Difference between Boys and Men
If freighter Operating Systems could drop sweat, Marksman II would certainly be doing so, "Captain Kirstein, would you please take your seat and pilot this vessel?" he asked as one of his miniature bodies descended from the ceiling into the cockpit.
Jean turned from looking out at the infinite star-filled ocean that was deep space and stared at the soda can-looking robot for a moment, staring without shame at him. "PAHAHAHAHA!" he bellowed, holding his sides and nearly falling forward.
"What is so funny?" Marksman asked.
"Your body is! It's… It's like a soda can! If we took you down from the ceiling and put you in the fridge, I'm sure someone would mistake you for a drink!" Jean continued laughing hysterically.
The sound of Jean's obnoxious laughter was enough to make Marksman retreat into the ceiling and let his stationary body located above the cockpit's front window do the talking, "It is getting late. If you are not going to pilot the ship, then at least go away and let me handle it."
After standing to his full height and getting the last of the laughs out of his system, Jean nodded. "Go ahead. Have a field day with it." He said.
"I hope you'll be ready to read over the manual tomorrow morning. And hopefully you can find some maturity between now and then." Marksman said as he watched Jean leave the room through the hallway that led to the sleeping chambers.
Sitting in the kitchen at the bar and reading over some space weather reports on one of the tablets he'd found on the counter, Marco couldn't help but let his mind wander from the forecasts. Now that he was here in space with nothing keeping him from the endless expanse known as the universe, he started wondering if this was a good idea. He'd abandoned everything he'd grown used to on Shiganshina. Every single thing he had. All for-
"Yo, Marco!" Jean greeted as he came into the kitchen.
"Hey." Marco replied after looking up. He made sure to give a small smile to Jean; anything to make the man feel more confident in the choice he'd made to leave the planet and venture out into infinite space.
"Man, this kitchen is pretty cool. It's even got an island, which I've always wanted." The kitchen was indeed nice. It seemed brand new. The cabinets were in pristine condition, and they lined the walls flawlessly. There was a decently sized sunroof that allowed space to be seen. There was also a large, tiled backsplash behind the stove that was white and dark blue. All in all, it seemed like the kind of kitchen an incredibly well-off person would have. "Hey, you don't have any shortness of breath or anything, huh?" the brunette asked as he walked over and took a seat on one of the fancy couches across from the bar where Marco was seated.
"No. There's oxygen in the ship, Jean. I'm fine. I honestly haven't needed my inhaler for a long time now." Marco almost laughed as he spoke.
"Oh…"
"Thanks for worrying though."
"No problem, man."
"…So… uh, it looks like we won't encounter any space storms if we keep on our current trajectory."
"That's good."
"And gas reserves are holding out, it seems. But still, Marksman told me we should consider refueling soon."
"Refueling? Uuuh… Shit! I don't have money for the gas this ship needs! That stuff costs a fortune!" Jean shouted and threw his head back in defeat.
"Neither do I. What should we do? We can't keep going on the little gas we do have, you know."
"I know."
"…" Marco avoided looking over at Jean, whose Adam's Apple was protruding quite a lot since he was leaning his head back on the couch. "We could take up jobs." He offered.
"That means we have to land somewhere soon."
"Yeah. The next planet should be Trost… But we have to pay for parking before we do anything, you know."
"God, everything costs money!" Jean lamented at the top of his lungs.
"True… But we'll be okay, Jean."
"…"
"I'm getting a bit tired, so I'm gonna go take a bath." Marco said as he turned the tablet off and put it down on the counter where he found it.
"Hey, these things have those spa-like bathrooms, don't they?"
"I think so."
"Let's go do that then."
Marco almost blushed, "Together?!"
"Yeah, we've done it before. What's the big deal?" Jean asked, raising a curious eyebrow.
Averting his eyes, the freckled-man looked to the floor. "Nothing…"
"Then come on!"
