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Into the Black [missedstations & Bathos]

That was cruel. Remarque was used to feeling nothing when he was touched, so he hated himself even more than Vince at that particular moment. He didn't want to like anything to do with Vince, but that touch, it made him want something. Quite suddenly he knew Vince was right: he was going to tell the bounty hunter everything. He closed his eyes, trying to control his breathing.

'He, ah, was playing both sides... Seeing who'd win. Must have cut a deal with the IPA, I know he changed identity.'

His list of objectives was rapidly shrinking. He barely managed to stop himself talking there: how many secrets would he betray? If Vince had the right questions, Remarque had the answers to match, and despite the fact that the rational part of his mind was screaming and kicking, the drugs were stronger.

'Stop touching me,' he said vaguely, knowing that was what he should really want, but feeling that he needed exactly the opposite. He was never going to forgive Vince this.
 
"It's too much fun," Vince argued, grip tightening around Remarque's arm so he could drag him across the room. He wasn't unnecessary rough about it, but he put strength behind his pull so Remarque had no excuse to struggle. He hauled him over to the main computer console, where raw code still flashed across the screen as the ship sailed steadily toward their destination.

Vince flipped Remarque around, so his back was pressed up against Vince's chest, and slid his arms beneath his prisoner's, wrapped his hands around Remarque's body and dropped his mouth to the tender bit of skin just beneath his ear.

"Do you know where Lang is now?" Vince asked, lips and a day's worth of stubble scraping down Remarque's skin even as his fingers were hitching up the hem of his shirt and exploring the pale expanse of his belly.
 
Vince's breath against the skin was far too nice. These drugs, they made it hard to pretend not to know what pleasure felt like. It was hard to be cold when every touch was fire. His heart was still frozen, but his heart was irrelevant here. The least human aspects of him were making themselves felt.

'No...' He tried to concentrate on the code, leaning his arms against the table.

'He would be working for the IPA now. I couldn't find his new identity. Maria will probably know.' Ah, and he'd betrayed the only sister that he had ever had. She may not have been related to him by blood, but she had been his closest friend in college. She used to make him dinner, and dragged him to social events. She had tried to make him human. She had introduced him to Jack. Why had he said her name?

Loathing himself and Vince, he arched against his torturer.
 
"I would have left you alone," Vince said conversationally as he filed away Maria's name for later inspection. It was the second time Remarque had mentioned her. She had to be important , though whether her significance to Remarque was purely professional remained to be seen.

"If only you weren't so difficult," he went on, dragging his fingers up Remarque's abdomen and chest, scraping the pads of his fingertips across his nipples. It wasn't like Vince to be so gentle with a plaything, especially one for whom he harbored so much ill will, but he wanted Remarque to enjoy himself, wanted it viciously. He'd implied already, much to his own misfortune, that he was largely impervious to torture of the physical variety.

He wanted Remarque desperate with pleasure, instead. Vince wanted him drowning in his body's betrayal, whining and writhing with want. He wanted him to feel shame--if not for his crimes, then for his weakness here and now.

"Maria Cervantes," he prompted as he rolled Remarque's nipples between his fingers, scratched them lightly beneath his fingernails. "Who is she?"
 
'Council General. In charge of intelligence. Had her records purged just before the end of the war.' He wasn't quite capable of full sentences anymore. The drugs were far, far stronger than he was, and he was now beginning to respond to every single of Vince's touches.

He would not beg. That was the only promise to himself he thought he had any chance of keeping.

Maybe he should not feel so guilty about telling Vince about Maria: she had survived so many power shifts and kept her position, and even now she was a fixer. A dangerous woman, she could take care of herself. He knew he was laying to himself, that what he was doing was unforgivable.

'She still has contacts. Knows too much.'

Distantly, he realised that Vince could use this chance to take back the full control of the ship. Even so, he was rubbing his back against Vince. He had often been a whore, but never a slut.
 
