They Can Smell Your Intentions

THEY CAN SMELL YOUR INTENTIONS
chapter ten

The morning was not a pleasant one, Nigel discovered much to his dismay, the memory of the night before a hazy, unwelcome intrusion. He didn't remember a lot of it, and it was clear he had slept the night on the couch, which was hardly a good sign, and though the regular sounds of breakfast being made were still bringing him into gentle wakefulness, he didn't miss the strained, almost reluctant tone of Adam's voice: "Breakfast is ready."

Every portion of his body ached, and Nigel knew it was more a symptom of apology than an abundance of toxins. He'd done something awful last night, and the terror that it was irredeemable tied into tight knots in his stomach, making him want to retch. He cracked the kinks out of his neck as he sat up from his passed out position on the leather couch, his body sticking to it and holding an unpleasant sweaty odour laden with alcohol that made him wince. He rubbed at his face with his hands, his stubble scraping raw against his palms. He felt sick and lonely, and the pronounced lack of feeling in Adam's voice made him swallow back a thick stone in his throat that threatened to choke him. He stood up and it was then that he realized how much his head was pounding, that his brain was doing all it could to seep out of his nose, his stomach clenching at the very thought of eating a plateful of eggs.

He staggered, groaning, into the kitchen, where Adam was primly seated at his usual spot, not looking up at him or greeting him. Nigel sank into the chair opposite his precious angel who had flinched when he'd tried to give him a good morning kiss. If he had been beaten bloody and left for dead on an abandoned warehouse floor, and been pissed on for good measure, Nigel couldn't possibly feel worse than he did right now.

"Adam, I was an asshole last night. I'm sorry."

His plate of eggs and his coffee were waiting for him, as per usual, and Nigel felt the smallest twinge of hope at this, for at least that routine hadn't changed. He poked at the eggs with a fork, hating the thought of putting one of them into his mouth. He gave Adam fleeting glances over it, watching him carefully as he wolfed down the last of his scrambled eggs and then began the slow sips of his glass of milk. The laptop was on the table between them, a not so subtle barrier against communication.

"Nigel, you were extremely rude last night. Rector Stanislov is a well regarded member of the educational world and to attack him like that was uncalled for. You are very lucky he did not press assault charges. I do not understand why you were so angry with him, you kept saying he had denied me the job and made me cry--two humiliating facts that I would have preferred he did not know. I was very embarrassed, Nigel."

Nigel sniffed and poked at his eggs, pushing them around the plate and not eating them. Not even the coffee held any interest. Guilt was bitter enough. He pouted a little over the eggs, poking at them and pushing them around the plate as he gave the situation a nod of his head. "He *did* make you cry..."

"I had already decided that working there would not be in my interests, I was not happy with the way the university was so willing to buy and sell knowledge to the highest bidder, it denotes a lack of respect for the subjects it teaches. Nigel, eat your eggs. Your are suffering the severe after affects of alcohol poisoning and after searching through several websites on Google I have discovered that your best course of action is a breakfast rich in proteins to help absorb residual alcohol that has not yet been digested and to drink copious amounts of water to help distil the amount of alcohol in your bloodstream. You are severely dehydrated, and that is why you feel so sick. Coffee is a diuretic and not usually something one would recommend, but the last thing you need at present is both caffeine withdrawal coupled with the headache induced by the poison in your system. Besides, it may help in flushing the toxins from your filtering organs and returning your liver and kidneys to optimal function."

Nigel's misery wasn't getting any better, Adam didn't seem to have a cure for that. He tentatively put a forkful of now cold scrambled eggs into his mouth and forced himself to swallow it. He had to make his spaceman happy again. He grimaced as he sipped at his black coffee, all of it swimming unnaturally heavy in his stomach. "I'm so sorry, my angel."

"Yes, you are," Adam very sharply replied. He finished his milk and, instead of immediately going to the sink to rinse off his plate and glass as he usually did, he pressed his lips firmly together and then closed his laptop with a decided click. Nigel waited, tense, his cup of coffee poised at his lips, bleary eyes trying to keep Adam in his tortured focus.

"You have been under a great deal of stress, and I understand your need to release it. I know that in future you will not do this again..."

Nigel fervently shook his head at Adam, hell no, no he wouldn't tempt the ire of his little spaceman again, no he would not risk losing his delightful angel, hell no, he was not going to sleep on that couch when Adam's feverish little body was lying in wait for him in the bed and all he wanted to do was bury himself against Adam's sweet skin.

