Gigi Sinclair
Miscellaneous slash

Gigi Sinclair

Across the Deserts Bare

"So," Frank Towns said, calculatedly casual, as they started their descent into Houston. "Got any plans for the layover?" He glanced at his co-pilot, who grinned lasciviously.

"Do I ever, man. Her name's Jenna. She's a journalism major at the University of Houston and she's very interested in my story."

"Jesus. How many is that now?"

AJ looked thoughtful. "Eight...no, nineteen. Not counting the ones who didn't put out." Nineteen journalism groupies in the two years since they'd come home. Frank had to admire that. At first, Frank had tried to emulate AJ's dedication, with little success. He just didn't attract sympathy sex the way AJ did.

"Damn frigid Barbara Walters screwed up your average, huh?"

AJ shrugged. "Can't win 'em all, Frankie. And that '60 Minutes' chick was a demon in the sack."

Frank laughed and picked up the radio. Even after two years, he still felt a surge of relief when the control tower answered.

When they'd told him where to land, Frank put the radio back and AJ asked: "What are you up to?"

Frank hesitated. He'd been thinking about how to raise the subject with AJ, but the best he could come up with was: "I thought I'd give Elliott a call."

Frank kept his eyes on the controls, but he could feel AJ staring. "Elliott?" AJ finally said. "What the hell for?"

"No one's spoken to him since we got home." Not even Kelly, who had been Elliott's friend, at least as much as any of them had. "I wondered what he was doing." Elliott hadn't even come back to the States with the rest of them. As soon as the embassy's doctors cleared him, he'd walked out of the hospital in Beijing, without even saying good-bye. And that irritated Frank.

"You know what he's doing, man. He's some big shot at NASA, and they're welcome to the little prick as far as I'm concerned."

"He saved our lives, AJ." Three times: first when he'd lied and convinced them to rebuild the plane, secondly when he'd killed the Mongolian arms dealer to get them back on track, and then when he'd fixed the tail of the Phoenix in mid-flight. You didn't have to like the guy---and Frank definitely didn't---to appreciate that. "I'd like to see him again." Hell, Frank thought, he and AJ ate at Sammi's greasy restaurant whenever they were in town, and even Ian sent him a corporate Christmas card every year. The least Frank could do was buy Elliott a beer or whatever bizarre drink he preferred.

"Whatever, man." AJ shrugged. "You want to waste your downtime with that freak, it's your call."

It was, and it was a call he'd put a lot of consideration into. When he left the airport, he got into his rental car and reached for his cell phone before he changed his mind.

The people at NASA were reluctant to put Frank through to Elliott. Frank was wondering if he'd have to use the "Actually, it's Captain Frank Towns, we were together in the Gobi," card when he was finally transferred to a woman who called herself:

"Elliott's research assistant."

Frank felt an immediate empathy for her. "That must be a hell of a job."

"Elliott's a brilliant man," the woman said, which didn't really say anything.

"My name's Frank Towns," Frank said, hoping the assistant was one of the four people in America who didn't know his name. He couldn't imagine Elliott ever talking about him. "I'm in town overnight and I'd like Elliott to give me a call."

"Captain Towns?" The woman's voice took on an awed quality. Not one of the four after all, then.

"Yeah. Can I give you my number?" He gave it to her, pausing so she had chance to write it down.

"I'll make sure Elliott gets the message," the assistant promised earnestly.

"Thank you." Frank hung up, hoping that whatever Elliott's reaction was to his call, he didn't take it out on her.

***

Frank spent the afternoon in his hotel room, working on expense reports and spreadsheets and other things he'd never worried about when he was doing the oil rig runs in Mongolia, where half the money that changed hands was never recorded anywhere. It had been easier, Frank thought, stretching, but not perfect. His high-priced lawyers were still tied up in court with the mining company who refused to pay for that last trip on the grounds that none of their property had arrived in usable condition. Except for those few employees, of course.

It was nearly six o'clock when Frank's cell phone rang. There was a long silence on the other end when Frank picked it up, and just as he was about to hang up, a familiar, monotonous voice with a familiar, weird accent said: "Captain Towns. Why did you phone my assistant?"

"I phoned you, actually, Elliott," Frank said. "How are you?"

"I am a very busy man. I don't have time to reminisce with people who once said they'd be happy if they never saw me again."

"I don't think I..."

"Don't worry," Elliott cut him off, "The feeling is still entirely mutual."

Elliott was an asshole, and probably nuts. Frank remembered that very well, and it was clear he hadn't changed. Frank knew he'd be better off if he followed AJ's advice and just forgot about the guy.

Instead, Frank heard himself say: "I'm at the Four Seasons. Feel like meeting me for a drink?"

Elliott hesitated a second, and Frank wondered if he'd surprised him for once. Then Elliott said, "I think that would be entirely pointless, Captain Towns," and hung up.

Frank snapped his cell phone closed. So much for that, he thought. Still, he'd tried, and the next time Kelly sent one of her infrequent emails from whatever offshore rig she was on, he'd be able to tell her Elliott was the same as ever.

