Title: Burning star (takes all night)
Fandom: My Chemical Romance
Characters: Ray Toro/Mikey Way
Rating: Teen
Length: 4,320 words
Content notes: Contains swearwords, astrophobia (with associated panic), non-explicit injury descriptions
Author notes: Space fluff (it was trying to be space angst, but I beat it into submission)! For shadowhive, whose Ray appreciation really inspired this one. Title derived from MCR's Save yourself, I'll hold them back
Summary: Ray doesn't spacewalk. He can't. But without engines, they're dead in the water...

They run into the meteoroid storm two cycles out from Korban.

Not that Ray realises that’s what’s happening. All he knows is that one minute he’s asleep, crashed out in his bunk and dead to the world, and the next he’s being jarred awake by what sounds like an all-out attack; red lights flashing and klaxons blaring as the ship shudders, Frank’s voice coming over the comms - low and quiet and serious in the way he only ever is when things get deadly – running through an inventory of failing systems across the ship.

Ray rolls out of his bunk like he’s a seasoned pro at this, and then promptly shatters the illusion by smacking his hip on the corner of the fixed drawer block that serves as his dresser. He curses like a sailor, low and fierce under his breath, because he still can’t bring himself to be loudly foul-mouthed in the effortless way that Frank does without his face turning red as a beet. Hopping across the cabin, he snags hold of his pants, still strewn across the end of his bunk from where he’d thrown them a few hours before, and he’s still shuffling into them when his cabin door opens to reveal Mikey standing outside, his lips pressed together so tightly they’ve turned white, and Ray’s mech kit held out like an offering.

The next few hours are like a nightmare that he can’t wake up from, and when he thinks back on it, the memories are a jumbled mess. A glimpse of Gerard racing for the bridge, his hair wild and his shirt untucked, his left boot on his right foot and his right boot hanging from his hand. Mikey crawling under the engine block, oil smeared across his cheek, partly because they need to get to the particle filter and he’s got smaller hands than Ray, and partly because Ray’s on the other side of the engine room, yelling instructions with his stomach in his mouth even as he tries to stop the ion compressor from overloading and taking out half the ship’s systems with it. That one petrifying moment when the oxygen generation system cuts out, with a deep mechanical groan that Ray can feel in his bones, and Mikey just stares at him, Ray’s own terror reflected in his wide eyes, except that Mikey’s terror is accompanied by a bone deep conviction that Ray will fix it, and Ray doesn’t know if he can.

(He does, but it’s a close-run thing, and he never wants to take that kind of gamble again.)

They limp out of it eventually, in some cases literally – Ray’s hip keeps protesting loudly about its earlier mistreatment, and Frank’s got a vicious gash on the back of his right calf that Ray’s somewhat afraid to ask how he got. But the ship is wrecked. The port side cargo bay is sealed off; none of them can get in there, but the sensors are recording a big enough drop in atmosphere that Ray’s suspicion is that they’re dealing with the kind of breach that will cause them serious issues if they try to take the ship planetside any time soon. Navigation is offline, although Frank thinks he should be able to have it up and running again within an hour or so, but the external communication array is either trashed or gone.

Not that any of that really matters, because they also have no engines. They’re dead in the water.

Gerard’s face takes on a pinched look when Frank reports that last, the kind that makes it seem as though he’s swallowed a lemon whole. Ray can empathise, because his stomach is twisting itself into painful knots.

Without engines, they’re fucked.

*****

“No,” Rays says, flatly, and Gerard squeezes the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger with a pained expression.

“Ray-“ he starts, and Ray shakes his head, jerky but firm, every muscle in his body drawn so tight that they feel like they might snap at any moment.

“No,” he says, again. “I told you, Gerard, right back at the beginning. No spacewalks.”

He had as well, back in that bar on Rohiva, sitting on his military discharge and staring into the bottom of his glass like it might hold the answers to what in the seven galaxies he was meant to do next. He’d not expected a stranger with bright eyes and a brighter smile to slip into the seat opposite him, push a drink across the table, and open conversation with So, okay, okay, listen. I heard a rumour from a friend of a friend of a friend that you were looking for a job and I just happen to be looking with someone who’s got some skills with an engine and I think this might be a match made in heaven…

Ray had listened to Gerard’s pitch about running a transport ship, and he’d noted all the things that Gerard hadn’t been saying, like who he worked for and where their runs were and exactly what his ship was used to transport. He’d listened and he hadn’t asked any of the questions that he’d known he wouldn’t like the answer to, and he’d taken the job.

