Chapter Text
Swanseas back was indeed screaming at him the next morning when he woke up. But not nearly as much as his brain was screaming at him.
'Look what you did. You knew this would happen, you knew you'd only end up hurting him in the end, and yet you let it continue. Why? Because you're a selfish, dirty old man who wanted to get his dick wet, that's why! You broke that poor boys heart all because he was stupid and naive enough to see something in you worth loving.'
Swansea let out a groan and rubbed a hand over his face, feeling an ache forming between his temples in addition to the one throbbing in his back. He could always go and ask Anya for painkillers but what would he tell her? I need some of our very limited supply because I threw my back out fucking my young intern last night? No. He figured the twinge in his back was fair punishment for how he'd hurt the kid last night.
The kid.
"I'm not a kid! You can't do those things with me and then call me a kid!"
Swansea sighed through his nose. Ok. Maybe he'd screwed up by infantalizing Dai like that but he was just trying to make sure the kid knew what he was getting into! He didn't know Swansea, not really. They'd spent three months together in close quarters on a cold, dull, cargo ship, one of which had been spent fucking each other's brains out. Was that really enough to build a relationship on?
And he was fifty six! Everyone below thirty was a kid to him. It didn’t mean he saw Daisuke as literally a child!
Regardless, he couldn't hide in his room all day. He'd be expected to report for breakfast soon and unless he was about to call in sick he was expected to be there. Swansea sat up with a pained grunt and prepared himself to face whatever was out there.
He ended up being the last to arrive. Everyone else was already sat at the table when he got there, chatting amiably. Daisuke looked OK, at least. He was sitting next to Anya and talking her ear off about some band or something.
"Morning, Swansea! Did you sleep well?" Curly greeted.
"Do you want an honest answer to that question?" Swansea grunted, rubbing his back as he sank down into a chair. "What're we in for this time?"
"Oatmeal. Again." Anya grimaced, lifing her spoon and allowing the slop with the consistency of paste that the company called 'oatmeal' to plop back into her bowl.
"Maybe it wouldn't taste so bad, if we were allowed to add a bit of sweetner to it? Pretty please, captain?" Daisuke pleaded.
"Sorry guys. You know the rules-"
" 'Sweetner to be used ONLY for morale boosting activities.' " Swansea drawled sarcastically, quoting directly from the disclaimer on the Sweetner page in Papa Polles Delights. "Because big daddy corpo has to restrict our access to sugar as if we were all children."
Swansea was sure that would've gotten a laugh out of Daisuke on a good day but he had just gone back to telling Anya about 'Spring It Off' or whatever.
The same thing happened again and again throughout breakfast. Daisuke talked excitedly to Anya, Curly, even Jimmy but completely ignored him. It was noticeable too. Anya and Curly were giving the two of them the side eye by the time the meal was over.
Daisuke was never in a hurry to get to work but as soon as he'd finished eating, he dropped off his bowl in the sink and practically fled into the Utility room.
"The hells up with him?" Jimmy commented idly, as if just noticing. Swansea barely suppressed an eye roll. That guy didn't pay attention to anything outside of his own head.
"He did seem off." Curly added. "Swansea, do you know what could be wrong?"
"How the hell should I know? I'm not the kids keeper." Swansea rebuffed gruffly, grabbing his bowl and carrying it over to the sink.
As Anya passed him to rinse her own bowl, she put a hand on his arm. "Hey. After this, can I talk to you? Alone?"
Swansea got a sinking feeling in his chest and nodded. How much had Daisuke told Anya last night? Relationships weren't exactly encouraged onboard and while he didn't think she'd be the kind of person to report them, he didn't know if she'd look too kindly on their age gap.
Anya brought him into medical and locked the door behind her. "Its about Daisuke. Did you...did you say something to him?" She asked.
Swansea stared at the wall just past her head, the blue of the false window lighting up the room pleasantly. "I say a lot of things to him, you'll have to be more specific."