Vince closed his teeth around his own bottom lip, fingers tightening momentarily on Remarque's nipples before releasing them altogether. His pleasure was a pleasant side effect of this exercise, but it was incidental and when a groan threatened to break free from his throat, he stifled it. Remarque responded more powerfully to the untested cocktail than he could have hoped or expected, and when he rubbed wantonly against Vince, there was no mistaking the answering hardness pressed against him.

"Good, that's good," Vince said, low and encouraging, and dropped his hands to Remarque's hips, guiding him into a better rhythm, pressing the soft swell of his still fully clothed ass directly against Vince's groin. "Like this," he practically cooed, settling them into a delicious, sliding motion that more fully mimicked the act of fucking itself.

Vince lifted his head minutely, flicked the tip of his tongue against the lobe of Remarque's ear. "Tell me what you know about Lang personally," he asked, voice rough with sex. "What's he like? What are his weaknesses?"
 
Remarque gave up, surrendered, closed his eyes. At least if Vince was hard too, he might get some satisfaction in this eventually. Vince could probably be as rough as he liked: it would make no difference to Remarque, he would still want Vince's cock as badly. He reached up and rested a hand on the back of Vince's neck.

It was positively hard to reply now. 'He's a sadist... Likes toying with his prey.' Remarque tried to control himself a little by thinking about all the corpses he had left in his wake. The frozen dead on the Requiem. Men he had shot. Those who had died in the vacuum. It didn't particularly help, it made him feel a little necrophiliac. Thinking about corpses and still having a hardon, still shifting against Vince.

'He feels nothing about no one. He's rational, he will hide himself well. He can act any part. Knows he has to to get away with it. War let him be who he really wanted to.' The sentences were broken apart by sharp breaths that he couldn't control.
 
Nothing could have prepared Vince for the shock that rolled over him when Remarque actually broke down and touched him back. It was an innocuous touch, safe against the back of his neck, but what it symbolized was much greater and he gave a great shudder when he realized he'd all but won.

"Fuck," he whispered, harsh against Remarque's ear, "you're going to be good, aren't you? You're hot for it already." He turned his head then, closed his teeth around the inside of Remarque's upraised arm, and bit down, hard enough to bruise but not enough to do lasting harm.

"Tell me about Maria," Vince said, raising his head. "How will I get her to cooperate?"

With one steadying hand still on Remarque's waist, the other went to the fastenings at his trousers. He was already familiar with the fly and he made short work of it, shoved the pants down over his hips.

"Would she trade Lang for you?" he asked, idly curious and breathless a the same time.
 
Remarque whimpered. The bite hurt, but the pain was marginal through the drug induced haze. He would have taken any contact. He hated all those nerves that seemed to have suddenly woken up, become demanding. He hated the hardness of his cock, unseen by a partner for many years. It was only memories of Jack that used to be able to inflame him. But the drugs... The drugs. He hated them.

'I don't know,' he gasped. 'Maybe she would.' Trade, that is, but Maria was a witch. For anyone to meet with her, they had to enter her lair. She never made things easy for anyone, last time she had Remarque blindfolded and led to her. He had no actual idea where she really lived, apart from the planet and the city.

'She will give you at least an interview for me,' Remarque finally said, unsure and entirely distracted.

Weighted down with his tools, his pants fell to the floor with a clank. Vince could do anything to him, he was desperate. 'Fuck me,' he commanded. He would not beg. No, he would not do that. He needed to retain at least some vestige of dignity.
 
Whether Remarque considered himself to be begging or not was of little consequence to Vince. When those words hit his ears, two simple syllables, fuck me, he felt as if he were soaring with victory. He couldn't contain the chuckle that tumbled out of him, deep and throaty and sounding almost as wrecked as Remarque did under the influence.

"Oh, I mean to," Vince promised, and suddenly there were fingers at Remarque's mouth, pressing against his lips. "Suck them," he instructed breathlessly into Remarque's neck, where he was now mouthing hungrily at the pale flesh beneath his ear. "Get them wet."