She'd probably never doubted it.

***

There was a decent restaurant in the hotel, and after dinner, Frank went into the bar, where a passably pretty blonde was playing the piano. Frank ordered a scotch on the rocks and sat at a table in the corner, trying not to think about Phoenix Airlines's finances or AJ getting off with yet another nubile young reporter while Frank sat drinking alone in the bar of the Four Seasons.

Frank drained the drink and indulged in a little nostalgia about his days in Mongolia, where there was no FAA and he could down a bottle and a half in a bar in Ulaan Baatar and fly out to an oil rig six hours later with a blinding hangover and a barf bag next to the throttle. That kind of thing didn't work when you were CEO of your own airline. Frank was thinking about heading to bed for a good night's sleep when he looked up and saw Elliott standing on the other side of the table, with that same fake-blond hair and wearing what looked like, but couldn't possibly be, the same jacket he'd had in the desert.

"Captain Towns," he said, neutrally, as if they were casual acquaintances who happened to have run into each other.

"Elliott." Frank didn't know whether he should stand up and offer his hand, but he could imagine Elliott ignoring it if he did. So instead, he gave a casual half-wave from his seat. "Didn't expect to see you here."

"That's not surprising, Captain. There seems to be very little you do expect."

Frank didn't rise to the bait. "Do you want something to drink?" The waitress was already coming over. Elliott pushed up his glasses and shook his head, like he was brushing away an irritating insect.

"No, thanks," Frank translated. The waitress retreated, and Elliott asked what seemed to be the question of the day:

"Why did you call me?"

Frank shrugged. "Why did you come?"

Elliott didn't say anything, which Frank took as a small victory. Elliott took the paper napkin and started folding it. Frank would have betted on a paper airplane, but instead, Elliott folded the napkin in half, and then in half again and again, until it was a small, dense square. "Ian sent me a Christmas card," Elliott finally said.

"Me, too. With a picture of himself at his desk."

Elliott turned the napkin over in his hands, then started unfolding it. "He would have killed me if you hadn't stopped him."

"He wouldn't have," Frank said, although, remembering the way Ian had looked with the gun against Elliott's head, he wasn't at all sure about that.

Elliott pushed the napkin across the table. "I didn't mean to lie. It just kind of...happened." It was the only time Frank had ever heard him sound the slightest bit apologetic. He shrugged.

"You saved our lives."

Elliott looked up, his face pale in the dim bar lights. "I killed a man."

"I killed four," Frank replied. And he lived with it every single day.

***

When they first got back to the States, they were all told to see a psychiatrist. Frank went a couple of times, but that was the same time he and AJ were trying to get Phoenix Airlines off the ground, and when the shrink started throwing around words like "post-traumatic stress disorder" and "long-term therapy", Frank stopped going. He could get along fine on his own, he told himself. So he had a few nightmares here and there. So he couldn't even look at canned peaches in the supermarket without panic rising in his chest. So he let the other pilots take any flights that had to cross the Mojave, or the Sonoran, or the Great Basin Desert. AJ understood, and they never talked about it.

Except AJ couldn't really understand, because it wasn't AJ's judgement that had forced Kyle's parents to hold a memorial service because they didn't even have a body to bury. It wasn't AJ's mistake that had killed Rodney and put the rest of them through hell. AJ couldn't understand that, but Elliott did.

Enough to say: "I don't want to talk about it here." He looked at Frank for a long moment. Frank expected him to leave, which would probably have been the best course of action. Instead, Elliott stood and said: "Can I assume you have a room?"

"I am the CEO of a major airline," Frank replied, throwing some money on the table. Well, a minor one, anyway.

When they got to the room, Elliott sat on the desk, next to Frank's laptop. He picked up a Four Seasons pen and twirled it in his hands.

Frank didn't know if he should ask the question, but then, nothing had gone the way he'd planned this evening. "Why did you walk out in Beijing?"

Elliott didn't meet his eye, staring instead at the slightly worn patch of carpet next to the bed. "I bought an around-the-world ticket. I still had places to see."

"Elliott."

He glanced up, then, rather unexpectedly, threw the pen across the room. It bounced off a print of an ocean sunset and onto the floor. "I'm not crazy," Elliott said, a statement with which Frank was about to beg to differ when he went on: "Sometimes it's better not to know what you're capable of. I wish I'd never found out."

"You saved our lives," Frank repeated, again. He didn't have anything else to offer.

Elliott looked at him evenly. "It wasn't worth it."

Frank felt like a prop was twisting in his gut, but he said it anyway. "I knew we were overweight when we took off. I knew we should have turned back when the storm first hit." But he'd wanted to get back to Ulaan Bataar as soon as possible, get paid for the job and get this latest bunch of freaks off his plane. He didn't want to wait out a desert storm in the middle of nowhere, with Ian and Kelly and Elliott for company. And that had nearly killed all of them.