"As for our courtship, I will allow it to continue. However, you must agree that we have already completed two of the tasks on its strange list. I went to dinner in an unfamiliar setting and you announced to your friend Darko that you are courting me, so I count that as one of the tasks. Second, I had a wonderful time with Micah and feel he is an intelligent and insightful child. I am rethinking my uneasy stance on having children, and though the initial few years may be of great adjustment, I do feel I have adequate tools to be a passable parent. I am not assuring you that children are a given, but I am telling you that it is now a possibility I am not so loathe to consider." Adam raised his chin and his gaze fleetingly met Nigel's before falling to his chest. His attitude was one of incredible poise and pride. "We may be doing these particular courting steps out of order, but you are to accept this. As these rituals seem to involve giving an Omega a certain degree of power within what is culturally perceived as an otherwise uneven relationship, I am fully taking advantage of this. Tonight, it is your duty to please me. I demand it."

He left Nigel blinking confused into his black coffee as he got up from the table and began rinsing his plate and glass, his movements automatic as he grabbed his laptop and headed back to the bedroom, but not before giving Nigel a sweet kiss on the top of his head. "Your skin tastes like palinka," Adam softly admonished him. "A hot shower will make you feel better."

He made a move to leave and Nigel caught his wrist, stopping him. Adam seemed reluctant to hear it, but Nigel had to say it. "I love you, my darling."

"You're not entirely forgiven yet," Adam said, raising his chin in a haughty huff at this, and Nigel could only smile, because a little bit of forgiveness from his little comet was better than none at all. "But I love you, too, Nigel. I must if I'm putting up with this."

Nigel grabbed his hand and kissed the back of it with a fervour that made his stomach flip and jump, and not from sickness this time. "I won't disappoint you like this again, my darling angel."

"No," Adam said, and it was both a warning and a fact. "You won't."

~*~
The tentative forgiveness made some of Nigel's anxiety dissipate, but there was little to help him with the heavy knowledge that Subcomisar Gorecky had received his email by now. He parked his Oltcit Club in its usual spot and eased his way out of the car, the torn seat squeaking as he stepped onto the curb. He kicked the door shut and made his way into the precinct, lighting up a cigarette as he did so and hating the way he still couldn't taste anything but booze on his tongue.

Adam had forgiven him. He probably shouldn't have since apparently he punched the shit out of a possible future employer, the rector of the University of Bucharest and who had posed not even a whiff of a threat. He was lucky Adam was able to smooth over the whole incident and had somehow convinced rector Stanislov to just put his nose on ice and walk away. The facts were plain, Nigel had been a drunken jackass. Adam's forgiving kindness wasn't about to go unrewarded, hell no, he was going to make tonight so special and make his little spaceman feel so good he would be hovering amongst the stars with those galaxies of his for weeks and weeks.

So it was with a heavy heart that he walked into the precinct and didn't even have time to give a not so cheerful nod to Darko when he was already faced with the open door to Subcomisar Gorecky's office and the large man beckoning him to go inside with sausage thick fingers and a plate of a palm. Nigel groaned at the very thought, pausing at Darko's desk first. "I'm in the dog house at home enough as it is, what the fuck does he want from me?"

Darko glanced over his shoulder at the heaving bulk of their Subcomisar. He was meek as he whispered to Nigel, "He's been in a real fit all morning, just warning you. Pacing his office and there's two bigger officials waiting in there. This whole thing about the warehouses has pissed him off big time, he doesn't like that you went poking around calling the FBI and talking to United Main officers when that's the job of the Russian branch of the anti-trafficking operations."

Nigel shrugged. "Are his fucking panties too tight? I got the information needed, didn't I?"

"Don't ask me, man. I'm just warning you, he's in a hell of a mood."

Nigel was still feeling sick and he was sure he still reeked of booze. Steeling himself, his forced his queasiness down and marched for Subcomisar Gorecky's office, If he was about to be hung for doing his investigation properly then so fucking be it. He'll even hand Gorecky the fucking tapes and tell him about his suspicions as to the identity of the Chesapeake Ripper, really give him some rope to hang him with. So far he'd kept that particular information under wraps and he wasn't keen to use it unless it was absolutely necessary. He'd seen the body count of that particular bastard, he wanted to stay off his radar.

