With their takeout dinner secured, Ro had retreated to what had formerly been 'his' corner of the couch (a distinction that meant little these days, considering Cael was usually draped over him, or they were touching one way or another while each tended to their own things), legs tucked in closer than usual, his container of food in his lap as he prodded at the dumplings and thought about what he wanted, or needed, to say. Cael's comments a few days ago had hit an unexpected nerve—and hearing back from Command, as long as he had been waiting for that shoe to drop, had only hefted more weight onto them. He was being promoted: a position with more responsibility, a position that only made him more likely to be the last person on the ship if (when, the voice at the back of his head said) it went down.

He doubted Cael would like that particularly much, but... Cael's seemingly not understanding him when Ro had previously thought he did had left him questioning where they stood or were going.

Heavier things than he wanted to be contemplating, but fit right in with his exhausted view of ... everything, currently. Pulling back the way he had hadn't been kind, he knew that, and nothing Cael deserved, but he had needed to figure things out for himself first before he could approach them. Words were not his forte, and even if he had asked for it, he found it hard to start the conversation now. "It's about what you said the other night," he started, finally, the dumpling between his chopsticks dropping back into the takeout container as Ro kept his eyes on it. "As you've guessed."

For as much as Cael held himself together what he considered to be reasonably well most of the time, he wasn't nearly as detached from his emotions as he'd been raised to be. For the better part of his life he'd coped with it by simply never giving much thought to what he wanted; he'd stuck with the GLF when he'd been better able to buy into the pretense that they were working toward a better ideal of the future. Once the shine wore off of that, he had viewed it as the lesser of two evils when stacked up against what the Alliance held control over. It was only more recently that he had started to allow himself to embrace what he wanted, what made him happy, to actually get attached to what his life could be and whatever abstract hopes he had for a future.

Much of that had kicked off because of Ro and how badly Cael wanted to be with him. Ro had never given any illusions about his likely mortality, or that he wanted to stay on the job until it took him out, always spoken of as sooner rather than later, so that they simply had whatever little amount of time was afforded to them by luck. It was only Cael's own decisions he could control to try and draw that out as long as was possible, in planning for his exit from the GLF so Ro would be less likely to jeopardize his career and not plunging off into the unknown after Rinta since there was no telling how that would go.

Cael had always felt alone until Ro, but it was a feeling that was still waiting not so deep as to be unreachable. It creeped back whenever he distanced himself, clearly displeased with something; even if Cael hadn't done anything wrong, the result seemed the same and when compared to other times Ro had come back from—this wasn't even a job, so much as Fletch requiring an emergency rescue—whatever, it'd been considerably. Colder. Still, Cael was closer to Ro than not, not retreating to the other side of the couch, though not leaned up against him the way he usually would, since Ro's posture didn't allow for it. Gaze lingering on him, Cael set his own chopsticks down for the moment. "I had some idea, yeah," he said, biting back the urge to point out, again, he really didn't view it as a bad thing. It was just simply how things were. "What did you want to say about it, darling?"

"It's—not fair." It had been Ro's first instinct to say, even before he had understood why he felt that way, though the past few days he had mulled it over, whether he had wanted to or not, until he felt certain enough that he knew reasonably well what had upset him this much. "I hoped you knew that what I do... it doesn't mean anything about what you mean to me." He loved Cael, genuinely and sincerely, no matter how much time they would be graced with in the end, but he hoped regardless that it would be much more yet. A retirement was still hard to imagine, given the amount of close calls his life had featured already, but it was a thought he had increasingly enjoyed.

Except—"I thought that—I thought that you knew that, going in. That this is just who I am." That Cael understood him had been one of the things Ro had always taken solace in, that he didn't have to apologize for who he was and was accepted fully, with all his many flaws and the uncomfortable parts of his story, and feeling like that wasn't the case after all had unsettled Ronan more than he could have explained in the moment.

He had yet to take his eyes off his food, and he slowly picked up another dumpling, though he just lit it hover where it was. "And I can't have you making me feel guilty for that."

Cael was quiet as he listened to Ro, wanting to give his words the due consideration they merited. It really hadn't been meant as any kind of critique, since Cael loved Ro because of who he was, not in spite of anything he was. More in spite of the circumstances and his own pessimism, if anything, since while he didn't view his life with any particular sort of pity, it wasn't like there had been a lot of it that went well until recently. He'd fought the losing side of a war and been raised by parents who'd done what they could, but had always put the bigger picture ahead of all else and he typically tried to do the same.

