The Vigilant received Luka Rothrin without ceremony, the boarding ramp sighing shut behind him and sealing away the station’s light. The ship’s interior wrapped around him in quiet promise: steel ribs and dim lighting, corridors narrow enough that he could feel the walls on either side. The air was metallic on his tongue, sharp and intimate. Space’s way of reminding him that survival was a negotiation, not a guarantee. He stopped, not from hesitation, but to feel the ship’s pulse against his skin.

Commander Ilias Varsen stood waiting. The corridor seemed built around him, or perhaps he’d simply claimed it so thoroughly that the distinction no longer mattered. Broad shoulders filled the space with an ease that made Luka want to test it, to see what would happen if he pressed closer. Varsen had the stillness of something coiled, all that strength held back just enough to let you wonder what it would feel like released. Even gravity seemed to soften around him, bending like everything else did.

Varsen’s dark gaze found Luka and didn’t let go.

“Cadet Rothrin.” His voice was low, abraded, the kind of sound you felt in your chest. “You’re late.”

Luka smiled, unwilling to let himself be intimidated. “There was an issue with the transfer shuttle, sir. You didn’t get the message packet?”

Varsen’s face didn’t change, but Luka was close enough now to see the details: the crooked nose, the permanent crease between his brows, the short-cropped black hair that was turning silver at the temples. His eyes were such a rich, deep brown he’d taken them for black at first. He had the stance of someone who’d seen too much seen, carried too much, and never set it down.

“You probably passed it en route,” Varsen grumbled. “Follow me.”

The floor dropped.

Gravity flickered and Luka’s boots left the deck, his stomach lifting with a sensation that was almost pleasure. The lights dimmed. Then the field snapped back, sudden and hard, slamming him down with enough force that the weight of his bag nearly dropped him on his ass. Varsen had remained fixed in place, his arms still crossed, his expression unimpressed.

Luka laughed, breathless. “Practical joke or temperamental ship?”

Varsen turned to lead the way. “The generator is aging. The techs have been working on it, but best to be prepared for zero G at any point.”

“Will I be issued mag boots, then?”

“You weren’t given any when you were dispatched on this detail?”

“No, sir.”

Varsen sighed, but did not answer Luka’s question as he strode along the hall. Luka watched the commander’s back, the precise economy of his movement, the way his body spoke a language of control and restraint. He felt the prickle of dangerous desire, unprofessional and undeniable.

“Keep up, cadet.”

Luka did, close enough now to smell the musk of his body as crowded the man, close enough to notice the heat radiating from skin.

“Not that close, cadet,” Varsen rumbled mildly.

Luka stepped back, but the damage was done. He’d felt the commander’s awareness shift, the slight hitch in his stride before that iron discipline reasserted itself. When they reached the crew quarters, Varsen gestured to a door without looking at him.

“0700 fleet time. Don’t be late.”

He walked away before Luka could respond, footsteps measured and deliberate, putting distance between them like it was a tactical decision. Which, Luka thought as he watched him disappear around the corner, it probably was.

His quarters were downright palatial for a cadet, but only in the sense that he was not bunked in with multiple crew members. The perks of a deep-space explorer over a combat vessel, he supposed. There was a bunk, a standard terminal desk, and a flickering light that put him in further concern over the state of the ship. The air hummed, recycled and close.

Luka trawled through the public files on the ship. Schematics. Tech books. Service leaflets. A small collection of entertainment files. Nothing remarkable. He tried pulling up engineering’s current status. A denial message blinked onto the screen: YOU ARE NOT AUTHORIZED TO ACCESS THIS DEPARTMENT.

“Like hell I’m not,” Luka muttered.

He tried going through a maintenance back door, only to be denied again. Not that was unexpected. He sat back in the cot that was both bed and terminal seat, and stared meditatively at the screen. The tip of his index finger brushed along the small scar hiding coyly beneath the curl of his bottom lip. He backed out to the staff directory and hunted for engineering—ah, there. Two techs. He pulled up their dossiers, then set about trying to log into their user profiles.

He had success with the Tech Lieutenant Saturday’s access by overwriting the biometric requirement with a borrowed security key and utilizing a combination of the man’s birthday and squad numbers. He made a mental note to note that in his report after he’d finished taking advantage of it, and navigated through to the engineering status readouts and reports.

