"Play It Safe"

Play It Safe

All rights reserved by the author, and unauthorized duplication is prohibited.

"Paramecium."

Sam Waterston looked at the man beside him in bed, not as startled as he would have been six months earlier, when he had first tumbled Terence Mori into the nearest rack and screwed the slim tech until he was cross-eyed and howling.

"See, that's what I like about you, Ter. Always with the sweet talk. You know just how to get a guy's juices flowing," Sam said, grinning as Mori punched his arm, hard.

"Unlike you raider rats, I don't go into complete brain failure after I shoot my load," Mori retorted. "I've been thinking about Bogies."

Sam laughed. "I'm wounded. Five minutes ago, I had you yelling to Buddha and all the kami, and the minute you catch your breath, you think about Bogies." He reached over to tug on Mori's thick black hair. "Tell me. And use little words, lab rat."

Sam was able to understand only about a tenth of what Mori did in Medlab, but he knew Mori was determined to come up with as many ways as he could to keep Sam and the rest of the raider pilots alive. Considering that the Bogies had been bioengineered by the B'nari in the first place, Mori's talents were more than appreciated by all the pilots.

"Okay." Mori sat up, his eyes bright with excitement. "You know I've been working on nanobots to help insulate against the sonics that the Bogies use to disorient you pilots. That's all well and fine, but it's reactive. I'm just responding to their threat."

"And hoping to shoot my ass full of 'bots," Sam muttered, chuckling when Mori punched his arm again.

"What I should be thinking about is being proactive, and engineering something that can attack their systems," Mori continued, shifting a bit on the narrow bed. "We come up with a bioweapon, and I can load it in 'bots and add them to your tracer projectiles."

Sam shifted to rest his head on Mori's thigh, almost eye to eye with Mori's cock. "I'm sort of seeing how this chain of thought might have come up." He laughed out loud when Mori gave him an indignant look. "Shit, all weapons are phallic, to some extent. Fucking the enemy over is more than just a metaphor when I slam a missile into his engine's intake."

"Now who's sweet talking who?" Mori said, his cock twitching reflexively under Sam's scrutiny. "I'm serious about the being proactive thing, though. We need to take the fight to them."

Sam tugged Mori back down, reaching for the cool white sheet and pulling it up over them both. Mori settled into his favorite position, his back pressed against Sam's chest and his ass tucked into the curve formed by Sam's thighs and groin.

"You're sexy when you're fierce, you know that, Ter?" Sam rested his cheek against Mori's hair, his arm wrapping around the slender tech, and he fell asleep moments later.

Smoke filled the corridors of the Leviathan as Sam tried to find his way down to Level 18 and Medlab. He choked, the stench of overheated circuitry and burning fabric filling his nostrils while the klaxons screamed in his ears. Emergency lighting was not enough to penetrate the gloom, and the smoke only seemed to thicken as he ran. Sam fought down a wave of panic as he turned a corner and found himself in an unfamiliar corridor.

It was like some B-vid horror show, and Sam shuddered as he looked around, trying to reorient himself. It was impossible to be lost in this section of the ship. Sam knew it intimately. This was the pilots' quarters, where he had slept almost every night since he had been assigned to the Leviathan, not counting those nights he had spent with Mori. Or the nights Mori had spent with him, squeezed into his narrow rack. This section of the corridor should have held the stairs, and Sam's head whipped back and forth as he looked for the familiar door.

Harsh voices rang out from the corridor he had just left, and Sam pressed himself against the wall, his heart racing. He felt his hip, knowing that his sidearm was not there. It was all part of the nightmare, to be alone and unarmed, on a ship that was burning and crawling with Bogies. They would be looking for Mori, for the man that designed the 'bots that were grinding away at them inexorably. Sam sucked in a ragged breath, working up the nerve to make the open dash down this corridor and around the corner, to where the stairs had to be waiting. He took the first step, eyes tearing and lungs burning, and he heard Mori scream his name.

"Sam!"

Sam felt someone shake him, hard, and he came awake with a start. "Ter!" He turned his head to look at the slim tech, eyes wild as he cupped Mori's face between his hands. "You were screaming..." Sam groaned as Mori's eyes widened, his hands dropping away. "Sorry. Fuck. I must have been dreaming."

"That was some dream," Mori muttered. He shifted, moved his head to Sam's shoulder, one arm around Sam's waist, and settled back down.

Sam lay there, feeling his heart rate slowly fall back to acceptable levels.

"Ter?" Sam nudged his lover until he got a grunt. "Do me a favor? Forget the proactive shit, okay?"

"Thought I was sexy when I was fierce, raider rat," Mori mumbled, a small smirk curving his lips.

Sam snorted. "Sexier alive, lab rat."

That dragged a sleepy chuckle out of Mori. "That was almost sweet. Remind me to fuck you in the morning."

"You going to do it?" Sam grunted as Mori rearranged himself, settling back in his favored position.

"Play it safe? I will when you will. Now shut up and let me sleep."

Sam curled around Mori, his face buried in Mori's thick black hair, trying to breathe around the fear that closed off his throat.