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I.
Zor-El's still young enough that he has none of Jor-El's restraint - not that Jor-El had very much of said restraint when he had been Zor-El's age - and as far as Dru-Zod and the harassed El retainers can tell, Zor-El has hacked into a popular entertainment vidgrid, synced a historical vid to a tesseglyph, and then had somehow turned an entire room into a tesseglyph console without anyone noticing.
This meant, naturally, that the brats were running back and forth in the chamber squawking with delight while soldiers in pre-evolutionary gear engaged each other in battle about them, every detail caught in beautiful, deadly detail by the tesseglyphs. Zor-El shared not only his brother's stubbornness and intellect but all of Jor-El's blithe lack of self-preservation.
"The two of you, get back here!" Dru-Zod snarls at them, wading into the chamber even as the El retainers watch worriedly from the safety of the corridor. He ducks automatically as a tesseglyph soldier swings a blade at him, then hisses as he nearly loses his footing as an artillery shell blasts a crater just inches away from his boots. The glyph pieces from the spray glance off his persteel with shrapnel pings, but the brats are wearing mere robes-
"Kneel!" One of the soldiers shouts - a commanding officer, judging from the detail of his uniform and the blade that he thrusts into the air at the advancing horde. "Kneel before General Zod!"
The little monsters shriek with startled laughter, and Dru-Zod himself is so surprised that he doesn't sidestep a soldier in time and gets swiped flat on his face on the tesseglyph. When he rolls up quickly, he finally recognises his House crest on the officer's jacket, and he scowls, darting out of the way of an antipersonnel destruk and reaching the two brats. He grabs Allura firmly by the scruff, because she bites and because Zor-El will follow her if she's been removed from the vicinity, and somehow manages to get all of them to an adjoining corridor with little further incident.
"That was highly irresponsible," he informs them, with the sternest expression that he can manage, which is normally sufficient to cow the little monsters at close range, but today, Allura and Zor-El merely exchange glances and then start shrieking with laughter again.
Dru-Zod sighs. Now that he's out of the vid, he does recognise it - it's the re-enactment of the Oorn Crossing, a war that marked the founding of the Dreaming City. The war had shot the House of Zod into prominence - the progenitor of his House had been a gifted tactician. The vid had been a publicity stunt funded by his great-grandfather.
"Zor," Dru-Zod tries again, and Zor-El manages to shoot him a sober glance for all of two parsecs before his mouth wavers into a lopsided grin. "I cannot always be present to pull the both of you out of trouble," Dru-Zod forges on sharply. "I have my duties." As it is, he has to split what little free time he has out of the Ministry of Defence between the Zod and El estates, and with Jor-El currently fully embroiled in his semester, that meant that whenever the retainers were worried, annoyingly enough, they called Dru-Zod.
"You worry too much," Allura tells him pertly, despite still being dangled in the air, and he narrows his eyes at her even as he finally sets her down. Allura In-Ze - Severan Sov-Tam had managed somehow to squirrel out her fourth-tier lineage - had spent far too many of her formative years living alone in Strata 0 - this had given her a dangerously flexible opinion of authority, in Dru-Zod's opinion. It didn't help that Jor-El spoiled her like a younger sister: she was a bad influence on Zor-El.
"This isn't anything like what Jor used to get himself into," Zor-El adds, and Dru-Zod's curious enough that his temper subsides a fraction.
"Oh?"
Zor-El grins, sensing blood, the brat. "Haven't you seen that huge structural crack on the third level?" Dru-Zod nods - he had often wondered why Seyg-El had never bothered to get that fixed. "He did that when he was five cycles old, with an old replicator, a servosync modulator and a grillig tooth. Mother told me."
Dru-Zod waits carefully, but Zor-El's mood doesn't change, and he relaxes. The first few months of Jor-El moving back into House El with his little brother had been heartbreaking: Jor-El hid his grief well, but Zor-El was too young to, and it was clear that the House was haunted with ghosts enough for the both of them.
"Tell me more," he concedes, at the end of it, he's amused, the brats seem to have forgotten about the tesseglyph rig, and he's managed to worm out a promise from the both of them not to proceed with any more large scale experiments without permission.
This promise lasts in spirit for about a week, and it's broken a further six more times, once spectacularly and explosively, whereby it was only by a miracle that no one was unhurt, and only because of R'Druk's reflexes. By the time the cycle turns to the Military Academy graduation ceremonies, Dru-Zod feels like his nerves have suffered permanent damage. Worse than the old blaster damage to his right shoulder and arm. He spends the entire graduation ceremony keeping an eye on the little monsters, thankful at least that Ministry guests have a private galley, and by the time Jor-El finally locates them, Dru-Zod's quite seriously considering tossing Allura and/or Zor-El over the bronze balustrade.