He had more questions he wanted to ask, but he could wait until Remarque's mouth wasn't so busy, so for now he rubbed bodily against his captive and breathed raggedly against his skin. Vince, despite all appearances in their present situation, was actually a skilled lover. He wasn't terribly discriminating about who he'd drag back to his quarters in the early hours of the morning, but he always left them satisfied. It wasn't for lack of partners that he turned to this option with Remarque.

It was a power game, pure and simple. Remarque had it and Vince wanted it and he was willing to tear it away from his cold, dead hands if that was how he wanted to play. Though he had to admit that he rather liked this option, Remarque hot and flush and sort of willing, knowing if he turned the engineer around he'd find his eyes dark with pleasure and probably a little desperate, cheeks flushed.

Yes, he liked this option a lot.
 
Vince meant to? Oh, that was good. Remarque's rational part curled up and went to sleep. Later it would probably fume and rage, and Remarque will probably want to be less human, because, really, what Vince was doing now was breaking him. He hadn't done anything irrational for years, and now, to surrender to his base desires, it was just like- Well, never mind what it was like. He couldn't think about that now. Instead, he obeyed Vince, licking and sucking at the fingers he was offered, whining with need.

It was, all in all, a little undignified, the way he kept arching towards Vince, the way he didn't want the contact broken for a single moment, the way he wanted Vince's lips against him. He could for the moment forget how he hated that man, his own past, his entire existence he could erase with those touches. Distantly, he did know that he would hate himself for this and that the guilt would be as bad as for anything else he had ever done, but for now he wanted more than anything else.
 
"Shhh," Vince murmured to Remarque, voice full of false tenderness. "I've got you," he cooed, because this impatient little whine was issuing out of Remarque's throat and it was delicious and kind of endearing, but mostly just doing things to his cock like an actual physical caress and Vince didn't want the moment to slip by unnoticed. "That's good," he went on. "Good," he said again, and slipped his fingers, slick and shining with saliva, from Remarque's mouth.

He wondered, absently, if there would ever come a time he could trust Remarque to apply that skillful tongue elsewhere. They were bound to be stuck together for several days more at least. Still, it was unlikely he'd let his guard down again like this, without the assistance of the drug. Not that that was much of a deterrent.

"Here," Vince muttered, putting his dry hand just between Remarque's shoulder blades and giving him a firm push. "Bend a little, so I can," and when Remarque bent easily under his touch he changed course, said, "Yeah, like that."

Vince scraped his thumb down the cleft of Remarque's bared ass, traced the line down until he found his target and abruptly, without any form of warning whatsoever, he shoved his two spit slick fingers in to the knuckle, his own breath punched out of him by the tight heat he suddenly found wrapped around them.

Vince was suddenly fumbling quite urgently at his fly. "Why," he began, but found he was momentarily too short of breath to go on. "Fuck," he hissed, when he'd freed his cock and it sprang instantly to full attention. "Why would the IPA want you dead?"
 
False tenderness or not, Vince's words were strangely soothing. If he could purr with contentment, he would have. The drug didn't leave that much room for personal initiative, so he simply followed Vince's directions. He felt so relaxed, and he could probably have done anything Vince asked him to, even if the orders were completely ridiculous.

The pain was sudden and for a moment he tensed, gasped. That was unexpected. But both the pain and the pleasure together... That was good. Some warning would have been nice, but beggars could not be choosers.

'Only one who knows. Where the Requiem. Is.' He tried to slow his breathing, but it was really a bit pointless. 'Saved a lot of data. On her. Stolen weapons in her hold.' Vince no doubt had no idea what he was talking about, but Vince was not a military man. The bounty hunter probably believed in the falsely genteel idea of war, where surrender was surrender, where civilians weren't shot at, and where it was illegal to create weapons of massive destruction. 'CHG-4563 not a supernova. Ugly things. Don't ruin this.'

He leant his head on the desk, eyes closed, waiting. Remarque was neither in a state where he could explain or elaborate, it had been enough effort just saying what he did.
 
