Star Ocean: Till The End Of Time Fan Fiction ❯ Yaoi Ocean 3 ❯ Chapter Ten: Dilemma ( Chapter 10 )

[ X - Adult: No readers under 18. Contains Graphic Adult Themes/Extreme violence. ]

Unfortunately, there's no sex in this chapter. Just some angst.

No rights, as usual.

Chapter Ten

Dilemma

After a long voyage, they finally set foot on Moonbase. Because of the shields, they couldn't be teleported directly to the lab, so they had to walk to it. The circus performers were there, among some other people. Fayt noticed that Sophia had grown strangely distant since the “incident” but she never mentioned it. Come to think of it, she avoided the male half of the party completely, particularly Fayt. He didn't like that very much, but he might feel the same way if… “No, don't even go there!” he internally screamed at himself. But it was too late. The image already arrived. His mouth twisted. His left eye twitched and his fingers curled much like a bird's around a tree branch. Cliff was the only one who saw the look. The expression that dawned Cliff's face spoke without words and it said, “What the fuck?”

Fayt immediately had to think about Cliff. He studied Cliff's body thoroughly. When that wasn't enough, he looked at Albel. Albel noticed him staring and frowned at him in confusion. Maria and Sophia were talking about something ahead of them and didn't see any of this.

Fayt's gaze went back to Cliff, then to Albel again. He took a long, deep sigh and continued. Fortunately, he found both of the other's bodies interesting enough to banish the image that had so disturbed him.

The writer is certain that the reader must be curious as to what the image was. Well, it involved Sophia… and Maria… and also Nel... in a similar predicament as what the yaoi threesome were in when Sophia walked in on them. However, this is not a yuri fic, so that is as much detail as you get.

Fayt was not interested in lesbians. He had always considered himself a guy-on-girl kind of guy. Well, how that had changed! All the same, yuri didn't appeal to him.

Cliff and Albel looked at each other, shared confusion evident on their faces. “What?” Albel mouthed, pointing at Fayt incredulously.

The blonde shrugged his shoulders in a helpless gesture, shaking his head. “No idea,” he mouthed back.

Cliff was amazed that Albel had gotten all the knots and tangles out of his hair and still managed to look rested when they arrived.

They didn't come far though, before Fayt got hit with a rock.

“Learn to dodge, fool,” Albel said. It sounded like instructions to Fayt.

It ended up being Peppita, from back at Hyda, who had thrown the rock. He was more than a little surprised to see her. After a brief reunion, they shooed her away and continued ever onwards to the base.

Much to most everyone's chagrin, Peppita showed up later too and demanded to accompany them through Moonbase. Fayt caved in to her demands, much to most everyone else's displeasure. As they were walking, Peppita looked at everyone she didn't know, making assumptions about them based on their demeanors and clothing in a typical childlike, bias kind of way.

She thought she saw something and peered closely at Albel, frowning. “You have a hickey on your neck!” she squeaked, pointing when she realized what it was. It was right above the collar, and in plain sight if anyone actually looked; barely hidden by his hair. Peppita had seen it when he turned his head a little to look at something. Peppita looked around at any possible suspects as to whose lips planted the hickey. Her gaze fell to Maria, as she knew that Sophia was more interested in Fayt and she didn't even consider the real culprit. Yaoi was not something that her child's mind yet wholly fathomed. She grinned and nudged Albel in the arm. “So, who's the lucky lady?” she asked coyly, peering up at him. No reply was forthcoming, so she made one herself. She obviously didn't know Albel well enough yet to know when to keep her mouth shut. “It must be Maria, right?” she said, pointing at Miss Traydor.

Maria's mouth moved but no sound was forthcoming. She had such a look of horror on her face that it was worth photographing. What she wanted to say was something along the lines of “I'm not interested in cross-dressers” but she was so shocked and appalled at the very idea that she couldn't speak.