He couldn't understand why he was even having a meeting, the email was information for the militia, it was their job to go in and do a rescue mission at this point. He stood confused in the small square that was Gorecky's office, two goons from upper ranks standing near the window that opened up into a back alley. Nigel clicked his back heels together as was the custom when greeting a superior officer in full uniform. "Subcomisar Gorecky," he said in greeting.

"Sit down, Nigel," Gorecky said, his voice weirdly gentle for such a large man. He spilled wide across his desk, his body barely contained within the chair he was wedged in, the man too big in so many ways, enough to dwarf a massive oak desk and make it seem like it was a kid's school table. "First, I think it's important that I acknowledge the hard work and good result you had in the freeing of those Omegas in our last raid. There have been no more casualties, I'm happy to report, and the survivors have been making a full recovery. That's something to be proud of, Nigel. I hope you are."

Nigel shrugged at this, irritated. "It's my job."

"It's a thankless one, and I'm giving you the recognition you deserve for it. So shut up and sit down and if I hear one curse word out of that snarling mouth of yours, you'll be donating five bucks a curse towards the coffee fund. You'll keep us going all year with that gutter mouth of yours." He pointed a finger the size and width of a polish sausage at the unlit cigarette dangling in Nigel's mouth. "No smoking in my office."

Nigel groaned and collapsed into the chair opposite Gorecky. He knew he was smelling pretty ripe and still suffering a serious hangover, facts that were making the other two superior officers in the room look at each and cringe at being this close to his stinking aura. Nigel kept his unlit cigarette dangling at the corner of his mouth, figuring if he was going to be treated like trash on the inside he might as well look it on the outside. Gorecky wasn't a bad guy, per se, but he was an upper level officer and sometimes lost sight of what was happening on the front lines while he played nice and smoothed over political boo-boos that other departments seemed to revel in. Like the case last week of the lead officer in the drug-trafficking brigade being caught with a mini grow-op in his downstairs bathroom. Gorecky was the one who had to stand in front of the cameras and assure everyone that all that thinly held chaos was under control. His massive size helped with that, he was a human metaphorical wall.

Nigel crossed his arms, his long legs stretched out before him, ankles crossed. "What's all this about?"

"I was talking to Agent Jack Crawford of the FBI. You've been in correspondence with him for the past couple of days, and it's real nice that I find out about that after the fact and through an email. I'll admonish you about that later, we have more important things to argue about at present. Like how you got the intel about where the Omegas are being housed on United Main soil." He pointed at the goons in the corner. "General Drubek is head of our international communications. He's a tad annoyed you didn't go through their department first since they know how to talk to United Main citizens better than you do. There's a lot of cultural and political differences, Nigel, you could have impeded this investigation by saying the wrong thing. I'm guessing being an Alpha helped you get a free ride."

Nigel made a face. "What the fuck are you talking about, he's a fucking FBI Agent, there's no reason I wouldn't talk to him freely, he's on our side!"

"That's ten leu, Nigel. It doesn't matter, you know we don't converse between regions without going through the proper channels, and in this case it's Chestor-General de Politie Drubek."

Drubek gave Nigel a withering glare, an easy task for the tall, bald man whose eyes shone black down at him. It was easy to think of being on the end of his gun, getting executed, but Nigel was irritated by this grandstanding rather than frightened.

"Yeah, it's real fucking nice, isn't it, how we can sit in this office of yours and have this nice little fucking chat and talk and talk and fucking talk until our goddamned tongues fall out and meanwhile there's nearly eighty of our Omegas dying on United Main soil, right this minute, because the need to talk is more fucking important than the need to act! You're a General, hunh? What are you going to do right now, kick the sense into me, like you do your prisoners? Fucking jackass!"

Gorecky sat back in his chair, and from the way it creaked Nigel had to wonder if its weight load had reached its limit. "I guess you'll be keeping us in coffee for a while, Nigel, so thanks in advance. Listen, I am perfectly aware of the problematic timeline happening here, from our calculations those Omegas have four days at the most to survive this before starvation really kicks in. No one wants to have boxes of ashes sent home. So here's what's going to happen--Since you've established such a lovely rapport with the helpful citizens of the United Main, namely Crawford and his profiler Will Graham, we are sending you to Baltimore to rescue our Omegas and bring them back. We got one of our seaships parked at the international dock, and we've got a medical team there on stand by. Our problem is getting past the GSF. Jack Crawford can't go near the place, no judge will give him a warrant in their current political climate and even if he goes rogue to find the Omegas himself they will end up in GSF facilities." Gorecky sighed, "There are orders under the table for GSF to shoot suspicious FBI agents on sight. The Coastline is under the belief that the FBI is a Mainland supporter. From where I'm sitting, there's only one thing that can be done."

