Estranged Breakfast, Part 2
Posted on Sat Oct 25th, 2025 @ 11:53am by Lieutenant Darius Korveth & Lieutenant JG Ryan Kellerman
1,691 words; about a 8 minute read
Mission:
What was Lost is Found
Location: Darius' Cabin
Timeline: MD 6 0600
Darius slowly turned to face the man he still loved despite everything. There was a flare of resentment, perhaps anger, in his eyes. But then it was gone replaced by a look that his husband had rarely seen. Resignation. Defeat.
"That's not what I meant Ry. I didn't mean officially get back together. You've made your position on that abundantly clear. More than once."
"I meant just the opposite. Do you want your freedom. Do you want a divorce?"
Ryan blinked. Once. Twice. Three times. It was not about clearing his vision and more about forcing a hard reset on a world that just tilted off its axis a good three degrees.
He opened his mouth and then closed it again. His throat felt dry--the way it did after the first twenty kilometers of the Academy's ironman marathon across Mongolia.
"I--" He stopped. Swallowed. Tried once more. "Ari, that's... Jesus."
"Ry, I still love you," The half Orion hesitated, "I'm still in love with you. I don't think that will ever change. But, I can't k keep doing this. I can't keep waiting for you to forgive me. Really forgive me. I can't keep apologizing for a mistake, a horrible mistake I made three years ago."
"Not just a mistake. A choice. But whatever you call it, I'm just tired."
"A month ago you said you didn't want that. Now, now I'm not so sure. Maybe that would be a way for you to move on. Put things behind you. Put me behind you. Find someone new. Some that you could trust. Someone you could love."
Ryan stood there for a long time. It felt as though the air between them was choked with thick smoke and their words were disappearing somewhere in that space before the other could hear. He didn't move at first. He didn't actually trust himself to. His hands remained at his sides only because he couldn't remember what they were supposed to do. Finally deciding to reach for the coffee again, just to have something in his grasp, he picked it up and it was empty. Of course it was.
"I don't know," he said finally, his voice barely above a whisper. "I keep thinking that time's supposed to fix everything. That maybe if I wait long enough, and the pain turns into distance, and the distance turns into... perspective. I don't know. Maybe it already has. Who the fuck knows?"
Ryan sighed heavily before replacing the coffee mug back on the table. "You know, every time I think I can live without you, something small happens--a sound, a smell, a look--and it all comes back."
He looked down at the table again. The plates were still half-full, the eggs now having cooled, the potatoes untouched.
"I'm still in love with you," Ryan said, eyes downcast on the food. "But I'm also afraid of you." The last part was said just as he brought his gaze back to Darius. "Not in the way you might think. I'm terrified of what loving you might cost me."
Ryan's last comment surprised Darius. That had been the last thing he'd expected. Part of him wanted to step into the other man's personal space. To wrap his arms around him in a hug that would be anything but platonic. To kiss him, to do more than that. Maybe it would be healing for both of them.
Part of him, however wanted to keep his distance to preserve whatever thread of a relationship, and renewing the relationship because he was concerned that any attempt at intimacy, no matter how fleeting would have the opposite effect of what he wanted.
He sighed heavily. So, like Ryan, his hands remained at his side.
"So, Ry, I have to ask you. If you're afraid of losing me, why do you keep pushing me away?"
Ryan felt the question hit him square in the chest. It wasn't loud or cruel--Darius never needed to raise his voice to land a blow. He just had to ask something that cut too close to the truth.
His breath came out uneven, a soft, humourless laugh tucked somewhere inside it.
"Because I don't know how not to," he said. "Because if I let you close again, even for a second, it's like handing you the same knife and pretending you won't use it this time."
Darius closed his eyes again, stepping back, increasing the distance between them. "I get that," he said and I can't change the past, I can only change the future. Could we try dating? Get to know each other all over again. to show you I'm not going to use than against you."
"We serve on the same ship, Ari. The same senior staff. People talk. Hell, people notice."