Sophia's face first turned white with shock, then a sickly green as the implications reached her brain like blood spilling over a clean white tablecloth. Maybe I wasn'tdreaming…

Maria turned on her heel and started marching away rather than continue gaping at Peppita, who she was quickly growing to dislike intensely. Fayt was quick to follow her. He certainly knew how that hickey had gotten there. He glanced at Cliff as he walked by him, but nothing more. Peppita followed Fayt. Sophia picked up the pace to walk beside Maria—and away from the male half of the party. Albel glared at Cliff until it became uncomfortable and Cliff followed the rest of the group. Albel trailed behind as usual.

And so the plot thickens with the discord amongst the party members…

They ran in to a boss battle, and after that, they entered the lab. After a brief search, they found precisely what they were looking for. Much to Sophia's growing horror, she was also a member of the experiments performed on Maria and Fayt. They also discovered why this was so—and it had to do with the attack on Earth.

It was all a little over-the-top and unbelievable, but after all they had faced so far, it wasn't too hard to swallow. Apparently, the three were vital to save their universe from a “4-D being” known as “the Creator.” Naturally, their conclusion was to go to the planet Styx, where the scientists first discovered this and where the Time Gate they had discovered it from stood in the hopes of finding more information, going to the 4-D universe and ultimately stopping “the Creator.”

They headed back to the Aquaelie. Fayt almost brought Peppita along with them, but he happened to get a really good look at all the disapproving glares he was receiving from the other party members and told her to stay with her troupe. She agreed, but was a bit put-out. Fayt wondered why it was his decision anyway. If the others had simply voiced their opinions and such, he could have avoided the guilty feeling that Peppita's pouting face filled with destroyed hope had given him. She had really wanted to help.

Onboard the ship, they received the news that more planets and whatnot had been destroyed while they were gathering information at Moonbase. Regardless, in light of the situation at hand, they headed to Planet Styx post haste.

Sophia went directly to her room and stayed locked inside. Never again would she open a door before knocking. She still wasn't entirely sure that it had really happened; one hickey was hardly proof and she had woken up in her bed after all. It could always be some sick dream. But if it was a dream, what did that say about her? She wasn't sure if she wanted it to be a real memory or a dream with that in mind.

Maria, for one, simply didn't care. She didn't care what Albel did in his own time so long as he wasn't being obnoxious or troublesome in any way and him having hickeys was no concern of hers by any means; she just didn't like being accused of being the culprit. Still, who had given him the hickey? She never looked at it, so she supposed that it could still be from before he had come to the rescue back at the Training Facility. She decided that that must be it; it was the most likely explanation. Satisfied with that answer, she did computer-related things for a while before she went to bed.

The door opened in Cliff's room. Cliff looked up in time to see Albel storm over to him and backhand him. The blonde was growing accustomed to this sort of violence.

“I didn't know you had a hickey!” Cliff complained.

Albel's eyes narrowed into dangerous slits. “Considering that you are the one that put it there, worm, I find that unlikely.”

Cliff rolled his eyes. “Fine. Let's go to the sick bay. They can heal bruises there; they can heal the hickey too if it bothers you.” The blonde stood up, stretching his back. His shirt stretched a little over his chest, giving Albel a fairly decent view of his torso.

The door opened partway and Fayt stuck his head in. Upon seeing the other two, Fayt came all the way inside and the door shut behind him. He looked none too happy. He crossed his arms. “This has to stop,” he said.

Cliff paused mid-stretch. “What?”

He waved his hand around the room. “This. The three of us. I mean…” He sighed, flustered. He had composed an entire speech in his head on the walk back from Moonbase and had been rehearsing it up until now. Why couldn't he say the rest of it? Well, what had he meant to say? “Sophia walked in on us…” Fayt gestured to the door. “Peppita noticed a hickey on Albel.” He pointed at the hickey in question. The Elicoorian scowled. Fayt crossed his arms. “I don't really want everyone to catch on.”

Cliff conceded that Fayt had a point. Oh, what would he ever do if Mirage found this out? He groaned inwardly at that idea. “Yeah…”

Albel looked from one to the other skeptically.