Anya frowned her 'Stop trying to bullshit me' frown, crossed her arms and said. "He came to my room in tears last night, saying you two had had a fight. Wouldn't tell me anything else. Just that you had fought."
Swansea felt a bit of relief as he realized their secret was safe but hearing just how hurt Daisuke had been by his selfishness only made the hole in his gut open up wider and wider.
"...He was that broken up about it, huh?" He murmured, putting a hand to his forehead.
"He was devastated!" Anya confirmed, her expression concerned and scolding. He was older than her by almost two decades and yet he felt like he was being chewed out by his mom again. "What...what did you say to him, Swansea?"
He shook his head. "It doesn't matter now."
"It clearly matters very much to Daisuke!" Anya persisted angrily. It was obvious she wasn't gonna let him off the hook. Which, good for her, honestly. Sometimes Swansea thought she was the most mature one on this ship. But how did he even begin to explain to her what was going on between them?
Daisuke didn't tell her. Was that for his sake? Or did he even want her to know? And if he didn't, did Swansea even have the right to tell her?
Swansea rubbed at his temples. His headache was back and pounding away at his skull and he was seriously reconsidering asking Anya for painkillers because he couldn't think straight-!
"I messed up, Anya." He admitted, slumping against the wall in defeat. "I messed up bad and I said some shit I shouldn'tve and..." he hesitated for a moment, pondering just how honest he should be. "...look I can't give you specifics. It involves some very personal information that isn't mine to tell-"
"I know he's trans."
"You do?" Swansea asked, raising an eyebrow.
"I'm the nurse, Swansea. I wouldn't be able to do my job right if I didn't know." Anya explained matter-of-factly.
He sighed. "Nonetheless. All I can tell you is, I fucked up, ok? And I dunno how to make it right."
Anya eyed him skeptically, trying to decide whether or not she would accept this framing of events at face value. After about a minute or two, her stern expression softened.
"...You could try apologizing?" She said, laying a hand on his upper arm.
Swansea scoffed humorlessly. "As if it's that simple."
"It isn't. But it's a good start." She remarked. "Now, how about I get you an aspirin? You've been rubbing your head and back all morning."
Swansea chuckled lowly. "Nurse Anya to the rescue again."
"Just doing my job." She said modestly, pulling a bottle of pills from a drawer and shaking a couple loose. "This is all I can give you but it should help with the pain."
Swansea held out his hand and Anya dropped them onto his open palm. "Thanks Doc." He said, popping them into his mouth and swallowing them dry.
"No problem. Oh and Swansea?" Anya called to the engineers retreating back. "Whatevers going on between you two, once the two of you talk it out I think he'll forgive you. He really thinks highly of you, you know?"
Swansea felt that pit in his stomach again. A wide, yawning chasm that sucked in any light that came near it like a black hole. "...yeah. I know."
Daisuke was waiting outside the Utility room when Swansea got there, arms crossed, staring blankly at the floor. He didn't say anything, only moved away from the door so that Swansea could unlock it.
When it slid open Swansea didn't have time to ask questions. Daisuke just strolled inside, plopped down at his desk and buried his face in the company manual, unmistakably ignoring him.
Swansea sighed. This was not gonna be easy. "Sleep well?" He mumbled, sitting down as well.
Daisuke turned the page and didn't respond.
"Spoke to Anya just now. She uh... she knocked a bit sense into my head about a few things."
No response.
"You uh...you didn't tell her about us." Swansea commented. "Why?"
Another page turn.
Annoyed, he hissed "You chew my ear off everyday for months but as soon as I wanna talk about something, you clam up?"
Daisuke visibly tensed, his finger tapping rhythmically on the side of the book cover.
Fuck. This was getting him nowhere. Swansea took a moment, took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. Getting angry was not gonna fix this.
"I get it. You're pissed at me."
Daisukes eyes peered up at him from behind the cover, an eyebrow raised expectantly.
Swansea rolled his eyes. "Fine. Furious."