"Were you always like this when you were younger?" Dru-Zod mutters, as they head towards the jumpship. The brats are exhausted from mayhem and joy, and Dru-Zod has Allura cradled in his arms, while Jor-El is holding Zor-El.
Jor-El smiles brilliantly at him, and Rao save his soul, but his bond-mate is gorgeous, especially in the sleek black Cycle-Final cadet dress uniform. It's almost enough to distract him from the torture that the past cycle has been. Almost. "I was worse, I think."
"If only I had known," Dru-Zod grumbles half-heartedly. "Congratulations on the posting."
"It was never in doubt," Jor-El shrugs, amused. "Trus-Vex told me that Rais was worried that House Lor-Van would try to shuttle me off into Exploratory Science. Rais made the offer before graduation."
"I see."
"Aren't you going to congratulate me on being awarded first class honours?" Jor-El suggests, and laughs when Dru-Zod rolls his eyes.
"Was that in doubt?"
"I was fairly distracted during the last month," Jor-El admits, as they pick their way out to the launch strip.
"By what?"
"I kept thinking," Jor-El says, with a perfectly innocent expression, "Of all the things that I wanted to... talk to you about in private. After graduation. In detail."
Dru-Zod nearly stumbles as desire pulses sudden and hot under his skin, and then he has to swallow a curse when Jor-El has the gall to grin mischievously at him. Thankfully, the children seem to have dozed off, but as they surface out onto the launch strip, Dru-Zod is still mentally revising all the ways that he's about to make Jor-El pay for his cheek once they get back to the El estates.
Annoyingly enough, Faora-Ul is waiting for them next to the El jumpship, and for a brief and irrational moment, Dru-Zod hates her with every fibre of his soul.
"Lieutenant," Faora-Ul salutes, seemingly oblivious to said hatred, then turns to Jor-El. "You were serious about that offer?"
"I'm always serious."
She sighs. "And to think that I thought that you might want to go through at least an entire cycle without making new enemies."
"What's this about?" Dru-Zod demands suspiciously, and to his exasperation, Faora-Ul only eyes him briefly before glancing back to Jor-El.
"You don't have the funds with which to help me right now."
"In a week or so I'm going to publish five patents. I'll have the funds then."
"Fine," Faora-Ul snorts. "Contact me when you do." She nods to them both, and strides around them, heading briskly back into the Academy. Dru-Zod spends a brief and uncharitable moment wishing that Faora-Ul would spontaneously implode, then he swallows a sigh and follows Jor-El out into the El jumpship. They settle the brats in the passenger seats, but before Jor-El can set the jumpship to launch, Dru-Zod pins him firmly against the hull.
"What was that about?"
"What was what about?" Jor-El's staring, rather distractingly, at Dru-Zod's mouth. He tries not to let himself get distracted. Persteel's good for that, at least. The girdle plates make getting an erection really fucking uncomfortable.
"The 'offer'?"
"Ah. Private enterprise."
"Elaborate."
"Can we get home first?" Jor-El asks plaintively. "I wasn't lying about my distraction."
"You could keep stalling," Dru-Zod risks a glance at the sleeping kids, and leans over, until his lips brush Jor-El's ear, "Or you can tell me what sort of new trouble you're getting yourself into, and then we can go back to the estates, put those brats to bed, and then we'll retire to your room and I'll put you through your bed."
Jor-El lets out a soft, shaky laugh, his pupils dilating, "I've missed you, a'shara."
"Still stalling," he tells Jor-El, though he melts a little. It's a really uncomfortable sensation. Maddening, like most of Jor-El himself.
"We're going to look into the Inkorp," Jor-El says reluctantly, squirming, and only when Dru-Zod presses closer. "Happy?"
"The Inkorp?" Dru-Zod demands, incredulous. "You'll make enemies of them? Haven't you had enough of assassinations for one lifetime?"
"I made Faora-Ul an offer cycles ago. I'm following through."
"Maybe you should think of your brother."
"I did. We'll be careful. The Inkorp are a destabilizing force in the Oorn-zone. If we can remove them, we'll be a step closer to full assimilation and-"
"And a much bigger step closer to having to check your shadow for the rest of your life-"
Annoyingly enough, Jor-El starts to laugh, even when Dru-Zod glares at him and thins his lips; he keeps his mouth clamped shut as Jor-El leans up to brush a kiss over his mouth, trailing his fingers distractingly up over his neck. "This is a new record."
"What?"
"We got as far as the jumpship before quarrelling."
"Don't think I wasn't tempted before." Dru-Zod mutters, though he sighs, and lets Jor-El have his kiss. It's incredibly difficult to refuse Jor-El anything: if Dru-Zod didn't have the self-respect that he did, he'll probably be... More distracted. Yes. "So. What exactly were the both of you going to do?"