Fayt was relieved that Cliff felt the same way. “Okay. So this stops now.”

The Klausian nodded his head slightly. “Right. We've had too many close calls lately. So we'd better cool it for a while.”

Albel strode over to Fayt, raised his fist, and punched him in the face as calmly as if he were swatting a fly. Fayt fell back against the wall. The Elicoorian rounded on Cliff, but the blonde caught his hand, and then the other one when that one came up too. In that moment, Albel made a mental note: Attack Cliff first, while he was unsuspecting.

“What the hell!” Fayt demanded, nursing his cheek where he had struck him.

Cliff held Albel out at arm's reach, and not without effort. “What's your deal?” he demanded.

Albel stopped struggling against him, but Cliff knew better than to relax his grip until the other's rage had cooled. “Both of you…!” He wasn't really certain of how to communicate his real feelings. Right now, he was angry because of how pathetic Cliff and Fayt were acting. How strong could they really be if they were afraid of some people finding out? Why was it a big deal? Why couldn't he make them see that being afraid of something like that was silly and childish?

But Cliff and Fayt were adamant. They knew that things could get really awkward if the truth came out. They had friends, coworkers, and the like to deal with. They didn't want to go through their lives with something like that acting as a disturbing barrier between them and the rest of the galaxy.

“I'm going to let go of you now,” Cliff said after several seconds had passed by. “If you attack us again, I'm throwing you out in the hallway. Or, you can be civil and we'll talk about what to do.” Cliff let go of him. Albel stepped away and sat down on the bed heavily. Cliff sat back down in the chair. Fayt leaned against the wall. There was a long moment of silence in which no one spoke nor looked at each other. Cliff looked from Fayt to Albel. The former seemed to be content to keep his mouth shut and the latter was too angry to speak. He sighed. Looks like it was up to him. “So.” Bad start. He tried again. “We have a problem; we need to find a way to be more discreet if we're gonna keep this up.”

Albel looked up briefly, then back at the floor. Fayt glanced at Cliff. “Any ideas?”

Cliff picked up his scanner. “Yep.” He explained to Fayt that he could put a censor outside the door that would make the scanner alert them to anyone approaching.

“And no more marks,” Fayt said.

“Right.” Cliff glanced sideways at Albel. “Hey, Albel, how about heading over to the—“

“Both of you are pathetic,” he noted.

The other two stuttered a bit in a confused way before Fayt demanded an explanation.

Albel rolled his ruby eyes and looked up at them. He had finally found the right way to word what he really meant and now was as good a time as any. “You're acting cowardly. Who cares if people know? If I were a woman, would either of you be hesitant to be with me? If I were a woman, would either of you care about being secretive?”

“But you're a man,” Fayt insisted.

The Elicoorian blinked. “And that makes a difference, fool? Why?” His tone was accusatory.

Cliff sighed. He was old enough and wise enough to know and realize that the younger man had an excellent point. But he also knew how to counter it. Why did he feel guilty though? He brushed the feeling aside. “It makes a difference because the other people we interact with will view us and treat us differently.” He straightened a little. “Take Sophia for example. After she walked in on us, haven't you noticed that she's been acting strange?” He looked at Fayt for that one.

Fayt nodded. “She's been kind of distant and quiet around me.”

Albel snorted. “You can't use her as an example; she's jealous.”

Another good point. It's natural that Sophia would act differently; she had liked Fayt, so she might react differently than someone who was indifferent about any of them. Cliff waved the matter aside. He really wanted Albel to be right, but he couldn't let him win the argument; Cliff knew better. “Not the point. It'll change the way people act and behave around and towards us. Do you really think that's a good idea?”

“I don't see why you're worried about it.”

But the Klausian knew a good counter to that one too. Some sadistic part of him was anxious to see Albel's reaction to what he would say next. And another part wanted Albel to somehow know how to make everything all right. Fayt wasn't sure who he wanted to win the debate. “What if we were back on Elicoor and… Oh… maybe some of your Black Brigade soldiers saw me fucking you,” Cliff said.