General Drubek stepped up in front of Nigel and held out his hand. "Congratulations, Chief Inspector Nigel Ionescu, you've been promoted to Comisar de Politie. Your first job is to hop on a plane and enact a delicate rescue mission on the United Main. Your plane leaves late tomorrow morning. The timeline is cutting things very close, if they are still alive, they are already in bad physical shape."

Nigel balked at this and refused to shake the Chester-General de Politie's hand. The man stared down at him in stoic blankness, the absolutely dead heart of him finally sending a jolt of fear through Nigel's gut. "The United Main is too fucking dangerous for a guy like me right now, you're sending me on a fucking suicide mission!"

"Jack Crawford will meet you at the Baltimore airport tomorrow at seventeen hundred hours. This is not optional, Comisar Ionescu."

"This is going to be impossible," Nigel said, shaking his head, a sense of panic rising within him. "If I go there and they get wind of why, the GSF will put a bullet through my back!"

"Nigel."

Subcomisar Gorecky spread wide his massive hands and gave Nigel a helpless shrug. His voice was suspiciously soft, as though he was placating the moment, but Nigel knew better. He was being rewarded for all his hard work, all right, he was doing the job the Russian military was loathe to step up and do. "This is a very uneasy political situation we have found ourselves in. If we ship this whole operation over to the military, it will be considered an act of war by the United Main. General Drubek has made the entire scenario very clear to me. The only way we can keep the peace and keep their problems on their shores is if we send in a guy like you."

"You're going to fucking sacrifice me, you fucking prick."

Gorecky clasped his massive hands together and wove them into thick ropes on the surface of his desk. He kept Nigel unwavering in his sights, his stance firm. "You are going, and you are coming back. Don't think for a second that we expect anything less."

~*~

Fuck.

Fuck this shit, fuck, fuck, fuck.

Nigel kicked the lockers in the change room of the precinct's gym, hard enough to make his feet ache. If the damned job wasn't making him feel bruised and battered enough before, it was slamming his face against concrete now. Curious chesters poked their head in to see what all the shouting and banging was about, only to quickly retreat when they saw it was Nigel. His Alpha instincts were running full force and it was unwise to confront him, his fury turning him into a snarling animal as he kicked and punched at the lockers, denting two of them so badly they would need to be replaced.

Knuckles bruised, he stood back, his hands on his hips as he forced himself to calm down. The locker room held the smells of too many other Alphas and Betas, so when the gentle waft of an Omega began winding its way through the room, Nigel hesitated, his fury instantly quelled as he took in the scant notes of fear within the pheromones. He rolled his eyes and crossed his arms over his chest as Inspector Dula walked into the room, a towel casually thrown over his shoulder to suggest he was coming here for a workout. Of course Nigel wasn't fooled. He cursed and threw another punch at a locker, though it was with significantly less force, he didn't like the thought of upsetting Dula.

"Darko sent you in here?" Nigel asked.

Inspector Dula was a great cop and not one prone to lying to his superiors. He hung his head in cautious submission. "Yeah. We, uh, we already know what happened, boss. You got a promotion. Congrats, I guess." His officer nodded at this, his slight build nearly dwarfed within his own uniform, but Nigel knew better, he'd witnessed Inspector Dula take down trafficking goons twice his size and cuff them rodeo style. No wilting violet here, not even with all the motherly scents still swilling around him. He knew why Darko had sent him in specifically, nothing like an Omega still full of pregnancy hormones to quell the savagery of an Alpha's fury. "I see you found a uniform that fits right," Nigel said, pointing to the buttons on Inspector Dula's black cotton shirt.

"Back to the flats," Inspector Dula joked. "Stopped breast feeding a week ago, thank God. I hated it, even though it was sore as hell drying up it was nothing compared to being a damned snack bar for three months."

Nigel lightly chuckled at this. "Guess your man Hadar is disappointed to see them go."

"Not really. It's not like he got to enjoy them, they were too damn sore and they leaked. Nothing sexy at all about them, trust me, they were gross."