"Are you sure that this can't wait?" Jor-El squirms against him pointedly, and he's a little flushed now: the cadet uniform, in Dru-Zod's experience, has none of persteel's hampering qualities.
"Yes, I am sure," Dru-Zod growls, "And to think that I thought that you might have learned some sort of common sense during your-"
Allura chooses this moment to roll over in her sleep and mumble, "Kneel before General Zod." She sniggers even in her sleep, and Dru-Zod groans, even as Jor-El arches an eyebrow.
"What have you been teaching the children?"
"Your brother hacked into the entertainment grid," Dru-Zod retorts. "It's not important."
"Historical war vid?"
"Horrific acting, nothing worth watching," Dru-Zod tries to project total disinterest, but he recognises that look of distant abstraction on Jor-El's face with a sinking feeling. There's really only one line of attack in such circumstances: he drags Jor-El over to take his mouth, keeping it slow, with just enough of a touch of teeth to make Jor-El start to squirm. "Let's go," he growls against Jor-El's ear, and feels him jerk against his thigh.
Thankfully, House El's retainers whisk the brats off, leaving them to get to Jor-El's chambers unimpeded. Persteel takes a while to shed, and they don't quite make it to the bedchambers: collapsed on the thick pelt on the floor of Jor-El's reading room, with Jor-El's arms around his neck and his tongue down his throat, Dru-Zod strokes two fingers between Jor-El's thighs teasingly and freezes as they come away slick.
"Didn't want to wait," Jor-El pants against his ear, even as Dru-Zod's brain briefly flatlines at the mental image of Jor-El, curled in a shower stall or some stolen pocket of privacy, his fingers wet with lubricant, opening himself up with that pretty flush over his cheeks. Oversoul.
"Should have waited," Dru-Zod retorts, his voice a little strangled to his ears, "Would have used my mouth."
Jor-El makes a keening whine at that, his nails digging into Dru-Zod's back, then he hisses, "No, I... no, I needed this, Dru - get, get inside, I want - please - Rao, I've been-" The rest of his babbling drops into a gasping moan when Dru-Zod lines himself up and pushes deep; the prep's not quite enough, but he gets his hands on Jor-El's hips and tugs, pulling Jor-El up and onto his prick. Jor-El arches , his head snapping back over the pelt, digging his heels into Dru-Zod's spine and bucking until they're joined as deep as Dru-Zod can go and Rao but he has to bite down hard on his lip to keep himself from spilling.
He's missed this, he's missed- "Missed you," Jor-El's whispering, scrabbling at his shoulders until he bends with his weight on an elbow and his free hand supporting Jor-El's weight, "Missed you, missed you-" and it's in moments like this that Dru-Zod has no defences: Jor-El can ask him for anything in the universe and he will give it to him.
"I've got you," Dru-Zod mouths kisses over Jor-El's lips until his shoulders stop shaking, "I'm right here." Jor-El's breath rattles in his throat as he clenches down over Dru-Zod's prick and Dru-Zod hisses, trying not to grind deeper. "I don't think you're - not yet-" the rest of his protest is lost in a choked cry as Jor-El bares his teeth and somehow manages to twist them around, until he's crouched in Dru-Zod's lap, head bowed, his hands curled tight over Dru-Zod's arms as he lifts his weight briefly then drops himself back down, rolling his hips as he does and shaking.
Dru-Zod bucks up to meet him at the next, and it punches a shocked, "Oh!" out of Jor-El that forces Dru-Zod to bite down on his lip again. The reprieve doesn't last - Jor-El grins at him, dangerous and gorgeous as he starts to ride him, Oversoul, driving their weight into the pelt and they fall out of sync in no time at all; it goes savage even with his hands clutched over Jor-El's hips, all the desperation of distance and the raw wonder of their union; he braces his heels against the pelt and drives up and nearly tips Jor-El over his chest. This gets a breathless laugh, and another bared grin, all challenge: it gets gloriously rougher, harder, until he thinks they're going to bruise each other, bioengineering be damned, he can't hear his breathing over the wet claps of their flesh, can't feel anything but the sweetly tight cage around his prick.
It's over when he hauls himself up and drags Jor-El close, trapping Jor-El's arousal between their bellies, sweat riding hard flesh up against him as he kisses Jor-El as roughly as they're coupling, his hands clawed uselessly in Jor-El's short cropped hair. Jor-El whines and chokes out an incoherent tumble of words, his voice hitching, then he's dragging Dru-Zod over for a kiss so rough that he's sure that their lips will bruise; he feels Jor-El shake under his palms, warm liquid spurting between them, and it takes him a few more jolting thrusts before he also touches ecstasy.
Jor-El makes an unintelligible sound when Dru-Zod tries to move, curling his legs around him more firmly to hold them joined, uncomfortable as it's growing, and there's mayhem in his grin as he touches their foreheads together, their breathing still shallow and stuttered. "Not yet."
