"Are you sure you want to stay?" Scott asked, trying his best to seem disinterested. Which is lot harder than you might think when your heart is in your throat, restricting your breathing.

"It is not a question of wanting." Jaal sounder tired, as if this had been discussed before, and Scott shrank back against the wall.

"Oh" he said, "sorry." The angaran male sighed deeply and turned to Scott.

"I am grateful that I have been allowed to journey and fight with you" he said, "but now my path has changed and I must stay here on Aya. my people ask it of me and i will serve them to the best of my ability."

"Well" Scott muttered unhappily, "if you're sure." tat was really the end of the conversation; Scott stood in silence and watched Jaal gather up his belongings and tidy up the tech bay, until there was as much as a trace of having ever been there. Scott watched with an increasing sense of helplessness, wishing there was something he could say to make the other male change his mind - but what could he say, exactly? Definitely not what he wanted to say. What he was aching to say. 'please, please don't go - don't do this, make them send someone else, don't leave me, please', but if he said that he would also have to say the words that terrified him more than a whole battalion of kett - 'I'm in love with you'. Saying something like that to an angaran who was really just a gigantic pool of compassion wrapped in flesh and would most likely want to hug it out, was... well, probably not the brightest idea he'd ever had. especially not since he had manage to get close enough as a friend to be informed that Jaal had zero interest whatsoever in males. At least outside his species. And Scott had failed not crying himself to sleep over that enough times as it was, thank you very much.

Therefore he stood and watched in silence as Jaal packed his belongings, unaware that he was packing the remains of Scott's heart into his bag, too.

Once the angaran was done, the two males walked in silence through the ship to the docking area. they said nothing as the ramp ascended, and it was in the same silence Scott watched Jaal walk slowly down the ramp as if he was walking to an execution. Tears stung in his eyes, but his pride refused to let them fall. He had always known this stupid crush wasn't going anywhere anyways. He had been setting himself up for heartbreak from day one and now he was reaping what he had sown.

But knowing that, he realised as he told SAM to tell Koll to take them back to the nexus, did not make it hurt any less. However, a distraction just might.

Rest removed due to graphic sexual content. Contact author for details.