Dan had expected to rejoin the survey crew by nightfall, but an unexpected headwind slowed their progress to a crawl.  “It's getting dark soon," he told the person on the other end of the radio, “and I don't want Dali to...run into something we can't see."

Dali looked affronted. “I can see just fine, thank you very much.  And we're crossing what amounts to a prairie. What could I possibly hit?"

“Shouldn't you be paying attention to the road?" Dan asked, quieting the varius before keying the microphone again. “We're going to set down for the night and finish up in the morning.  We should have the transport back at camp before your breakfast dishes are clean."

“You bet you will," a female voice on the other end said, “because you're going to be the one washing our plates."

Dan smiled.  Debbie was one of the more pleasant people on the scientific crew and he was glad she'd been the one to pick up the microphone. “Understood.  We'll see you in the morning."

“Have fun tonight," Debbie responded, and Dan could almost hear her understanding smile in her voice. “Base out."

After finding a suitably protected area and setting up their tents, Lucas played cook by warming their ration pouches by the fire. Logically, nothing was gained by eschewing the heaters built into the pouches, but almost everyone who was forced to eat the emergency food swore they tasted better when heated by campfire. He thought that Clay's parents were really missing out. It felt unusual not to have them there, but the two had elected to spend the evening in their own company. Lucas didn't understand the appeal of closing yourself off in a tent far away from everyone else when there was a perfectly good varius party brewing around the campfire, but he supposed they had a right to spend the evening however they wanted. To each his own, he told himself.

The fire that crackled brightly between the six men worked hard to chase away any somber mood that might have lingered. Eight members of their group may have died, but against all odds over fifty had lived. Even though the whereabouts of most of them were currently unknown, they were sure to be found soon and returned to the colony.

"Anybody know a campfire song?" Dan asked, when the conversation slowed. "Weren't you a Wolf Scout, or something? " he asked Victus, jokingly. “I've never met a Wolf Cub who didn't know any campfire songs."

"No," Victus said, soberly. "I was an acolyte. Cubs learn songs. Acolytes learn chants."

"But you're so squeaky-clean," Bo observed, "Nobody so wholesome could possibly escape being a Wolf Cub."

"That's the problem," Lucas said, leaning in to Victus' warmth. "I don't think he was ever young."

"I was young, all right," the Lupine said, quietly, "it's just that nothing much happened to me back then that's worth remembering."

Dan wished he could say that no childhood could possibly be so devoid of joy that it should be totally dismissed, but in Victus' case he thought the man might have a valid point. "But that was then," he said. "You've got Lucas back and you've got an entire planet to explore, so you can make all the good memories your brain will hold."

When he'd first met the varius, the Kenzine's face carried upon it the stoicism of duty. Since the crash, it had carried the weight of his loss. Now, finally relieved of its burdens, the man's face was an exercise in tranquility. His eyes did not dart back and forth in a ceaseless evaluation of threat, his nose did not wrinkle and smooth with continual analysis of his environment, and his ears had ceased their constant motion. Now that Lucas had been returned to him, Victus was finally at rest.

“You can start by exploring this," Lucas said, reaching inside his jacket to pull out an unmarked flask. He unscrewed the cap and handed it to Dan, who took an experimental whiff, looked mildly confused, then took a deeper sniff and looked at his mate for confirmation.

“Scotch?" Bo guessed, smelling the liquid first through Dan's limited senses, then a moment later through his own. Even though he was sitting nearly a meter away, the vapors wafting from the flask were unmistakable.

“Don't mind if I do!" Dan said, with obvious enthusiasm. He took a shallow sip before offering the bottle back. “Where'd this come from?"

Lucas' left ear twitched. “That's actually part of a longer story..."

“We've got nothing but time. What actually happened out there?" Bo asked, bluntly broaching the subject now that things had settled down a bit. “We lost contact right after you got hit with a piece of shrapnel from the blown engine," he offered, to start the story rolling.

Lucas scratched behind his right ear, remembering events from a month before. He'd never forget any of them, but putting them in order wasn't easy. "The first hit took out one of our maneuvering thrusters, which you knew about. The second one knocked out our comm system. There were a couple of minor impacts after that, but none of those did much damage. It was the first one that caused all the real trouble."

Dan leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. "So what happened?"

"Our port thrusters were gone," Lucas said, rubbing his handpaws together. The whiskers on his muzzle twitched involuntarily with agitation as he recalled the series of events that nearly killed him. "We were spinning out of control, and I'd just about given up when I remembered something Vic told me. Something about using an opponent's force against him." He caught the odd look with which Victus regarded him. "What?"

Victus shook his head, sadly. "If I'd had any idea you were actually listening to me, I'd have been more ambitious with your training schedule."

Lucas poked the Kenzine in the ribs. "Exactly. So where was I? Oh, yeah!  Spinning out of control... So I calmed down and focused on one axis at a time. The positive pitch thruster was the one that got hit, so I used the roll and yaw thrusters to spin the ship into position, then a combination of the two to zero-out the pitch."

Dan was looking puzzled. He turned to Bo, but received only a helpless shrug. Their bond couldn't help him understand spatial concepts like this. He would have to figure it out on his own.

sorry

*apologetic*

do not worry about it

"Go on," Dan encouraged. "I'll figure it out later."