"Maybe I want to continue on the bed," Dru-Zod counters. It's been over a cycle, and he thinks that he'll possibly never get used to how filthy and unsanitary the aftermath of sex is. It's also, he's learned from experience, an activity that gets increasingly uncomfortable when conducted outside of a bed.
"Maybe I want to feel you get hard inside me," Jor-El replies, because he's as much a monster as his brother in the worst of ways, and Dru-Zod moans and squirms because the mind might have some self-respect, but the flesh is eternally weak to Jor-El's evil wiles.
In revenge, he fucks Jor-El spread open with a thigh up over his shoulder and the other pinned securely under his palm; grits his teeth and drives in hard enough to shove Jor-El up an inch over the pelt each time he thrusts and then backs down into a gentle rocking each time Jor-El's breaths go wounded and pitchy and close. Jor-El glares at him at first, then he screams himself hoarse as Dru-Zod finds a better angle, and when Dru-Zod finally starts to feel the ache and strain in his back and the thorny edge of pain in his own arousal, he begs, garbled and whimpering.
Dru-Zod concedes - he always will, when Jor-El gets like this, so lost in desire's grasp that his beautiful, brilliant mind is in fragments - and he's shaking as he spills, the tremor through to his fingertips, though he still manages to get a hand around Jor-El's prick; he tugs stiffly and awkwardly for a moment before he remembers belatedly that it's the wrong hand, the ruined hand, but before he can pull it away Jor-El has closed his fingers over his arousal with his own, dragging their joined hands up in a rough channel for a moment before they're soiled.
Jor-El always grins when he's dazed like this, a little foolishly, face lax, eyes wide with nothing but adoration, and it's so much of everything that Dru-Zod has ever wanted that it hurts to look at it. He averts his eyes, and Jor-El grabs his damaged hand, bringing it up to his mouth to lick it clean, and Dru-Zod has to grit his teeth as he feels his spent prick give an unwilling twitch. "Now can we get to the bed?" he manages to rasp, and Jor-El laughs, breathless, hoarse.
"M'not moving." He sucks in Dru-Zod's index finger to the knuckle, smirking around it, then he grins again when Dru-Zod jerks his hand free, wipes it pointedly on Jor-El's flank, and pulls away, wincing, oversensitised. He gets them both to the bed with what is probably sheer willpower alone, which is a trial, because Jor-El seems bent on blithely informing him of all the deeply heretical acts that his insane and brilliant mind seems to have dreamed up in the cycle he had spent in the Academy.
"It's a wonder that you passed at all," Dru-Zod tells him, when he shoves Jor-El onto the bed and climbs in after him.
"I'm good at multitasking," Jor-El agrees, and then adds, in the same tone, innocent as you please, "Later, you could try slipping a finger in. Along with your prick. I think it'll fit now."
Dru-Zod grits his teeth and tries to recover essential brain function. It's a near thing. "If you get too sore to fly H'Raka again, it'll be your own fault."
II.
He's briefly derailed by the sound of Jor-El's laughter. It's hearty, delighted, and it tugs a brief curl to his mouth - at least until his enhanced hearing picks up the sounds of that stupid historical vid. He can hear the brats too, now to think of it, and annoyed, he hesitates at the branch in the corridors before scowling to himself and striding off to get to work. The day hasn't started well.
It gets progressively worse during the morning, if only because Dru-Zod can't quite stop himself from worrying about Jor-El's and Faora-Ul's latest suicidal venture, and he's in a black mood by lunch. He returns to his office from the cantina to find the brats piled in his chair like a pack of trisnouts and Jor-El curiously going through his correspondence in the infogrid with his usual utter lack of shame.
"I was here to see Rais," Jor-El cuts in quickly, when Dru-Zod sucks in a deep breath. "The research wing is just on the next spire."
Salient sections of said research wing go up in smoke and/or explode on a fairly regular basis, and Dru-Zod grimaces, his mood worsening, as the reality of Jor-El's posting finally settles home. "You'll have your own lab?"
"Not at first, but it'll just be a matter of time." Jor-El smiles warmly at him, clearly unaware of how his blithe declaration only adds to Dru-Zod's mood. "How's your day been so far?"
"It's getting better," Dru-Zod finds himself saying, despite himself, just to see Jor-El's face light up, and he's growing into a sap, this is embarrassing his ancestors, and he focuses on the two brats in his chair in a vain attempt to regain a bit of his sanity. "What are they doing here?"
"I was going to leave them with the retainers, but they seem rather spooked recently."
"That's because they blew up the moonward terrace a few klicks ago," Dru-Zod notes sourly.
"I made a miscalculation on the nitrocyclic phason," Zor-El tells Jor-El, when Jor-El glances at him.