No questions asked, but one proviso. No spacewalks, that was what he’d said, and Gerard had agreed. Except now he’s going back on that, and Ray’s not sure if the air is still compromised in here, because his chest feels funny and tight and he can’t draw a full breath.

“No,” he says again, even though no-one has said anything to disagree with him yet, and he folds his arms resolutely across his chest, ready to stare down any one of them that wants to argue with him.

None of them does. “Give me another option,” Gerard says, instead, and Ray stutters on his next breath. Perceptive goddamn asshole.

The thing is, the thing is, if he thinks about it logically, he understands. Everything in the engine room is fully operational, or at least as fully operational as it needs to be to give them propulsion, and Ray has checked every internal coupling three times over. Everything inside the ship is fully functional. Whatever the problem is with the engines, it has to be external, and Ray is the ship’s engineer.

Hell, if Ray’s going to be logical, he can admit that it’s not Gerard’s fault that even the idea of a spacewalk has sent his stomach into freefall, leaving him with bile scouring his throat and his mouth flooding with sour saliva.

Right now, Ray hates logic a little bit.

“I can talk Mikey through it,” he says, also hating the edge of desperation colouring his words, but powerless to hide it. “If he shows me footage of the engine, I can tell him how to fix it from in here.“ He leaves the possibility that the engines might not be fixable deliberately unspoken. This whole thing is bad enough already; he doesn’t think they need to borrow more trouble.

“Comms are out, remember,” Frank says, grimly. “We are, quite literally, reduced to the space age equivalent of old-world ham radio. Short-range, audio only. C’mon man, you know what Mikey’s like with machines; there’s no way he can use that to fix the engines, I don’t care how good of an engineer you are.”

“It’ll probably go wrong the first time I tell you that the thingumajig is hanging off from the doodad,” Mikey agrees, thoughtfully, surprising a bitter laugh that burns Ray’s throat as it comes out. Mikey smiles at him, small and a little crooked, and Ray’s stomach squirms with a familiar something that has nothing to do what’s being proposed. It only lasts a second, before he ruthlessly squashes the sensation down somewhere deep where he can’t feel it. He knows already, from painful experience, that it doesn’t go away, but he doesn’t need to pay it any more attention than it deserves.

Ray’s mom always used to tell him he should aim for the stars, but Ray likes to think he’s pretty pragmatic, usually. Pragmatic people don’t pine after things they can’t have.

“Cutting in before you suggest it to point out that, no, none of us know enough about engines for that plan to work,” Frank says, knowingly, and Ray’s attention snaps back to him guilty, because, right. The potential impending spacewalk that it’s looking increasingly unlikely he’s going to get out of. “There’s a reason we hired you, you know?”

And there’s the problem. He’s right; Ray hates that he’s right, but he is. With audio comms only, the risks of getting it wrong are too high, and they can’t afford that. That only leaves one inevitable, stomach-churning outcome, and he scrubs his hand tiredly over his face. “Fuck,” he says, thickly, and Gerard gives him a concerned look.

“You know I wouldn’t ask if I thought there was any other way, right?” he says, just a little worried in that way he always gets when he feels like he’s exerting his authority too harshly, and Ray drops his head into his hands with a groan. Gerard has an unerring ability to make him feel like an asshole without even trying; it figures that this time wouldn’t be any different.

“Yeah,” he says, dejectedly, and Mikey reaches out to pat him sympathetically on the arm. It’s a little awkward, like Mikey always is, and it shouldn’t make Ray feel better, not facing what he is, but somehow it does.

“I’ll prep the suits,” Mikey says, and Ray blinks. They’re not a big enough crew and they don’t have enough skills crossover to risk sending more than one of them external at a time, but every time Ray even thinks about walking out of the airlock on his own, it makes his brain short-circuit, and he has to think about something else, or go scream into his bunk mattress.

“Suits?” he echoes, not quite daring to hope but hearing it creep into his voice anyway. “Plural?”

Mikey rolls his eyes. “You’re not going out there alone,” he says firmly, with a determined expression that dares anyone to argue with him. No-one does.

If Ray was a better man, he thinks he’d protest, but he doesn’t say a word. He’s not that good.

*****

The suit is just as claustrophobic as Ray remembers it, making him feel slow and awkward, and he fidgets, shifting on his feet like he can’t find his balance. It’s fitting, really; he feels unbalanced and uncomfortable, like his skin doesn’t fit properly anymore, and he’s trying as hard as he can to ignore that they’re waiting in the airlock to do the one thing he had sworn he was never going to do again.

