Page 88 of Under His Heel

Thankfully Parsons dropped whatever was bugging him and laughed at all the right parts after that. Well, he looked pretty disgusted when the serial killer got gored, but Alex couldn’t blame him. The effects were pretty gruesome.

When the movie ended and the other two crew members left, Parsons lost some of his tension.

“The stars are different,” Parsons said suddenly. “When I have lookout duty, normally I can recognize where we’re going.”

That must have been the different route Tracht’s brother-in-law had mentioned. Alex shrugged. “They all look like little blurred lines to me.”

“No, look,” Parsons led Alex to the observation feed in the corner of the lounge. After a few taps, the small screen turned on. “Here, this purple cloud? We don’t usually see it from this angle. It’s off by a couple of degrees, and…”

He must have noticed that Alex had no clue what he was talking about.

“Never mind.” Parsons sighed and went back to the couch.

“So what’s the problem?” Alex asked. “I mean, so what if the stars are different? Don’t things move all the time in space?”

“Yeah, but not like… that cloud isn’t part of this solar system. Or this galaxy. If we take the current time of year and our normal travel trajectory into account, that’s not the view we should be getting.” Parsons rubbed his nose. “It just means we’re not going the same way we usually do.”

Again, Alex shrugged. “Does it matter?”

“No. I just thought it was interesting.” Parsons looked over at the clock on the wall. “Oh, it’s time for my shift. I’ll see you later.” He grabbed his stuff and jogged out of the room.

Weird.

===

Tracht was being... mostly himself. He really, really wanted Alex to learn stuff. To the point that one evening they sat down to watch a documentary about the early history of settlements on Pylos.

“This is kind of boring,” Alex complained, ten minutes in. He was flopped across the couch with his head in Tracht’s lap, and he wasn’t surprised when Tracht dug his nails into Alex’s shoulder.

“You’ll find that I absolutely do not care what you think of it,” Tracht responded. “If I’m going to take you out in public, I refuse to have you sound like a moron.”

“You’re going to take me out in public? Like, to your meetings?” Alex craned his neck to look at Tracht.

That weird look of annoyance from the other day was back on Tracht’s face, but this time Tracht sighed and started petting Alex. “If you can manage not to embarrass me, yes. So shut up and watch the movie.”

The movie really was boring though. Alex tried really, really hard to get himself to care, but knowing the names of the first cities or what Earth countries had claimed the planet or how the different parts of Pylos got delineated into their own separate countries just didn’t interest him.

He started wondering if he could distract Tracht with sex. Except Alex didn’t actually want sex where he ended up in pain, and he didn’t think just a blowjob would be enough to distract Tracht. He ended up fidgeting, his body full of energy with no outlet.

Two minutes later, Tracht grabbed a handful of Alex’s hair. “I know what you’re trying to do,” Tracht said. “It won’t work. We’re watching the movie.”

“But it’s boring.” Alex wiggled again, and he thought he caught a hint of a smile on Tracht’s face. Hah, Tracht would probably rather be doing something else, too. Maybe a few lashes would be okay, if the pay-off was not sitting through this crap.

Unless Tracht decided the punishment wouldn’t be lashes, but something more humiliating. Or—

Tracht’s tablet gave a shrill noise, startling both of them.

“One more day. One more day, and I would have been safe,” Tracht muttered. He paused the movie and fiddled with his tablet to pull the video app up on the main screen. The camera was angled so that Tracht would be visible to the other person, but Alex was completely out of the picture.

“Hello, Anna.”

Alex snorted at how unenthusiastic Tracht sounded.

“Johannes! I’m so glad I caught you before you left comm space.”

Anna was just as dressed up as she had been the last time. Alex suspected she just always looked like that, wearing her money with pride.

“Whatever this is can’t wait? I was in the middle of something.”

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