Some colour rose to Albel's cheeks and he dropped his head again without saying anything, but at that point, he hardly needed to. Ah, so he finally found a way to hit home. Cliff smiled with satisfaction. A tingling of guilt and—was it disappointment?--welled inside him.

Fayt pursed his lips together. “So, we need to either stop or be more discreet.”

The general conclusion was to cool it for a while and be more discreet afterwards. Albel left to go back to his room. Fayt bid Cliff a good night and went to his room. Cliff leaned back in the chair. Maybe he should go see about Albel. He hadn't taken any of that very well, and he wanted them to be on good terms. He sighed, contemplating actually doing that for several minutes and eventually convinced himself that checking on him was the right thing to do—besides, he wanted to make sure Albel went to the doctor and got rid of that hickey.

He walked across the hall to Albel's room, knocked once and entered as he told him to go away. The Glyphian was sitting down on the bed sideways, fiddling with something. “I told you to `go away,'” he snapped.

The door slid shut. Cliff was still inside the room. He crossed his arms. “I just wanted to make sure that you were all right.”

Albel glanced up at him, then back at what he was doing. “I'm fine, maggot.”

A brief silence ensued. “So you have no problems with being discreet?”

Another pause, then a shake of his head. “No. I understand your dilemma.” He stopped for a moment, then continued. “Just tell me when you're ready to stop living a lie.”

Cliff crossed his arms. “But even you conceded the point when I said that about your soldiers.”

Another brief pause—not long enough to be uncomfortable, but long enough to be considered longer than a normal gap in conversation. “There's—“

A knock at the door stopped him. It opened and Fayt stepped inside. “Oh… Am I… Interrupting?”

“Yes.”

“No,” Cliff said. “Anyway, I'm going to bed. Albel, would you go see the doctor about the hickey on your neck?” He left without waiting for a reply.

“What doyou want, worm?” Albel demanded testily.

Fayt scowled. “Just to make sure that we were all in agreement.”

“I already talked to Cliff about that.”

“Oh… Then it's okay?”

“Mm.”

Fayt nodded. “All right. I'll leave you alone then.” He hesitated, but couldn't think of another reason to stay.

About time… the Elicoorian thought.

The blue-haired youth left. He almost returned to his room, but stopped and went to Cliff's instead. Cliff was looking at something on the computer. He turned when Fayt came inside. Fayt didn't say anything, but sat down heavily on the bed. He looked at the blonde Klausian briefly, considering. “You know… Albel has a point.”

Cliff leaned back in the chair. “Yeah, I know. But so do we.”

“Yeah…”

“What would you do if Sophia and Maria knew—really knew? Sophia doubts what she sees—thanks to you putting her in her bed—but what if she knew, y'know?” Cliff waited for Fayt to respond.

The Earthling considered his answer. What would he do? He had known Sophia for a very long time. He certainly didn't want to wreck his relationship with her and he cared about her. But sneaking around wasn't really something he wanted to do either. “I don't know,” he finally answered. “Sophia's my friend, and I'd like to keep it that way. But I don't want to pretend I'm not doing something I am either.”

Cliff nodded. He felt the same way, but what to do? Well, it's not like they had to come to a conclusion now, and he said so. “Maybe after all this stuff with the Creator is finished, we'll figure something out,” he said. That seemed to content Fayt, for the moment, but it did bring other questions to the surface. None of those questions he wanted to address though, so he let it be.

“You're right.” He fought back a yawn. “I'm going to sleep. Night.” He walked over to Cliff, as casually as ever, and kissed him. He had intended it to be a simple goodnight kiss, a church kiss, but Cliff pulled him down to him and kissed him like he had, what seemed so long ago, back in the mines. Fayt moaned against his mouth. Cliff stood up, lifting Fayt with him. Tongues met, saliva swapped, and breathing deepened with the kiss. It was turning in to the kind of kiss that never ended with just a kiss.

Fayt broke away and shook his head before they got carried away. “No,” he said. “Not right now,” he insisted. He looked up at Cliff. “Let's get some sleep, all right?”