Bo was mesmerized. "Okay, so you got the ship stable. What then?"

"With one of the main thrusters offline, the only thing I could do was use the ones that were left in short bursts to park us in a temporary orbit and use the maneuvering thrusters to balance out the errors as I went."

"You were obviously successful," Bo noted. "Go on?"

Dan and Victus seemed spellbound by Lucas' story, but Bo was waiting for the important part: the part where eight people died.

"Yeah, well, once we were parked I used the remote cameras to figure out how bad the engine was fucked up. It took a couple of hours to find the problem," he remembered, "and by the time I did, some of the passengers were coming down off their medication and starting to panic. Some of them were screaming and yelling, using up air faster than it could recycle. I talked them down as much as I could, but some of them just couldn't let go of the panic. After a while, three of them started screaming that I was trying to kill them, and they were going to space me if they could get their hands on me."

Victus' brow furrowed in confusion. “You were the only pilot onboard. How did they imagine they were going to get to the surface if you were dead?"

Lucas sighed ruefully. “Panic kills more good men than bullets do." He paused for a moment to regroup and the others waited patiently for him to continue. “There are only two ways out of the ship," he explained to Dan and Victus, “You can pop the hatch from the cabin and get out that way, but the airlock in the cargo compartment does a better job recycling the air. You only lose a third as much if you go out that way, and we were already running low so I couldn't risk it. My only way out was the airlock, even though I had to get past the crazies to do it."

Lucas's eyes were dark now, shaded by reliving the ugly scene.  “When they saw me wearing a suit with my helmet on they totally lost their shit. Asshole A was trying to convince the other passengers I was trying to kill them and take the ship for myself, while Asshole B was busy accusing me of abandoning ship and leaving them there to die. He threw his arms up in the air expressively. "Where the fuck was I going to go in a vacuum suit?  I'm not going to fly all the way to the nearest fuckin' planet, right?

“Most of the passengers weren't nearly that bad. They sat on the crazy ones long enough for me to get outside, but they couldn't hold them forever. Things inside kept breaking down, and it seemed like every time I got a system up and running I had to stop what I was doing and go back inside and talk sense into them."

"And by, 'talking sense into them', you mean, you 'punched them in the face.'" Victus offered, one eyebrow arched. "That would explain why some of them wanted to leave you behind once they reached the ground."

"Yeah, well," Lucas looked troubled, “you do what you gotta do." He looked over at Bo for confirmation and immediately received a single decisive nod of the head in agreement. Lucas knew he couldn't expect unconditional support from everyone, but the opinion of others didn't matter to him a tenth as much as Bo's did.  Bo had been in the military and served during times of conflict, and had made ugly choices of his own. Chuck and Dali had also served, but Bo was his friend, and knowing that the battle varius was standing behind Lucas and his hard decisions meant the world to him.

That gave him the courage to look at Victus and share the worst part of his tale. “By the time all the leaks were patched and the thrusters were back online we'd wasted more oxygen than we could spare. Four of the biggest assholes started rounding up the youngest and oldest passengers and herding them into the airlock, and they were careful to include the people who restrained them so I could get outside the ship.

“I tried to calm them down until one of them started making noises about throwing me out the lock too. At least one of them was in the army, so he might have actually been able to do it, given time. Two of them jumped me and started trying to pull me out of my suit, and that was it. Playtime was over. I punched one of them in the throat," he said, speculatively, “so he might have been dead before he hit the lock, but...I'm not sure. The others, I just kept throwing them into walls until they stopped fighting back, then I tossed them into the lock and blew the seal.  

Dan was aghast but trying hard not to show it. He thought of Lucas as being a nice guy, someone who'd pay for a veteran's groceries or give a stranger a ride home if his speeder broke down, and in the most casual manner possible he'd just told a group of people that he'd recently killed eight grown men. At this, Dan took a mental step back for a moment.

Gods

he thought to Bo,

that's…

...what he had to do

Bo supplied.

when you're in space

you do what has to be done

or everyone dies

what he did was awful but necessary

and fifty-two people lived to be angry

 if he had not made the choice

sixty people would be dead today.

"So what was wrong with your ship?" Victus asked, sounding as normal as if Lucas had just told them that he'd taken out the trash and left it by the corner. “How did you fix it?"  

"When I got outside, the only major damage I found was to the hydraulic line running to the main thrust diverters. It runs just under the skin of the ship, and if you lay it open under pressure it'll dump the whole circuit in about two seconds.

"Since it's cheaper to do it that way, almost all of the hydraulic hoses on spacecraft are the same diameter and use the same fittings," he told Dan and Victus, "the only difference between them is length. Landing skids never survive in a crash anyway, so I swapped out the hose that opens the skid doors for the broken thruster hose, then refilled the thruster's fluid from the skid's reservoir from inside the ship. The hose was a little longer than I needed, but that was okay. I just tucked the extra where it wouldn't get in the way and closed the panels back up.

"So...voila!" he exclaimed. "We had a working ship, but no way to reprogram the nav system with the new coordinates and almost no fuel left. So I broke orbit and used what was left of the fuel to slow us down just before we plowed into the ground. I knew the general region you guys landed in, so I aimed for the western edge of the main continent and set her down as best I could."

