Disclaimers:
Summary:
Warnings:
Notes:
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by
Life was fickle. Not only it did have a unique sense of humor, but it was also easily bored. This was one of those special times when life decided to focus all of its special attentions on Darm. Instead of a gentle tap on the shoulder, life kicked him in the ass with a steel-toed boot.
"Lights," Darm said.
Overhead panels illuminated the bare, orange metal walls of the prisoner transport's main holding area. The ripe odor of stale sweat and unwashed bodies lingered in the air. He breathed through his mouth instead of his nose.
Darm squatted and looked into the face of the man whom he thought was dead. What had happened to Keef? How had he ended up on this prisoner transport? Was Keef's re-appearance related to the contraband which was most likely aboard the ship?
Darm pressed his hand to Keef's cheek, hoping for some type of response. The man stared forward with the same dull, lifeless look in his eyes as the rest of the prisoners sitting on the metal benches along both walls.
Darm moved his hand along the back of Keef's neck, until his fingers felt the cool metal surface of the small collar disc. He leaned Keef forward to get a better look it. Whatever outside company the Core Guard contracted to manufacture the discs had obviously kept the towering intelligence of the average Core Guard recruit in mind when designing them. Very simple and easy to follow instructions, "Use keytool.", were etched onto its' surface.
Darm fished around in the pockets of his appropriated Core Guard uniform and found a short, thin metal rod in one of them. It was about the length and thickness of his little finger, completely smooth, made of blue metal, and bore the Core Guard Insignia on one end. He placed the end without the insignia in contact with the collar disc.
The disc shrieked the way a commpad did when you entered something wrong.
Darm put the keytool back in his pocket and waited. He had seen Wadi de-collar perps at the patrol station, and knew that when the disc shrieked, you wait. It was a security feature. Anyone else would think they had used the keytool wrong, and would try using it again on the disc. Bad move. Doing that would activate a tracking beacon and broadcast an attempted escape alert to all Enforcers in the area.
After about ten seconds, the disc deactivated and detached from the back of Keef's neck, landing with a sharp clink onto the metal bench, between where Keef and another prisoner were sitting.
"Keef," he said.
He combed his hand through the oily, tangled strands of Keef's shoulder length brownish-blonde hair. Odd. He remembered it as being much softer to the touch. Maybe hair care products were in short supply for research teams on the aboriginal worlds.
Darm glanced at the door. Any minute now, the Core Guard would arrive to escort the rehabees off the transport. He seriously needed to be elsewhere when that happened. He grabbed Keef by the shoulders and gently shook him. Keef's head fell back, and hit the metal wall with a bonk. Darm winced. Maybe Keef wouldn't notice it when he came around. But in a way, he deserved it for what he had done.
Darm gave soft pats to Keef's face with the back of his hand. "Come on. Things are gonna get pretty intense around here in a few."
Keef's zombie stare vanished. He jerked his head, and stared into the emerald green eyes of a swarthy, uniformed stranger.
Darm didn't care about encountering possible morning breath from his partner. He grinned, and leaned forward to kiss Keef.
Keef pushed him back. The expression on Keef's face was wild, like a feral animal that woke up one morning and suddenly realized it was in a cage. A cage where the keeper wanted to put a liplock on him and see what his tonsils tasted like.
He tried to get up, but the latin guy in the uniform pushed him down onto the metal bench. When he tried to yell, the man covered his mouth.
Darm felt the hardness of teeth and the warm, liquid feel of saliva on the palm of his hand. "Whoa, big guy," Darm said. "No biting. Hear me? You're safe."
Keef stopped his physical protest.
Darm eased himself down from "manhandling the perp" mode. He removed his hand from Keef's mouth and placed it on Keef's thigh. Darm remembered stories of perps being uncollared and suddenly going postal, but those were probably just exaggerations. Keef may have been a little disoriented when he was first uncollared, but he seemed to have calmed down now that he knew where he was, and who he was with.