The bathroom was extravagantly large and unexpectedly spa-like. There were multiple shower stalls that doubled as bath tubs as well, a large hot tub in the center floor, surrounded by a step layer, a few steam ports in the walls that would turn the room into a sauna, and a large window in the ceiling that gave a glimpse of the endless expanse of stars outside. Most of the room was tiled, and thankfully, there was a room just before this one where clothes, towels, and anything else someone wouldn't want getting wet from water or steam could be kept.
"This is just fucking amazing!" Jean admired as he walked into the bathroom with a towel wrapped around his waist. The hanging lights were what really got his attention. They were all bright, but a panel on the wall told him the brightness could be adjusted.
Well, it took him no time at all to dim them down.
Marco heard Jean flipping out in excitement from where he was in the changing room.
After stepping out of his underwear, he pulled towel around himself and walked over to the door. It slid open and he entered. To his surprise, it was very dim. The lights suspended from the ceiling were either broken or possibly adjustable. When he turned and saw the panel to adjust them mounted just beside the doorway, he had his answer.
Jean was sitting in the hot tub, his towel folded and covering his eyes and forehead.
"Marco."
"Yeah?"
"You give good massages?"
"Uhm… why do you ask?"
"Well, I always heard guys who like guys gave good massages."
"You shouldn't listen to or perpetuate stereotypes. I don't even see how that could be believable…"
"Wanna give me one?"
"You're not nervous or anything?" Marco teased.
"Well, you like girls too, right? It's fine. Besides, it's you. If it was anyone else, I wouldn't go for it."
Marco walked through the humid room and came up behind Jean, then took a seat on the step the man was using to rest his elbows on, and then sat down behind him, his legs on either side of him in the hot water. "I wanted to talk to you about that. It's what I've been meaning to tell you about for a while now... I just haven't found the way to tell you."
"What is it?"
"I'm… ah…" Marco swallowed a desperate mouthful of saliva. "Well I'm not as interested in women as I used to be. In fact, I don't really know that I'm still physically attracted to any woman." he admitted hesitantly as his heart was nearly jumping out from his chest. The ensuing silence marinated his confession in the steamy room. Though, that silence grew in duration to near unbearable extremes, so noticeable that it could almost literally be sliced through by a plastic butter knife. This was only to be expected though, with a secret like that one. Jean was probably really uncomfortable now.
"Really?" Jean asked, breaking the uncomfortable quiet that had gripped the room. He leaned forward, noticeably putting some distance between them. A blind man could see that that's what he was doing.
"Yeah. I didn't know how you'd feel about bringing me with that knowledge, so that's why I wanted to tell you before we left." Marco uttered shamefully. "But you know how things went at the docks… It was too crazy to stop and tell you."
"What makes you think that'd bother me?" Jean asked, pulling his towel down from covering his eyes and laying it on the floor beside Marco's leg.
"It's just something I thought you should know. I don't want you to be uncomfortable or anything."
After looking over his shoulder for a moment, Jean shook his head at Marco and grinned, "I'd be uncomfortable if you weren't here. I can't survive without my saving grace."
"Jean-"
"By the way, I still want that massage… if you care to give it to me."
Relief gradually stretched its way across Marco's face in the form of a gentle smile. He reached out and pulled Jean back so he was just a breath away, and then grabbed both his shoulders. "I guess this isn't the weirdest thing we've done." He joked, making light of the slightly awkward situation. Jean was naked and sitting in between his legs, while Marco himself was only wearing a towel to cover himself as he gave him a massage.
"Yeah. Besides, I don't mind—AAAH!"
"You okay?" Marco asked, retracting his hands as quickly as he would if he'd touched an open flame.
"Fine… ugh… that just felt really good..."
"You're very tense. Been working at the construction site again?" he asked, knowing that Jean always managed to rustle up some work that was very labor-intensive. The construction site was one of his least favorite places to work, and on the rare occasions he visited Marco after a long and strenuous day to complain, he usually fell asleep on the couch with a beer in his hand.
"I stopped working there about a week ago. Can't believe that heavy lifting had such a long-lasting effect on my body… Shit…" he groaned, rolling his shoulder to try working out the kinks. "But anyway, none of those crappy jobs matter anymore. We're out here in space now! The universe is ours to explore!"