"Ah, that's understandable. Did you try a sub-flux citrin of amaesthyrcin as a stabilizer?"
Dru-Zod looks over to Allura, expecting to see boredom, but what the little girl actually says is, "We tried a quarter mix of trisentium."
"That's not a bad piece of lateral thinking, but you should have tried a sixth tincture," Jor-El concedes approvingly, and Dru-Zod sighs as the three of them continue to speak in what seems to be a totally different language, even as he pointedly shoulders Jor-El out of the way to check his messages. Eventually, even Jor-El gets the hint - he gently shoos the children outside before circling back to the infogrid.
"Leaving them unattended is a very bad idea," Dru-Zod tells him, if only because the Ministry of Defence is fully stocked with most offensive Kryptonian weaponry known to civilisation, and Allura has the morals of a thief.
"Only briefly." Jor-El leans over for a quick, hard kiss. "See you at home."
It's all disgustingly domestic, and Dru-Zod tries not to stare at Jor-El's pert rump when he leaves, quite undisguised even under the House El robes, but his self-discipline fails him this time.
He doesn't go back to House El immediately, if only because technically, his home is the Zod estates, omissions of fact and Jor-El's bed aside. He sorts out a few minor admin matters with the few staff he has on retainer and the House Zod barracks before his head of staff finally gets a word in and tells him that Jor-El is in the eyries with the brats. If he rushes down to find them, it's only because - he tells himself - that if the brats get eaten, it'll interfere with the hybrids' carefully monitored diets.
To his irritation, they're in the main roosting cavern with H'Raka and R'Druk, and Allura is even petting R'Druk's muzzle. Dru-Zod glowers at R'Druk - traitor! - but the hybrid only shoots him a serene glance before ambling over to greet him, and H'Raka chirps over from where it's allowing Zor-El to inspect one of its foreclaws.
"Do we get to ride one of these someday?" Zor-El asks hopefully.
"What? No," Dru-Zod scowls.
"But why? Jor has one."
"Jor is my bond-mate," Dru-Zod points out.
"But we're your friends, and there are lots of hybrids," Allura says reasonably, "While there's only you, Jor, and a couple of handlers."
"There aren't 'lots' of hybrids," Dru-Zod corrects, but this is a stupid and circular argument that he probably can't win, especially when Jor-El steps over to sneak an arm around his back.
"No exceptions?" Jor-El asks, and Rao damn him, but the way he stares at Dru-Zod's mouth as he speaks really ought to be illegal.
"Did I mention how much of a pain in the aether those two were while you were away?"
"We'll be good," Zor-El promises instantly, his eyes intent.
"No blowing up the estates," Allura adds quickly.
"No hacking into your Ministry account," Zor-El continues.
"No checking in on the House feeds to see why you and Jor stay locked up in your rooms for hours," Allura continues, and the little monsters burst out laughing when Dru-Zod makes a choking noise.
Jor-El also chuckles, which cements Dru-Zod's opinion that House El is a House of evil shapeshifter changelings, his bond-mate included. "Allura, it's not nice to lie. I'll have noticed if either of you managed to crack my security."
"Ha, I knew it," Allura's already turning to Zor-El. "They were up to that after all. Pay up."
He sticks her tongue out at her. "Still can't prove it."
"Maybe we'll have this talk later," Jor-El adds quickly, with a sidelong glance towards Dru-Zod. "It's not very good for Dru's blood pressure."
"Oversoul, what have you been teaching your brother?" Dru-Zod hisses, and H'Raka makes a soothing trill, even as Zor-El grins at him.
"Relax. Allura and I just found some unusual vids on the entertainment grid before we actually found that old Zod vid, that's all."
"What sort of unusual vids?"
"If you ever want to ride one of these," Jor-El pats R'Druk's flank, making the hybrid rumble in affection, "Then you're both going to have to be nicer to Dru."
"We're already nice to him," Zor-El objects.
"We try to include him with our experiments," Allura adds.
"He just gets angry really easily-"
"Zor," Jor-El cuts in, and although his expression is blank, Dru-Zod can feel his bond-mate shaking ever so slightly against him in suppressed mirth. "Remember what I said about observations."
"Not always worth correlating?"
"Not always worth exploring?" Allura tries.
"Not always worth describing," Jor-El says firmly, and grins when Dru-Zod glares at him.
"If all of you are quite finished," Dru-Zod growls.
"You see," Zor-El tells Jor-El, and even as Dru-Zod's contemplating allowing the hybrids to eat the brats after all, damn their diets, Jor-El manages to get the two of them packed off to the jumpship, where a retainer's apparently waiting to take them both back to House El.
"You shouldn't take them here," Dru-Zod tells Jor-El, when they're alone in the eyries.
"I know," Jor-El agrees, utterly unrepentant, and kisses him, which should be irritating, but isn't. "Let's go flying. I have a private park on the south side of the city."