His life had never felt like it was worth much in the grand scheme of things and he had found solace in that, but in finally feeling like he had things to lose, there was sadness that came with it now, too, even as it was also the happiest he'd ever been. "I don't want you to feel guilty for who you are, Ro. I didn't mean it as a criticism of you in any way—I love who you are. Completely," Cael said, gaze lingering on Ro, "and I know you care about me, I just—I've been alone most of my life and there's nothing wrong with that, but I badly don't want to lose you."

Setting his own food down, Cael clasped his hands in his lap, looking down at them now since his voice was unsteady. "I very selfishly want a future with you, and sometimes I getupset with how little regard the people you work with seem to have for your life, which. I know my situation isn't better, currently, and there's nothing either of us can do about other people, so I shouldn't have burdened you with that and I'm sorry."

Ro kept his eyes downcast as he listened, unwittingly chewing on his lower lip as he thought it over. "It doesn't matter if you don't want me to feel guilty," he said, not unkindly, because he didn't mean for it to be, but his words rarely came out the way he intended, "Or if you don't say it. You still feel that way." And I know that, now, he didn't say, because even if his assumptions that Cael understood had been wrong, at least he had been blissfully unaware of it. Wrong, but unknowingly so. With a sigh, Ro maneuvered the dumpling up to stuff into his mouth, falling silent as he chewed. "But it has nothing to do with you. It doesn't mean you come in second."

The last thing he wanted was to hurt Cael; he cared deeply about him, and even hearing how much it affected him now wasn't easy. "I want to come home. I don't do what I do lightly. I'm not—doing it for the thrill, exactly," he added a little more emphatically, frustrated, prodding at his food with disinterest and a crease between his brows. It hadn't, necessarily, always been the case the way it was now—the regard Ro had for his life these days wasn't something he had always had, something that still surprised him at times, but whatever fulfilment he had sought in his work when he was younger was now balanced out by the home he had on Terminus.

He looked up, finally, frustration giving way to something sadder. "I don't want you to suffer because of what I do, but... I can't drop it. And it doesn't mean I care for you less, Cael."

Uncharacteristically still, Cael continued to look down at his hands. He knew it was his own shortcomings that had led to him being upset and while feeling inadequate wasn't anything new for him, it had been quite a while since he'd felt that way around Ro—maybe since their last major fight, almost a year ago now. Cael didn't want to crumble and make Ro feel worse about the whole thing and, given how the last few days had gone, he didn't want to break down and have to put himself back together alone as that would only somehow disappoint the both of them. Ro had already washed his hands of that yesterday, when he had pointed out he couldn't help that Cael was upset and didn't have the capacity to do anything with it.

With everything else going on with Ro, it was unfair to lean on him, anyway, and so Cael simply took a breath to steady himself. "I know you can't, Ro, and I would never ask you to. You've always told me how important your work is to you," he said carefully. "It's been nice feeling like I might not be alone for once, but that's too much to put on you—on anyone—when I know you might not have a choice in the matter, or that I'll maybe get taken out first."

Since, really, it wasn't as though Cael were an overly cautious person, nor would he hesitate to save anyone at the expense of himself, he was just put in the position considerably less than Ro was on a fairly regular basis. That didn't have any bearing on the importance he had to Cael, either, so he knew it was hypocritical in some measure, but his feelings weren't always rational and he'd done plenty to deserve ending up alone, anyway, whether he drove Ro away now by not handling all of this better, or through some other circumstance that neither of them could predict.

"Coming in second isn't how I meant it, exactly, and it isn't a reflection on you," he said, finally looking over at Ro, the wistfulness in Cael's own expression not quite suppressed. "More like—other things being more important is how I've always viewed myself, in the grand scheme of things."

There had, likely, been longer stretches of time than Ro would have wanted to admit when his self-sacrificial tendencies had been rooted in a lack of care for his own well-being and no idea what to do with himself—even joining the Endeavor hadn't been his idea, but an interesting enough proposition to give it a chance, at least. He felt differently now, about many things, and he understood that it was... hard, to unify these things. "Hey." He put the take out container down on the floor, then reached one hand out to cover Cael's and squeezed it gently. "I want to be here," he told him and meant it, "And I'll always do everything I can to come home."

The idea of either of them not returning from a mission was one Ronan didn't indulge; he knew it wasn't near as unlikely as he hoped, but he simply refused to think about things he couldn't change. Whatever could be said about his crew, Cael was thoroughly competent, and Ro trusted him implicitly.