There was a part of Vince that wanted to pause for clarification, but it was a small part, overshadowed utterly by the part of him that was desperate to lay full claim to Remarque, to have him speared on his length and crying out with forced pleasure.

He gave Remarque a quick preparation, fingers moving in and out with a sloppy kind of urgency, crooking every so often to rub against the little gland that would have him seeing stars. It wasn't long before he deemed Remarque ready--or, in all honesty, ready enough--and withdrew his fingers and replaced them with something bigger, blunter, and a lot less forgiving.

"Tell me," Vince whispered, but his voice failed him and tumbled into a stuttering groan as he pushed his hips forward. He'd wanted to take Remarque brutally. That had been the plan all along. To warm him up into a panting, writhing mess and then tear him open, hissing insults into his ear and pulling roughly at his dick until he came despite himself.
Why, then, was Vince pushing forward in increments, fucking Remarque slowly open and guiding the tilt of his hips into something more pleasurable for them both?

"Tell me," Vince said again, and there was an obvious struggle in his voice. He was pressed flush against Remarque now, his trousers still up around his hips, only his cock free, so the cold metal of his fly pressed up against the back of Remarque's thigh. He withdrew slowly, and then slammed forward again, let a groan tear his throat into shreds, and asked, finally, "How do I rate against Jack?"
 
Until Vince said that fateful word, the bounty hunter's touches had only served to drive him further. The fingers were good, so good, better than anything he'd felt in years, ever since-. He was so glad when he felt the end of Vince's cock against his entrance. Slowly, slowly... Remarque growled and pushed back against Vince. He wanted the bounty hunter inside him quickly, brutally. It would hurt less in the long term, he knew.

He wondered what sex with Vince would be like if they actually liked each other. It would probably be being able to see heaven again when he closed his eyes. It would have been nice, if it was only possible. But feeling this, he could feel a little hope again for his existence. In his groans, under Vince's touches, in the beating of his heart, he felt alive again in a way that he had forgotten. He could almost thank the drugs for that.

The effect of Vince's words though, was catastrophic. Remarque said nothing, but suddenly he was limp against Vince, no longer participating. It was as if someone had thrown acid on his nerves: and turned everything to pain. Monster. Demon. Beast. He could not bring himself to speak. His mind was abruptly clear. Clear and sharp, as if a bone hand snapped, or the world cracked. For a moment, he could not breathe.

'Don't touch me.' Remarque's voice was still ragged, but now with a different sort of desperation. He tried to twist away from Vince, his body still drug-numbed and responding far too slowly.
 
Vince wasn't 100% sure this was what he wanted to happen. There had been a point, somewhere between stabbing Remarque with the syringe and his husky, lust-laced voice demanding for Vince to fuck him, when he'd lost his grip on the plot. He'd started to see Remarque as something that he wasn't, started appreciating his revealing little sighs and moans as something more than triumph over a stubborn will. He'd enjoyed them, enjoyed Remarque's pleasure the same he would with any other lover.

But now his captive was cold and limp against him, unresponsive. Vince found victory here, too, but it paled in comparison to the heated little slut he'd created with his drug cocktail, and he found he felt the loss acutely and his own enthusiasm for their charade took its own hit.

"Aww, don't say that, princess," Vince said, something brittle there. "We were having such a good time."

He hooked an arm around Remarque, curled his fingers around his cock, dragged his thumb across the head, and began to stroke him, fast and hard. The rhythm of his thrusts was set to match, a punishing pace meant to drive them both quickly to the conclusion of the episode rather than drawing out the pleasure.

"Thought your kind got off on this," Vince said, out of nowhere, between deep, labored breaths. He hadn't meant to speak at all, and the edge in his voice was unfamiliar to him. He wasn't this man, not really, just when it was convenient, when they deserved it. But he wasn't a malicious man by trade, and this wasn't really his thing.

Only, right now, with this murderer beneath him, wrapped around his dick, rocking with the force of his thrusts, he had to admit he kind of was.