"You did an amazing job," Dan said, quietly. He could tell by what he was feeling through his bond with his husband that what Lucas had done was all but impossible.

Lucas was about to defer the praise, but the grumbling in his stomach was audible to them all.

"Here." Without hesitating, the Kenzine put his plate closer to Lucas. "Give me your plate."

"No," Lucas pulled back, "for the love of God, stop trying to feed me!  You need it more than I do."

"You are healing," Victus said, reasonably. "You need the extra calories."

"Luke."

Lucas turned at the tone of Bo's voice. Although the battle varius hadn't used the command voice, he'd definitely wanted to catch his friend's attention. "What?"

"You have to go to the bathroom."

Confused, Lucas stared at his friend, wondering if he'd heard correctly. "No, I don't."

"Yes, you do," Bo said, walking over to Lucas with an aluminum crutch in each big hand. He presented them with an air of expectancy that brooked no argument.

"Fine," Lucas grumbled, looking behind him as he struggling to his feet. "I'll be back in a minute, Vic. I apparently have to pee."

Bo helped his friend hobble out of the clearing and into the bushes. As soon as they were out of earshot of the others, Lucas asked, "Do I gotta shit, too?"

"This won't take that long," Bo said, stopping Lucas and turning to face him. His voice was soft, but urgent. "Let him feed you."

"I don't need his food, Bo." Lucas sounded exasperated. "He keeps pushing things on me like I'm an invalid, or something. I've stayed alive this long without help, and I'm not going to keel over dead if I have to wipe my ass by myself!  If I need more food," he explained, "I'll just get another meal pouch."

“He's not stupid, Luke. He's perfectly aware that you can take care of yourself."

“Then he's smart enough to realize that he doesn't need to go hungry just so I can have more."

“Oh, Jesus." Bo rolled his eyes in brotherly disgust. "Maybe you do need to take a shit, after all." Widening his stance and crossing his arms in front of his barrel chest, he cut an imposing figure. “This isn't about you, dummy, it's about him. This is his way of showing that he loves you, and you're trampling him." He looked at the other man carefully. “You're hurting him."

“Hurting him?" Lucas scoffed. "Are you kidding me?  That man's tough as nails."

"Yeah, he's tough," Bo agreed, "but even the hardest steel in the world will snap if you hit it where it's vulnerable. Remember, he was raised by a bunch of sapes."

"Are you saying he's weak?" Lucas said, suddenly sounding defensive.

"No," Bo shook his head, "nothing like that. He's just a different kind of strong than we are. He has different vulnerable spots than we do, and you're poking them."

Lucas' mouth quirked. "He told you this?"

In answer, Bo tapped the side of his head. "No, but Dan's the same way. He gets all kinds of pissy with me if I don't let him be nice to me every now and then. Trust me, it's way easier to just let them be nice."

Considering his information imparted, Bo turned and walked back to the campfire, letting Lucas return at his own pace. As he followed, Lucas had time to think about what Bo had told him, and although the man's words might not have been the least bit sensitive, the spirit behind them held wisdom. If Bo had been a little less of a bull in a china shop, he might have said something like, “Sometimes, the greatest gift you can give others is to allow them to give their gift to you."

With chagrin, Lucas remembered that those words were precisely what Victus had told him on a number of occasions. All this time he'd taken it as just another pointless koan that had no bearing on their situation, but each time he said it, Victus had been asking Lucas to stop punching him in the gut, and Lucas had been too blind to understand what he was really saying.

How many other “pointless koans" had Lucas missed?

Hobbling back to their log, Lucas saw that Victus hadn't moved. He sat down next to his mate, perhaps a little closer than he'd been before. Victus recognized Lucas' expression and he knew the other man was troubled, probably by something Bo had said. This was no great surprise, given that Bo could be remarkably abrasive when he wanted to be. He was, Victus thought, the most varius varius he'd ever met.

The two watched the crackling fire in companionable silence until Lucas rubbed his knee up against Victus'. “Vic," he started, “I've been so wrapped up in my own problems that I haven't told you how much I appreciate your coming all the way out here to get me. Or," he realized with embarrassment, “how much I appreciate your saving me from the fighting ring. Or," he said, now with no small amount of shame, “how much I appreciate your pulling me out of the slave pits in the first place."

Victus looked tenderly at his mate, and slowly reached one hand up to Lucas' forehead with the same motion he used for discipline, but this time he did not bump his palm against the canine's forehead. Tonight, he simply touched it there for a moment with the boundless gentleness borne of love. “Awareness."

Clearing his throat, Victus' demeanor returned to its normal cool efficiency. “Who says that I came back for you?" He reached down and carefully hooked one black claw beneath the leather thong that had been securely fastened around the canine's wrist. “Perhaps I only wanted to put my hair back in its braid."

Lucas grinned shyly. “Mine," he said, gently pulling his wrist out of Victus' reach.

Watching discretely from across the fire, Dan reached out and took Bo's handpaw in his.

you do good work

*mirth*

for a steamroller

*satisfaction*

he just needed a good slap in the fruit.