He can admit that he’s not being entirely successful.

Mikey knocks against his shoulder, clumsy in his own space suit, and Ray can’t see his face through his mirrored visor but he can hear the smile when Mikey says, “Chill, dude.”

“I think I’m going to throw up,” Ray confesses, and Mikey shakes his head with an exaggerated movement.

“Don’t,” he advises dryly. “You will regret that shit really fast. I did it once, on one of my early spacewalks, and I was still picking pieces of carrot out of my hair three days later. It was gross. And weird.” He breaks off thoughtfully for a second. “I don’t even like carrot.”

“Heads up, grav-boots are about to kick in,” Frank says easily over the comms, saving Ray from having to answer, and there’s a low hum in his suit as the gravity lock on his boots powers up, anchoring him to the airlock floor.

“Locked in, Frankie,” Mikey says, “Ray too. Gonna let us out?”

“Yeah, yeah, keep your panties on. Thirty seconds to depressurisation,” Frank says, and Ray’s breath whistles in his ears as he checks his tether line for what feels like the fiftieth time. It holds solid, the steel cable reassuringly thick, and Ray forces himself to draw one deep breath and then another. It helps a little, and then Mikey knocks his shoulder again wordlessly.

That helps more.

“And you’re good. All systems are green, and I’m opening the airlock,” Frank announces. Ray feels panic spike through him, piercing his chest to cramp painfully in his belly. He opens his mouth with every intention to tell Frank to stop, but then the airlock is open, the vast nothingness of space stretching out ahead of him as far as his eyes can see, with only the occasional distant star to break up the monotony, and Ray’s mouth slams shut with an audible snap, the words shrivelling to dust in his throat.

He can’t do this; he can’t do this. It doesn’t matter how badly it needs to be done, it doesn’t matter that he’s the only one who can do it. Space is stretched out in front of him; impossibly large, inconceivably exposed, and suffocatingly empty, and Ray can feel the air in his breather slicing into his chest like a blade with every inhale. He can’t move, every muscle is locked tight, holding him frozen on the spot, and his fingers are wrapped so tightly around the tether that he thinks it would be cutting into his skin if it wasn’t for his suit.

“Shit,” he breathes out, the curse slipping out as though it had been punched out of him by the jackhammering of his heart, and he shudders violently. “Shit.”

“Ray?” Mikey’s gloved hand on his shoulder is surprisingly grounding, anchoring him in a way his kit hasn’t been able to, and Ray half turns toward him before he even thinks about it. “You’re panicking. Why are you panicking?”

Mikey sounds genuinely confused, and Ray latches on to that like a drowning man to a life preserver, focusing on the need to answer the question with a fierce intensity he hadn’t realised he was still capable of. “Space freaks me out,” he says, eventually, and Mikey tilts his head to one side.

“Why?” he asks, curiously, and it’s so far from the response Ray had expected that he finds himself answering before he’d even decided he was going to.

“I got spaced once,” he says, haltingly, because he deliberately hasn’t thought about this in more cycles than he can count, and he hadn’t spoken about it in a lot longer than that. Mikey jerks, his surprise clear even through the suit, and Ray can’t blame him. If he hadn’t known it was true, he wouldn’t have believed it either. “My last assignment in the military, before my discharge, there was… I was outside, and there was an attack. Arbyian pirates, I think, or maybe Kellians, I don’t remember. Anyway, they came on us out of nowhere and there wasn’t time. They had to close the airlock.”

It sounds like nothing when he says it like that, but, even now, Ray can still feel it; the terror that scoured his throat like acid as he’d suddenly been cut loose, the gleaming end of his sheared line floating weightlessly as the ship had started to move away from him. The glare of the engines had blinded him, searing across his retinas in a painful flash that had forced him to turn his head away. By the time the floating blank smears had cleared enough that he could see again, and he’d blinked his eyes back open, fighting against the urge to screw them closed, the ship had gone. There’d been nothing there but him. And space.

He closes them now with another shudder.

“How long?” Mikey asks, the question enough to drag him back out of his memories, and Ray gives himself a shake, pointedly ignoring the hated brush of the suit over his skin, that brings him out in goose bumps even as he’s flooded with a surge of gratitude that he thinks is probably misplaced.