Darm flashed a friendly smile. He saw a blur and white points of light filled his vision. He felt himself falling backwards in slow motion. Time slowed, and his senses went wild. White patches of light with blue fringe played across his field of vision. He heard the slow deep rumbling of Keef fleeing across the metal flooring. He felt searing heat from his mouth, and drafty coolness from the metal grating just inches from the back of his head. He flung out his hands and stopped his fall before his head hit the floor.
Darm focused his will and his vision cleared. He propped himself up and looked toward the far side of the holding area. Keef wasn't going anywhere - he couldn't get past the security lock on the door.
Darm sighed and rolled his eyes toward the ceiling. Why did the men in his life always give him pain when he tried to help them? And more importantly, why did he keep coming back to help then again and again?
Darm wiped the blood from his cut lip and studied the red stain on his finger. He put the finger in his mouth, and sucked it clean. The satisfying taste of emulsified saltiness merged with the numbing tingle of his lip. Within a few minutes, his lip would be a throbbing, swollen unsightly mess sure to attract attention from everyone in the cargo bay. He needed time alone to heal. Time he didn't have now that Keef was in a mood.
Darm picked himself up.
"What was that about," he said, fingering his lip as he walked towards Keef.
Keef moved along the wall, trying to keep some distance between himself and the uniformed thug heading towards him. He pointed defiantly with a shaky hand and shouted at the man he had just cold-cocked. "Stay away. I mean it."
"What's the matter with you, Keef? It's Darm. Remember me?"
The conversation wasn't getting anywhere, so Darm pointed first at Keef, then at himself, and spoke like he was talking to a child. "You Keef. Me Darm."
Keef stood silently and watched like a hawk every move that Darm made.
"Any of this coming back to you," Darm said, closing the distance between them to a few feet.
Darm eyed his partner with caution. Keef was not the fighting type, which meant he was unpredictable when backed into a corner. Darm's tender, swelling lip was testament to that. He decided to take a different approach, hoping to prevent Keef from doing something probably stupid and possibly violent.
"You could have contacted me," Darm said. "Three and a half years. You just left me hanging there. Not a word. Was it something I did? Something I didn't?"
Keef shrugged and cocked his head to one side.
Darm pointed an accusing finger at him. "Now that. That really pisses me off when you do that. Anytime we got a problem, you don't put up. You just shrug and leave me hanging. After you disappeared, do you know how many nights I couldn't sleep. Not knowing if-"
Keef offered the first thing that popped into his head. "I... I forgot." Ouch. Wrong thing to say to the crazy man. He winced.
Darm nodded. He kept nodding, and licked his cut lip. Words surged and exploded from his mouth. "You couldn't even call me? You couldn't let me know you were still alive?"
Keef flattened against the wall.
Darm waved his hands, trying to wipe away what had just been said. He was a professional and he had a case to finish. The sooner he did, the sooner he could say goodbye to headaches like this, and hello to some much needed sleep.
He rubbed his forehead and tried to focus. "So what happened? How did you end up here? Pause it. Do I... No, I don't care to hear about your problems. Just tell me one thing. Know anything about the smuggling?"
Keef's mouth dropped open.
Darm felt like he was talking to a fish. Maybe Keef's mind was still clouded from the collar, but he was definitely confused. He usually squinted and went slack-jawed like a fish when he was confused.
Darm enunciated the words. "Understand? You. Smuggling?"
"Yes," Keef said. He corrected himself. "I mean no." And corrected himself again. "Yes to the understanding, and no to the smuggling." He did a confused fish expression. "Smuggling what?"
"Contraband," Darm said.
"Contraband? Yeah. That's what you usually call stuff that's being smuggled. Any idea? You know, something - oh, I don't know - something specific about what type of contraband that you're looking for?"
"You tell me."
"Me? Why would you think that I have something to do with it?"
Darm gestured towards the clothes Keef wore. "That. And your knack for always ending up in the middle of trouble."
Keef glanced down at the clothes he wore, and saw these were not HIS clothes. He pulled at the bold yellow and black-striped shirt he wore, feeling the scratchy material. "Bad taste in clothes doesn't make me a criminal."
Darm chuckled.
"Take a good look around," he said, gesturing with open arms at the four surrounding walls. "Even with that collar on, you saw what was going on in here. Any memories you got should have already returned by now."