Cliff sighed noisily and put him down. He supposed that, with all that Fayt had learned, with all that was going on, it was natural for the boy not to have much of a sex drive at the moment. In the face of disaster, Cliff liked to have sex; it helped dull the disaster for him, added some stress-relief to the moment. But Fayt wasn't up for it.

He watched him go. He considered going to Albel with his desires and thought better of it. The other wouldn't be interested either; he had still seemed a little put-out. Besides, he might just end up getting yelled at… considering that they had decided to not do things like that for a while and be more discreet.

Cliff doubted that Albel would go to the doctor on his own. Oh, well. He supposed it wasn't that big of a deal anyway, and it would go away soon on its own. He went back to browsing through the computer's database.

Fayt paused outside of his room, then glanced at Albel's door. He had seemed really put out. He hesitated, then knocked briefly and entered the room.

“What now?” Albel demanded without looking up.

The door slid closed. Fayt glanced nervously around the room. “I just thought… You seem upset.” No reply was forthcoming. The Earthling sighed, flustered. He wasn't sure of how to go about this. “Is there anything else you're upset about—or…”

“There's a difference between your subordinates and your friends,” Albel pointed out. He looked up. “If Sophia is really your friend, it won't change how she sees you.”

“That's easy for you to say,” Fayt shot back.

“Because I don't have any friends?”

Fayt paused. That wasn't what he had meant. Besides… he felt mildly offended at that. “I'm not your friend?”

“'Lover' maybe.”

The college student couldn't keep the pout off of his face. “Well, I consider you a friend.”

“The feeling isn't mutual.”

Fayt would have laughed if Albel hadn't been serious. “Oh.” He hesitated, then stepped over to him. “Then I'll settle for `lover.'” He leaned down and kissed Albel on the temple. Albel tilted his head up, pulling Fayt down for a real kiss. A thought occurred to Fayt and it flew out of his mouth before he could censor it. “What happens if I fall in love with either of you?” Albel's mouth stopped moving. Fayt's face flushed. “I mean—Oh, shit. It's that…”

The Elicoorian silenced him with another kiss and then abruptly shoved him away. His gaze held steady, and that, more than what he said next, hurt Fayt. “Sex has nothing to do with love, so don't worry about it.”

Maybe Fayt was still just a teenager, but that stung. He fled to his own room. Somehow, he couldn't separate “sex” and “love” in his mind. Could the other two separate it because they were older and knew better? Was Fayt too young to really tell the difference yet? He didn't feel like he loved either of them, but it still seemed wrong to separate the two. Had he just done something to jeopardize his tedious relationship with Albel by saying that? He had half a mind to go see about it now, or talk to Cliff, but he decided to lay the matter to rest instead. Pretend it had never happened. Maybe the other would do the same.

Fayt pulled off most of his clothes and curled up in bed. A million different thoughts and problems flew across his mind. He fell asleep trying to consider each one and failed. There was just too much there to really think about in a short expanse of time.

Albel continued what he had been doing before the other two interrupted—taking off his gauntlet. What Fayt had said before bothered him. He had worried that Fayt was a little too young for this, and now he knew for sure. Fayt was at the age where he fell in love quickly and easily, often unable to tell the difference between lust and love. He'd have to be careful to make that boundary more distinct for him. There shouldn't be any problems, so long as neither of the older two accidentally led him on.

The mangled arm felt sweaty and hot inside the gauntlet and it was uncomfortable. Once he had wrestled the gauntlet off, he set it down on the floor and flopped over on to his side, flexing the ruined fingers. It felt a lot better that way, and he was able to fall asleep relatively quickly.

Fayt woke up to the sound of the alarm he had set. He hit snooze, but didn't fall back asleep. He shut it off and stretched. Why had he set it again? The fog of sleep clouded his reasons for a moment. Ah, a shower! A shower!