"Go on, tell me to stop again," Vince went on, because shutting up simply wasn't an option. "Ask me."
 
He had no pleasure left in the thing. It wasn't sex any more, it was some physical action that involved inserting tab A into slot B. Even if it could be a purely physical act, it just wasn't enough to overcome his utter and sudden despair. That clear, sharp pain was something that he thought he'd never feel again, the sound of a heart breaking. Not that Remarque would know this. He did not know himself well enough: he was a fortress of locked doors and no one living had the keys.

'My kind, your kind,' he whispered. 'You are the same as the worst of us.' But men like Vince, they were good at self deception. They were on the right side, so what they did was always right. Remarque just didn't believe in sides or in justice these days.

'Do what you like.' You win. He'd lost all the battles and he'd lost the war.

Remarque closed his eyes again and thought about the man he'd left at that psychiatric hospital. Distancing himself from his body, he remembered everything with the same clarity he had seen that day. Approving the paperwork, handing his lover over into the care of the doctors because he just couldn't do it, he had to return to duty. The lack of expression in Jack's eyes. The beautiful summer weather. His nightmares come to haunt his waking moments.
 
The next few minutes dragged on like an eternity. Vince finally gave up on trying to coax a renewed response out of Remarque and concentrated on getting things over and done with, which he did, weakly and with only a soft grunt to herald the big finish. With little regard for Remarque or the shape he was in, Vince withdrew quickly, tucked himself away, and did up his fly. By the time he'd finished, the sweat from earlier had already dried at his temples.

He was far from satisfied.

"So I guess you're not made entirely from ice, after all," Vince said, more to break the silence than from any real desire to communicate. "Go figure."

Then, louder, Vince said, "Victor one two seven, unseal the room." Across the engine room, the door chirped. "Lyle will be keeping an eye on you. Obviously, you're free to move around. He's just there in case."

Vince took one last look at Remarque, pulled an irritated face, and strode out of the engine room.
 
Remarque collapsed to his knees, leaning his forehead against the wall. His hair was in disarray, hiding his face, and for a few moments he made no effort to cover himself.

'You are nothing compared to him,' Remarque told Vince, finally answering the question. Jack, Jack Hart, Jack of Hearts. The only man, only person, Remarque had ever loved. He hadn't even know that he could want anyone until he met Jack, that it would be so nice to spend nights lying beside someone, that he could feel so content. He'd known it once, and never again. He knew he would never feel it again, he just wasn't capable these days.

He was glad that someone else would be looking after him. He didn't want to see Vince again, let alone spend any time alone with him. It was only when the bounty hunter was gone that he pulled himself up, redid his pants. He had been, in a certain way, rather polite to the ship.

A little stiff, still a little dizzy from the drugs, he deleted his initial modifications and simply wrote himself into the ship's authorisations. He checked the ship map again, rerouted power and resources to an unused cabin, and then left the engine room, leaning against the wall all the way.

Remarque didn't even bother locking the door: most of his dignity had been stripped away, simply with one single word. That was the way things went sometimes. He stripped and washed his trousers in the sink, wringing them out to dry. He probably spent so long curled up in the shower that the ship probably notified the control room of the usage. It didn't make him feel any better: he knew it wouldn't. He still felt like a piece of filth.

Eventually, he got out. It was almost a ritual to stand there dripping in the bathroom, redoing his braids, sliding the metal into the strands of hair as he worked. The cold was no discomfort at all. When he was done, he put his shirt back on, then sat down on the bunk. It covered him up well enough should someone walk in. He felt so empty,so sad and tired.
 
The transparent ghost of his own image stared back at Vince, reflected in the view portal and colored in with distant points of light. He looked old and felt ancient. His joints were raucous with the ache of exhaustion and his eyes were rimmed with red, but natural sleep continued to elude him and there was just enough time before the Dioscuri reached its destination that a drugged sleep wouldn't be doing him any favors.