Keef surveyed the prisoners sitting along both walls and came to the obvious conclusion about his new clothes. "These are prisoner clothing."
Darm nodded.
"No. No. I didn't do this," Keef said. "I'm innocent of... of whatever it is I'm supposed to be guilty of. You've got to believe me on this, Darn."
Darm had heard that same emotional plea about innocence so many times before that it didn't even register anymore. He ignored it, and stated the correct pronunciation of his own name.
Keef eased his head back against the wall. Ouch. His head was tender for some reason, as though it had been hit on something. He rubbed it.
Darm crossed his arms and averted his eyes. He hoped that Keef wouldn't say anything about that bump on the head, which Darm had accidentally given him earlier. But Keef didn't need to know that. No need to unnecessarily complicate the issue with facts.
"Crap," Keef said. "Why should you believe me? I don't believe this - any of it. This is all just one big joke, and I'm the crappy punchline that everyone wants to throw away and forget about."
Darm stepped closer to give a comforting pat on the shoulder, but Keef tensed up and backed away, just out of Darm's reach. Darm tried consoling his partner with words.
"So, you don't know anything about the smuggling," Darm said. "That's good."
Keef felt pent up anger - anger about this whole situation - growing inside.
"How many times do I have to tell you this," he said, glaring at Darm. "No, I don't know anything about that. Do they actually pay you to be this... so damn irritating?"
"I think I liked you better with the collar on," Darm said.
As he walked towards the door of the prisoner holding area, Darm pointed a finger at Keef, and spoke without emotion. "Whatever this mess is you've got yourself into, you just go and get yourself out of."
He tapped a few keys on the access panel and the door slid open. He paused on the other side of the doorway.
"Some Core Guard Enforcers will be by to take you and the rest of this perp garbage off to Rehab," he said. "Try to resist, hon. They love that."
He sneered, and sealed the door.
Keef looked at the rows of prisoners. He realized that his only means of escape had just walked out the door. His heart dropped into his stomach, where swarms of carnivorous butterflies brutally attacked it.
He ran over to the door and looked through the small glass security window. He yelled so that he could be heard through the glass, but the echo he instinctively knew should be there - wasn't. His words passed through the glass as though it wasn't even there.
He lowered his voice and repeated the frantic words he had said. "You can't leave."
Darm had frozen in his tracks. A part of him wanted Keef back. That part wanted to go through the motions, no matter how unpleasant, of having the man he knew so well back in his life. But Darm was too tired to face Keef, and talked with his back to the man.
"One reason," he said. "One reason why you left, and ended up here on a prisoner transport."
Keef searched his mind for an excuse. He couldn't tell the truth, because he couldn't remember what had happened to him. All he could think of was the excuse he had heard in that movie he hated so much. The movie he knew every line to. The movie his girlfriend kept watching over and over and over, about the trapped firefighters, an approaching hurricane, and a beached whale, but which was really about the two sisters reconciling or something. It was the same excuse he had used when she caught him in bed with her old boyfriend. It didn't work then, but maybe it would work now.
He swallowed hard, trying to remember the exact words. "I'm sorry," he said. "Whatever you think I did." He corrected himself. "Whatever I did to you, I am so sorry. I know that what I am saying now can't even begin to make up-"
Darm waved his arms. "Cancel download."
He turned and faced Keef. "So, what you're saying is things are so bad, you can't even tell me why."
Keef nodded. "So you'll help?"
"Remember your last words," Darm said, "before you left on that research trip? I asked you to reconsider, but you told me 'I need time to myself.' Well, take all the time you need."
A grin of long over-due satisfaction graced Darm's lips, as he turned and walked off.
Keef whistled, trying to get the guy's attention. "Darn. Dude. You are coming back, aren't you? Right?"
Darm waved without even looking back. The sound of booted footsteps on metal grating receded down the corridor and around a corner.
Keef tapped several keys on the interior access panel, but couldn't get the door to unlock.
He slumped against a wall and let his body slide down it. Darn, Darnit, whatever his weird-sounding name, said Keef's memory should have returned by now. It hadn't.
