head even though Joshua can’t even see him.
“Have to try harder than that, Shua.”
“Cheol,” Jeonghan reprimands, turning to slap Seungcheol on the arm, but Seungcheol only opens one eye, grinning.
“Yeah, Hannie?”
Jeonghan huffs, but he can’t stop his own incoming smile. He loves Seungcheol like this. No one responds better than Seungcheol to bitching.
“Also, the Dug,” Joshua points out, from in front. They both swivel around.
“What?”
“The Dug,” Joshua repeats. “Malastare’s native species. They’re much more similar to the Saheelindeeli.”
“Honestly, Shua,” Jeonghan drawls, leaning back against the hull. “You just read all this on the computer ten minutes ago.”
Joshua only jerks the ship again in response, and it’s Jeonghan who lets out a small yelp this time, as he gets rocked straight out of his seat. Seungcheol snickers from beside him, eyes still closed and arms still crossed behind his head. Jeonghan bodily shoves him away.
“We’re here,” Joshua says, straightening. “Port Pixelito is picking us up.”
Joshua starts the ship’s descent, they breach the first layer of clouds. All three of them lean forward to peer through the windshield.
They can gripe as much as they want, but this is the greatest joy of being a smuggler. There’s no planet in the galaxy they don’t eventually have a reason to visit. Always some kind of demand for something. Each time they get a glimpse of a new world is just as thrilling as the first.
The ship passes through Malastare’s clouds. Jeonghan hears Seungcheol suck in a breath.
All planets in this section of the Mid Rim are hot, but Phorsa Gedd is a lawless, infertile desert. From one glance through the windshield, Malastare is teeming with life. The planet is beautiful.
Just by the look of it, Jeonghan knows. It’s the kind of temperate, tropical weather that makes things grow.
The surface is covered in forest. Jungle. The kind of dense, dark, wet green that Jeonghan used to dream about, huge, splayed leaves and thick, winding tree trunks, kilometers of pure undergrowth expanding as far as he could see, proof of growth, proof of life, earthy and strong and alluring. And in the distance, past the endless lines of trees, a sweet, milky blue. Lakes.
Joshua brings them down. Jeonghan breathes. Before the ship stabilizes, he turns and makes for the ladder down into the hold. Joshua lets out some kind of breathless laugh as Jeonghan disappears, but Jeonghan doesn’t entirely hear it. Malastarian air is starting to seep through. It wafts into the ship without waiting as Joshua brings the door down, slipping through the widening crack and swimming in, and Jeonghan feels it immediately, the humidity.
It’s like he could run a hand through and gouge a space out, carve a path. The air is humid, dense, and hot.
Malastare is nothing like Desevro.
The gravity hits. Jeonghan feels the weight of his body drop like a stone as his boots press into the ground, and barely a few steps leaves him taken aback by the new weight of him. He turns around to meet eyes with Joshua and Seungcheol, the latter of who is making an incredulous face right back at him.
“Malastare gravity,” Joshua laughs, striding past the both of them, seemingly already having gotten used to it. “One point five-six standard. Try to keep up.”
They disembark. Port Pixelito is engulfed by hot sun.
The shipyard around them is packed, shipgoers carrying crates stacked to their brims, driving ships around on their wheels and the great din of voices, yelling, laughing, haggling. Jeonghan feels the trader in him light up. From behind them, a Gran ambles over and begins surveying their ship almost immediately, head tilted and all three of her eyes glancing thoughtfully.
She wastes no time. As Jeonghan glances over, she taps him on the shoulder, head tilted in question. When Jeonghan nods to her in greeting, she gestures up at their ship.
In accented and melodic Basic, the Gran asks, “How much?”
Seungcheol makes an affronted noise behind him and Jeonghan kicks his heel back to make contact with Seungcheol’s ankle.
“Sorry,” he says, as apologetic as he can muster. “What my colleague is trying to say is, the ship isn’t for sale.”
The Gran shrugs, unaffected. “Have it your way,” she tells them, giving the ship another onceover, “But I’ll be the first to tell you, I’d give you more than that pile would ever be worth.”
“How much?” Joshua asks, curious.
Seungcheol makes another noise of protest that goes ignored as the Gran lists them a credit value that, frankly, is far more than their piece of shit starship is worth.
Jeonghan looks over at their own ship too, as if to check. “Why?”
When he glances back, the Gran is grinning at him, all three eyes narrowed with mirth.
“It’s racing season, greenies. You picked a busy time to vacation.”
The air beside Jeonghan sweetens suddenly, a thick cloudburst of excitement—Joshua, brightening. The Gran senses it too, her gaze turning to Joshua one eye at a time.
“Podracing?” Joshua asks, and the Gran laughs, revealing a set of flat, white teeth.
“What else, boy? It’s the Vinta Harvest Classic this time of year. Hosted right here on Malastare. These podracers build their own racers, you know. Always looking for spare parts. The kind of junk that would never normally sell gets snatched right up. Think about it.”
Jeonghan hums. This must be why Bumzu decided to send them here. Best drivers in the galaxy, in these racing parts. He perks up.
“Could you point us in the right direction?”
Seungcheol shoots him a look, but Jeonghan ignores him, is nothing if not opportunistic.
“The podrace?” The Gran laughs. “Easy. Just follow the crowd.”
Jeonghan bows low, feels both Seungcheol and Joshua copy from behind him. He smiles. “Thank you for your time.”
“Come find me if you decide to give up on this piece of shit,” the Gran calls back to them, already on her way to find something better. “I’ll be here.”
Jeonghan nods and turns away. Seungcheol tugs on Jeonghan’s sleeve.
“Really?” he hisses. “A podrace, right now?”
Jeonghan shrugs him off.
“Come on, Cheollie,” he says dismissively, taking Joshua by the wrist and ushering them both along with him. “I know what I’m doing.”
A huge arch of stacked, beige bricks leads them from the shipyard into the main street. Jeonghan, Joshua, and Seungcheol fall into the flow of people, as easy as that.
“That ahjumma,” Jeonghan insists. “Said that they take all kinds of junk in for the races.”
“Yeah?” Seungcheol says, hastening to keep up. “And?”
“And, there’s always some genius whose job it is to put it all together. Trust me.”
Just two hundred meters out of the shipyard, in the distance, great, green trees rise tall, canopies of spiny leaves so tall and dense that they nearly cover the sun in their entirety, shooting up from the horizon. Jeonghan tries not to get distracted by the sight, all that green, but of course, he does. Huge screams and cheers float closer, rippling through the crowd, then the melody of a distant song that appears to get recognized, sung along as they approach closer and closer, inching towards the racing grounds.
“Trust me,” he repeats. Joshua’s excitement is palpable, thick in the air, Jeonghan’s blood begins to hum in response. Those damn Zeltron pheromones. He squeezes once around Joshua’s wrist, then looks over at Seungcheol.
"If anyone knows pilots,” Jeonghan says, firm, “it’s their mechanics.”
