As always, thanks go out to TheGoldenUnicorn and JK Victus for their tireless help and friendship!

Dan sucked the last of his drink through the straw with a satisfying slurp, earning a disapproving glare from of one of the matrons playing bridge at a nearby table.  He smirked to himself, resisting the urge to vacuum up the dregs as a noisy show of childish resistance - something he never would have even considered pre-Bo Taylor, he thought. He would have felt chastised by his elders and would have quickly fallen into line. His varius husband, on the other hand, would have smiled sweetly as he ran the straw around the nearly empty glass, slurping and smacking as long as his lungs had capacity.  And Bo had uncommonly big lungs.

Smiling at the imagined misbehavior, Dan raised his arm and waved his hand in the gesture which summoned the robotic servant. “Another of the same, sir?" the servant asked, in the vaguely British accent favored by serving equipment across human-colonized space.

“Yes, please," Dan replied, relishing the feeling of indulgence. This early in the morning it contained no alcohol, and since the kitchen crew had yet to assemble the lunch buffet it would count as a breakfast juice, something which was covered under their meal plan.  Dan might have been feeling decadent at that moment, but he hadn't completely lost his mind.  

He was in the middle of a delicious nap when a change in the tone of the room brought him awake. Dan cracked an eye to see what had ruffled the old ladies' feathers and saw Bo headed towards him, resplendent in shorts, sandals, and an unbuttoned Hawaiian print shirt so loud it made him yearn for a volume knob.  

"Whatcha doing?" the varius quipped, bounding up to Dan and giving him a quick smooch on the top of the head. "Twenty-five decks of fun and recreation, and you're lying here reading a book." The morph pulled a tattered copy of the daily schedule from his shorts and leafed through it. "Don't you want to shoot skeet in the holodeck on deck seven?  Or maybe go rock climbing on the forward deck?  That starts in about thirty minutes."

The disapproving stares of the biddy hens did little to constrain Bo.  He dropped the schedule, picked up Dan's arm and with a loud growling noise, began gnawing on it.

Sighing, Dan pulled his arm from his partner's fearsome jaws and, with the other hand, pinched the one ticklish spot he'd found on Bo's body.  The outsized canine gave a surprisingly high-pitched yelp and collapsed back in the lounge chair.  “I give!"  he immediately conceded. “No more!"

“Be good," Dan admonished.  “We're under scrutiny."

Bo rolled his eyes, then stared straight at the elderly gaggle.  “Do you even remember what it was like to be young?" he asked, dismissing them without another thought, and returning his attention to Dan.  “So how about it?" he asked magnanimously. “We can do anything you want!"

Dan checked his chron. “Oh, crap. I didn't realize it was so late."  He began to gather his few belongings.  "Why don't you pick something that starts an hour or so from now, and we'll do that.  We're about to go through the jumpgate and I don't want to miss it."

Bo leaned down and gave Dan a quick smooch on the cheek. "I keep forgetting that this is your first time.  How long until translation?"

"Mmmm... Twenty minutes or so, according to the notice board. Unless something happens to hold us up, that is."

Bo snorted derisively. “Doubtful. They keep those schedules down to the second. If a single ship is late it holds up a dozen others, and that screws up transfers across the galaxy."  Noticing that Dan had no place to put his comm and was running out of hands, Bo took it from him and dropped it into the front pocket of his own shorts.  “You'd better take a quick shower before you do anything else," he suggested.  “You're all sweaty."

“Don't worry," he said, feeling Dan's anxiety. “We've got plenty of time.  The chapel isn't far from the room, and I doubt anyone else will be in there."

***

Dan found fresh clothes and jumped into the shower. “Why don't you find Vic and Luc?" he called over the hiss of spraying water. “Maybe we can share it with them?"

“Already on it." Bo's quick search found their friends on the ship's observation deck with a hundred other passengers, and his enthusiasm wilted.  He sure did like Lucas, but the other man's social habits were utterly alien to Bo.  “They're in the observatory," Bo reported.

Dan made unmistakable gagging noises.  “Maybe next time."   He shook his head bemusedly.  “I sure do like those guys," he said, “But their social habits are…" he paused and looked at Bo.  “Is that my thought or yours?"

“Yes," Bo said, handing Dan one of his favorite retro tee shirts, a faded grey one emblazoned with the United States Space Agency meatball. “Hurry up or we'll miss it."

Three minutes later the two walked through the doors of the empty chapel, and Dan made a beeline for the clear observation bubble. “The gate should be visible by now."  He scanned the sky around himself for a moment, then mentally smacked his forehead. There was only one place one should expect to see a jump ring, and that was directly in front of a ship.  Sighting down the line of the cruise ship, he found it quickly.  "See it? Right over there!" Dan couldn't keep the excitement from his voice.  

Bo looked in the direction Dan was pointing. His eyes were supernaturally sharp and he had no trouble spotting something as large as a jump ring hanging in the void of space, but in the spirit of the moment he pretended to be surprised. "I think... Okay, yeah!  There it is!"  Dan's enthusiasm was infectious, and Bo felt his heartbeat quicken once he saw the torus.  

Easily a kilometer across, at this distance the jump ring was little more than a tiny speck of reflected sunlight and their cruise ship lumbered towards the event with an unhurried, elephantine grace. Although their schedule was tightly controlled there was no need to hurry, for in the end, the torus would do all the work.  If they were early, the ring would not have time to recharge and they would simply pass through in normal space.  If they were late, they'd upset the timetables of a half million passengers.  Everything must happen apace and so it did.