“I got lucky,” he says. “There was a Rohivan trade ship passing not that far away; they picked up on my suit beacon and pulled me in just before my air ran out.” He breathes in, slow and deliberate, listening for that desperate whistle in his chest that means there isn’t enough air, but it doesn’t come.

“A Rohivan trade ship,” Mikey echoes flatly, not a question. “What happened to your ship?”

Ray shrugs. “They thought I was dead.”

“They just left you?”

“Space fight,” Ray says, by way of explanation, with an illustrative wave of his hand, that he suspects doesn’t really illustrate anything at all. “Pulse cannons. Fusion torpedoes. Tiny spaceman in a fragile, unarmoured spacesuit. You do the math.”

“Wow,” Mikey says, the blankness in his voice audible even over the tinny scratch of the comms, and Ray braces himself for Mikey’s variation on the inevitable it’s what you signed on for, you survived, get your shit together that he’s already heard a hundred times and that never makes the blindest difference to the screams that get trapped in his chest. “The Planetary Alliance are dicks.”

Ray’s so sure of what he’s going to hear that it takes a second for Mikey’s words to register. When they do, he blinks, uncomprehendingly. “Huh?” he says, stupidly, and Mikey shrugs.

“Gee always says so,” he says, with that certainty that always colours his voice whenever he’s echoing Gerard. “I guess I knew. But it’s different, hearing it from someone who’s actually lived through it.”

“I-“ Ray starts, and then stops. “I’m not really sure what to say to that.”

“What’s to say?” Mikey says, “They’re dicks and it’s no wonder you’re all fucked up about spacewalks.”

“I just… before that I’d never really thought about it properly, but space is dangerous,” Ray says, quietly. “Even if there aren’t pirates trying to kill you, the environment is. There’s storms, and flares and…” He trails off, with a half shrug. “Yeah, it messes with my head.”

Mikey twists, turning so that his visor is facing out of the open airlock. “Deadly,” he agrees, “But beautiful anyway.”

Ray’s heard Gerard say much the same thing, more than once.

“Can you do this?” Mikey asks, suddenly, and Ray hesitates, bites back the instinctive no that wants to burst out of him. This is Mikey asking, which means it’s a genuine question, and he deserves better than Ray’s automatic, fear-fuelled response. He stares out of the open airlock, his fingers flexing and releasing rhythmically against the solid line of the tether, and sinks his teeth into his bottom lip until he can taste blood, tangy and metallic on his tongue. Fuck, but he really doesn’t want to go out there. Fuck, but he has to.

“I’m not sure,” he admits.

Mikey hums, consideringly. “The thing is,” he says, “We’re not near anything that could flare, and space storms don’t sneak up on you. They’re really fucking obvious; we’d see them coming.”

“Meteoroid storms do.” Ray hates himself even as he says it, but he can’t not. Mikey shakes his head.

“Not really. You can spot them if you know what to look for. I’ll keep watch, and if there’s anything, I’ll take us back inside until we’re sure it’s safe. You’d be de-suited and back in the engine room before anything hit.”

“That could make things take longer,” Ray points out, because military habits die hard, and Mikey tilts his head, as though the question had been asked in a foreign language.

“Don’t care,” he says, firmly. “We’re not the asshole Alliance and I wouldn’t risk you like that. Better slow than not at all.”

I wouldn’t risk you like that. Ray’s mouth goes a little dry, and he has to give himself another shake as Mikey’s words echo in his head, bringing a weird flutter to his chest. Mikey doesn’t mean it that way, Ray knows that; he’d say the same about any member of their team, but still.

Ray’s feeling a little fragile. He can’t help taking his comfort where he finds it.

“I can’t promise it’s safe,” Mikey adds, obviously mistaking Ray’s silence for reluctance. “But I can promise that we would never leave you out here.”

He lets his hand drop from Ray’s shoulder, leaving a cold spot behind, even though Ray knows that’s physically not possible through their suits, and steps forward. Ray’s heart beats in a sickening pulse to match as every step takes Mikey closer to the airlock.

Then Mikey turns, reaching out toward Ray, as his helmet tilts questioningly to the side, and Ray’s heartbeat gives a syncopated stutter.

“Trust me?” Mikey says, and the fact that it’s a genuine request, that Mikey’s holding his hand out as an invitation, not an instruction, is the only thing that lets Ray reach out and catch hold of Mikey’s glove with his own.

“Yeah,” he says, swallowing dryly, and Mikey squeezes his fingers hard enough to feel even through the suit. “Okay.”