Inspector Dula stood awkwardly in front of Nigel, and he took in the highly feminine contours that made a male Omega what he was. He could see, in a way, why the male of the gender was considered so exotic, the fine lines of his cheekbones, the smoothness of skin, the near alien grace with which he moved. Basically, all of the components of the female of the gender with just a small amount of brute strength added, which was admittedly illusory. Sure, Dula could take down suspects as well as the rest of them and had a toughness that was wiry and hard to handle, but male Omegas had more delicate immune systems than their female counterparts and every cut Dula got ended up getting infected. He might have strong muscles but Inspector Dula was on sick leave a lot, constantly on antibiotics and severely affected by environmental irritants like harsh cleaning products and overly bright lights. His pregnancy had been very difficult, he'd spent the last three months of it in hospital on bed rest, being monitored around the clock.

He kept Dula out of the fight of the takedowns for this reason, keeping him around on the periphery as a calming influence on violent suspects. His presence on volatile scenes had been indispensable, especially when he was in the early stages of his pregnancy, where punters were more than happy to divulge information to a seemingly helpless, fragile Omega in the interrogation room. They got a lot of leads thanks to Inspector Dula's coy, feigned flirtation. He really knew how to reel those smug bastards in.

"How's the baby?"

Inspector Dula grinned widely at this question. "She's doing good. A feisty little Alpha, cut a tooth already, that's our Amelia. I'll get Hadar to bring her to the station, she loves the attention. It'll be fun watching all you Alpha bastards fuss over her, especially Darko. I still can't get over how he bawled when I brought her in when she was a week old, remember that? Big tough bastard holding her in his arms and he melted like a pile of ice cream on a sunny sidewalk."

"He's a sentimental son of a bitch," Nigel agreed. There was a big hole in his gut that he was filling with sorrow at the thought of having to tell his best friend that was being shipped overseas. Adam was on the periphery of his mind, his darling angel was too embedded in his heart to even think about right now, not when the thought of leaving his spaceman behind turned that pumping organ into a bomb set to detonate. He swallowed down his emotions, a difficult thing for a man who was so used to wearing all of them openly the way a person wears a shirt. He wiped the moisture at his eyes with the heel of his hand, and thought about Adam in Inspector Dula's place, with a little round belly and pert breasts and he pushed the instinctive, animal thought away, his heart setting off that timer inside of himself, the bomb getting ready to blow.

"They got me heading overseas.  Tell Darko I'll give him a call with all the details later. I'll need a ride to the airport."

Dula smiled, but there was worry inside of it, and Nigel hated that he'd put that there.  "Sure thing, boss."

Nigel made his escape out of the precinct through a back door that led into the alley. He kicked aside garbage as he slid a cigarette between his lips and lit it, the smoke trailing after him as he walked amongst the stinking filth. He couldn't go home yet, he needed a good head's up as to what to expect when he got to Baltimore tomorrow night and he knew just the person to give him more puzzling pieces.

~*~

The harried nurse looked up at him in impatience, her clipboard hugged tight against her thin chest, and though she looked as though she was made of cellophane she stood her ground and glared right back up at him without flinching. "Darlene Yousef checked herself out of the hospital, against the advice of her physician, late yesterday afternoon. We don't know where she went. She picked up some clothes out of the lost and found and took off out of the hospital. We're not a prison, here, Mr. Ionescu, we heal the sick and if they want to leave, they can. She went through a terrible ordeal, we're not going to hold her like she's an accused criminal."

It was on the tip of his tongue to shout how he damned well knew this, but for fuck's sake, she was a key witness and now all hope he had for figuring out what the hell to expect in the United Main was gone. He cursed and the nurse gave him a dirty look as she stomped down the corridor away from him, curious onlookers hooked up to IVs giving him a judgemental once over. He'd just missed her by an hour or two at the most, by the look of things, they hadn't even gotten round to fully emptying her room. The other surviving Omega she shared the room with was still in rough shape, barely conscious and hanging onto life with a slower, less lucid recovery. She was still painfully thin, and in an induced coma to keep her body in full rest mode. When she was awake she tore out the life saving tubes in panicked delusion and the risk of infection was too high. It would be several more days before doctors would even try to bring her into full consciousness. Nigel sank into the chair between her and Darlene's empty bed, his palms roughly coursing over his face as he tried to figure out what the hell he was going to do. How was he going to break this to Adam? He was still in the doghouse after the stunt he pulled punching out the rector of the university, and it was a miracle all its own that Adam had at least partially forgiven him for that.

