The Technician's Fight, Draft 1, CH38

“How are you feeling?” the Psychologist asked.

Jeremy couldn’t stop the shrug. The desire not to think about what had happened. Not to acknowledge it had happened. The hunt was done. He should move on. Get on with his life.

“Do you understand why you need to do this?”

“So I won’t dwell on things I can’t do anything about.”

“Not the counseling. Living. Do you understand why we don’t let hunters simply return to their work? Why we force you to take weeks of only life?”

He shook his head. It felt like wasted time, but accepted it as a Kelsirian thing.

“What did you do yesterday?”

“Had sex with Gral.”

She smiled. “What else?”

“Cooked.”

“What else?”

“There was more sex.”

“That is normal. Sex is a good way to remind yourself you’re alive. And considering what your Heart nearly did, he also needs to remind himself you are still there. Did you do anything else?”

“Not really?”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know.”

“Hazard a guess.”

He sighed. “Just so I’d keep busy. It felt good to make things. Things me and Gral can enjoy afterward.”

“And did you?”

“We had some. We’ll have the rest over the week and the next, since we’ll have what I’m making today, and there will be leftovers.”

“You cooked again today?”

He nodded.

“Why?”

“I told you, because it feels good to make something we’ll enjoy.”

“Then why make so much you can’t enjoy it?”

He found he didn’t have an answer. He’d started cooking and hadn’t felt like stopping. It kept him busy, kept his mind occupied, so he didn’t have to think about what had happened.

Was that it? Was he using cooking as something to avoid dealing with what had happened? Why wasn’t he working on one of his theoretical projects then? Because he couldn’t use the excuse of something coming from the work?

“Am I avoiding?”

“That’s possible. It’s a known reaction with some hunters. It’s the reason for enforced life.”

“I don’t know if I can do that. Weeks of nothing.”

“It’s not nothing.” She considered him. “We may be dealing with species differences here, and if that’s the case, we’ll make allowances, but I’d like you to try only being among people. No work. No doing something to keep you from feeling. Just be. Experience life.”

“Just stand in the middle of a crowd?”

She chuckled. “You have friends. I’m sure they’d like to know you have returned.”

“They know. There was a ship wide announcement about the end of the hunt.” Then he understood. “They’ll want to hear it from me. They’ll want to touch and smell me.”

“We are a sensory species.”

He nodded and considered how to go about it.

*

The laughter around the table was loud enough Jeremy worried they were disturbing the other patrons, then forcefully put that out of his mind. He’d told the restaurant’s agent what the gathering was about when he’d made the reservation for him and his friends, and they said it was fine.

Xenial had just finished recounting another of his youthful antics to anger his mother.

Jeremy was realizing his friend thrived on making the lives of those with authority over him difficult. No wonder he was so annoyed with Gral trying to be friends.

“What about you, Jeremy?” Scarif asked. “What kind of trouble did you get into as a cub?”

“The kind that got me brainwashed,” he replied, then had to think about why he’d said that as the table fell silent. “It’s okay. It’s just a fact. Other than that, I wasn’t a troublesome kid. Skinned my knees falling from trees, or playing baseball at school. But I was pretty well-behaved. Other than this drawing of naked men and Kelsirians. What about you, Scarif?”

“Well, there was this female on the floor above the one my family lived, at least ten years older than me, and with curves that gave me erections. I spent weeks making advances, much to my father’s consternation.”

“How old were you?” Jeremy asked

“Fourteen, fifteen?”

“Did she accept your advances?” Atarik asked.

“Her mate convinced her to put me out of my misery. Best day of my life.”

“You know,” Jurani said, “I’m kind of realizing that Jeremy’s sexual interest seems more in line with ours and Earthers.”

“I doubt we’re that different. I’m pretty sure we also become sexually active in our teens as a whole. If there’s one difference, I think, it’s with how you just accept it as part of life, while Earthers seem to have built this huge mythology around sex and its use as reproduction.”

“If that was the only reason we had sex,” Leiha said, “we would have filled the galaxy at this point.”

*

The room was filled with banners, and Jeremy felt utterly out of place. He and his pack, along with the other two, stood before the three cryo pods holding the bodies of their pack mates.

A few of the banners had designs he recognized because they were those of a god, while most represented people. People who had known the dead hunters, had been helped, saved, or, Gral had told him, had simply shared space at one time. If someone had recognized the name of the dead, they might have sent their banner simply to acknowledge that.