"I can't promise it. We both know it might... not happen, one day." It was, likely, why getting stranded in a black hole had taken more of a toll on him than any danger they had faced; if they were dying, it would be a slow, drawn out death once they ran out of supplies, and all the way to that point Ro would have known that Cael was home, worried, hoping he would come home, and that, selfishly, was much harder than simply dying. "But I will always do what I can. I just... can't change the way I am." And maybe that was selfish, too, but—

Tension eased from Cael's shoulders as Ro squeezed his hand, the touch reassuring in a way that nothing else could quite measure up to. It was grounding, always, no matter how much his thoughts could drift sometimes to the worst possible outcomes since they hadn't happened: Ro was there and ultimately nothing was more important than that in the time they did have together.

Cael looked over, expression softening, as he listed closer until he could lean against Ro's side with a quiet sigh. "I don't want you to change at all, darling," he said. "Not one thing." It was true; he had fallen for Ro completely as he was, improbable as that would have once seemed for both of them, and he was unfailingly good in a way that Cael deeply didn't want Ro to think there was anything he was doing wrong. The hangups Cael had were all his own, were there before Ro and didn't simply magically go away with him, though they were considerably better than they had once been.

Leaning closer still, Cael pressed a kiss to Ro's shoulder, turning his hand to curl around Ro's in return. "It's just hard sometimes, but that isn't your fault," Cael said, "especially when presented with the possibility upfront that you're taking a one-way trip into oblivion, though I would still rather know than not. It just made for a long week. I'm sorry I haven't handled it better."

Without hesitation, Ro wrapped his free arm around Cael to keep him close, and in turn turned his head to press a kiss to the top of his head as he pulled him in tight. "I know it is." Ro considered himself lucky that Cael hadn't been on too many missions since they had begun dating that had involved him going entirely dark, and the one that would have, Ronan had been there for.

"I. When your ship crashed. I think I spent the whole week worrying about whether you were alright." More so than for Iliya or even Holden, but the absence of Cael in his day to day had been entirely too obvious not to miss. He squeezed Cael a little tighter. "I don't—I'm sorry. That you have to handle it at all." There was nothing he could do about that, Ro didn't think, short of picking an easier, quieter life somewhere, and he didn't believe he could do that now. He had seen what all was possible in this strange universe, and he couldn't imagine going back to a life of being oblivious.

But then—Commander Valeska had.

Maybe Ro truly was simply selfish, and that was a feeling that sat uncomfortably in the pit of his stomach all of a sudden. It made it only harder that he had yet to tell Cael the news. "There's another thing," he started, and let out a deep breath, "I've heard from the Admiral."

Pressed against Ro's side, Cael fit familiarly and well against him as always, smiling to himself at the kiss pressed to the top of his head. "Little did you know, I was just working on a terrible sunburn to thoroughly seduce you," he murmured. The worrying wasn't easy, by any means, and maybe it was unfair to let Ro see that in full force like he had now, but Cael wasn't good at hiding much of anything from Ro, nor did he want to, in the long run. "It's more than worth it, darling, so—you don't need to be sorry. Besides, even if I'm not sure what I'll do next, I hardly think it'll be some kind of desk job."

It was something he'd been mulling over; crime in and of itself didn't excite him anymore the way it might have when he was younger, nor was he particularly interested in trying to strike it rich. Truthfully, Cael had ultimately wanted to work toward making things better for people, even if he'd deny up and down having any sort of good samaritan-ing impulse, and while he had years ago thought that might be accomplished through the GLF, he hadn't felt that way in a long time. But, one step at a time and it was a bridge he would cross later, so he pushed the thought aside in light of Ro's own job concerns.

Sitting up a little to better look at Ro, Cael's arm curled around his waist in case it wasn't good news, considering the way Ro had been worrying. "What did they say, darling? If they've fired you that seems incredibly stupid on their part."

Ro mustered a small smile as well, tucked away into the crown of Cael's hair. "I didn't know that was such a calculated move, but clearly I should have expected it," he murmured, remembering all too well the concern that had come with not hearing from any of them, and just how troubling it had been that it was Cael he had missed particularly much. "Even if it's not a desk job, maybe it doesn't need to be.. black hole surfing, exactly." Not that Ro would stand in the way of whatever came next for Cael, though he was never quiet about his disapproval.

"It would be incredibly deserved," Ro disagreed, and still felt, regardless of his previous conduct, that the kind of thing he had done was punishable on principle. If they didn't, what example did that set? The Endeavor was a chaotically run ship, but attacking your superiors was not something they could overlook—in his assessment. But as almost always, the people in charge thought differently than he did. "Our head of medical resigned in support of Cortez, too. But no, they're not firing me."

Ro gently, slowly stroked his hand up and down Cael's back, a motion that was equally as soothing to him. "They're... promoting me, actually." Which still felt entirely nonsensical to him, and he wasn't sure yet what the reality of it would look like. "It's a new position. Makes me in line for command, if... well. Anything happens."