Out of habit he began searching Darlene's bed, turning over the mattress and completely stripping the dirty sheets that the nurses hadn't yet had time to get to. He was rummaging through the drawers of the small night table by the bed and there, sitting plain and obvious in the centre of it, was a small, black cell phone. There was a bright pink sticky note attached to it, making sure whoever found it sent it along to the proper person it was meant to be gifted to.

'To Inspector Nigel Ionescu of the politia Romana.'

Frowning, he picked it up, the weight of what it possibly contained too heavy to contemplate. With a shaky swipe of his thumb he brought the screen into wakefulness, an image of a human heart, a real one, like an artist's rendering of a surgical photo, greeted him.

There was a message in a green band laying in wait across it. Swallowing though his throat was dry, Nigel ducked his head past the curtain and pulled it over, ensuring he had full privacy before he swiped the green band and read the bubble of information waiting for his eyes alone.

'Inspector Nigel Ionescu. I am pleased to make your acquaintance. My daughter Darlene has told me wonderful things about you.

I look forward to meeting you. Fate has entwined us in ways that are both complex and sympathetic, though you may not yet believe this to be true. You will. As Bellona became the consort of Mars, so we become united in the ramifications of battle. The bloody sword is waiting, Inspector Ionescu. On whose side shall you wield it?

Yours, ever in anticipation,
C.R.'

C. R.

The Chesapeake Ripper.

Nigel felt a cold clutch at his heart as he pocketed the cell phone and made his way out of the hospital, his breath uneven as he tried to keep his panic under control. He knew he was supposed to reveal this to his superiors, he should be telling Darko about it, anyone. But there was a strong feeling within his gut that to do so would guarantee his death warrant. He needed to keep his big mouth shut for once. He needed to go home and bury himself in the celestial comfort of his angel and pretend that none of this shit was about to bury him.

~*~

"But I always make dinner."

"Complaining already, this is the faith you have in me! All you have to do is sit down and take it easy, tonight you are not making it, and that's final. Is it such a bad thing, me doing something special for you, giving you everything you desire? I'm making your favourite, macaroni and cheese and chicken and broccoli. Give me a break, my darling, I'm trying really hard not to fuck this up."

Adam shifted where he stood in the entrance to the kitchen, watching Nigel as he put the water on to boil from the noodles. The thought of making macaroni and cheese from scratch was a bit daunting, but there was an app on his cell phone that was more than adequate when it came to recipes and Nigel knew how to damn well read. The milk was scorching a little, but no big deal. The cheese melted the right way and he might have added too much mustard, and why not some wine? Lots of garlic. The sauce smelled heavenly, his angel was going to love this!

"I think it might be burning, Nigel. And you added too much flour."

"For fuck's sake, Adam, it's just a cheese sauce, stop worrying about it, go look at your lovely nebulas and I'll call you out here when it's ready." He gave Adam's little frown a kiss at the centre of his forehead, liking how the tiny measure of wrinkled skin instantly smoothed at this. He felt forgiven. His heart beat hard at the very thought.

He wasn't sure how long that feeling was going to last because he still hadn't told Adam he was leaving late tomorrow morning and he couldn't be sure how Adam was going to take the news. The facts were, he was wandering into the midst of what was a highly volatile situation that could easily blow up in his face at any moment, not the least of which being on a serial killer who was now a cult leader's radar. He wanted to push his fears aside, give Adam at least one good night to remember him by if it all went to shit, and dammit, he felt like he was failing it already, his head so full of worries and doubts and fuck, he did burn the fucking sauce!

He strained the noodles and put it all together anyway, hoping the burnt taste didn't invade it too much (it did), and that Adam wouldn' turn his nose up at it (he did), because he was trying really hard, really damned hard to keep it all together and it was a fight he was set to lose.

"It's ready!" Nigel shouted into the hall and then he quickly lit candles and dimmed the lights in the kitchen and poured the chilled white wine that had a sweet taste Adam liked, and with a flourish of presentation, he put both plates of burnt macaroni with black bits, undercooked chicken and overcooked sickly green broccoli onto the table. He lit a candle and hoped Adam didn't notice how awful it was.