Ryan glanced toward the viewport, where the stars seemed to simply be an illusion--a giant light behind a black curtain that had been repeatedly pricked with the tip of a knife. "What does dating even look like for us now? Dinner in the mess like nothing ever happened? A walk down the corridor between shifts, hoping no one's paying attention?"
His voice softened. "And if it goes bad again--what then? What happens to the chain of command, to the trust we've been clawing back piece by piece?"
Darius took another half step back, folding his arms across his chest. "I can't belie... " He stopped himself unfolding his hands. "What if it doesn't blow up?"
"Why do you assume things are going to go to shit? And why do you care what other people are going to think?"
"I don't know," Ryan said with a shrug. "Maybe because that's what happened three years ago. We blew up. We burned." He gave a small, broken laugh.
Ryan pressed his thumb against the rim of the empty mug. "And I care what people think because this isn't San Francisco and it's not the Astera or the Galileo. We're not cadets or junior officers anymore. We're senior officers now, running our own departments."
"I know we blew up," Darius said slowly, "I'm the one that blew us up
"And you're right. We are senior officers now, does that mean we can't have a personal life? That we can't try? How much more time do you need?"
Ryan stared at him for a long moment, and then the smallest shake of his head broke through the silence. He placed the mug down gently, though the sound it made against the glass table made it sound like a gunshot.
"Ari..." he said, the words coming out frayed. "You don't understand how pain works. You don't put it on a clock and wait for it to stop ticking."
He took a slow step back, then another. His jaw flexed. He wasn't angry in the loud way--he was angry in the quiet way.
"You want to schedule healing," he said, still shaking his head. "You want me to tell you I'll be fine by next Tuesday, and then we can grab dinner and fuck." He let out a long breath through his nose. "That's not how any of this works."
Ryan glanced down at the table--the congealed yolks, the wilted toast, a breakfast that was doomed from the start. He pressed his palm flat against the surface for a second, steadying himself, then turned for the door.
"Thanks for having me," he said politely. "The food was good."
He made it two steps before he stopped, half-turned, his voice having grown softer now. "I'm not trying to punish you. I'm just trying to remember how to be me without you."
Darius's anger spiked and he almost let the explosion out, release it. But he stopped himself. If it had just been angry that's what he would have done. But, he wasn't just angry. His husband's words devastated him.
"Ryan," he said in a low voice, "that's not fair, saying that I think everything is magically going to go away, that I'm trying to schedule healing and putting you on the clock. Or that I just want this so I can fuck you."
"I'm not sure which one of those is worse."
"Then you say you're not trying to punish me, but it sure feels that way. You're not the only one that was damaged because of what I did."
Ryan stopped. His back was to Darius, but the words rooted him to the deck. For a long time, neither of them spoke. There was a raw energy rippling through the air like an ache that had outlived its apology.
When he finally turned around, his expression wasn't cold--just tired. A fatigue that came from deep in the bones and leapt out of the eyes.
"You're right," Ryan said. "You're not the only one who got hurt. But here's the difference, Ari--you got to move on with your life and your career. You got to make peace with yourself, or at least pretend you did. I'm still trying to figure out how to live with the version of me that trusted you."
He exhaled heavily--again. Shakily, he added, "That's not punishment, Ari. It's survival."
"I think you should go now Ry. Not because I want you to, or I don't want to resolve things. But, I'm afraid if you stick around one of us will say something we can't take back."
Ryan gave a small nod. The air between them had gone thin and metallic.
"Yeah," he said quietly. "You're probably right."
He didn't look at Darius this time. Just the wreckage of a doomed breakfast on the table, now cold. A fork lying sideways in a smear of yolk. It struck him as funny in the saddest possible way: that something meant to start a morning could feel so much like an ending.
And then he stepped out of Darius's cabin and into the corridor, leaving behind the smell of coffee, the ghost of warmth, and a simmering silence that would take hours to cool.
Lieutenant JG Ryan Kellerman
Chief Intelligence Officer
USS Valkyrie
Lieutenant Darius Korveth
Chief Strategic Ops Officer
USS Valkyrie
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