Both men's attention was drawn to Victus' sudden movement. He stood and calmly, but with deliberation, hoisted his mate over his shoulder with a single word. “Mine." Belatedly considering the concerns of the group, he turned. “I have a healing to perform." And then, they were gone.

"What was that all about?" a confused Bo asked the group at large.

Charlie spoke up, a chuckle in his voice. "Abrupt, much?"

"Be nice," Dan told them, giving his mate's shoulder a solid push for emphasis. "Think how you'd feel."

Bo considered how he would have felt if Dan had been resurrected from the dead and he conceded. "True." He spanned the distance between himself and his partner with one long arm and tugged at his Dan until the man was pressed against him reassuringly.

***

"Dear?" Lucas said, sounding patiently aggrieved. "Where are we going?" The bounce in the wolf's step was pushing air in and out of Lucas' lungs, making the pitch of his voice jerk up and down in time with their pace.

"To the tent," Victus replied, his voice back to its normal, calm timbre.

"The tents are behind us," Lucas pointed to the direction they'd come, but Victus was looking the other way.

When his mate replied, Lucas could hear the smirk in his voice even if he couldn't see it on his lips. "I know. We're making a little pit-stop first."

"You can put me down at any time," Lucas groused. "I'm not an invalid who needs carrying around."

"You've got a bum leg," Victus answered, logically. "I'm not going to make you walk on it. But," he conceded, "you're right. This isn't dignified." He swung the canine varius off his shoulder, but instead of placing him on the ground as Lucas expected, he felt his mate's left arm push behind his knees. Another smooth hoist, and Lucas was being carried in the Kenzine's arms. The lupine snuffled a nose in the hollow of his mate's neck. "That's better."

"Watch where you're going, or we're both going to have broken legs," Lucas warned. throwing his arm over Victus' shoulder. "Where are we going?"

"A circular clearing not far from here I remember seeing on the way out here." Vic hugged Lucas to him. "I think you'll like it."

"I already like it," Lucas replied, resting his head against Victus' solid chest muscle. Over the past year he'd watched Victus work out on any number of occasions, but still it surprised him that the lupine could carry him so easily. His sigh was contented, and after a moment he almost whispered, "I wasn't sure I'd ever see you again."

"Shhh..." Victus said,  "I know." He hesitated, but only for a moment. "It scared me."

"You told me that Kenzines fear nothing." Lucas looked up at Victus. The way the moonlight reflected off the fur of his mate's face made it look as if he were being carried by a being made of equal parts luminous silver and inky shadows.

"I was wrong." Victus said, simply.

After a hundred steps the pair broke into a small clearing. A dozen more, and Vic bent to lay his mate on a soft cushion of moss. Lucas opened his muzzle to say something cute, then shut it. Now was not the time for levity. Instead, he devoted himself to storing away the minutia bombarding his senses. The buzzing insects, the whispering breeze, the moonlight glinting off the tips of the grass, the unusual scent of the loamy soil, all were added to a sense memory that he'd call up for the rest of his life. This moment was special and he was determined to remember it.

Victus knelt at Lucas' side, one hand maintaining the physical contact he craved and the healing bond required. Divining his intent, Lucas objected. "Vic, no..." he tried to push his mate's hands away. "You're not strong enough for a healing bond right now. It can wait 'til later."

"Shhh..." Victus soothed, "you're with me now." A quick assessment of his energy levels confirmed what he'd been feeling since finding Lucas, and a confident chuckle escaped his lips. "I'm stronger than I've ever been." With one paw, he gently pressed Lucas back into the soft, yellow moss.

The canine's compliance came as much from Victus' attitude as from the pressure on his chest. Once Lucas was once again lying supine, Victus extended his aura to surround them; previously it had only extended to the injured area, but this time it surrounded their entire bodies. Diving into his mate's energy stream as easily as he would have a warm creek, his perception swam to the break in Lucas' leg. His first task was to unknit the bad healing. There was pain in the re-breaking process, but he wasn't about to let Lucas feel it. Selflessly, Victus absorbed it all, accepting the sensations of intense pain without ever allowing it to turn into suffering.

In the middle of that first step he felt Lucas' paw against his jaw. "Don't take it all on yourself," Lucas said. He shrugged. "We share everything, right?  Good and bad?"

Victus nodded slowly, appreciating his mate's wisdom. "Good and bad." He shunted a portion of the pain back to his mate, reducing his own discomfort without allowing his mate to suffer.

"Good," Lucas said, tightly. He'd forgotten how much his broken leg had hurt at first, but he was glad to bear even double this portion of pain if it meant Victus didn't have to.

Turning back to his healing, Victus flowed energies that even he did not fully understand into the broken bones, examining the break from inside and out. Once he was certain what had to be done, he gripped Lucas' leg on either side of the break. After shutting down nerve endings around the break, Victus gave a quick pull and a practiced twist and the jagged bone ends slid smoothly together. "Half done," he promised his mate. "It's downhill from here."

Grasping pawpads were placed carefully over the break, helping to funnel the healing energies where they were most needed. Reaching out to his mate, he saw that the pain was indeed lessening, and he adjusted the virtual valves to allow Lucas to monitor his own discomfort. When the pain was almost completely gone from Victus' perception, he turned his attention to knitting the abused bone ends. Drawing energy from both himself and his mate over a handspan of minutes, the Kenzine deftly wove the two ends together as if they'd never come apart.