Adam sat at his seat, admiring the effort Nigel had made. "This is very romantic, Nigel." he said, and he was blushing. He poked around his meal with his fork and gave Nigel a grimacing grin that didn't have a hint of genuine delight in it.

Nigel sat defeated in his chair, the meal not exactly all that great to him, either. He took a bite of the macaroni and cheese and all he could taste was burnt milk and flour. He sighed over it and pushed his plate away, eyeing the pots and pans he'd used that were still piled high in his sink.

"Pizza?"

"Ham and pineapple."

"Just the way you like it, my little spaceman."

Adam patiently gathered up their plates and scraped them into the garbage, remarking that at least Nigel didn't make an overabundance of the meal thus there was fairly little waste. The bleeding chicken was still salvageable if they put it back into the oven to cook more. Nigel shook his head, the image of the bloody chicken making him feel sick.

"I appreciate the effort you are making, Nigel. This does please me." His blue eyes were wide in the dim light of the kitchen, which clearly relaxed him, and despite the absolute disaster of the meal he was more than happy to remain in the candlelit space. He shrugged happily over his chilled glass of wine and smiled shyly at Nigel, who gave him a lascivious wink in return. Ah, look at him, playing so innocent like he doesn't know what kind of crazy this drives him! His little angel spaceman, looking up at him all coy and soft smiles and wetting his lips after each sip of wine, like he didn't know what the image of that little darting tongue was doing to him. Fucking devious, that was his little angel. Driving him mad without even knowing.

He glanced up at Nigel through the firelight of the candle and Nigel's heart felt as though it was about to stop, the little bomb ticking within it holding the moment in a tense pause. "Nigel," Adam whispered in the half light, his lips so sultry and wet as he spoke. "Did you order it?"

Nigel blinked. "Order what, darling?"

"The pizza."

Reality boomed its way into the space and Nigel was fumbling for the cell phone and accidentally took out the one the Chesapeake Ripper had left for him before pocketing it and getting out his own. He quickly ordered the pizza while Adam blandly looked on, transfixed by the candles dancing within the influence of Nigel's exaggerated movements.

Nigel hung up his cell.

"You have two phones," Adam said to him, the little frown returning. "Why?"

"It's part of the investigation, darling, it was left behind by one of the Omegas." Nigel closed his eyes, hating having to give Adam this half truth so he didn't worry. "There are family contacts on it, I needed to go through them. She checked herself out of hospital and left it behind, I'll be giving it back to her when we find her again."

Adam didn't find this all that difficult to understand. "If she left it behind, she doesn't want it. If it was important to her, she would have kept it. I wouldn't just lose my laptop, and a phone for someone like that is even more important. This was done on purpose. She doesn't want to go back to her family."

No, she doesn't, my darling, she wants to go into the United Main and fight a battle that has nothing to do with her and leave her family in tearful tatters, the stupid bitch.

Nigel bridged the small gap between them, capturing Adam's face in his hands. The candlelight set lovely shadows into the hollow of his cheeks, the flames dancing brightly within his eyes, trapped stars that stared back in explosive brilliance back at Nigel. He kissed him long and slow, taking his time to weave his tongue against his angel's, savouring every molecule of flavour that his precious cosmonaut gave up. Adam's throat uttered a tiny whimper at the passion of it, and Nigel could feel his cock get hard at the sound, need working its way through his consciousness.

He didn't want to lose him. He kissed him again, and then again, not letting him up for air, his passion poured into the slight catch of Adam's breath, his hands hungry for his body. He didn't want to imagine it, a life without nights full of heavenly bodies, of the lack of fucking nebulas and density spiral theory. How was he going to survive without the whisper of the speed of comets (a wide variation of 10 to 70km per hour, dependent upon shape and proximity to the Earth's orbit) placed lovingly against his ear?

He didn't know how much time had passed, but it was enough for the pizza to be delivered and he paid for it and brought it to the kitchen wordlessly, the box brought into the dark space and placed on the counter, its red checker design so painfully boring and normal he could feel the lump rising in his chest and he fought against it, he had to, this was his precious darling's night and he was going to make him feel special and he was going to remember Nigel Ionescu the rest of his whole, magical, wonderful life, he most certainly fucking was.

So when Adam whispered to him, playfully teasing a kiss at his ear and smiling into it with such a supreme level of innocence, "Is this on the list of courtship rituals, Nigel? Ordering pizza the way I like it to please me?" Nigel nodded and encircled his arms around his little spacemen angel, desperate to be sure he wouldn't float away into Heaven just yet.