"We'll have to get jobs eventually, even if they're just temporary." Marco said, now missing the stability of his old job. It was an irrational decision he made, leaving so suddenly on a hopeless odyssey into space for Jean's sake, but there was no way he could live with himself for the rest of his life if something happened to Jean because he let him leave on his own. On Shiganshina, it was different. They could reach each other if the need arose. But being light-years apart? That was a strain he wasn't willing to undergo.
"I know." Jean practically sighed.
"You're a hasty guy, you know."
Shrugging, he smirked, "I take my chances when they come."
"You don't need to tell me that. I've had to save you so many times before."
"So what would you have done if you inherited this ship?"
"Well, assuming the paperwork for it was done and it was in my name, I'd sell it. That's the rational thing to do. Then I could've had a bigger nest egg in case something went wrong."
"No way. So you never wanted to leave Shiganshina? Ever?"
"Not really… I enjoy stability." Marco replied wholeheartedly. "Anyway, you need to make sure this thing is in your name when you get the chance."
"I already got MJ to delete the previous crew's info and put ours in. He registered it in my name after he did that. It's fine now. I just have a fee to pay…"
"Can't hurt to check the records at the DSV*. The last thing you need is another charge against your record." *(Department of Spaceship Vessels)
Jean sighed and leaned back, pressing the back of his head his back against Marco's inviting stomach. Marco grew warm and stopped massaging him. When Jean felt him stop, he looked up into those coffee brown eyes. "I'm curious." He admitted straight out of the blue.
"About what?"
"You have a lot of sex?"
"I—What a weird thing to be curious about!" Marco nearly shouted, his eyebrows furrowed a bit in confused surprise. Jean stared up at him still, making him nervous. Inevitably, he caved. He always did. "Okay…" he breathed out, ready to begin, "So I was seeing someone for a while and things were going just fine. He was the kind of guy you could build a life with, you know…? A family and a home… But we broke it off shortly after he got a job in another city. He didn't really want to negotiate it since it was his 'one chance in a million'. Needless to say, we realized a long distance relationship wouldn't—um! Wait! Why do you want to know about my personal life?!"
"I'm just asking. We haven't talked about stuff like this in ages…" Jean replied honestly and a bit glumly with a shrug as he recalled their early teenage years when all they did was talk together, spending days under the clouds and nights under the stars rattling on as boys often did about the great unknown future. He missed those days… But alas, adulthood soon sprang itself upon them both and left no room for idle, innocent, and incandescent aspirations in its bleak, demanding, and austere wake.
"We're not kids anymore, that's why we haven't... Your private business is yours, and I have mine."
"S'not like we can't talk about it now." Jean offered, his innocence and desire to return their relationship to the way it once was showing through unintentionally and unbeknownst to him.
"Are you that interested?"
"Kinda." He said simply.
Marco sighed and directed his attention back to their position, which was nothing short of interesting. "You know Jean, this is why people always thought we were dating. You're waaay too comfortable around me…"
"Don't say stuff like that! Of course I am! You're my best friend!" Jean declared sincerely, then closed his eyes and brought his arms up to rest them on Marco's thighs, "Besides, I couldn't give two shits what everyone else thinks. I know what I am…" he said, all of his current actions meaning to emphasize his exceptionally bold point.
Marco tried bringing his thighs together a little. "Um… I don't know that this is a good position…"
When he felt something hard press against his back from under Marco's towel, Jean's eyes popped open and he jumped forward, "Marco-"
"It's not my fault! You're the one who's so comfortable around me!" said man blushed profusely, desperately avoiding eye contact and closing his legs tightly now that there was nothing keeping them from being able to do so.
Jean shook his head and grinned, "I'm honestly just surprised. In all our time every being physically close to each other, you never got a hard-"
"Alright! We can drop it!"
"Heh, well, I'm done here." Jean said, then retrieved his towel, covered himself under the water, and stood up. "You… uh… you keep yourself in check, yeah? Bad uh… bad dog." He joked before he stepped out of the water and went on his way.