Lucas remembered the drawn look he'd seen on Victus' face after the last healing, and he was surprised to see that tonight, the look on the varius' face resembled ebullience far more than exhaustion. "What just happened?"

"WE happened," Victus said, cryptically. "There's more power here than just you or me alone. We've got a huge 'us' to draw on, and that was just a drop in the bucket." Although he had seated himself next to his mate, one handpaw remained on Lucas' thigh, maintaining the connection between them. Slowly, Victus began rubbing his paw up and down his mate's thigh, watching in the dim light as faint sparks of static ignited between individual hairs.

Stealing a glance at his mate's crotch, Victus could see that he was every bit as energized by the healing as Victus had been. Without asking permission, Victus reached up and loosened his mate's belt, then unfastened his pants and drew down the zipper. "Uh, babe?" Lucas said, nervously.

"Mmm hmm?" Victus murred, gently pulling his mate's pants down and off his bare feet.

"We don't have any way to take a bath, and I might be a bit...you know...gamey down there."

"That's okay," Victus said, casually. "I'm not going to need that part of you tonight."

"Really?" Lucas raised an eyebrow. "I was wondering if you were ever going to flex those muscles." He didn't sound averse to the idea, so Victus continued his gentle massaging, rubbing his way down Lucas' thighs and past his calves until he reached his footpaws. Weeks of hobbling around without shoes had thickened his footpads until they were as hard as Victus' practice-calloused feet, but the Kenzine rubbed them as lovingly if they were soft and well-cared for.

His attentions elicited a groan of  pleasure from his mate, who sighed in contentment. "That feels great, babe."

"Mmmm..." Victus murred, working his way back up to his mate's crotch. One by one he  unfastened the catches of Lucas' shirt and removed it, tossing it to land on top of his discarded pants.

Shaking his head back and forth to re-arrange his headfur, Lucas' eyes widened in surprise as they again lit on his partner. Victus had been touching him with both paws for quite some time now, and what they saw surprised him. "Hey!  How did you get naked?"

Victus chuckled. "Ancient Kenzine secret."

"Riiight," Lucas drawled. As long as his mate was naked, he might as well have a little fun. He reached for Victus, but the Kenzine moved himself out of reach. "Nope. Not for shotties." He reached down and pressed his palms against Lucas' broad chest muscles, pressing tension out of them and suffusing his mate with healing energy. "You have a few internal injuries too," he noted, healing them as he went. The activity would once have cost him dearly, but he now did it almost casually.

The reserve of power from which he drew his abilities, the reserve which he had all but exhausted a few weeks earlier by simply joining Bo and Dan inside their private headspace, now seemed almost limitless. "Better," he murmered, more to himself than to his partner. "Turn over." Lucas obeyed and found himself lying face-down on Victus' clothing, his mate's unmistakable and very welcome scent permeating the cloth.

Victus repeated the massage on his lover's back, finding points of tension and rubbing them away with loving care. There was nothing to say so the men stayed silent, but Lucas did feel Victus open up the channel between them, the one which had recently been a pipeline for pain but now shuttled peace and contentment between them. Lucas' desire had begun to ebb under the assault of so much relaxing pleasure, but the feel of his mate pressing against sensitive areas brought it rushing back. Passion poured from the canine in an almost palpable wave which Victus was more than ready to share.

Buoyed by his mate's arousal, Victus reached underneath Lucas and pulled his hips into position. The wolf was certainly not the more sexually aggressive of the two, but tonight he was the one in command. They went smoothly through the motions that both had by now become so comfortable with, ending their foreplay with Victus kneeling behind Lucas.

What Lucas saw when he turned and looked at Victus stopped him cold. While he had always recognized the fact that the lupine looming over him was every bit his physical equal in most areas, a part of Lucas had always viewed Victus as being weaker overall. In the instant it took to glance behind him that changed, and Lucas suddenly realized how very wrong he'd been. The Kenzine he'd partnered with might be civilized by choice, but underneath the thin veneer of civility so polished that it had fooled even Lucas, lived an untameable animal who could take what it wanted. And right now, it wanted him.

And Lucas, to his relief, found that was precisely what he wanted as well. As his walls crumbled, Lucas bent his torso downwards and buried his nose in his mate's clothing, immersing himself in the heady, pheromone-rich scents of his partner.

As strong as the physical sensations were, Lucas felt oddly disconnected, as if maybe this experience wasn't going to be 'all that' after all. Maybe this was just going to pop instead of explode. Maybe–"

"Unh!"  The forceful grunt behind him was accompanied by a disorienting flash of light, as if someone walking in the woods at night had swung a portable lantern in their direction. But there had been no source for that light, he realized. And the fact that he could still see everything around them suggested that his pupils had not contracted, so…had it even happened?  Lucas had once accidentally touched his forehead to a live groundcar battery, and the effect had been almost the same.