Bo had jumped dozens of times when he was in the military, but that had always been from deep inside a transport ship.  He'd never had the chance to actually watch while it was happening. A few kilometers away from the ring, the deck of their ship thrummed a silent, gentle shudder beneath their feet as the pilot killed the engines. Bo felt Dan's curiosity through their link.

“We've got to pass through in as static a condition as possible," he told his partner, wrapping huge arms around him and resting his chin on the top of his head. “If you tried to drive a ship through a ring under power, the torque would tear it apart."

Dan wasn't feeling particularly social, but still he regretted that Lucas and Victus weren't there to experience this with them.   The torus was coming up fast now, and the ship was aligned perfectly to slip through like thread through the eye of a giant needle.  

As the timer clock above the bar wound down past the two-minute mark, Dan silently reached around and took Bo's paw-like hands in his own.  Through their link Bo could feel his mate's nervous anticipation and he soaked it up.  How wonderful it was, after so many years spent trudging through the galaxy like it was just another office job, to once again be capable of seeing this as an adventure!

A sharp jolt ran through the deck plates, rattling the glasses behind the courtesy bar.

What the…

Dan started, the thought cut off as a second shudder rang through the ship, followed closely by a third.  Neither man knew what was happening, but both knew without a doubt that something wasn't right.  It didn't surprise Dan that he had no clue what was going on, but it worried the hell out of him that Bo didn't know either.

A half -second later the lights in the chapel turned red, and they heard emergency klaxons sound in the hallway.  The sirens became less obnoxious a few moments later when the doors to the observation deck sealed themselves shut, just as they had in the emergency drill on their first day aboard. “Should we go to our assembly area?" Dan asked, his voice tinged with worry.

“Hold on," Bo quieted Dan with a raised hand as he listened to the pattern of the alarm bells. “We're supposed to stay where we are, so make yourself comfortable." he explained.  

“What about the doors?" Dan asked. “Can we still get out?

“If the ship starts to lose air, all the doors seal until the crew can fix it." As he talked, Bo moved to examine the chapel's transparent dome for damage.  “We can leave whenever we want," he said,"but the door might not open immediately.  The ship will only open one door at a time on each deck while the red lights are on."

Bo could feel Dan's concern through their link. “This is all pretty standard stuff," he said, reassuringly.  His tone changed when he noticed that the jump ring was no longer where he expected it to be. It had moved - or rather, the ship had moved - at least fifteen degrees off course.  He sighed, the corners of his mouth growing tight in annoyance.  “Goddamn fucking shitberries," he said, resurrecting a pet phrase that Dan hadn't heard him utter in months. “We're about to have bigger problems," he said.

“Bigger problems than a lack of air?" Dan challenged.  He followed Bo's gaze until his own eyes lit upon the jump ring. For someone who had never been into space before, he grasped the situation with remarkable speed. “Oh, fuck."

“Yup," Bo said.  “Unless they can manage to restart the engines in the next sixty seconds, our inertia's going to carry us into the ring."

“Maybe we'll turn a complete 180 by then," Dan said, but he didn't sound hopeful.  

“That's a thought," Bo said, humoring him.  Snapping his head around, he stared at the position of the ring and did a quick mental calculation.  “Holy shit," he said, examining their rate of spin more carefully. “We just might. We won't hit the hole head-on, and we might still be spinning as we go through, but we might get lucky!"

Dan looked out the window. Whatever force had caused them to begin rotating had continued, adding to their spin with each second.  They could only hope that the crew could do something to adjust their course before they passed the event horizon.  “I guess we're not playing shuffleboard at noon, huh?" Dan quipped softly. He reached down and pulled Bo's hand back into his own, feeling the warmth and strength in it.   

Irrationally, Dan felt like the impending accident was his fault, that he should always have known that their vacation had been too good to be true, and that he was to blame for making them go anyway.  

“In for a penny," Bo said, pulling Dan gently back into the observation dome.  “I'd rather see what's happening to us and I'm sure as hell not going to die cowering in a corner."  He wrapped his arms around Dan, then grabbed hold of the central pillar supporting the clear dome.  Whatever happened next was probably going to be violent and Bo committed his last ounce of strength to protecting his mate. For Dan's sake, he refused to give in to the panic knocking at his mental door. Vacuum injuries weren't pretty and he'd seen his share.

As noble as Bo's efforts were they were unnecessary because Dan had no great fear of death.  He'd had a good life.  He had made peace with his maker, he'd had a good upbringing and he had good friends, the best of whom he'd managed to marry and was standing next to.  What more could a man possibly ask for?

Bo reached out for Dan in the link, and discovered his mate reaching back for him at the same time.

I love you

I love you

As the men pulled each other closer, they extended their consciousness until Dan felt the bright spark of Bo's presence slip into his mind as comfortably as someone might slip into the warm, evening ocean.  With practiced ease, the two allowed their minds to weave together until they were indistinguishable.  

Well

Dan/Bo thought,

if we have to die, at least we're dying happy  

They smiled contentedly, Dan's body snuggled into Bo's warm fur.  He was barely aware of Bo's arm curling around the support pylon in the center of the viewing chamber.