Almost gleeful, he put on his clothes. First, he needed to find the showers. Maybe he should wake up Cliff and he could wander around with him to find them. He wanted to shower so badly; he was really looking forward to this. The idea of being clean woke him up. He wanted a shower more than he wanted to sleep right now.

He peeked inside Cliff's room. He was awake and moving around. “I'm coming in!” Fayt announced and pushed the door open all the way. Cliff was just slipping in to his shirt. Fayt's eyes trailed around his chest and stomach, then he yanked them away to the other's blue eyes.

“I'm going to the showers… But I don't know where they are. You want to come help me find them?”

Cliff immediately put on his shoes. He liked the idea of a shower just as much as Fayt did. “I don't know where they are either, but we can probably ask someone.” They went on their way to go see about it.

Fayt stopped and glanced backwards. “Should we get Albel too?”

The Klausian considered, then grinned. “He's from an underdeveloped planet, which means that they don't have showers. Let's bring him.”

Oh, this might be interesting. Fayt looked ahead. There was a patrolling soldier walking by. He almost suggested that Cliff ask the soldier about the showers and leave Albel to Fayt, but he considered his conversation with the other last night and thought better of the idea. Truthfully, he didn't want to be alone with him presently; he felt embarrassed about what he had said last night. “I'll go find out where they are. Could you go get him?”

“Right.” They split up to go about their duties. Cliff walked into Albel's room unannounced. He was a bit surprised that Albel was still asleep. He turned the light on. Albel flinched and his eyes flickered open. He turned his head to look at Cliff. He rolled back over, away from him. Ah, so he was still mad.

Cliff's eyes fell to the gauntlet on the floor, then back at Albel. “Hey, get up. We're going to go bathe. You want to come along?”

Albel considered that idea. Washing his hair would be really nice… “Yes.” Albel sat up and swung out of the bed. He was completely naked, which didn't surprise Cliff in the least, but it was pleasant. Cliff's eyes trailed along his legs, his torso, then it fell to the left arm and his expression changed. Albel noticed it, and never commented, but he touched it absentmindedly with his other hand. Cliff stepped closer to him, touching the old scars. He lifted his wrist.

“What did you do?” Cliff wondered, inspecting the pattern of scars on his arm. He was amazed that the arm wasn't rotting, and it was a bloody miracle that he could move it.

“Dragon fire,” he muttered.

“What did you do to the dragon to make it mad enough to barbecue you?”

“I didn't do anything, maggot,” he insisted.

Cliff found that difficult to believe.

The worst part was his hand. Cliff held it in both of his. Albel had such feminine hands; they were dwarfed in Cliff's. The fingernails didn't grow in very well, there was no fine body hair to speak of, and that wasn't by far the worst part. His index and middle finger looked to have, at one point, melted together and then had to be spliced apart and there were scars from the stitches. Cliff half-expected his skin to crack on contact, but it didn't. There were horrible swirling marks where the skin had melted and then charred. Other places were worse, and some were better.

“Yeah, I'd keep that covered up too,” Cliff said, dropping his arm. It was such a shame though. He glanced at his other arm—smooth skin, petite, toned. “If you'd told me about this, I could have fixed it when I cured your illness. If you want, we can go to the medical facilities here and they can probably heal your arm.”

Albel glanced down at his left arm, considering the offer. To Cliff's surprise, he shook his head. “No.” He turned away and started getting dressed. Cliff left the room. Why wouldn't he want that thing healed? Maybe it held memories for him. Cliff had some scars like that that he had never gotten healed. That had to be it.

The real reason was that Albel thought that he had earned those scars and should bear them as such.

Fayt came trotting down the hall and told Cliff the directions. “Is Albel coming?”

Cliff nodded, a little absently. “Yeah.” Just then, the door opened. The warrior had the gauntlet back on. He trailed behind the other two on the way to the showers. Cliff informed Albel about the showers, and even gave a brief history of them, which served to keep the atmosphere more jovial. Fayt wondered as to why Cliff had committed to memory such utterly useless, trivial information. However, upon considering that answer, he determined that it was probably in his best interest to not know.