Lucas shook away the memory as irrelevant. His mate was taking him, and that's what he wanted to concentrate on. Again the flash of light appeared, but this time it was paired with the almost feral growl of a varius deep in rut. Lucas smiled at the sound, proud to be the one to give his mate such pleasure. Deep within him reaction grew, straining at the chains of his self-control. As it built in intensity, the varius allowed himself to slip beneath the waves of pleasure, wallowing shamelessly in sensation. His body shook as Victus decisively claimed him as his own.

So deep was Lucas in their rut that the fading of the world around him seemed completely unremarkable, a natural consequence of his utter focus on what they were doing. His mate was breathing heavily now, forcefully pushing towards his completion, and the clothing that had been pushed underneath him smelled so good, so powerful, so...

“Unh..."

Victus was no longer taking Lucas from behind. Now, it was a sturdily built Centurion sharing carnal pleasure with his wife, making love to her as only her soulmate could.

“Unh!"

Lucas lay the woman who was to be his mate down on the mossy river banks, tenderly smoothing concern from her brow. “It's all right," he said, “I love you. And I want to be a father!  More than anything!" And the look his fiancée gave him was nothing short of glory.

Victus sat by the side of the bed, awaiting the inevitable. Even a love such as theirs could not stop death. Mortal bodies expired, and there was no stopping it. As the life slipped from the body of his beloved, tears spilled unashamedly from his eyes, running down his cheeks to be lost in a beard turned white with age. Before his lifemate was gone he climbed into bed with her, feeling her warmth one last time as he listening to her gradually slowing heart, knowing that by the time the sun rose he would join her in the great beyond.

Lucas looked around him carefully to make sure nobody saw him before slipping into the barn. His man was meeting him there, as he had almost every day for the past four years. The thick scent of horse sweat and grain filled his nose the instant he closed the door, dust swirling around him as he waited for his eyes to adjust to the dim light. Thin arrows of light shot through small holes in the barn's thatch roof, turning swirling dust into brilliantly luminous rods. The religious zeal of his fellow farmers made it dangerous for him to be here, yet the fact that his man was here made it impossible for him to stay away. He knew it was wrong to love another man, he knew it was a sin that would have him put to death if anyone found out, but he had no choice. He'd tried to stay away before, but as inevitably as the rising of the tides he was always drawn back. Eventually he had stopped resisting and accepted the truth of the matter, in spite of the danger.

A hand on his shoulder made him spin around in alarm, but the sight of his man made all tension drain away. The touch was kind, strong, and gentle. It was loving. They embraced, breathing deeply each other's scents. He was larger than the other man, but no more powerfully built. “Come on," his man said, letting go of the embrace but maintaining the physical contact both men craved with a hand on Lucas' back. “Let's sit. How was your day?"

As he moved through the barn with his hand at the curve of the larger man's back, they passed through one of the largest light rays, momentarily dazzling Victus. As his eyes adjusted, a flickering remained, as if what he saw was being shown to him on an antique film projector. Each time the light brightened a different scene came into focus, snippets of past lives that dimmed before he could become invested in their story. The images that flickered past him were old; ancient even. He and Lucas in other bodies at other times - a dozen times they had been together - a hundred? - more?  

It seemed utterly alien to see the unmistakable soul of his mate enshrined in human flesh, but a thousand years ago they could not have been varius. Victus looked more closely, disciplining his mind to slow the flow of images...

“Lucas!"  

Lucas turned, astonished to see his mate in his mental space. “You're here!" he cried with joy, “You made it."

“We made it," Victus corrected, engulfing his mate in a bear hug and rocking him back and forth. “We made it."

After a few moments, Lucas unburied his nose from the warm, fragrant fur in the hollow of Victus' neck and looked around them. “What's all this about?"

“I'm not quite sure, love," Victus admitted, “but it seems we've done this before."

“Fuck me." Lucas was stunned by the display. He walked from screen to screen, staring at the sepia-toned images that flitted across each one, witnessing each of their past lives with disbelief. “For the record, I don't believe in reincarnation."

Victus chuckled wryly. “That's okay," he said, “you don't need to believe it." He moved behind Lucas and gently rested his chin on his mate's shoulder, watching a man and a woman painted in dull shades of brown and ochre as the two found each other after half a lifetime of searching. “Do you remember that?" he asked, quietly.

“Yeah." Lucas' voice was weak. “Yeah. I do."

Victus turned them to face another screen, illuminated from behind with brighter colors that seemed to indicate a more recent past. On this one, two sweaty young boys in overalls and coonskin caps played in the summer sun, their bicycles laying behind them in the weeds as they ran as fast as they could towards a country creek.

Lucas' voice was barely a whisper. “That's when I saw your body for the first time." His voice caught in his throat as words suddenly rushed out of his muzzle. “That's the day I fell in love with you." They watched silently for a moment as memories rushed back. “But you went off to fight in the war and I had to stay home, and you..." he turned to look at Victus, backing up a step in horror. “You never came back, damn you!" He fought against the tears that raged to spill as his anguish raged. “I loved you!  And you..." He broke. “You died."

Victus grabbed his mate, pressing their bodies together as hard as he could, almost crushing him with his power. “I'm here!" he said, urgently. “You must be feeling something from a past that no longer exists. We're together. I'm here." He put some distance between them, only enough for him to reach a paw up to stroke his lover's face. “Shhh..." he soothed. “I'm here. Focus on that."