"Of course you do." When Ter-Zod had gained control of the House El finances, he hadn't quite been able to dispose of its properties due to legal niceties: as far as Dru-Zod was aware, House El still owned enough of the Dreaming City to possibly secede if it really wanted to. It's always a sobering thought, in reality. Had the situation in Solton never arisen, Dru-Zod would never have had the standing, funds or means to-
"I think R'Druk and H'Raka might like it," Jor-El strokes his arm, as though he's heard the sentiment. "And there's a water feature that I think might prove to be of some entertainment."
The 'water feature' turns out to be a miniature lake with a waterfall, and Jor-El has surprisingly filthy ideas involving water that Dru-Zod really shouldn't be indulging, being the responsible half of their bonding, but Jor-El naked is a weapon in and of itself.
He's briefly worried that the brats might blow up House El in their absence, but it's too tempting to have Jor-El again in his bed when they eventually get back to the Zod estates, and besides, Jor-El doesn't seem too worried. "You think too much," he grins at Dru-Zod, nipping at his jaw before he sinks down to his knees, and the rest of the day makes up for the part preceding.
"You're too concerned about things that never happened," Jor-El tells him in the morning, still curled in bed when he wakes up, though Dru-Zod notices that the infogrid array in his chambers has been switched on at some point in time during the night, with the blueprints of what looks like some huge engine still hovering over the hologrid.
"What?" Dru-Zod asks, never at his best first thing in the morning.
"Your concerns about my House's standing," Jor-El flicks at his nose, and grins when Dru-Zod scowls at him. "Look at it this way. I don't think that you'll have wanted me at the start had our bonding not been arranged by our parents. I wouldn't have been in the Military Academy, after all."
"You'll still have been-"
"And," Jor-El ignores the interruption, "I really can't imagine living without you, so I prefer not to think of all the vastness of probabilities that had engineered fate to create our current consequence. The algorithm would be unnecessarily quad-dimensional."
"That," Dru-Zod notes slowly, blinking, "Was actually turning out to be one of the nicest things you have ever said to me, up until you buried it in scientific jargon."
"Hardly jargon," Jor-El corrects, though he grins mischievously and flicks at Dru-Zod's nose again, and gets wrestled onto his back for the indignity.
III.
He deals with Zor-El's and Allura's panic, then with Lara Lor-Van and the rest of Jor-El's uninteresting friends whose names he can never be quite bothered to remember, and then he's hauled off back to the Ministry to help deal with the Xamatrin situation. By the time he's done, Jor-El's somehow talked the hospital into allowing him to get discharged and has gone back to the El estates, which means that Dru-Zod is worried and furious by the time he actually gets to leave work and head over.
Jor-El's tinkering in his lab instead of resting, and when Dru-Zod advances, Jor-El holds up a hand without even looking up from the workbench. "Hold up, I just had the most fascinating epiphany about differentials and their possible relationship to-"
"You are going to bed," Dru-Zod snaps, and marches Jor-El out of the lab despite his protests. Jor-El's chuckling by the time Dru-Zod forces him to change into sleep robes and get into bed, though he stops that stupid grin of his when Dru-Zod turns to go.
"Dru?"
"I'm furious with you right now," Dru-Zod tells him flatly, "And I'm going to take a jumpship home and go flying."
Jor-El winces, sitting up and looking contrite. "Dru, I'm sorry that we didn't tell you about the-"
"Shut up and rest."
"The injury isn't even that serious-" which is as far as Jor-El gets before Dru-Zod storms out. He's still furious enough that when he gets to the Zod estates, even the guards quickly make themselves scarce, and R'Druk nudges him worriedly when he goes to look for it in the eyrie.
As an afterthought, he takes H'Raka along, in case Jor-El fails to take a hint and tries to come after him, and they head out at random to one of the Zod storage silos, and he lies on the planarform between the hybrids with his head over his folded arms, and stares up at the stars. H'Raka makes a questioning sound, and Dru-Zod glances briefly at him. "Your chosen's an idiot."
R'Druk makes a snuffling sound, like a sigh, and shuffles over to groom H'Raka philosophically, checking over the bronze hybrid's flanks for parasites. Dru-Zod glares at it, but R'Druk only gives him a placid stare in return. Arguing with hybrids tends to end up ridiculous, though - he's tried it before, when he was far younger - and Dru-Zod rolls over to his flank. He's just going to rest his eyes for a moment.
He ends up two hours late for work, but thankfully Captain Pyr-An has heard of the Inkorp matter - as has all of Krypton by now, probably - and only shoots him a vaguely sympathetic look. Feeling harassed and out of sorts, Dru-Zod manages to catch up with the morning's messages by the time Jor-El sidles meekly into his office.
"Go away," he tells Jor-El firmly, without looking up.
