(no subject)

[vervaceous]

Title: Vector
Fandom: Harsh Realm
Rating: NC-17 for language, violence, and explicit adult situations
Wordcount: 60,155
Summary: Three years after his entry into the Realm, Tom Hobbes finds his stagnant day-to-day existence disrupted by the worst threat he's ever faced--and the entire Realm faces it as well.

And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him.



-14-

“What the fuck was that?”

Mike is sitting up against one of the tunnel walls, his voice hoarse, and at the last syllable he breaks off into another round of deep, harsh coughing. Florence is sitting next to him, head tilted back, breathing in rough, drawn-out gasps. Tom is wondering if he'll get that far, He can barely cough, his chest is so tight, and his eyes won't stop watering.

“Oh, fuck off, Pinocchio,” Waters says, glaring down at them. “This wasn't your mission. We didn't know what was waiting for us down here.”

“You failed your mission,” Mike rasps, glaring right back. “Your target is dead. Good fuckin' job, Major.”

“We couldn't have known that was coming.” Waters is turning slightly red, and through the haze of trying to get his breath back, Tom can see the unease behind his eyes. Mike is right: the target is dead, and now Waters has to go back to Santiago and explain exactly how that happened.

“So you're only responsible for the shit you can anticipate.” Mike looks up at him, voice dripping with contempt before it dissolves back into coughing again. “That's... you're fucking pathetic, Waters.”

Waters's boot connects with Mike's side with a solid thud and Mike slumps back, curling against the pain and coughing even harder. Florence leans over him, hands at his back, and when she lifts her head to stare at Waters again there's a look of hatred on her face the likes of which Tom hasn't yet seen. Not with her. For an instant he almost feels sorry, and there's a rush of confusion, a twist of grief. It didn't use to be this way. Waters didn't use to be this way.

But this place changes you.

“Spread out!” Waters turns back to the Guardsmen, some of them still wearing the respirators, all of them looking uncertain and unsettled. “Search the place. Anything you find, you leave it there and report back to me. Move!”

“He had a sample,” Mike croaks, still doubled over.

“What?”

“Greg had a sample of Horse.” Mike sits up again, slow, still in obvious pain but gently shrugging Florence's touch away. “An original sample. He told us.”

Waters drops into a crouch, staring. “Who the fuck gave it to him?”

Mike smiles thinly. “Well, Mel, he didn't exactly get a chance to tell us.”

“Fuck.” Waters stands again, pulling off his beret and raking a hand through his short blond hair. “Fucking hell.” He looks down at Mike again, half sneering. “What makes you think he would've told you?”

Mike shrugs. “We'll never know, will we?”

“Fuck,” Waters says again, turning and striding away, over to the bank of computers, bending over them as if examining them. Tom leans over, nudges Mike's shoulder. His own breath is easing, though he can feel the coughing hovering around the edges of each inhalation.

“You okay?”

“'M fine.” Mike coughs again and leans back, one hand on his chest. “I hate that shit. They didn't have to use it.”

“How long does it take to wear off?”

“Not that long. You'll be coughing for a few hours. You'll be fine. We got bigger things to worry about.” He glances up at Florence, something dark flickering across his gaze, and she nods very slightly. What exactly has passed between them, he's not sure, but he feels a rumble of disquiet.

Maybe it's just the coughing. He looks down at his hands, and part of him expects to see spots of red.


* * *


They leave. With Elliot dead and the installation searched, there isn't a lot more to do. They tramp back through the woods, this time surrounded by Guard, though even if they did try to run Tom knows they wouldn't get very far before their muscles locked up. The animals are still dangling in the trees in the falling darkness, far more sad now than frightening. Tom ducks his head out of the way of their little dried bodies, still coughing into his fist. Florence is coughing too, pausing now and then to lean against a tree with the force of it. Mike's hand steadying on her back. There's a feeling, a faint sense, of everything slowly coming undone.

They'd found the sample back in one of the chambers that Elliot had apparently been using as a makeshift laboratory. Inert. Inactive. Or so the Guardsman had said. They'd left it there. As they climbed out of the hatch and started heading away through the trees, Tom had looked back to see two Guardsmen setting charges around the edge of the hole. A few minutes later and there had been a muffled explosion. Tom hadn't looked back again.

The three of them climb back into the humvee but they sit there for a few minutes with the Guard standing around outside, looking at each other, and there's a palpable uncertainty in the air.