Sensing something nearby, the Kenzine looked up and smiled. “Look, over there." He turned his mate to see what was playing across a screen behind them. “Remember our first house?"

Lucas chuckled wetly, despite his shock. “Oh, Gods, yes. You and those damned ceramic figurines."

“They were my grandmother's!" Victus protested, the same way he had all those years ago. “I loved those."

“You were a middle-aged man, and keeping a collection of wide-eyed waifs sitting on chamber pots was not attractive."

Victus could only shrug.

Lucas took several deep breaths and regained control of himself, eventually pulling free of Victus' protective arm. “So... are these our past lives?" he asked. “Have we always been together?"

The lupine varius walked slowly among the screens, gazing thoughtfully at each of them. “I don't think so, love." He saw one of a woman staring off into the distance, eyes filled with a well of sadness that seemed bottomless. “I don't think so."

“But," he said, after looking at a few more, “It seems we've managed to find each other in most of our past lives." He spoke slowly as he considered a dozen lives playing out before him. “It doesn't really seem to matter whether we were born as men or women."

“Look at this one," Lucas said, pointing to a pair of older women riding in an oxcart. “I think we were–" He cut himself off suddenly as a wave of pleasure raced through their world. “What the hell was that?"

Victus almost looked embarrassed. “You're about to finish."

Lucas was aghast. “We've been in here for this long and you're still not finished?" He shook his head in horrified wonder. “Save some for later, dude!"

Victus grinned. “Time in the mind doesn't work the way it does in the world, love. We've only been in here for a few seconds. A minute, at most."

Lucas looked taken aback. “Oh. So how do we- Uh..." Lucas' eyes closed to slits as a second wave passed over them both.

Victus smiled quietly and closed his eyes, enjoying the sensation. As the wave began to ebb, he offered, "This is similar to a Tantric orgasm."

Lucas was trying to catch his breath. "Tantric?  When you sit on a cushion for an hour with a creepy smile on your face?"  At Victus' nod of confirmation his voice went from skeptical to curious. "Maybe I should try meditating after all."

"Told you so." Victus chuckled. "Come on," he encouraged, "this is a show we don't want to miss." He was turning away when Lucas' voice stopped him.

"Uh... Vic?"

Victus thought he sounded alarmed, and pitched his voice to soothe. "What?"

"How do we..." Lucas waved his hands vaguely around his head. "How do I get back? Inside me?"

Victus thought for a moment about what he did to pull his consciousness back inside his own body. "I've never really thought about it before," he admitted. “I just...desire it, and it happens."

Lucas looked somewhat lost. "But I don't. Desire it, I mean." He looked around them. "It's good here, right?"

Victus' eyes softened in understanding. He nodded his head in agreement. "It is good here. And we can come back anytime you like," he reassured. "But we can't live here." He waved his arm to indicate the hundreds of randomly-scattered screens stretching off into the distance, extending out of sight in every direction. "This is about the past and the...the Now. In here, you can know who you are and you can remember who you were, but out there is where everything real happens."

He gestured off to his right, where suddenly instead of flickering screens, there was only a path leading into darkness. Out there is 'real' life. Out there is the future." He looked into Lucas' warm, brown eyes, thinking that he could very easily get lost in their depths. "Our future."

Reaching across the small distance separating them, he took his mate's warm, calloused hand in his slightly smaller, slightly cooler one. "Let's go together."

For a split second Lucas' smile was hesitant, but then he opened himself and embraced the uncertainty, leaning into trepidation and turning it into adventure, as was his habit. Hand in hand, they walked into the darkness and back...

...into their own bodies. Lucas was usually the dominant partner. He'd played the submissive role a handful of times, but he'd never before thrown himself into the experience like he was doing with Victus. He wasn't merely allowing the lupine to take him, he was actively wallowing in the sensation. Fully back inside himself now, he swam in utter bliss.

Lucas' body wanted nothing more than to relax absolutely, to rest his head on the ground, to bury his face in his lover's clothing. But the man behind him had other ideas. Leaning forward, the Kenzinze warrior-priest reached up to his partner's broad shoulder and drew him backwards, until Victus could drape his arm over Lucas' shoulder and bury his nose in the side of his mate's neck.

Many times in his role as Kenzine priest, Victus had facilitated superficial bonds with others. He knew from his own experiences, most of all with Lucas, that they were impossible to force. You had to want it deeply but not desperately, to crave it without needing it. It must feel desired, but never required. It was he who drove this ship as it crashed through their lustful ocean, so it fell to him to pull the smallest portion of his attention away from the physical act to ask what must be confirmed. "Is this what you want?" he growled.

Any doubt Lucas might have felt during their previous attempts had vanished, driven away by the memory of how desolate his world had been without Victus in it. Not knowing if he'd ever see his mate again had affected him more profoundly than he could admit, and he never wanted to experience anything like that again. "Yes," he called out, feeling emotional relief as profound as if he had shed a heavy physical burden. "Oh god, yes!"

