As the shuttle raced along at warp seven—a phenomenal rate of speed for anything that small—Paulo Costa locked in the autopilot while Tristan Hawthorne continued to calibrate the recon sensor pallet Olympia Station had lent them for the journey. The sensors on a type-12 shuttle were already pretty sophisticated, but this added enough resolution for them to stand a chance of locating Buran and their errant probes in a potentially hostile environment. Costa could tell that Hawthorne was a little moody after the captain’s pull-aside. He wasn’t exactly thrilled, either, but it’s not like either of them had done anything wrong. Now, they had very little to worry about from an outside perspective.

“So, how’s life?” Costa asked.

Hawthorne rolled his eyes. “Peachy, you absolute menace,” he said, with his typical blend of acid and sweetness.

“Careful. You shouldn’t tease me too much. I really kinda like it now,” Costa shot back. “Systems are secure on autopilot. Our EM signature is about as small as we can get it without a cloaking device. We’re good to go,” he added in a more professional tone. 

“Excellent,” Hawthorne said. “And I know, dear. I tease you because you like it and not just because it tickles me as well,” he added with a small smile. He swiveled his seat and kicked his Starfleet-issue boots off onto the deck plating before putting his feet on Costa’s lap. “Can you please tell me I’m the worst boyfriend in the universe now?”

“How can I when you do that?” Costa replied, turning his chair to face Hawthorne and starting to rub his feet. It was one of their ‘things.’ It wasn’t sexual, per se, but when they were on the couch talking or watching a holo, Costa had to have something to do with his hands, or he got antsy, and Hawthorne had no objections channeling that into a free foot rub as a living fidget toy. It’d become a part of their routine—and something that Costa had come to depend on to help fight off the chaos that sometimes dominated his life. “I’m not sure we’ve ever settled on that word ‘boyfriend,’ but I like it.”

“I… yes. I’d somewhat forgotten that. I’d been using it in my own mind for a long time now,” Hawthorne admitted, which caused Costa to beam. “I would absolutely love for you to interrogate me right now about what I said to you in your quarters before the red alert. Though, I will concede you have a certain right to string me along, should you so choose.”

“Do you think I would do that, though?” Costa asked his ‘new’ boyfriend.

“No, I don’t. I just wanted to give you the option,” the previously mentioned ‘new’ boyfriend admitted.

“Alright. Can you tell me more about how it all… happened?” 

Hawthorne cleared his throat. “Right after you told me you had been assigned as first officer aboard the Arondight, Fleet Captain Lancaster offered me a role as his First Contact Specialist,” he explained. Costa’s heart started to bend into little knots on hearing that—it was absolutely a perfect role for Hawthorne’s training and a very prestigious one to boot. “Apparently… I made a face. He asked him why I wasn’t happy, and I said I wanted to be posted with you.”

“Baby,” Costa whispered, the same as his initial reaction to the admission earlier that day. “Just like that? The fleet captain offered you an amazing job, and you just said ‘no,’ like that?”

“Not entirely. Well, initially,” Hawthorne replied. “I mentioned that we did well together. He said that he understood that, but it was his job to give us the best possible chance at a successful career as he could. I told him I was qualified to serve on Arondight. Then he asked if I loved you.”

Costa was breathless. “And what did you say?”

“The question made me a little nervous, but I said ‘yes.”

“So, Michael Lancaster knew you loved me before I did?” Costa asked, deflating a little. As he thought about that for another split second, he regretted letting that make him feel down. “I guess at that point, I knew, too, and hadn’t told you, but I knew you felt that way about me.”

“Yeah, I would rate us about a two on the communication scale.”

“We’re gonna do better, Tristan. A lot better.”

“I suppose that means you’re not sending me off to Cambridgeshire like Catherine of Aragorn,” Hawthorne said; it was clearly a quip, but Costa did not get the reference at all.

“Yeah, totally…,” Costa tried, not knowing what type of emotion he was supposed to respond with.

“God, you’re so thick,” Hawthorne retorted.