The eyebrow twitched.
"Fine! Outraged!" Swansea declared, throwing his hands up.
Daisuke lowered his eyes to the page again, apparently satisfied.
Swansea growled in frustration. Christ this kid was doing numbers on his blood pressure. "But you can't be pissed at me forever if you wanna work this out." He hesitated for a moment before adding. "...I want to work this out. If for no other reason then because we're gonna be stuck on this ship together for at least another nine months and we need to be able to tolerate each other. You can hate me, that's fine. I probably deserve it. But this ain't sustainable."
Silence filled the room. For a full minute not a sound was made between the two men, even Daisukes repetitive tapping had stopped.
Just as Swansea had convinced himself that his offer had been quietly rejected, Daisuke closed the manual, swiveled his chair around to face Swansea, leaned back, and looked him directly in the eye.
"Go on." He said.
"Huh?" Swansea asked, a little surprised by the kid speaking to him for the first time all morning.
"Talk." Daisuke stated, looking at him like he was stupid. "That's what you want, right? To talk? To tell me all the reasons why what you did was actually for the best for me because 'I'm young and I don't know better!'" He mocked.
Swansea glared at the antagonistic remark from the younger man. "Daisuke, that ain't-"
"Oh, it's 'Daisuke' again now?" He exclaimed sarcastically. "So I'm adult enough to have adult conversations and adult enough for you to fuck me but not adult enough to make decisions about my own fucking feelings! Isn't that funny?!"
"I was trying to help ya! You don't wanna get involved with an asshole like me!" Swansea argued.
"Newsflash! You've been inside me! That's pretty fucking involved." Daisuke bit back, shoving a finger into Swanseas face. "Don't forget, you started all of this!"
"That's-!" He was right. If Swansea had just kept to himself and pretended he hadn't seen anything when Daisuke was masturbating none of this would've happened. He was the one who insisted on 'helping' him.
"That's different! Sex is one thing but...I don't think I'm the kind of guy you wanna get serious with, ki- Dai. I'm too old and too mean to be good at love anymore."
Daisuke crossed his arms, looking away and blinking rapidly to combat the tears threatening in his eyes.
"Fine." He spat. "If sex is all you wanted from me, then fine, I could live with that. But the one thing, the one thing I asked you not to do was try and tell me what I want! And what did you do? Infantalize me!"
"Daisuke-"
"I wanna hear it from you. Straight out." Daisuke demanded. "No dancing around it with 'oh, I'm no good for you' or 'I'm just an ugly old man', I wanna hear how you really feel about me. I think you owe me that much."
Swansea had to agree with him on that one. The least he could do for the kid was stop bullshittin him. Daisuke had had the courage to bare it all, Swansea owed it to him to do the same. And once that messy tangle of feeling was finally out in the open, they could figure out what to do with it.
"...I want you more than I've wanted anything in a long time. It...scares me a little, how much I want you because I don't know if I can trust myself to behave like a man should around you. You're right. You're not a kid. You're an incredibly handsome young man that shines as bright as the sun among all us sad sacks around here."
"You're the sun in my eyes, you're the sound of birds waking me up in the morning, you're the squeak of brand new sneakers. You're this beautiful, irritating thing that just wouldn't leave me be until you'd worked your way under my skin. And there's no getting you out now."
The tears that had brimmed Daisukes eyes finally spilled over. His lower lip trembled as he struggled for words. "Why...why were you trying so hard to push me away then?!"
"Because I couldn't promise you something I wasn't capable of giving you!" Swansea defended.
"And what's that?"
"A future. The kind of love that you deserve." Swansea put his eyes to the floor, unable to look Daisuke in the eye as he gave his answer. "The kind that...I'm not sure I'm able to give anymore."
Daisuke clenched his fists. "You-! Aaargh! You infuriating old man!" He exclaimed, standing up from his chair and beginning to pace from his fury. "I don't care what my future looks like as long as you're in it! If that means spending the rest of my life doing hauls like this for Pony Express, fine! I'll do it! Happily! I just want you!"