With a slight shift of his weight, Victus pulled his hand off Lucas' chest and rested it on the side of his mate's face, feeling the short, bristly hair of his cheek underneath his paw pads. His world had seemed just fine before this man came along, but ignorance had been his bliss. It had taken the midnight blackness of losing him to reveal how critical to his life Lucas had become. That a man as strong, capable and handsome as he could see beyond Victus' compendium of faults and wish to bond with him above all others was nothing short of staggering.

Lucas' consciousness tugged at the foreign yet absolutely familiar sensation that was growing within him, teased it until a few threads came loose; pulling on them was like spinning a pile of wool into thread. The more he pulled, the more came out, until his mind held a substantial thickness of the strongest rope imaginable. Nobody told him how to do it, but it seemed the most natural thing in the world for Lucas to tie that rope around himself and pull the ends so tight that the knot wove itself into the fibers.

With a crashing roar the two men reached their completion, each experiencing the sensations of both giver and receiver as their expanded minds intertwined.

*joy*

Yes

it worked.

*incredulous*

This isn't like it was with mom!

*smirk*

you never did this with your mother.

or at least I hope you didn't

*humor*

who are you and what

did you do with Victus?

*satisfaction*

I told you I had a sense of humor

I just have to keep it bottled up.

*pleasure*        

unh...

The wall of sensation momentarily overwhelmed Lucas, and his body trembled under the force of another even stronger wave of stimulation.

you're welcome

*disbelief*

did you do that?

 it's a tantric technique

oh... yeah.

*pleasure*

uhhhhh....

Lucas swayed back and forth, only able to stay upright on hands and knees thanks to the strong arms wrapping around him.

satisfaction

***

“Is there more wood?"  Dan looked around them for something to stoke the slowly dying fire.

“Yeah, I think..." Bo craned his neck, but could see no more of the thick wood chunks in the spot where Lucas had dropped them. “Oh. I guess not. Want me to find–"  A shiver ran down his spine, strong enough to stop him in mid-sentence. He'd been feeling odd since Victus had carried Lucas away, like bugs were crawling through his fur, or something.

“You feeling that, too?" Chuck asked, rubbing his hands through his fur.

“Like something's crawling on you?" Dali looked at him oddly.

“Yeah," Bo confirmed, handing Dan his flashlight. “Take a look, will ya?"

Dan aimed the beam of the light at Bo's shoulder, using his other hand to ruffle the fur backwards to expose the lighter-colored skin hidden underneath. Seeing nothing, he moved behind his mate. “Bend your head down." He repeated the process at the back of Bo's wide neck but still saw nothing out of the ordinary. “Just dirt."

Although he saw no vermin, Dan did think that Bo might feel warmer than usual. He put a hand on the back of his mate's neck to check again, then had to brace himself. “Oh..." What he felt through their link was heat of an entirely different sort.

*desire*

Bo was fighting the urge to rip his husband's pants off and penetrate him shamelessly - in front of the other men, if need be.

Dan reached out with his mind and felt his mate burning with raw lust. His voice sounded weak in his ringing ears. “Maybe we should check back in the, uh...in the tent..."

“Yeah," Bo agreed, standing quickly.

Dan was unable to stop staring at his husband's pants, suddenly desperate for what they contained. On his way past, Bo grabbed a very stunned Dan and hoisted him over his shoulder. “G'night, guys," he said, without preamble.

Dali was standing behind Chuck, using his own flashlight to peer through the hair to Chuck's scalp. Something about running his paw through the ursine varius' fur was pleasant to Dali. He did it several times to check for bugs, continually stroking as the two men watched the fire burn down. When doing it with one hand no longer seemed enough, he dropped the flashlight and used his other hand as well to expand the scope of his attention into a scalp massage. He had had little interest in other males since settling down with his wife, but nothing about this physical contact felt odd so he continued.

Chuck was surprised when Dali began running his pawpads through his head fur, but it felt good so he didn't object. The repetitive stroking encouraged relaxation, and Chuck could hardly be blamed for leaning back slightly and resting a portion of his weight against his buddy. The men were too engaged in what they were doing to notice when Bo left with Dan for the night.

Dali was a good man and enjoyed making other people happy, so when Chuck relaxed and leaned back he welcomed the contact. Looking down at the top of his buddy's head, Dali's gaze was drawn past his small, round ears to the front of his friend's pants, which were tenting provocatively in a manner that matched what was happening inside his own. He was pleased that his friend had made no attempt to hide his reaction. It was a good thing, for men to make each other happy, and shouldn't ever be shameful. And attraction between friends was something to be proud of, not hidden away as if it were wrong. “You're packing a lot of heat there, Chuck."

In fact, now that Dali thought about it, it would be interesting to get a better look at Chuck's hardware. Bending over, he nuzzled the hair on top of Chuck's head and breathed in the scent of another strong male. Beneath him, so softly that it was all but inaudible, he heard the ursine's utterly relaxed moan.

Dali's intent was clear when he moved his handpaw down to rest comfortably on Chuck's shoulder. “Let's go to the tent."

Chuck barely opened his eyes. He rolled his great head teasingly back and forth against Dali's belly. Though he had been clear early on about being a content hetero male who was uninterested in casual encounters, it suddenly seemed like a very good opportunity to expand their friendship. Decision made, he pushed himself out of his camp chair. “The transport's closer."