Work Text:
Title: The Change Of Mind
Author: Xantissa
e-mail: xantissa@wp.pl
Series: second in "The Change" series.
Archive: sure!
Fandom: Andromeda
Pairing: Dylan/T.Rhade
Rating: FRT-17
Summary: Sequel to "The Change Of Things." Rhade isn't the only one who doesn't have anything to lose.
Warnings: slash, some implied het, nothing explicit.
Spoilers: most of season five
Disclaimer: To my eternal regret, the boys don't belong to me and I am making no money on this fic.
Dylan leaned back and sighed at the sensation of cool, hard wall behind him. He shifted a bit deeper into the shadows and wondered if Rhade really didn't know about him here or simply didn't care, or maybe he was playing some kind of game with Dylan.
After Rhade told him that he was going to quit drinking, things really looked better. It seemed as though Telemachus was going to finally get a grip on himself. He went on cargo runs with Beka and they even seemed to bond over the whole Matriarch thing.
But then, suddenly, from absolutely nowhere came another change. And if Dylan thought it was bad with the Nietzschean before, it was way, way worse now.
Rhade started drinking again, this time with a vengeance that surprised everyone. Before, he was drinking all the time, but only to keep a light buzz going. This time it was different. Rhade was drinking himself into oblivion, often passing out in Harper's bar.
Even the day before, when he was needed to help with the evacuation, he sat in the bar, drinking himself into a stupor. It took Harper a few right hooks and a bar stool to even wake him up enough to help Beka get to the Andromeda, while the newly revived Rommie was beating the crap out of him and Doyle.
Dylan fingered the flask Rhade once gave him as a pledge that he would quit drinking, and watched the scene before him. He was standing in the corridor leading to Rhade's bedroom and watched yet another woman having sex with the Nietzschean.
The low key jealousy he felt at watching some nameless woman touching and taking something he wanted so badly was drowned in the sorrow of disappointment. He never expected Rhade to become so...cheap. Harper's cracks about knowing just what Rhade did for a living, judging from the tight pants, suddenly didn't seem like such a joke anymore.
The change was sudden, and really unexpected. From one night to another, the Nietzschean seemed to break. He slept around with almost every attractive woman in town --with those who hired him for his fighting abilities, with those who hired him for his looks, with those who were just willing. And there were a lot.
Telemachus Rhade was an extremely good looking man, with a perfect body and attitude that just screamed 'Bad Boy' and women fell for it. And the Nietzschean didn't seem to care.
Trying to bury the pain deep inside, Dylan watched as some unknown-to-him woman touched Rhade, as their bodies writhed on the low bed, and he listened to the soft sighs and grunts, the tell-tale sound of skin on skin, and wet sounds that could be connected only to sex.
She was young and dark skinned, with pretty features. With a kind of masochistic impulse, Dylan watched as Rhade pinned the woman under him and started moving in that timeless, unmistakable way.
The sex Dylan was witnessing was hot and passionate, desperate in its rush and so painfully meaningless. It was something that Dylan never did. If he wanted to have sex, he preferred to do it with somebody he cared about, respected. It didn't necessarily mean declarations of undying love, but some kind of emotion --friendship or respect-- was necessary for him. Sex like this, without even knowing the woman's name, drunk out of his mind, was something Dylan never found appealing. And somehow he thought that Rhade also felt like that.
Watching his former Weapons Officer fuck the young woman without ever kissing her or really looking at her, made him ache. Ache for the thing that Rhade was losing with every encounter like that. And there was also that part of Dylan, small and sad, that kept asking why it couldn't be him. If it didn't matter to Rhade who he was fucking, why didn't he choose Dylan? After all, he had to know about Dylan's feelings for him, the attraction at least. He was surely able to smell it on him. And yet, Rhade never even looked at him.
What was so unattractive about him, that made the Nietzschean overlook him so completely?
Not much later, the woman gathered her things and left, never noticing Dylan hidden in the shadows. Telemachus was resting on his back, one arm thrown over his eyes. The thin sheet was pooled low on his hips, giving Dylan a glimpse of the corded abdominal muscles. There was something utterly sensual about the man lounging like that, relaxed, oozing satisfaction that only sex can give, and yet still arrogant. His nudity didn't make him vulnerable; on the contrary, it made him even more aware of his advantage.
Acting on impulse, Dylan withdrew the small flask he's been clutching in his hand the whole time and threw it at the naked man's chest.
Easily, with reflexes that should be seriously impaired by the amount of alcohol he drank, Rhade caught the item in his left hand.
"Did you enjoy the show, Dylan?" asked the Nietzschean in a low, husky voice, with that distinct after-sex quality to his manner.