*****

“I don’t care what you say,” Mikey says, flatly. “Ray was awesome.”

Ray has to duck his head to hide his smile, not that he thinks it really matters. Neither Frank nor Mikey are paying him the blindest bit of attention, but still, it’s the principle of the thing.

“Yeah, eventually,” Frank grumbles, but it’s good natured; Ray’s been on this crew long enough now to tell the difference between this and when Frank is properly pissed. “Took you long enough. The hell were you doing in the airlock, anyway?”

“Strategising,” Mikey says, deadpan and without missing a beat. It’s too perfect an answer, even Ray can see that, and Frank’s eyes narrow suspiciously.

“Mikey Way,” he says, low and filled with an unholy delight, for some reason. “Are you keeping secrets?”

Ray watches from under the cover of his hair as Mikey levels a long, considering look at Frank, and Frank just grins back at him.

“Gee,” he says, eventually, the syllable heavy with that unspoken sibling communication that Ray doesn’t think he’ll ever really understand, no matter how many cycles he spends on their ship.

Gerard doesn’t even look up from the reports he’s reading, just reaches over to smack Frank around the back of the head with unerring accuracy. “Shut up, Frankie,” he says, absently.

“Fucker,” Frank says, indignantly, reaching up to rub at his scalp where Gerard had connected. “You always side with Mikey!”

Gerard does look up at that, with his usual, brilliant smile. “Well, yeah,” he says, the implied duh unmistakeable in his tone, and Ray bites back his own smile. “But you were also being a pushy ass, so….” He shrugs.

“Was not,” Frank declares immediately, an intent glint in his eye that Ray suspects does not bode well for a peaceful conclusion to their break. “Casting slurs, Geeway. Aspersions on my good character. That’s fighting talk.”

Ray misses whatever Gerard says in reply as Mikey drops down next to him on the bench seat, bleeding warmth where he presses in against his side, and Ray shifts his focus with immediate ease, letting Frank and Gerard’s bickering fade into the background. “Frank is an ass,” Mikey says, and Ray shrugs a little awkwardly.

“Kind of,” he says, “But I get why he’s curious. I did freeze.”

“Only a bit,” Mikey says, dismissively, “And then you were awesome, and now the ship is working again. That’s the important bit.”

Ray grins a little, feeling the way the ship hums around him almost like a response to Mikey’s words, because he’s right; she’s back in as top a shape as Ray can get her and it feels good. A low warmth spreads deep in his belly, and he lets himself press his shoulder companionably against Mikey’s for one delicious second. “I couldn’t have done it without you,” he admits, and Mikey nods.

“I’m awesome too,” he says, matter-of-factly, “It’s probably why we were super awesome together.”

Ray quirks an eyebrow at him. “Super awesome?”

“Yup,” Mikey says, catching hold of Ray’s hand and tangling their fingers together with an enviable ease. “We should team up more often.”

Ray stares down, his eyes caught by the link of their fingers, and hyper aware of the soft heat of Mikey’s palm against his and the soft brush of Mikey’s thumb, featherlight across his knuckles. “I still don’t want to go out there,” he says, apropos of nothing, and Mikey squeezes their fingers together tightly enough to make Ray’s skin go white.

“Not what I was thinking, really,” he says, with a shrug. “I was wondering about something more, I dunno, light-hearted?”

“Oh,” Ray says, the sound little more than a breath of air, but one that feels like it’s expanding to fill his chest until it’s almost hard to breathe. He has to look up, because he thinks, he thinks he knows where Mikey is going with this. He’s hopeful, anyway. “What did you have in mind, then?” he asks, cautiously encouraging.

“There’s a new Ilithian bar at our next station stop I’ve been meaning to check out,” Mikey tone is studiously offhand, but he doesn’t meet Ray’s eyes as he speaks, his gaze firmly locked on the space between them where their hands have fallen.

Like he thinks Ray might say no.

“It’s a date,” Ray says, firmly, and with how close they’re sitting, he feels more than hears Mikey’s sharp intake of breath, and he has to add a caveat, just in case. “I mean, only if you want to…”

Mikey’s smile, when he looks back up, is blinding as an engine burst (and Ray should know). Turns out what he didn’t know is he doesn’t mind this kind of blinding at all.

“A date,” Mikey agrees, and he leans back into the seat, dragging Ray’s hand with his across his thigh as he goes, that pleased smile still playing across his lips.

Ray can’t stop himself from smiling back.