"All right, but will you be coming home later?"
"I don't live in the El estates."
"I can explain it to you at-"
"What's there to explain?" Dru-Zod asks flatly, his eyes fixed on the infogrid. "You come to me when you want to play house, and you go to other people when you want to gamble with your life."
"It's not like that."
"Oh?"
"It's something I owed to Faora-Ul," Jor-El says, in his annoyingly reasonable tone, "And I knew that you wouldn't approve."
"I'm so glad to know that my opinion means so little to you."
"It means everything to me," Jor-El corrects, a little steel creeping into his voice, "Which is why I-"
"Ran off to get yourself killed regardless? Get out, Jor. I'm working."
"I'll leave, if I can get an assurance that we'll have a mature discussion about this when you're-"
He shoves Jor-El out of his office and scanlocks the door. This will, Dru-Zod realizes on hindsight, probably prove problematic when he needs to use the sanitation facilities, but thankfully, Jor-El just mills around for a while before he leaves. He manages to successfully avoid Jor-El for four klicks, albeit with some ingenuity and luck, and his anger slowly ebbs into a simmer.
He's still angry, though.
And he's definitely not in a good enough mood to entertain Faora-Ul when she saunters into his office at the tail end of what has proved to be a spectacularly bad day in terms of Xamatrin rogue sects. "What do you want?"
"Permission to speak plainly, sir?"
"If it'll make this meeting shorter, certainly."
"I don't like you," Faora-Ul says briskly, and Dru-Zod arches an eyebrow. Faora-Ul isn't in Strat, but she's in Assets, which is close enough to his area of authority: he could send her off to Xamatrin if he wanted to.
Actually, he is rather tempted. "Go on," he drawls.
"I particularly dislike how much you affect Jor," Faora-Ul adds, just as briskly. "Almost for the entirety of all the cycles that I have known him. It's pathetic how obsessed he is about what you might think about him."
"That's-"
"Did you think all those auxlic pins - and his first class honours - were awarded because he was truly all that interested in studying Academy subjects?"
"He has a genius-level intellect."
"You know that's not enough," Faora-Ul narrows her eyes. "Not to mention all the work he puts into his combat classes."
"Get to the point, sergeant."
"My point is," Faora-Ul growls, "That despite my best efforts, I'm worried about Jor, and although at first I didn't want his help because I knew this was going to happen, he did it to help me answer an old debt. The Inkorp murdered my mother in front of me when I was a child. I don't know if this detail matters to you, but it matters a great deal to me. I've spent my life training to try and take them down. I thought that I saw an opportunity. Jor wanted to help."
Dru-Zod hadn't known about the reason behind Faora-Ul's enmity with the Inkorp - he had thought that it was a reckless overreach over their Cycle-Five attempted assassination. Still. "My opinion about his involvement wouldn't have changed."
"And he knew that. Which is why he spent the entirety of the mission worrying over what you might think, and that's why he got hurt in the first place."
"And how is that my fault?"
"It isn't, you fool," Faora-Ul hisses, "Getting injured was Jor-El's fault. He shouldn't have been distracted in the first place. But he's been a friend to me despite everything, and I'm trying to pay him back for the sentiment right now. Giving someone the cold shoulder instead of talking to them is childish. Go and talk to him before he does something that we'll all regret."
"Does what?" Dru-Zod demands, frowning.
"You know," Faora-Ul tells him loftily, and sweeps out of his office, which means that Dru-Zod spends the next two hours utterly failing to get any work done, and ends up taking a jumpship straight back to the El estates.
He runs into the two brats on his way out of the reception chamber, and they actually look surprised to see him. "Dru," Zor-El starts first, then hugs him cautiously, which unsettles him.
Allura eyes him with the same cautious stare. "Were you angry with us?"
"No?" Dru-Zod discreetly tries to pry Zor-El off him, but the boy's surprisingly resilient.
"You didn't come home, and Jor's been sad, so we thought-"
"My quarrel's with Jor, not either of you." Dru-Zod corrects, and to his exasperation, Allura seems to take this as an open invitation to hug him as well.
"Don't be angry with him," she mumbles. "Really, we'll be good."
"You don't even have to let us ride the hybrids," Zor-El adds.
"Where's Jor?" Dru-Zod asks, actually worried now, but his question's answered when Jor-El skids out from around a corridor, clearly having run all the way from wherever he had been. He breathes out, shaky with surprise, and steps over at a more sedate pace, though his hands unclench slowly.
"Zor, Allura, could we have a minute?"
"All right," Allura notes dubiously, allowing herself to be peeled off. "You're not going to shout at each other again, are you? I'll cry," she threatens mulishly, when Jor-El's lips tilt briefly into a faint smile.