Marco fell into his hand and let out a heavy sigh against it. Jean was too eccentric for his own good sometimes.
"Well, well. Captain Kirstein." Marksman said as Jean came into the cockpit, barely dressed in pants and no shirt with oddly red ears.
"What?" Jean said as he took a seat in one of the random seats in the room. "It's cold in here, by the way."
"Are you prepared to read the manual for this vessel?"
"M—manual?!"
Out from the ceiling, a thick, neatly bound manual descended in front of Jean, who ignored it by looking the other way. "Read it," Marksman said, releasing the heavy object and letting it fall right on Jean's lap.
Jean cursed and pushed the book to the floor angrily. "Why should I read a stupid manual?! Give me some practical examples of the procedures!"
"Because there's no way you could get practical experience from something like having one of the main engines going out from, say, an explosion. Attempting some of the procedures now is inadvisable at this time." Marksman replied, then his camera focused in on the person coming into the cockpit. "Hello Mr. Bodt."
Marco looked up to Marksman and nodded in greeting, "Ready to teach me to navigate this thing?" he asked.
"Of course. Make your way up to where you were seated before, but don't sit down. You'll soon find a much more effective way of navigating if you utilize this ship to its maximum potential." Jean watched as Marco climbed the stairs to the arena just behind his own seat. "Please remove your clothes."
"Huh?"
"Remove his clothes?!" Jean echoed, just as confused as Marco was.
"Wear this." The OS said, lowering a pair of tight shorts to the freckled man, "The developers of this ship developed the liquid you'll submerge yourself in to be regenerative to human skin, however, they were so concerned with that idea that some of the agents in the liquid are corrosive to basic clothing, especially cotton. Perhaps they expected a female to pilot and wanted that, however, this did not go over well with the head of the R&D for this vessel. She quickly had basic outfits developed at the utmost last-minute. I only have this one and the one for a female navigator, so do take care not to ruin it. If you do, you'll have to be in the chamber naked."
Marco took the shorts and blushed a bit. But he turned his back to Jean, even though he couldn't see his lower half given they were on two separate levels of the cockpit, and then started undressing. After sliding the shorts on, which were very tight and showed off all of the little curves, folds, and muscles he had to offer, he folded his old clothes and dropped them on the floor on Jean's level.
"Good." Marksman said.
Suddenly, the floor around Marco's arena rose to the ceiling, hiding him away from Jean.
"Hey! What are you doing?!" Jean shouted.
"Just watch." The OS replied.
The sound of water filling the chamber sounded. Jean tore his way up the stairs and started banging on the metal wall that separated him and Marco, "Damn it! He's not a robot! He can't breathe if you put him in a tank of water."
"Jean, calm down!" Marco's voice came from behind the wall.
The cockpit darkened, as all the lights in the room were going down. Jean looked around wondering why that happened. And slowly, the metal wall lowered, revealing a glass wall as it descended. Jean's mouth opened and he gaped a bit at the sight before him.
Marco was submerged in a strange fluid behind the wall. It was strange because, well, it didn't exactly look like water. It looked like space. It was dark, but filled to the brim with tiny stars. Marco himself was a bit lit up thanks to the stripes running the length of his shorts, which were very tight on him. The moment Jean's eyes ran Marco over, they wandered down to his groin, then when he realized that's where he was staring, he looked away.
It was only natural, he reasoned. After all, in all their years as friends, he'd never seen Marco completely naked. It was human curiosity at its simplest.
"Marksman, what is this?" Marco asked, moving his arms and legs about as he floated in the arena.
"Your navigation system, of course. The liquid you are floating in is one that does the work you normally do by breathing—oxidizing your blood. As for navigation, you have a complete view of this ship's surroundings in your arena. Consider it your glimpse into the galaxy around you."
"Whoa! That's amazing! I can't believe a simple cargo ship could have something so top-grade…" the obsidian-haired man commented. Reaching out, he instinctively waved his hand in the direction of the next planet. "Trost isn't that far from us. We must be traveling at a great speed."