So he stared. At space. Over half a day had passed since he'd seen Remarque and that final image of him, used up and kneeling awkward on the floor, stayed with Vince when his mind wandered in that direction. Mostly, he tried not to think of it, and when he absolutely had to think of Remarque the thought was accompanied by a dogmatic notion of justice and retribution.

More important than his burgeoning crisis of identity, there was the issue of the Dioscuri placing at the top of the IPA's most wanted list to consider. And Zachary Lang and Maria Cervantes. He needed to hail Cervantes, attempt to set up a meet or, at the very least, a holographic conference, but the ship would have to slow down before that could happen and Vince really didn't look forward to explaining the particulars of his flimsy plan to Rosemary when she came storming into the cockpit demanding answers. She was testy enough already with only the IPA to fret over.

It was another three standard hours before the Dioscuri was safely out of IPA space--wherein 'safely' was a relative term more closely aligned with the definition of 'not actively pursued, but still sitting in general peril.' Vince spent the entirety of that time with his gaze fixed on the passing space, lost.

The communicator chirped and Rosemary's voice filled the silence of his quarters and Vince found himself wondering, not for the first time in the course of their partnership, when his First found time to sleep. She often wondered the same of him and while she'd never set food inside Vince's quarters, she sometimes suspected the truth regardless. They had reached the Black, IPA signals and communiques had dropped off entirely, and it was time to summon Remarque.

Vince pushed a hand through his hair, smoothed the wrinkles from his shirt, rubbed the bleariness from his eyes--anything to stall seeing Remarque again. He was tired, too tired to deal with difficult prisoners who may or may not now be harboring a homicidal rage for him, but there weren't any other options, and no one else in the crew really knew what was going on, so that left Vince, slowing to a stop at the cabin Remarque had chosen for himself and, out of some inexplicable impulse, ringing the comm to alert him to Vince's presence outside his door.
 
Remarque was used to being hungry, so when his stomach began to growl again, he ignored it and tried to sleep. He was marginally more successful at it than Vince, but then he kept dreaming about how it felt when Jack used to touch him, and well, that really wasn't restful. He kept his back against the wall, using the coldness of the wall to keep anchor himself to reality. It would be far too easy to live in fantasies of the past, he knew. Rationality and a cold heart was better, but the problem with frozen things was that they were fragile sometimes.

He was starting to feel as if he had never spent any time truly awake since Jack was gone, that there was no pleasure left in anything, that the joy he took in machinery was just habitual. He remembered the days when Jack, from the bed, used to watch him work on ships, engines, weaponry. Truly, he had deserved being called a genius. But he didn't feel so clever anymore. He didn't feel so special. He had no one to tell him what he was doing was good.

It wouldn't be anyone but Vince, Remarque thought as he heard the comm ring. No one else of the crew would bother him, and, of course, he had told the computer to follow the movements of all crew members. He pondered putting his pants on, but they were probably still damp, so instead he simply stood up and opened the door. There was nothing that Vince hadn't seen already, after all.

'What? Want to do it again?' he asked, his voice a curious mixture of irritation and indifference.
 
Vince spared only a cursory glance to Remarque's state of undress. Remarque was beautiful, in his own way--unselfconscious and pale and lithe and a complete pain in Vince's ass--but he was in no mood to play, his face lined with exhaustion and some elusive emotion that drew his face back taut and miserable. It was disgust, though who it was meant for was a mystery to even Vince.

"No, thank you," Vince said easily. His voice was deep, like it had been when Remarque was pressed up against him and panting, but it lacked the heat of desire. It was just jagged, like the rest of him. "We're out of IPA range now," he explained tonelessly. "We should be safe from attack, at least from them. I'd like you to come with me so we can set up that interview you mentioned with Cervantes."

Vince was ready for Remarque to refuse to help him, had steeled himself against it before he'd even left his cabin. But Remarque was a marked man out here with no friends, and Vince couldn't see any reason he should refuse, except to piss off the captain.
 