“They fucked up,” Mike murmurs, and sighs, coughing once as the air escapes his lungs. “They know it. I've seen men desert rather than return with a failure.”

“What's gonna happen to them?” Tom asks quietly, his own voice still rough. He can't help feeling bad for them. Young men all, and now that he's met more of them, now that he knows them... It's just a fence. It doesn't mean there's any real difference.

Mike shrugs. “Dunno. Maybe nothing. Doesn't really matter.” He's looking out at the deepening twilight with an expression Tom's never really seen before. Not angry, not sulking, not smirking. Quiet and sad. Florence is leaning on his arm, and after a time Tom sees her close her eyes, but he stays awake, watching Mike watching the men until there's no more light to see by. But Tom only closes his eyes once the convoy starts moving again, and even then, with the rasping sound of his own breath in his ears, it's a long time before he sleeps.


* * *


As far as he knows, they drive through the night, because he wakes up in the brittle, colorless light of dawn and they're still moving. Florence is asleep, but Mike is awake, and as Tom blinks the sleep out of his eyes, it doesn't look as if he's moved at all.

He doesn't recognize where they are. He looks out the window; more fields, more dead-looking houses, but the fields look a little less dead, their brownness a little less final. They may be out of the badlands, or close to out. It's hard to tell. Tom blinks, glances at their driver and his companion in the front seats, but they haven't spoken since they set out and it feels a little strange to start now. There's a fog moving across the landscape, white and low, too low to obscure everything. It looks like a faintly transparent flood. Dreamlike. Tom blinks slowly and rubs at his eyes with the heels of his palms.

A quick stop to eat and piss, no one saying much of anything, and by the time they're on the road again it's becoming clear to Tom that they aren't going back quite the way they'd come. For a moment he considers asking why, but it feels like everything else: both plainly factual and pointless. He doesn't need to know. He glances at Mike, still quiet, brooding, and meet Florence's gaze briefly, asking a silent question. Is he okay?

She gives him a tiny shrug in return. It occurs to him that he's not entirely sure what 'okay' even looks like for Mike.

“How much longer?” he asks the driver after another uncountable length of time, and the driver glances up at him in the mirror, eyes unreadable. He doesn't know the driver's name. He thinks he might feel better if he did.

“Another few hours, sir,” comes the clipped reply, and then nothing else. There doesn't seem to be anything else to ask, and the very idea of trying to make small talk is too awkward to consider seriously. Tom sighs and sits back, rubbing a hand over his face, letting himself drift a little, into the lifting fog.

An hour later, or something like an hour, and they come to the town.

He knows something's wrong immediately. It's clearly an established encampment, the canvas and scrap metal shelters lining the roads, plastic flapping over broken windows, trash everywhere. It had once been a scenic little town, the kind you find all over out here; a school, a main street, a few stores and a good diner. Now it's a refugee camp, or it used to be. But even for a place where so much is wrong, it doesn't look right. There's hardly any people, and those that they pass stare up at the convoy with apprehension plain on their faces, but they don't run in panic like he'd expect them to at the sign of the crossed swords. They don't look like they could run at all, pale and hunched over, leaning against a wall or a post.

And there just aren't enough of them.

The Guardsmen taking a stint as passenger leans over and elbows the driver, speaking in a tense, hushed voice. “What the hell're we doing here? There's nothing back this way.”

“I'm following the lead,” the driver hisses back tersely. “You wanna go against orders, you be my guest.”

“Mike,” Tom whispers, reaching past Florence and touching his shoulder. Mike is staring out the window, and at first glance it looks like the same kind of half-blank stare he's kept for most of the long drive since the day before. But it's not the same. His eyes are wider, his jaw working very slightly, and Florence gives him a worried look. And then she looks away again, and at the same moment Tom's attention is caught by the same thing that had arrested hers, that holds Mike spellbound.

Down at the end of the street running perpendicular to them is an open space, a kind of square, and there's other humvees, vans, men in hazmat suits. And people. Lots of people. Some crowded into groups, some milling around the edges, some kneeling, hands folded against the backs of their heads. At this distance Tom can't see their eyes, can't make out the tone of their skin, but he doesn't have to.

“Stop the car,” Mike is muttering. But they don't, and the street is starting to recede. Mike raises his voice. “Stop the car. Stop the fucking car.”

They do, finally, but Mike is already opening the door, stumbling and rolling over as he steps out, up on his feet again. Florence jumps out after him, and as the vehicle rolls to a stop Tom follows, not knowing what else to do, deaf to the shouts of the men in the front seats. He's shouting himself.