"You don’t mean that." Swansea murmured, shaking his head in disbelief.
"This is the first time in my life I've been so sure about anything." Daisuke replied earnestly. Tentatively, he laid a hand over Swanseas much larger one. "I've seen the kind of love you're able to give and... I think I'm ok with that. I think I like your cynical, curmudgeonly, rough around the edges kind of love just fine."
Swansea swallowed. His throat was strangely lumpy now and his voice came out hoarser than he meant it to be when he next spoke.
"I don't exactly have a great track record when it comes to relationships."
"Sounds like a challenge." Daisuke smiled.
Swansea chuckled. "Got an answer for everything, don't ya?"
"No. But I don’t have to. That's what I have you for." With that, he leaned in and kissed Swansea.
And Swansea kissed him back, no longer allowing his fears and his doubts to hold him back. He gently cupped Daisukes cheek, trailing his thumb slowly over the soft skin, like he was something to be treasured, before letting his fingers tangle in his silky brown hair. Daisuke relaxed into his touch, sighing through his nose as the two pecked at one another's lips. With some gentle coaxing, he settled in Swanseas lap as their lips moved against each other.
Swansea gently bit down on on Daisukes lower lip, pulling it into his mouth and sucking on it which drew a soft, pleasured little noise from the younger man. Dai's tongue prodded eagerly at Swanseas lips who gladly parted them.
When they finally pulled apart, their lips were wet and both were panting heavily. Daisuke squirmed in his lap, his face red.
"Uhm...Swansea? Do we maybe wanna...take this back to our beds?"
Swansea stood up suddenly, pushing his intern up against his desk. "Fuck the beds. The utility room door locks." He said heatedly.
Despite the relatively privacy behind the locked door, they couldn't risk stripping completely. If the captain ambled over to security and ordered to be let in, they couldn't exactly say no. So it was pulling their pants down just enough to get their junk out like teenagers or taking their chances with the sleeping quarters while everyone was awake.
Large thumbs rubbed at Daisukes nipples through his shirt as he sat perched on the edge of his desk. Swanseas palms were big enough to cover large portions of his chest and back and he moaned at the sensation of being held in those big powerful arms.
"Fuck. You got any idea how nuts you drive me?" Swansea murmured, reaching into his pants to pull himself out. "The things I wanna do to that gorgeous little pussy of yours?"
"Tell me. God, tell me~" Daisuke whimpered, grinning and bearing his throat to the older man.
Swansea pulled his shirt aside, biting down on the spot where his neck and shoulder met and forcing Daisuke to bite back a yelp. "Wanna wreck you~ Wanna ruin you for anyone else." He rubbed himself teasingly against Daisukes bare slit, feeling the moisture already beginning to accumulate there.
"You already have~" Daisuke sighed, looking up at him adoringly. Swansea stole his lips again, sawing his cock back and forth between the younger man's folds to wet it and letting his delicious little muffled whimpers fill his ears.
"S-Swansea..." Dai gasped, hitching his hips up.
"That's it." The older man rumbled, pushing Daisukes shirt up to expose his chest. "Beg for me, baby. Be a good boy." He latched onto a nipple, licking and sucking greedily.
Daisuke bit his lip, throwing his head back as he keened. His fingers scrabbled to find purchase in Swanseas hair and on the edge of the desk as he panted and whimpered impatiently. Still, he couldn't resist the chance to for him to be the one being a tease for once.
"Oh its...b-baby, now, huh?" He stuttered, ignoring the way that little petname still made his heart flutter.
"Sure is." Swansea said, confidently, pausing to switch to the boy's other nipple. "Now, I believe I told you to beg. You should really listen to your mentor Daisuke."
"W-why should I?" He smirked, tossing him a coy look.
"Because otherwise," Swansea rumbled, meeting him with a firm gaze. "you won't get what you want."