"Not really," answered Dylan truthfully. If the scene wasn't so meaningless, if the woman wasn't just one of the faceless, nameless bodies that went in and out of Rhade's bed, he might have enjoyed the show. Even despite his jealousy, he would be able to see the beauty of two naked bodies entwined in the ageless dance. But in every move, in every way Rhade did not look at her, did not kiss her, he only drove the point home that it didn't mean anything to him.
"So why did you come here?" Rhade still didn't bother to look at him, nor did he pull the sheet higher, letting it only cover his loins and half his right leg, leaving the rest exposed to the hot, dry air and Dylan's gaze.
Sometimes Dylan wondered if Telemachus Rhade was deliberately cruel, flaunting his body like that at him, or if it simply didn't matter to him.
"To return your flask to you."
Slowly, Rhade lowered his arm and looked at Dylan from under the mussed, longish hair, the muscles in his pecs flexing as he moved. "Why?"
"Because it doesn't matter anymore. You promised me and yourself something that day on the Andromeda. You promised to quit drinking." Dylan looked away from the debauched, sexy man on the bed. He wasn't even feeling anger at this point. Just this low-grade sorrow eating at him, sadness that seemed to be integrated with thoughts of Rhade lately. "But that promise, your word, obviously doesn't mean anything anymore."
Rhade was silent; his eyes hooded as he watched Dylan with an expression that Dylan couldn't read.
"You know, Rhade," said Dylan, "of all the crew, the one I always thought was most susceptible to alcoholism, was Harper. But now it seems he had much more strength and will that you."
"Harper doesn't know..."
"Harper lost EVERYTHING!" yelled Dylan suddenly. "Everything he ever loved or knew, not once but twice! First on Earth --when sicknesses, Nietzscheans and Magog raids killed his parents, his siblings and cousins in front of his very eyes. He loved Rommie, for God's sake. She was his creation. And when he tried to rebuild her, he learned that she hated him and tried to kill him! Look around you, Rhade. Every one of us lost something. Beka was forced to watch her father die, again, unable to help." Dylan took a deep breath to calm himself, knowing that losing his cool with the Nietzschean would do him no good. "Every one of us lost something we loved. Something we needed. And yet we are alive. I would have thought that it was the Nietzschean thing to do. Survive. We did, and that gives us hope for a better future. For any future at all."
Angry suddenly, Rhade stood up, not caring about the sheet falling off of him, exposing himself to Dylan's gaze. He was, like most of his kind, proud of his body, of his looks that were the visible proof of his superior genes, so he didn't feel the need to cover himself. All in all, his nakedness was more disturbing to his visitor than to him, thus giving him an advantage.
"I don't need your lectures, Dylan; I've had enough of them already," he snarled, brushing past Dylan and heading toward the small cupboard with the bottle of booze standing on it.
"I'm not here to lecture you." Dylan tried to remain calm, but he wasn't a saint. He heard all his friends talking, saying that it was his fault that they ended up on Seefra; that if they had never met him, they wouldn't be there at all; or if they had turned tail on Arkology and let the Magog destroy the peace-loving fools. But they stayed with Dylan and his naïve, foolish cause of protecting the weak and innocent, and this is what it gave them. He tried not to take it to heart, knowing that he spent on Seefra the least time of them all and they were entitled to be bitter about it. But their constant scorn and despise of his ideals, of the very thing he believed in, ate at him, hurt him more than he wanted to show.
Of course Rhade, with his Nietzschean beliefs taken straight from Friedrich Nietzsche: If something was weak, then it should be killed.
Gaheris Rhade had been his best friend and his lover, and yet he betrayed him. He might have had his reasons for it, the treaty of Antares like a bone in the Nietzschean's throat, but he believed that Dylan was too soft, too foolish in his morals to ever win against Gaheris.
Then came Tyr Anasazi. In some ways he was more truthful to him than Gaheris ever was, because Tyr never made it a secret that his own agendas were the most important to him. He did everything he could to use Andromeda and Dylan to suit his plans. Tyr made it no secret that he despised everything that Dylan believed in, thought him inferior. And so did Rhade, even if he didn't voice it so often. And all because he refused to fight only for his survival, refused to turn a blind eye to the fate of others. Well, if he did what the Nietzscheans considered the right thing to do, all of them would have been dead a long, long time ago. Somehow, however, the fact that Telemachus Rhade thought him stupid and naïve hurt just that little bit more.
"So why are you here?" asked Rhade, pulling his leather pants on and leaving the button undone in favor of taking a long drink of the alcohol he always seemed to have in reach.
"To ask you a question."
Rhade laughed, and it was a nasty, bitter laugh that twisted his handsome features into something ugly.
"So, what kind of soul-searching question would that be, Dylan?"
Dylan looked at him, letting his eyes roam over the exposed chest for only the briefest moment, cataloging the hard expanse of muscle and male flesh, feeding his mind images of how it could be, were he allowed to touch that hard body, if he was touched in return.