They were kissing again, Adam's soft lips all the more heated and tender as he slowly backed out of the kitchen, Nigel following him. The pizza was forgotten as they did this searching rotation, a gradual orbit that had Nigel's shirt unbuttoned by the time they got to the bedroom door, and Adam's flushed cheeks accentuated by the bared skin of his pale chest. Blue eyes shot into Nigel's own with a decidedly sultry purpose, the mood between them electrically static with emotions that put Nigel in a strangely incoherent daze, his tongue already tingling at the scent of Adam's slick, dying to taste every facet of him.

But the feeling, heady and disorienting as it was and so very fucking gorgeous, just like his spaceman angel, it was tainted with untruth and Nigel could feel the bitterness of it winding through his heart and ruining this moment. He stole another long, languid kiss from Adam's lips, and then placed another on his bared shoulder, lips suckling along increasingly bared skin until they found an erect, hot nipple which he nipped at, sending a feverish shudder through his beloved's body, the shiver of his skin hot beneath Nigel's palms.

"Baby," Nigel said, barely registering that Adam's pants were already gone, that there was nothing but thin cotton boxers in the way of the trickling slick that was sickly sweet and strong, making Nigel's cock ache. "I have to go on a plane tomorrow morning." Nigel felt the tears fall, large drops into his angel's scalp, which was so hot, burning so much he could practically hear his tears sizzle. "I don't want to go, but I have to, people are going to die if I don't go..."

"Nigel?" Adam's eyes were wide, still laced with lust and need and yet there was a new emotion gaining momentum now and Nigel knew he'd ruined everything, his heart was set to implode and die. Adam shook violently in his grip, the fear so overwhelming, all Nigel wanted to do was drown him in kisses and caresses and try to convince his brilliant little space baby that it was all okay, he was going to be fine, there was no real danger.

"You're going to the United Main?" Panic rose within Adam's voice and he choked on a sob. His hands were busy on Nigel's body, as though placing him within his touch's memory, not wanting to let him go. "It's too dangerous! They can't make you! You'll be killed, Nigel, the GSF barely let me through, and you're rescuing Omegas and...Nigel you are going to die!"

"I'm not going to die, I'm coming back, my angel, I won't die."

Adam clutched hard at Nigel's shoulders, digging his fingers deep into them, leaving red marks. Nigel, heedless of Adam's panicked howls stole them from him, swallowing them down and forcing the kiss between them until Adam sank into it, his hands working on trousers, setting him free. He stepped out of them, collapsing on top of Adam, the slick so overpowering in its scent he could barely think rational thoughts. Everything was impressions. He could feel Adam's body writhing beneath his, he could sense the panic and the sorrow welled deep within his angel's breast. The feel of slick against his naked thigh, the guiding heat of Adam's hand on his needful cock.

"This will please me, Nigel," Adam harshly whispered in his ear, and he was pressing against the wet, slick entrance. He gripped the sides of Nigel's face with fierce hands, tears spilling and fear still taking reign. "I want a part of you. I need to keep it, because it's so dangerous, Nigel, you could die, and no, I can't not have something of you, I...I want this. Give me this. I want it."

Fuck, he was hot, like lava, fiery licks of slick along his cock as he pressed deep inside, sparks of a comet scraping against his insides, his heart exploding full supernova, the formation of a massive star, the birth and death identical, the forces of energy so massive he could only watch as Adam collapsed into his arms, the knotting deep into that burning hot nucleus. Nigel felt scorched as he tightly held Adam's limp body in his arms, arms encircling him in as protective an embrace as he could give. No comets would crash into this, no ricochet of the big bang to unsettle their union, the expansion of the universe would not tear them apart. This was their galaxy, these arms, this central, burning heart.

"I love you so much," Nigel shuddered into him, his voice gasping into Adam's ear in desperation, hoping he could still hear him despite the near coma of sensation his knotting created in the ill prepared Omega. "I promise you, I'm coming back, I'm not leaving you behind. I'm coming back to my universe, to my spaceman." Tears spilled onto Adam's face, his eyes rolled back in a secretive bliss that Nigel wasn't allowed to follow. He groaned into the shudder of his orgasm, the waves of physical pleasure not matching the miserable desperation he felt. "Remember this, if nothing else my darling, my angel. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I love you so fucking much."