"Neither will you." Daisuke pointed out, rolling his hips up.
Swansea just chuckled. "Considering how impatient you were for it in the first place, I'm fairly certain I can wait you out."
Shit. He had him there.
Still Daisuke persisted, giving Swansea a defiant stare...for about five more seconds.
"Ok, fine! You win! Please, Swansea! Please put it in me~"
He pouted when Swansea continued to chuckle. "Don't laugh at me!" He commanded.
"I ain't, kid." He said warmly, pressing a kissing to the top of his head.
...huh. Strangely enough it...didn't feel infantalizing when he said it that time. It just sounded...fond. All thoughts immediately left his brain, however, when Swansea began to push into him. Dai wrapped his legs around Swanseas waist, pulling him in as his cock filled him once more. He hissed a little, his inner walls spasming around him as he pushed in deeper.
"You alright?" Swansea murmured, a little furrow of concern in his brow.
"Yeah, yeah! 'M fine! Just a little sore from last night is all." Daisuke assured him.
"Christ..." Swansea exhaled. He knew he was too rough. It was the kids first time! How could he-?
"Hey!" Daisuke interrupted his train of thoughts. "It's OK. It felt good. I liked it. I would've told you if I didn't."
Swansea took a deep breath and nodded slowly. Couldn't let himself spin out like that again. That was how he'd gotten into trouble last time.
Daisuke smiled and kissed him as Swansea began to move at a much more relaxed pace than he had the night before. The new angle allowed him to brush against his G spot much more easily and the slower speed did a lot to ease his soreness.
"So tight for me, Daisuke. So good."
Daisuke turned his face into Swanseas neck, panting hotly and letting out soft little moans against his skin. The contrast between the pleasure he was experiencing now and what he had experienced last night was so stark.
Last night was harsh and dirty and relentless, Swansea driving him to new highs he hadn't even known he could experience. This was soft, sweet, intimate, the gentle rocking in and out of him, pushing him gradually towards climax. He loved them both. Loved what Swansea did to him, couldn't get enough of his touch.
"You feel- amazing! L-love your cock! Love you!"
"Oh, in that order, huh?" Swansea snarked breathily, unable to contain his grin.
"Shu-shut up!" Daisuke exclaimed, smacking him lightly on the shoulder.
As Swansea could feel Daisuke beginning to flutter around him, he brought a hand down to the boy's dick to help him along but was batted away.
"N-not there." Daisuke said. "There's still sore. But...I-I don't think I'll need it this time."
It only took a couple more minutes for Daisuke to prove that theory correct, cumming with a soft cry. Knowing that he too was close, Swansea pulled out to finish himself off.
"Wait!" Daisuke interrupted. "Hang on. If you jerk off on me in here, there's gonna be a mess and we really don't have anything to wipe off with that isn't our clothes."
Swansea rolled his eyes, a little irritated at being blue balled. "Well then, what's your brilliant solution?"
Daisuke simply gestured for Swansea to stand back a little, got on his knees and popped the head of Swanseas cock into his mouth. "Thif." He said with his mouth full, wrapping a hand around the shaft and starting to stroke.
"S-smartass..." Swansea hissed, feeling his climax quickly building back up again as his balls tightened.
Daisuke just winked cheekily at him and opened his throat in preparation for the coming deluge. With a groan, Swansea came, shooting into Daisukes throat as the kid did his best to swallow it all. He got most of it but some ended up dripping down his chin. He pulled away coughing and hacking and gasping for air.
"Knucklehead, are you trying to drown yourself?!"
Swansea scolded, crouching to face the young man.
"...Worth it." Daisuke grinned, even through his hoarse voice.
"I swear to christ, kid." Swansea sighed, shaking his head. "You're gonna be the death of me."
Swansea didn't know what would happen when they got back to Earth. Maybe Daisuke would get bored of him after all, or grow to resent him, think of all of this as some huge mistake. But for now, he had this golden ray of sun in his life. He might as well enjoy the warmth.