Remarque looked Vicent up and down expressionlessly. The man actually felt something apart from rage and hate? Shocking. He wasn't in the mood to play either, he just wanted to get this over with.

'In orbit around HS-3545765, there are three planets, and there's a shitty little rock that's commonly called Stone.' A grim little planet, just on the edge of the black, seemingly entirely inhabited by pirates and mercenaries. No one lived there for longer than a year. No doubt Vince had picked up a bounty or two there.

'Message the brothel called Black Orchid - it's registered - and say the commander wants to see her highness in the other downstairs office. And she will be expecting me.' Probably she will be puzzled that the message came at all, and would expect them with guns. But oh well, it was the fastest way. 'The other way to get a meeting is to arrive there and start begging.'

He shut the door in Vince's face.
 
Vince stood at Remarque's door a moment longer, blinking. He hadn't expected Remarque to be quite so helpful, though he supposed he should have known better. Maria Cervantes was, in all likelihood, a friend of Remarque's. That was why he'd mentioned her name, just before he thought he was going to be killed. Of course Remarque would want to be reunited with her, if only to escape from the Dioscuri and Vince's increasingly volatile temper.

Vince knew Stone, though not well. He'd been to its surface a handful of times, usually to pick up information, once to pick up a target who ended up being more trouble than she was worth. It was a dangerous place, a cesspool of murderers and thieves, and though he knew he could now count himself amongst their foulest ranks, he didn't relish the prospect of returning. But if that was where Maria Cervantes was, then that was where he would go.

Rosemary was finally gone from the pilot's chair when Vince went to plot the course, which he counted as a blessing, both because she would finally be getting some much needed rest and because he wouldn't be forced to explain himself until they were entering Stone's orbit. When she finally did emerge from her cabin, looking rested and clean and vaguely annoyed, she asked him about their new heading and Vince raised his eyebrows and told her he was taking care of their little IPA problem. Rosemary pressed for more information, but Vince was successful in remaining tight lipped.

Hours went by, Vince having lost track by that point of where days fell into one another, and he was finally able to get a little bit of sleep just before they arrived at Stone. Vince sent the message Remarque had dictated, verbatim, to the Black Orchid just before they gained clearance to land at a private hangar that Rosemary had determined to be close to the brothel. She cast a sidelong, accusing glance at Vince, but kept her mouth shut.

So it was, hours later, that Vince appeared again at Remarque's door, rested now and having had an actual shower and shave, and dressed in fresh clothes. He wore his holster now, slung low on his hips and holding matching pistols. Tucked into his boot there was a knife and a pair of cuffs was tucked into the top of the other, just in case.

He rang the chime and awaited the emergence of his 'prisoner'.
 
Remarque did not look forward to return to Stone: virtually every one of his trips there had ended unpleasantly, and actually seeing Maria was not quite the same the same as exchanging curt messages every few months. She liked knowing he was still alive, and while Remarque could accept that, he did not entirely understand.

He avoided the crew, spending the minimal time necessary in the engine room. He would only check that the ship was fine, then leave. Vince had ruined that room for him. He mostly spent his time in his chosen cabin, after he wired the ship so it could accept commands from there. A small room, his self-chosen cell. He had no desire to get to know either Pablo or Rosemary. They worked for Vince, after all. The only thing he would miss was the ship itself, so beautiful and charming, and wonderfully responsive.

He mapped their progress on his computer, took what supplies he needed without anyone taking much note of him, and lived those few days in silence. He got ready for his meeting with Maria too. It wouldn't do to look like a corpse in front of her. So he'd shaved too, made his hair a little more presentable, and washed himself and his clothes. He strongly regretted being unarmed.

Part of his preparation was mental, too. When he opened the door to Vince, his bearing was militaristic, and his grey eyes cold. He looked taller when he stood up straight. Once he'd made people defer to him with just his presence... Shit happened.

'You do know she's going to take away your weapons and probably have them broken into tiny pieces?' he asked. Remarque was looking forward to this.
 
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