"Does it help?" he asked quietly.
Rhade stilled and then turned slowly to look at Dylan. The Captain didn't like the glint in his eyes, didn't like the way his humor and sarcasm changed into something bitter and cruel over that last year. And obviously he was going to be on the receiving end of the newly improved humor of his Weapons Officer.
"Why are you asking? You want to try some? Make sure the proper equipment still works?"
Dylan didn't answer. He stood silently, watching as Rhade threw his head back and drank the last of the alcohol. There was something incredibly sensual in the way his throat muscles worked as he swallowed, the way his biceps flexed as he lowered the now-empty bottle. The movement of soft, slightly curly strands of hair over the tanned forehead was making Dylan wish he could be close enough to feel that touch, to replace it with his own.
The silence grew and stretched, and Rhade had no more booze to get his mind off of Dylan's question. He was tired, and drunk, and still high from the sex, and words escaped him unchecked and unwanted.
"No. It doesn't help," the Nietzschean said finally, turning sharply and throwing the empty bottle at the wall, watching it shatter into a million pieces, doing nothing to alleviate his anger and hate.
"So why do it?" asked Dylan, almost gently, keeping his voice firmly in check.
Rhade shook his head violently and lowered it, rolling his shoulders, obviously trying to escape the conversation. But Dylan was nothing if not patient.
Finally, with a loud, exasperated sigh, Rhade gave up.
"Because for that little bit of time, it makes me forget, makes me stop thinking about them over and over again." His voice was low, hoarse and dejected, the self-loathing clear.
"But you can't forget them. Cant forget your wife, can't forget your children. No matter what you do, you can not forget those who you lost."
"And why not?!" Rhade yelled at him, turning to him quickly and hitting him in the chest, forcing Dylan to stumble back under the force of the blow.
"Because if you forget them, you will kill them again. The only way is to remember them, make them live inside you. In your memories, in your heart. Nothing else will help. Never."
Something flashed in Rhade's eyes and it was the only warning Dylan got before Rhade caught him with a roundhouse kick. Dylan managed to twist his body in time, so that the kick hit his hip instead on his stomach, but it still hurt like hell and slammed him into the wall behind him. He was stunned by the blow and didn't manage to avoid Rhade, as he pinned him against the wall, this time his boneblades firmly at his throat. One move, one deeper breath and they would cut through his skin. They didn't need to cut anything vital. A small cut would be enough to make him comatose, or even kill him. For a brief moment, Dylan wondered if Telemachus used the same poison as Gaheris, three hundred years ago.
"And what if I DON'T want to remember?! What if I want to fuck the memories out of my head? To drink them away? What is it to you, Captain Do-Gooder?"
Dylan smiled softly at the angry man in front of him. Rhade didn't want to hurt him, because if he really wanted it, Dylan would already be dead. "I won't let you destroy yourself, Rhade."
"Just leave me alone, Dylan, or I swear I will kill you," Rhade hissed.
"I can't let it go."
"Why? Why do you insist on sticking your nose into business that's not yours!" Frustrated, Rhade pressed the boneblades just that bit closer to Dylan, forcing him to keep utterly still if he wanted to avoid being hit by the spikes.
"Because I care," answered Dylan softly.
"I'm not one of your charity cases, Dylan. If you keep nagging at me, I will cause trouble. I will kill you."
"Will you really?" asked Dylan with a sad half smile. He slowly raised his right hand and touched the other man's temple. He was so close, Dylan could smell the sweat on his skin, could feel the heat of his body.
Rhade seemed to freeze at the simple, almost innocent touch. Dylan caught the amber, haunted gaze of his Weapons Officer and kept it while his fingers trailed softly, with feather light touch, over the short facial hair and hot, soft skin, ghosting over the strong neck, barely brushing the bunched, corded muscles of Rhade's arm before closing over the gauntlet every Nietzschean wore. He could read the confusion and wariness in Rhade's eyes. The touch was almost sexual in nature, but there was nothing seductive in the way Dylan looked at him.
"And deep down, I know you still care, also," whispered Dylan, his hand firmly keeping the bladed forearm in place. "And I intend to prove it to you."
Dylan could tell, by the sudden comprehension in Rhade's eyes, that he guessed what Dylan was going to do, but it was just half a second too late, because Dylan's body was already in motion.
Never breaking Rhade's gaze, Dylan twisted his neck sharply, causing the poisoned boneblades to cut into his skin like a hot knife, tearing the soft, vulnerable tissue there and tearing muscle. He wanted to laugh at the shock in the other man's eyes.
Didn't he understand it already? Rhade wasn't the only one that didn't have anything more to lose.
He held Rhade's shocked gaze until darkness enveloped him.
End
Don't worry, the next part is coming soon :) of course some positive feedback would be most helpful.