He sat on the floor and rubbed his face, hoping this nightmare would just go away. He felt the coarse scrape and prickle of a few weeks growth of beard, which wasn't there an hour ago. Maybe more time had passed than he realized. Yesterday, last week, last month, whenever it was, he should have just stayed in bed that morning and called in sick.
*****
Darm stood in one small tributary valley of a towering canyon of metal cargo containers. It was so tempting just to leave Keef on the prisoner transport. But three and a half years of thinking his partner was dead had not lessened his feelings for him. Besides, he liked a mystery and wanted to know what had happened to Keef.
He walked between the ordered rows of cargo, heading back to the transport. He stopped when his sense of smell picked up the scent of nervous sweat. He extended his sense of hearing. A single person was hiding a few yards ahead.
He approached with caution, slowly and quietly easing his way forward. He paused just out of sight, took a deep breath, and wheeled around the container to subdue the person.
A startled Keef struggled, but stopped when he saw who had grabbed him.
"I thought I told you to stay," Darm said.
Keef pulled free of the bearhug. "A bunch of thugs-"
"Thugs," Darm asked.
"Guys like you."
Darm nodded.
"Two of them, dressed in uniforms like yours, came in and marched everyone out. First chance I got, I ducked behind here."
Darm straightened the larger wrinkles out of his baggy tunic. "You should have stayed."
Keef couldn't believe what he had just heard. "You left me there."
"Like you left me," Darm said.
Keef was not interested in hearing the rest of the one-sided conversation. He didn't know the guy, and didn't care to. He scurried off, maneuvering his way between the stacks of cargo, searching for the nearest unguarded exit.
Darm followed him.
"You won't even make it out of here," he said.
Keef wasn't listening to him anymore. Darm grabbed Keef's arm and stopped him.
"Would you listen," he said. "Once they figure out of their rehabees is missing, they won't stop until they find you. And they will find you."
"What do you care," Keef said, pulling his arm free.
Darm murmured under his breath. "That's what I keep asking myself."
When he looked up, Keef had already vanished out of sight. Darm listened with his senses, and quickly caught up with his partner.
"Stop following me," Keef said. "You've made it clear that you don't want to have anything to do with me. So leave. Go. Away."
Keef continued his search for an unguarded exit. He rubbed the bruised back of his head as he walked. Darm followed close to him.
An edgy Keef turned and confronted his annoying shadow. "What!"
Realizing he had yelled loud enough for anyone within a few yards to hear him, he lowered his voice. "What?"
"Nothing," Darm said. "Just waiting to see if that bump on the head knocked some sense into you yet. Look, I'm taking a big risk here. I should probably turn you over to those guys. I'm supposed to."
"Those guys," Keef said. "Wait. You're not one of them. Are you? Your impersonating one of those..."
"Enforcers," Darm said. "Do you want my help, or don't you?"
"Dude, I don't even know you. Whatever it is you really do."
Darm perked up. "You just call me some aboriginal curse word?"
Keef went with the flow. "Yes, Darnit. Yes I did. Now will you stop harassing me?"
Darm shook his head. Here they were in the middle of a dangerous situation, and his partner was deliberately mispronouncing his name and cursing at him in some primitive aboriginal tongue.
"Darm. Darm. Say it with me. D...A...R...M."
Keef repeated it exactly the way it had been spoken. "Darma," he said.
Darm chuckled in an irritated way. "A wise ass. Nice. Nice. But drop the 'uh' on the end. Darm."
Keef stood firm in his mispronunciation. "Darn, thank you for the enlightening language lesson, but- don't move. Stand right there."
Darm didn't move. He looked around with caution, trying to see what the possible danger might be. Not seeing or sensing anything, he deferred to his partner's suggestion to stay there.
"Here," he asked.
"Perfect," Keef said, as he backed away. "Stay there and, well, pull yourself."
Keef ran at breakneck speed the last few dozen yards to the end of the valley of cargo, around a corner, and straight into a solid body - Darm's.