"Really?" Jean asked.
Marco looked at him and smiled, "Heheh! This is really nifty!"
"Tell me about it!"
"I'll get some details for you, alright?"
"Okay!" Jean nodded, now excited about this ship and much more inspired to keep going on this voyage. "Marksman, let's get to my tutorial!"
"Take your seat then, please."
Doing as he was told, Jean flashed a small grin. His blatant eagerness dissipated, however, when a large manual screen came up in front of his steering wheel. "W—what?"
"It's too dark in the room for the book. Unless you'd prefer that." Marksman said, lowering a thick, heavy manual from the ceiling.
"Where do you keep this stuff, anyway?!" Jean fumed, waving the book away.
Spreading his legs and putting them up on either side of his dashboard, he started reading what was on the digital owner's manual.
As the ship traveled through space and both its occupants were busy figuring out their respective positions via manuals, it was incredibly silent. Marksman had nothing to say, so he too was quiet. The only thing to be heard was the sound of the engines, firing on at their best output.
Eventually, a planet came into view.
"Jean, I have information to share." Marco said.
"Yeah?" said man replied, looking over his shoulder. Marco was clearly having fun, floating there half-naked with his subtle musculature on display.
"As for storms, we're okay. There's no ether waves or anything in the vicinity. I also don't see any Titans in the 360 view. And with parking fees for Trost, we'll have to take the cheapest one they have."
"How much is it?"
"10,000 Historions."
Jean cringed, his eyes went wide, and he gulped, "That's the cheapest?! I don't have that much!"
"Yeah, we can pay in installments if we need to."
"Is 30 Historions an option?"
"Eh… It says the minimal is 2,000. The rest can be paid over the course of a week. Seems like they ensure you pay by holding your ship until you do."
Jean turned back to look out the window ahead of him at the planet, so big and green-ish orange in its entirety. "Fuck."
"Alternatively, and I don't know that this is legal, or if Marksman would like it, we could simply park out in the countryside. That'd be free, and if we could hide it from the MPs somehow, we could manage to get by. But still, gas refueling comes at the docking ports… Either we park for free and refuel the ship ourselves, or we park and pay installments on the parking fee."
"…"
"Jean."
"Yeah, yeah. We'll park at the port. We can't do anything without gas in this thing. I guess I'll pay the minimum."
"How?"
"I'll just overdraft my account."
"By 2,000 Historions?"
"Yeah..."
That certainly told Marco just how far Jean was willing to go for this trip to... wherever it was they were going. "Hey, I can pay half so you don't have to deal with it alone." He said, feeling partially responsible that he hadn't really been able to persuade Jean into maintaining the life they had on Shiganshina. Though, Jean getting the keys to this vessel was completely out of his control.
"You have money to spare?"
"Not really, but we're partners." Marco smiled. "Besides, now that we're out here, we're pretty much outlaws, huh? A negative balance in my account is no big deal."
"Heh, if only the others could see you now…" Jean smirked at just how much Marco was coming over to the dark side that existed outside his perfect little world where bills got paid on time and where he never got in trouble with the police, "Fine, we'll do it together."
"I do want to pull the actual money I have out of my account just so I won't lose it completely. You and I will need to get jobs fast though, regardless. I mean, I don't want my account to be negative forever… And we need food, and water, and clothes… Plus gas for the ship."
"Marco, you're not making this any better…"
"Sorry…"
"MJ, can we stay on board the ship while you're parked?"
"Only if you have gas to keep systems operational. If you don't, I cannot run to support you."
Jean sank in his seat. So with all the expenses thrown their way, shelter was another one? This was a bit too much already… And he wondered if he should just quit when he got to Trost. Start fresh there…
Looking over his shoulder, he relinquished that idea when he saw Marco flipping through some virtual panels that had lodgings on Trost. He'd already left Shiganshina, where Commander Dawk had coincidentally been to try apprehending him, so he was technically wanted… He figured he might as well keep going this perilous, outlaw-ish path…