"I think we can manage," Jor-El tells her wryly, and Zor-El and Allura reluctantly pad off, though they keep sneaking suspicious glances back at them. Dru-Zod studies Jor-El warily as they go. He looks tired, and he's still favoring his leg, but he doesn't seem-
"What have you been doing?" Dru-Zod asks, because he's never been a proponent of oblique questions.
"Ah," Jor-El looks a little startled. "I have two months before my position in the Ministry starts. I was assisting House Lor-Van with their hyperspace skip tech."
"I see." Faora-Ul is a Rao-damned liar. "Right," he adds, a little awkwardly, and turns to go - or tries to, anyway. Jor-El grabs hold of his wrist.
"You're... you're still angry with me?"
"Obviously." He'll be damned if he lets Jor-El know that he was tricked into coming here, though. "I was just... checking in. On the brats."
Jor-El's lips twitch briefly again. "You're a poor liar, a'shara. Did Faora-Ul say something to you?"
"Why, did you put her up to it?" The question's out before he can rephrase it.
"No, but she shouted at me for an hour yesterday." Jor-El notes wryly. "I'm sorry, Dru, I really am."
"But you would still have done it again if you had to."
"I'm sorry," Jor-El repeats, though he ducks his head; he looks so lost and miserable that Dru-Zod pulls him over, presses his head under his chin. His hair is starting to grow out; it'll probably reach the thick curls of his childhood in a few months. Dru-Zod strokes fingers through the thick spikes, and swallows a sigh. He's not exactly angry, not any longer.
"Did you really get hurt because you were worrying about what I was going to think?"
"Ah, um," Jor-El squirms, and his cheeks flush a little: Dru-Zod snorts, though he curls his damaged arm around Jor-El's back.
"You were trained better than that."
"No one's perfect," Jor-El mumbles, though he closes his eyes when Dru-Zod cautiously strokes a palm up and down his spine, gentling him.
Faora-Ul may have lied about some things, but she's right about most of it, Dru-Zod realizes slowly, as Jor-El obviously swallows a sob and clutches Dru-Zod tightly. He hasn't - he hasn't really seen it this way. He's always thought their union desperately one-sided - not Jor-El's fault, of course - and he knows that Jor-El loves him, but Dru-Zod had always thought of Jor-El's love as a hearthfire, warm but steady, controlled; his is more of a wildfire, consuming and maddening and elemental. It's humbling to see that he's wrong, that in his own way, Jor-El too has woven every strand of his soul as closely as he can around Dru-Zod, just as he has done around Jor-El.
He wants to say, I've hoped that you've learned your lesson, but it's pointless, if only because they're both born to know priorities, and if Jor-El has to, he'll do what he thinks is truly right even if it runs against what Dru-Zod might think. And Dru-Zod would do the same. It's not something to be changed easily. "I want you to try talking to me more," Dru-Zod tells him softly. "Just as I'll try to listen. And if you really want to do something against my wishes, I'll try to understand."
Jor-El's hands twist in his uniform, and his breath shudders against his shoulders, then Jor-El is leaning up, tugging him down, kissing him fiercely until their lungs burn from lack of air. Dru-Zod gets them to Jor-El's private chambers, just in case, but they're in no mood for much more than holding on to each other until it's dark.
In the morning, Jor-El's still curled in bed, and asleep, which makes Dru-Zod check the time, thinking that he's woken up too early. He's on time, though when he tries to get up from the bed, Jor-El pulls him back down, crinkled uniform and all. Cautiously, Dru-Zod looks him over, but Jor-El's still half asleep, his smile soft and lopsided and beautiful, and he laughs when Dru-Zod leans over to brush a kiss over his mouth.
"Some of us have to work," Dru-Zod tells him.
"Take a day off."
"You're a bad influence," Dru-Zod prods Jor-El, tempted. "But no."
Jor-El pouts, which is an expression that should look ridiculous on a Kryptonian his age, but instead manages to make Dru-Zod's prick twitch in his rumpled breeches. "Then I'll go with you."
"No," Some of the other officers in Strat have made snide comments about 'conjugal' visits as it is. Behind his back, of course, but Dru-Zod has good ears. "But," he adds, when Jor-El's face falls, "I'll try and make it an early day, and then I'll come home."
Jor-El blinks at him for a moment before Dru-Zod realizes that he's unthinkingly called the El estates 'home' - it's not accurate, not exactly. He no more thinks of the El estates as his home as the Zod estates, not any longer. It's Jor-El that he pictures when he thinks of somewhere to belong to. Before he can explain, though, or find a way to explain, Jor-El leans up swiftly for a gentle kiss; it's not a farewell, more of a promise.
"I'll like that," Jor-El whispers, and threads his fingers around Dru-Zod's, squeezing lightly before he lets go, and Dru-Zod allows himself one more, hurried kiss before he gets off the bed. The day has started off perfect.