Keef went off balance, and almost fell backwards. But with a clumsy waving of arms, he managed to right himself. He did a doubletake at Darm, and looked back the way he had ran - where Darm should still be.
"How did you," he said, trying to catch his breath. "You were... back there."
Darm eased his grip on Keef's arms, and looked up into Keef's eyes. He knew Keef was 6'3", but he always remembered their heights as being almost equal - at roughly the same eye level. He had pleasantly forgotten the fact that his partner was four inches taller than him. He slid his hands upward and rubbed the tension-filled muscles of his partner's shoulders.
"That's just the collar and the hit on the cabeza talking," he said. "Your mind can play tricks on you after decollaring."
Keef's rapid breathing slowed.
Darm picked a piece a lint from Keef's rehabee uniform. Something nagged at Darm. Something was different about Keef besides the temporary amnesia, and he couldn't put his finger on what it was.
"You still don't remember me, do you," Darm said.
"Remembering you would be a good thing," Keef asked.
Darm smiled. "It was pretty good. Well, I was. Us."
Keef pulled away. "Now you're really weirding me out."
"Memory wipe," Darm said. "Could be that. Some bangers - violent offenders - get the treatment if collars fail to keep them under control. But you never seemed the type."
Darm leisurely looked his partner over from head to toe. "Maybe something familiar would remind you."
"What did you have in mind," Keef said, eyeing him with suspicion.
The serious expression left Darm's face, and he grinned from ear to ear. "Maybe a kiss or something," he said.
"Maybe not," Keef said. "Especially on doing that unnamed something."
Darm's keen hearing picked up the sound of people. He turned serious and gestured toward a small open space between containers. Beyond it could be seen a group of guards in one of the larger aisles, breaking up into twos and searching the cargo bay aisle by aisle.
"You're running out of time," Darm said.
"Forget it," Keef said. "These lips are no man's land."
Darm conceded with a gesture.
Keef took another look at the guards, and eyed Darm carefully. "What's your plan?"
"Take your clothes off."
"Excuse me," Keef said, with dropped jaw. "Did you just ask me to-"
"No," Darm said. "I'm telling you. Put these on."
Darm squeezed something inside the front part of his tunic collar, and with the index finger of his other hand, he traced a path down the front of the tunic. The fabric parted, as though an unseen zipper were following his finger movements.
He reached inside and pulled out some vibrant, colorful clothing. He didn't mention these were the clothes he had worn to get into the cargo bay. Or that when he went to retrieve them, he found a couple of dock workers enjoying the good fortune of finding the semi-naked, unconscious guard he had knocked out. He threw the folded bundle of clothes to Keef.
Keef sneaked several obvious peeks at Darm's chest, as Darm zipped his tunic up in slow motion - so slow, he seemed to be teasing Keef.
Keef held the clothes at arm's length, and kept looking at them.
"Something wrong," Darm asked.
"Loud," Keef said. "The word loud comes loudly to mind."
"Your memory seems to be taking the slow shuttle back."
Keef gave a nervous nod.
"You wear clothes like that all the time," Darm said, lying to him. "Now drop trow and don't come back until I've seen that crack of dawn."
Keef gave him a weird look.
He walked over to a wall of cargo containers, faced the other way, and undressed. When he looked back and caught Darm staring, he edged closer to the containers, and tried to cover himself as he changed clothes.
"Nothing I haven't seen before," Darm said, defending himself.
Keef finished dressing. He even finger-zipped his shirt up, the way he had seen Darm do. He pulled and poked at his clothes, as he walked back over to Darm.
"You ready," Darm said, motioning towards an opening that led to a main aisle.
"Out in the open," Keef asked. "But they'll see me. I thought you were going to sneak me over to an exit."
"No worries. I'm the one wearing the uniform."
"So that way," Keef said. "They'll only be shooting at me."
Darm grinned. "Not if I'm hauling a dock lizard out of the bays."
Keef looked at the clothes he was wearing, and realized why the silk shirt was so colorful, and why the pants were form-fitting leather that left little to the imagination about which side he hung towards.
"A lizard is-," Keef said.
"Not dressed like that," Darm said.