“He was my best friend,” a hunter said, hand on a pod. “We grew up in the same part of Ashakalian, bad neighborhood. Always had to fight to keep what we had, but we always had each other’s back. I had the idea to join the hunters to get us out of there. She didn’t even argue.”

“She’d drive me mad,” another said. “With her constant correcting of how I pronounce Carbianal. It’s the language I grew up with. I know how to speak it, but no. She’d point out this syllable needs to be accented instead of that one. How the Khra isn’t supposed to have an expiration before the R, and how that’s rolled, not short. I can’t count the number of times I felt like strangling her.”

“She could be stubborn,” the first one said.

“Yeah. I’m going to miss arguing with her.”

Other stories were told. Jeremy felt awkward at not having any to share, but he hadn’t interacted with many of the hunters outside his pack. He’d been reassured this wasn’t about having stories. It was about being there to remind them that they weren’t alone, even if they might feel like it. In the moment.

*

Jeremy moved to the music, while hands roamed his chest and back. Fur pressed against him, muzzles rubbed against his cheeks.

After honoring the hunters who were now in the Forest, he’d needed to do something to feel alive, and a club had felt appropriate.

The music lent itself to languid motion, and he hadn’t felt the need to stop. He wasn’t even working up a sweat, but the constant moving had kept him warm enough his jacket and shirt had ended up on a table, and he’d realized he’d needed the feel of fur and skin against his as he moved.

He didn’t care who, or where, but he needed to be touched. To know he was among others. That he was like them. That what he’d gone through hadn’t made him something vile.

When he woke in a large bed filled with strangers the next day, he tried to hang on to the feeling of belonging he’d felt.

Back home, his Heart joined him in the shower and left him no doubt he belonged there.

*

“Should it be this hard?” Jeremy asked Leiha.

She smiled. “You’ll have to be more specific.”

“This.” He motioned around them. “Just being here. Living.”

“Life isn’t meant to be easy.”

“You’re being deliberately difficult. You know that’s not what I mean. The hunt was two weeks ago. No one in my pack died. I didn’t even get all that gravely injured. But I still feel….” He grasped for words. “Disconnected.”

“Hunters belong to the gods,” she said. “It’s an expression they use. You went through something extreme. It’s normal you returned changed. You are someone new, tempered in the hunt.”

“So this isn’t something I have to look forward to every time I return from a hunt?” he asked, hopeful.

“Possibly not. Some hunters never shed it. You’ll find them living in the hunter’s section. They can’t connect with the rest of us anymore. The hunt is everything to them.”

“That feels rough. There’s nothing you can do to help them?”

“I can’t help those who don’t seek help. Most of them didn’t have many connections with others before the hunters, so I expect you’ll be fine. But if those feelings persist, don’t hesitate to talk with me.”

*

“Do you have any idea what your actions made me look like?” his beta demanded, getting in Jeremy’s face.

“No, Beta.” It was not how he’d wanted to spend his first shift back on duty, but his life as a hunter now came first.

“There are procedures for a reason, Hunter!”

“Yes, Beta.” He did what he could to ignore the rest of his pack, but his face burned.

“Have you not learned what those procedures are, Hunter?”

“Yes, I have, Beta.”

“Then explain to me why you addressed another beta with your idea, Hunter!”

Was he serious? “I wasn’t contacting her, Thur—”

“Beta!”

Jeremy ground his teeth. “Beta. I was throwing the instruction out there because it had to be acted on as quickly as possible.”

“So you think yourself a Beta?”

Jeremy closed his eyes and breathed. “No. Beta. I don’t.”

“Hunters don’t give orders!”

“I wasn’t—”

“You weren’t what, Hunter?” his beta demanded.

Why was his friend being so stubborn about this? Instructions aren’t orders. He wasn’t ordering anyone; he just sent out what needed to be done so those in a position could act on it.

“You weren’t what, Hunter?” his beta demanded again, and this time, Jeremy glared.

“Nothing, Beta.”

“You are not to get anywhere close to the tech we brought back from the station.”

“Come on, you can—”

“Are you questioning your beta’s orders, Hunter?” his beta demanded, a growl underlying the words.

“It’s Earther—”

The growl intensified.

“No, beta,” he said through clenched teeth.

“Until further notice, you will spend half a shift assisting one of the builders. You will perform any builder-related task they give you no matter how menial, I will leave it to you to set when you are available on each day, but if I find you aren’t making yourself available to them, I will set it for you without consulting if you, am I clear?”