Frank sat on the edge of the bed, his head in his hands. He knew Elliott was there, staring at him, and he didn't care. When they first crashed, Sammi thanked him for saving their lives, but if it hadn't been for Frank's stupidity, they never would have been it that position to start with. He shouldn't have taken off. He should have made Ian get his bosses on the radio and he should have told them they couldn't carry all that equipment in one trip, that they'd have to pay for two and if they weren't happy with that, they could get someone else to do it. He should have forgotten about the schedule and scuttled the mission when he and AJ got their first glimpse of the wind stirring up the sand, he should have turned around, he should have landed wherever he could and waited it out. He should have done something, but he hadn't done anything, and look what had happened.

Frank hadn't cried since he was a kid. He certainly hadn't cried when he came back from the Gobi, although that damn psychiatrist had told him it was a "natural part of the recovery process." He didn't have anything to recover from. He'd come home with a sunburn on his chest and powder burns on his hands from the cartridges. Kyle and Rodney and those two others hadn't come home at all.

Frank jerked away when Elliott's hand landed on his shoulder, and he looked up to see Elliott sitting on the edge of the bed beside him. Elliott looked at him, his face strangely blurry. It took Frank a minute to realize this was because his eyes were watering. Frank wiped them roughly with his shirtsleeve, but before he could laugh it off with some embarrassed joke, Elliott shoved him backwards onto the flowery bedspread.

It wasn't a completely new experience for Frank, even if it was the last way he'd expected to spend his evening. He'd spent a lot of time in the backwaters of the world, where there wasn't always a willing woman within a dozen, or sometimes even a hundred, miles. Elliott didn't seem that new at it, either, and even as Elliott sat back and took off his glasses, Frank thought that AJ would be gratified to know it. He'd always had suspicions about Elliott's sexuality.

He didn't have any suspicions about Frank's, though. As far as Frank knew, no one did, which led him to ask: "Elliott, how..." Elliott shook his head irritably and leaned over to put his glasses on the bedside table. He looked younger without them, Frank noticed. Less prickly, somehow.

The effect was somewhat ruined when Elliott, in that familiar annoyed voice, said: "Do you really want to talk about this, Captain Towns? Because I'd much rather ignore the psychological implications and just do it." He sat still, and Frank realized he was waiting for an answer.

"What the hell," Frank said. He'd been ignoring psychological implications for two years.

Elliott was skinny and angular. Frank had learned that in the desert, when he'd pushed Elliott out of the way of the explosion, but the sensation was markedly different without freezing sand underneath them and heavy overalls between them. Frank's fingers fit neatly between Elliott's ribs as Elliott straddled his crotch, and he guessed Elliott wasn't spending much of that NASA salary on food.

"Do you have a condom?" Elliott asked, calmly, as he shifted backwards on Frank's thighs and unfastened his fly.

"No." Layover lays were AJ's speciality, not his.

"Then I guess I'll have to improvise again," Elliott grunted, his tongue sliding between his teeth as he took Frank's cock in his hand.

It was surreal, but no more than any other part of the last two years had been. Frank lay back, the mattress shifting beneath him and Elliott's hand on his dick, his breathing loud and uneven. It had been awhile since he'd been with anyone, and it wasn't long before Frank came over the hotel sheets, light blazing behind his eyes and blood pounding in his ears.

When Frank opened his eyes again, Elliott was pulling on his jacket. There was no noticeable bulge in the front of his pants, so Frank assumed he'd taken care of himself. Either that, or he hadn't been that interested in the first place. With Elliott, that was a possibility.

Feeling a little guilty, Frank said: "You OK?"

"I haven't been OK for years, Captain Towns." Elliott smirked a little as he said it. "But this didn't make me any worse." He put on his glasses.

"Did you want to, you know, ah, stay or something?" Frank asked, suddenly uncomfortable. Elliott shook his head, though, and Frank felt such a surge of relief he could have kissed him.

Which would have caused more problems than it solved, really.

"I have to go."

Frank wondered if he should see Elliott out, but settled for just sitting up in bed and saying, casually: "You know, I usually pass through Houston two or three times a month." Although he could easily change that.

Frank had only seen Elliott smile once, when they lifted off just ahead of those angry arms dealers. The smile he gave now wasn't nearly that enthusiastic, but it was a smile, which Frank took as a good sign.

"You have my number, Captain Towns." Then he was gone again.

***

The next morning, AJ showed up for their New York flight with a grin big enough for Frank to assume that things had gone well with Jenna.

"Have a good night?"

"Damn, but that girl knows how to 'conduct an interview'," AJ leered and hoisted his bag into their overhead compartment. Frank settled into his seat and started the pre-flight checks. "Hey, you ever talk to Elliott?"

Frank hesitated, but only for a second. "No. He never called me back."

AJ shook his head. "You're better off, man. I tell you, that guy's fucking certifiable." He probably was, Frank thought. But then, he wasn't that well balanced himself, so maybe it was a match made in heaven.

Or hell. Or the Gobi, which amounted to pretty much the same thing.

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Gigi Sinclair Miscellaneous slash

Gigi Sinclair

Across the Deserts Bare

Gigi Sinclair
Miscellaneous slash