“You know, it took me months to realize that word doesn’t mean what I thought it meant and that for you people, it means I’m dumb,” Costa replied. 

“The first royal divorce in English history. Henry VIII banished his first wife, Catherine of Aragon, to a castle in Cambridgeshire,” Hawthorne replied, rolling his blue eyes. “I see we haven’t been doing our homework.”

“Nah, I read some of your dozens of recommended texts, but I stopped around 1776 because it turned out that my people won at that point,” Costa teased. He poked himself in the chest. “Winner,” he whispered.

“Oh, fuck you,” Hawthorne laughed, shaking his head.

“Well, maybe. That’d be an interesting change of pace,” Costa said with a wink. 

Hawthorne just rolled his eyes. “Anyway, the fleet captain told me about how he’d turned down a command so that Luca—his husband—could finish his medical residency. Apparently, they had a huge fight over it,” he explained, pausing for a moment. “But, delaying command was tenable for Lancaster’s career, while skipping that residency wasn’t for Luca’s.”

“Okay, great. That totally makes sense for them, but do you think I wouldn’t have stuck with you on Arcturus? I think it’s bullshit you didn’t even ask me first,” Costa replied, some of his anger coming out. In a moment of distraction, he squeezed Hawthorne’s foot in the wrong place and made him whimper. He quickly released that part of him and rubbed him more gently. “Sorry, baby.”

“I know,” Hawthorne said, still hissing a little bit as Costa worked out that kink. “But you’ve got it backward: I knewyou’d want to stay, but he said that was the wrong choice both for you and for Starfleet.”

“Then… why did he… I guess, he…,” Costa stammered. “You’re right. I would have stayed for you,” he admitted, exhaling deeply. He felt himself blushing as a wave of shame washed over him. “Tristan, I was so excited to get offered a first officer’s seat that I didn’t even think about telling him no. I was hoping you’d end up with me, but I guess I didn’t even think about it.”

Hawthorne nodded, not seeming as fazed by that as Costa may have hoped.

“From what he said, he engineered that outcome. He believes you have what it takes to be in command. He wasn’t going to let you make the ‘wrong’ choice,” Hawthorne said softly. “Both of the choices I had were good ones. You staying on as a deputy, even on a big ship, wasn’t,” he said. “He also said that if you loved me, you’d be mad. If you didn’t, you’d be happy. Either way, I felt like our relationship was so new that asking you would have been a thing.”

“Well… shit,” Costa said, just sitting there for a couple of long moments. He took a deep breath. “I love you, Tristan. A lot. So I’m kinda mad. But I get it because I’m positive I would have done exactly the same thing,” he admitted. “But that can’t happen between us anymore. If we’re going to be a team, we have to be a team,” he insisted. “From now until you’re my chief science officer on our ship, moving into our quarters with Costa-Hawthorne stenciled on the doors, we’ve got to make these decisions together.”

Hawthorne hitched in a breath. “Are you proposing to me, Paulo?” he asked.

“I’m saying that I want this to be the last time I date anyone. My goal is to be your trophy husband. Maybe not right now, but I’m in this for your heart, for keeps,” Costa replied. “Not just for your ass,” he teased.

“You’re almost a perfect approximation of Mr. Darcy, sometimes,” Hawthorne quipped; Costa at least understood that one. “I accept your terms and invite you to pursue my heart, contingent on the completion of additional successful romantic tasks, to be determined later,” he said. “I promise in return not to make career decisions without you.”

Hawthorne surprised Costa by standing up and moving over to sit on his lap. He kissed him gently on the lips and then went back to his seat. The whole conversation made Costa feel warm and tingly, but that last exchange was simply the cherry on top.

“The captain said no funny business,” Costa teased. He checked the chronometer and saw that they had at least 2.5 hours of flight time remaining. “But, we could get that nap you wanted done and dusted.

A few minutes later, the two officers were curled up together on a pair of camping mattresses in the center of the shuttle’s cockpit. They fell asleep immediately, their bodies both ready for a tiny bit of respite together before tackling the mysteries that lay in Gamma Aquarii.