Everything in the green, and no recent issues or corrections in the log. Luka squinted up at the cabin light that flickered at irregular intervals.

“Right.” He sighed and keyed out of the terminal, toed off his ship shoes, and slid under the blanket in the cot. He took the time to clip the Zero-G netting to the clips on the frame. He didn’t much care for the confinement, but he also didn’t want to wake up falling to his death because of whatever fun someone was having with the ship’s systems.

Finally, he shut his eyes, determined to sleep. It had been a long few days to this rendezvous. It should have been easy. Then again, his leave and the planetside shuttles to follow had left him off fleet time, and it felt like he was trying to bed down a handful of hours too early. He pulled the blanket over his face and tried to will himself to sleep.

The Vigilant breathed around him, the hull emitting the occasional ping or groan past the subtle hum of propulsion. He was counting down slowly from one hundred for the fifth time when he could have sworn he heard footsteps. Slow. Deliberate. Right by his door.

Luka squirmed from under the safety webbing and popped open his cabin door. Varsen stood a few meters away, one hand braced against the bulkhead. His jacket was gone, sleeves rolled to reveal forearms corded with muscle and exhaustion. In the low noc-light he looked some moody advertisement for space travel.

“You haunt your own corridors often?” Luka asked, voice pitched to carry.

Varsen’s head came up. Irritation shone in his eyes. Irritation and something else, something that flickered hot and was quickly shuttered away.

“You should be asleep.”

“And miss this?” Luka stepped into the corridor, swaying close enough to see the way Varsen’s jaw tighten. “Don’t tell me the great Commander Varsen’s afraid of the dark.”

Varsen said nothing.

The ship hummed between them. Gravity held, barely.

“I’ve read your record, cadet,” Varsen said finally. “I know you have a problem with insubordination. Frankly, it’s a wonder to me that your last commander didn’t drop you on an outpost and let you hitch your way home.”

“Oh, well, you know what they say,” Luka chirped, “it’s who you know, not what you know.” He winked, a little thrill running along his spine for Varsen’s scowl.

“Do us all a favor and go to bed, cadet. Nobody needs you nodding off during muster.”

Luka didn’t move. “No,” he said quietly. “You’re just as out of bed as I am.” He angled closer still.

Varsen pinned him hard with his gaze. Luka was close enough now that he could see the man’s pulse beating in his throat, could make out the earthy smell of him beyond the musk of too long up and doing without a stop to shower. Varsen’s dark eyes narrowed, his mouth turning thin and hard. Luka hesitated a moment, then cocked a grin at Varsen.

“Of course, you could always order me to bed,” Luka purred.

The thin, hard line of Varsen’s mouth twisted into a scowl.

“It’s noc hours, cadet. Back to quarters. That’s an order.”

Luka’s lower lip rolled out in a pout, the spread in a grin that gave a glimpse of the scar under his lip. “Back to your quarters would technically be following that order.”

Varsen’s eyelid ticked, and Luka sagged back a step with a little laugh. “All right, all right. I’m going.”

—

The dream started innocuously enough. The corridor again, dim and close, the ship’s pulse thrumming through the deck plates. But this time when he found Varsen in the half-light, there was no order to retreat, no professional distance maintained. This time Varsen’s hand didn’t brace against the bulkhead, instead it reached for him.

The details blurred at the edges the way dreams do. The heat of skin. The weight of a body pressing him back against cold metal. Varsen’s voice, that low rasp, saying things that violated the chain of command in all directions. The feeling of being pinned, held, wanted with an intensity that made his pulse spike even in sleep.

Luka’s breath quickened, his body responding to phantom touches, to the dream-memory of calloused hands wandering over heated skin. He gripped and tangled and kissed and bit, breaths exchanged in heavy panting as he rode the man hard in the confusion of his dreams, fluctuating between pinned to the wall and rocking along the coarse sheet lining his cot.

He woke as he came, cock spasming into his blanket, hips rolling against the pinning webbing he’d secured in case of more zero G. He gasped and panted, dazed and disoriented, the blanket tangled around his legs beneath the net. Where was he? Ah, yes. The Vigilant. It hummed around him, quiet and steady… and then the light winked a few times in the fixture above.

Luka palmed at his face and squinted at the dull metal ceiling above his cot.

“Well,” he muttered to the empty room. “That’s going to make muster interesting.”