That Cael didn't really respect things like "chain of command" was probably not much surprise, especially when it sounded like said command was putting Ro in more jeopardy than anything else. Not that Cael hadn't followed plenty of questionable orders at times from his own superiors, but he always wanted better for Ro than all else. Relaxed under the movement of his hands, Cael blinked a bit in surprise; not because he didn't think Ro deserved a promotion, but because it seemed like a perfectly sensible move, even if the path to getting there sounded... more like something he'd expect from his own ship, really.

"That's—good, yes?" he hazarded, since Ro didn't seem particularly enthused about it, currently. "If being in line for command is a thing you want, darling." Without a doubt, he was the most reliable and trustworthy person in Cael's life and there was no one whose judgment he valued higher, so he had little doubt that it would be a good position for Ro to be in, if he wanted it.

Whatever it might speak to his mortality, well—Cael had never imagined that if anything happened to the Endeavor that Ro wouldn't already stay until everyone else was safe. It wasn't like Cael wouldn't do the same himself. Lifting his hand, he cupped Ro's cheek, and leaned closer to press a gentle kiss to his lips, searching his face. "How do you feel about it?"

Ro breathed a soft sigh when Cael pulled back again, then let let go of Cael's hand so he could reach up instead, gently tracing his thumb along his jaw as he thought it over. "I don't know yet," he settled on finally, and gave the slightest bit of a shrug.

"I think... I might be able to implement a bit more of a stringent security regiment, depending on what the next xo says. I'll have more insight into the briefings, in the future." He paused as he pondered, still not certain quite where he stood on it all. "It's going to give me a few more headaches, probably. And help me get rid of others, maybe."

One of the reasons Ro would never be suited to command was that, more than their mission, his top priority was the safety of their crew and getting them back home, and he already knew compromising that was something he couldn't do—just like he knew that it was a necessary part of what they did. "We'll see when we actually ship out next, I guess."

Cael readily leaned into Ro's touch, turning his head to press a kiss to his palm, quiet as he listened. "For what it's worth, as a humble neighborhood terrorist, there's no one I'd trust more to have my back than you and I think that's—hopefully something that your crew already appreciates and even if they don't, they should," he said.

It had ceased to be strange, for the most part, that the person he trusted most implicitly above all others was Ro, but Cael had little doubt that he was a good person, which. Maybe didn't suit him for command in the way that mattered to the Alliance, but did in all the ways that Cael considered as actually mattering and he was set enough in his own opinions to think that that was more important.

"Besides, as an outside but interested observer, your former xo didn't exactly seem to be very... stable, so that alone seems like a vast improvement, if it'll maybe give you any more leeway on giving the rest of your crew some sense of self-preservation beyond that of a fruit fly," he mused, tone wry, as he offered a warmer smile to Ro. "So if you do end up on the side of feeling glad about it, I'm happy for you, darling."

Even if the laugh he huffed was a wry one, Ro did manage a small smile. "They're not all that terrible," he argued, if weakly—he hadn't retold too much of their missions, he didn't think, though Cael had met plenty of them by now, and sometimes it did feel entirely miraculous that they were still alive by now.

Still, Ro didn't know yet how he felt about the new position, didn't think he would really know until the reality of it had set in after another mission or two (if he made it that far), so for the time being, he felt a little dazed at best, and uncertain at worst. Was he the right person for the job, or simply the next best one? It had been over a year with the Endeavor now, but... Ro shook his head, then let out another breath.

He did, however, no longer have to worry about how Cael would feel about the news, which brought plenty of peace of mind in itself, and he tipped his head up so he could press a kiss to his boyfriend's lips. "Thank you," he mumbled softly, and leaned forward until his forehead was resting against his.

Though Cael didn't know extensively what happened on the Endeavor's missions, it was impossible to miss the toll they took on Ro, whether physical or mental. Times he'd been shot or shot at, allusions to multiple instances of dying or nearly dying, unspoken horror that necessitated a visit to the incinerator, amongst others. Extrapolating from limited information and a greater protectiveness for Ro than Cael even held for himself, his opinions were probably less charitable than they should be, aside from of Ro and Hal. "Okay, maybe better than that, but. You know."

Still, it wasn't like Cael led a life that was devoid of risk. For whatever worry he felt, he wasn't any more likely to settle into a completely staid life quite yet. Sooner than later most likely, they'd face danger again.

But sooner still wasn't now and anything good that could happen to Ro was incredibly well-deserved, which Cael hoped this promotion would be in the long-run. Tilting his head, he returned the kiss warmly, then let his brow rest against Ro's. "You're welcome, love," Cael sighed out, content to stay right there a moment longer.