Darm mussed Keef's hair. When Keef started to comb it with a hand, Darm stopped him.
"Leave it," he said. "And you need to show off the quantity of the merchandise more."
Darm finger-unzipped Keef's shirt, and miszipped it up half way, with patches of color misaligned and small bulges of material in the zipper line, giving an impression of hurried dressing. Darm couldn't keep from staring at his partner's chest. He wanted to let his fingers run wild and free across the masculine forested terrain, re-exploring every valley and peak that he knew by rote. At their first meeting, years ago, one look at Keef shirtless and smiling was all it took. Darm knew from that moment on that he wanted the quirky researcher by his side on a non-professional basis. He felt that same yearning now.
Darm squatted in front of Keef.
"Don't get any ideas," Keef said.
Darm smirked. He tried not to stare at the modest bulge in the leather pants, which was mere inches from his face. He exhaled loudly and shook his head. With great objectivity and restraint, he pulled out one of the front shirttails and positioned it so that it drooped over the shiny, leather pants and drew attention to the crotch. Better, but something still didn't look right. He wiped the excess moisture from his lips, and stood.
He looked Keef over.
"Hold still," he said.
A puzzled Keef did as told.
In a quick motion, Darm spit onto the palm of his hand, and smeared the bodily fluid across Keef's upper chest and part way up the side of his partner's neck, leaving a dark, moist stain on the silk shirt and a noticeable trail of wet, matted chest hair across Keef's collarbone.
"Jeez, Darn," Keef said, reaching to wipe the sticky mess off his body.
Darm grabbed Keef's wrist, before anything could be wiped off. "Used goods. Some things people just don't want to see."
"Or feel," Keef said, displeasure showing in his expression.
"The last thing they want," Darm said, "is to be confronted with the fluid reality of the situation. They see you like this, they'll throw you out."
Keef nodded. "That's the idea. Isn't it?"
"Besides," Darm said. "Maybe that can draw attention away from that ill wind surrounding you."
Keef sniffed himself. Nothing.
"Any riper," Darm said, "and you would ferment into wine."
Keef turned a vibrant shade of red. "There wouldn't happen to be any place around here close where I could freshen up, would there?"
"Outside the bays," Darm said. "We'll get you a more suitable change of clothes there too."
He grinned. "Let's go, love monkey."
Keef grumbled, but let himself be forcibly led out of the safety of the cargo stacks, into a main aisle. A thought occurred to Keef. What if someone found the rehabee uniform he discarded?
"Wait," he said, his voice low as a whisper. "The uniform. We left it."
Keef heard a low hiss and glanced behind. The rehabee uniform was now a blood red and black-tinged puff of smoke, that didn't rise up like he expected smoke to always do. Instead, the dull, fiery cloud retained its' exact shape and faded out of existence. Nothing, not ever ashes, remained.
"Did you see that," he said. "That with the uniform."
Darm stopped and glanced backward.
"Nothing there," he said.
"Yeah," Keef said. "Is it supposed to do that?"
Darm tugged on Keef's arm. "Let's go."
Keef let himself be led to one of the larger main aisles. The cloud incident kept him quiet for almost a minute, but nervousness crept in.
"You do stuff like this often," Keef asked.
"Smearing stuff on guys?"
Keef glared at him.
"You mean this," Darm asked. "Rescuing my psychotic merger partners is one of the job perks."
"Undercover work," Keef asked.
"Public Investigator," Darm said. He eyed the other guards searching the cargo bay, but without making it obvious he was monitoring their positions.
"You know," he said, "we would attract a lot less attention if you quit chatting me up."
Keef kept edging closer to Darm as they walked. Every time he got too close for appearances, Darm widened the distance between them. Darm could smell Keef's fear.
They walked down an aisle, passing a Core Guard search team without even stopping, and headed towards the nearest exit. It led to the main terminal, but had the least security. All the service exits were too well guarded.
A Core Guard enlistee, guarding the exit, eyed them cautiously and motioned for Darm to come over. He moved his other hand close to his sidearm.
Darm clenched his teeth, and reluctantly dragged his colorful lizard over to the checkpoint.
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