“You are, Beta.”

His beta gave a sharp nod. “Go.”

Jeremy stormed off.

*

Jeremy stormed into his home feeling like punching something. “Who the fuck does he think he is?”

“Rough day?” Gral asked, stretching in the living room.

“Rough? That doesn’t even come close to describing how Thur treated me in front of the others. What the fuck is so bad about throwing an idea over comm because I thought about it?”

Gral froze in the middle of bending to the side and straightened, eyes fixed on Jeremy. In the time of the motion, his entire stance changed.

“Don’t you fucking do that,” Jeremy said, barely containing his exasperation. “Don’t you fucking go all Alpha on me.”

“I am your Alpha, Jer.”

And he heard the difficulty Gral had in using his name instead of Hunter.

“Then how about you go Alpha on him! He’s locking me out of the mind-raping machine tech. That stuff was used on me! I have a right to rip those things apart!”

“No, you don’t.”

Jeremy stared. He kept himself from speaking until he trusted himself not to say something hurtful. “I’m going out. I’ll be back once I’m no longer pissed.”

By the time he was out the door, Gral hadn’t called for him to return. The Alpha wouldn’t comfort him.

So, Jeremy went to someone else for that.

*

Toom held him. “I’m sorry they both treated you that way.”

“What the fuck am I supposed to do if I can’t go to my mate when I need to scream about something Thur does?”

“Gral won’t have any problem with you screaming about what Thuruk sel Minial does, unless the actions are as a beta.”

“And what do I do then?”

Toom rubbed his muzzle against Jeremy’s cheek. “You come to me, or another of your friends. We’ll listen to you scream. I’m sure some will have similar stories about those who outrank them.”

“You ever had that problem with Gral?”

“The captain has reprimanded me a few times, yes. I sometimes forget I’m not friends with the captain. Just Gral.”

“You okay if I stay here to sleep? I can’t go home right now.”

“I’m going to be on shift soon, but you’re welcome to sleep here.”

Jeremy rested his head against Toom’s shoulder. “Thanks.”

*

Jeremy looked at the mess in the back of the workshop the Hunter builder used. Broken parts littered the floor. Half-assembled or disassembled machines were on tables, and he’d been ordered to take everything apart and store the parts in specifically marked containers. He doubted he’d get through even a fifth of that in the four hours he had.

He set to work. He didn’t want to give Thur an excuse to add to the already set torture.

*

Gral watched Jeremy from the living room, muting the movie.

He stopped. “I’m sorry for not telling you where I was.”

“Toom let me know you were at his place. Are you feeling better?”

“I no longer feel like screaming at you. So that’s an improvement. But I don’t know how to deal with you being my Alpha when all I want to do is go to my mate and complain about how unfair my beta’s being.”

Gral motioned him over, and Jeremy sat on his lap. “I’m sorry I can’t set that part aside and just comfort you. I’ve never been in this position.”

“Toom reminded me there are others I can go to when I can’t go to you. But do you think Thur’s punishment’s fair?”

“It’s within the guidelines of what a beta can do.”

The forcefulness of the neutral tone told Jeremy he wouldn’t get more than that.

“You said I don’t have the right to access the mind-raping tech. Is that something you can talk about?”

“One part is that hunters don’t get access to things like that unless they bring skills that can help.”

“I have knowledge of Earther tech.”

“But not in that field.”

“What’s another part?”

“Because of who it was used on, it’s evidence in those crimes. The adjudicators will request access to them, and they can’t have been tampered with beforehand.”

“Are you fucking telling me I brought them back just for a bunch of lawyers to get them?”

“No. Documents have already been altered to show you brought back less than you actually did.”

“Can’t you get in trouble over that?”

“Yes, but I want my hunters to go over the tech that was used to hurt you. The Federation techs never updated me on what they found from the device I had to leave with them. I don’t want to end up hoping they’ll update me on these as well.”

“Will I get access to any of that information?”

Gral took long enough to respond, Jeremy looked up at him.

“Once the investigation of them is done, I’ll make those reports available to you.”

Jeremy rested his head against his Heart’s chest. It wasn’t everything he wanted, but it was more than he’d had before they’d talked.

Outline section 

No Outline

Addition 

Jeremy’s session. Days off work, just living. Time with friends. Honoring those fallen

Jeremy’s consequence for acting of rank during the hunt.

A little bit all over the place. Again, a mix of passage of time and establishing the aftereffect of what Jeremy had gone through/done.