“Mike! Mike! You fucking... you'll go too far! You'll set the chip off!”

Mike might as well not even hear them. He's moving down the street, Florence following but she hasn't caught him yet. Tom breaks into a run, stumbling through garbage and debris, almost tripping over the bloated corpse of a dog. The buildings on either side of him aren't especially tall but they still seem to loom, dark and ominous. There's yelling from the square ahead. Yelling from behind them. He hears the roar of an engine, then the screech of tires and when he manages to glance back he sees another humvee rolled to a stop behind them. It's all going into a blur again, the same kind of blur as he'd fallen into underground with Elliot, clear and confused at the same time.

Mike has skidded to a stop a few yards away, Florence drawing up beside him. Ahead of them, the men in the hazmat suits have started to take some notice, one or two of them heading for the three of them. Somehow Tom is still running. Behind him, Waters's voice.

“Pinocchio! Stop or we'll shoot you in the back, I swear to God!”

He's already stopped, you fucking idiot, Tom thinks, hissing through gritted teeth. He feels like he might have twisted his ankle. Shoot you in the back. Yeah, you're good at that, aren't you, you bastard?

He reaches Mike all of a sudden, the distance between them seeming to vanish in a blink. Mike is facing away from him, staring at the men in the hazmat suits, at the people, and his shoulders are heaving. Florence reaches out a hand, touches his shoulder, but he shrugs her away and it's not gentle.

“What the fuck,” he whispers, and something about the sound of it makes Tom tremble very slightly.

The two men in the hazmat suits are approaching them now, hands outstretched. “You have to get back,” one says, voice fuzzy and processed. “Sir. Please. You can't risk an exposure.”

“Don't fucking tell me what I can't do,” Mike breathes, stepping forward, trying to step past them. The group of people on their knees are faced by a line of Guard in respirators, guns lifted, aimed. Fired. It all seems so simple, so easy. The line of people crumples, falls, bursts into light and fades. Florence makes a quiet choking sound and turns away.

“You didn't have to--” Mike whirls on them, and Tom's breath vanishes from his lungs. He looks infected himself, pale, stricken, eyes a little wild and a little dead at the same time. He lunges past the men in the suits, and as he breaks between them there's another round of shots and another line of people falls and digitizes. It's so tidy this way. No bodies, no blood. Tom looks up in a kind of daze; the fog has burned off and it's a clear, sunny day. Somewhere, someone's screaming as Mike breaks towards the crowd. Tom knows he should try to follow, try to pull him back, but none of what he's seeing even seems to make any sense. He's never seen a suicide attempt like this.

The crowd has seen him, seen them, and now some of them—a few men, a woman with long stringy hair flying out behind her—are breaking ranks, tearing towards Mike as if they're long lost family members running into an embrace. As they run more shots cut through the air and several of them fall into the dust and disappear. The infected running, the soldiers running, Mike running, a great sense of convergence. Tom stands frozen, and it occurs to him to wonder why he can't make his legs function, why he's standing back and watching now. But Florence is at his side, suddenly, and when he glances at her he sees that her face is streaked with tears.

Time itself seems to be a different shape now.

Mike has almost reached them, they've almost reached him, when all the bones in his body seem to vanish and he drops like a sack. At the same moment the bullets find the last of the people trying to get to him and they drop without a sound. The woman goes down last, her hair whipping over her face as her back arches in a sudden spasm, and then she's gone. Tom feels his jaw stretching in a silent scream, but while the infected people vanish Mike doesn't, and the men in the hazmat suits are bending over him.

“He's fine.” Tom turns, numb, and Waters is standing next to him and holding a small black pen-shaped device in his hands. “It's just the neurotoxin.” He shakes his head, face twisting with disgust. “Stupid fucker.”

Florence breaks away from them, makes her way over to Mike's crumpled form. She seems half blind, stumbling through the debris that litters the street. There should be bodies, Tom thinks. It's so wrong that there are no bodies. Like they were never here at all, like they don't matter. No mass graves, no ovens, no bones or ashes. Gone without a trace.

He means to follow Florence over to Mike but his feet take him in the other direction, back towards the stopped convoy. Halfway there he stops, leans against the wall of one of the buildings as everything inside him lurches up in a spasm of horror and disgust. He looks at the wall, at his hand on it, and under his palm is a long brown spatter of dried blood. He doubles over as another spasm churns through him, and he hadn't eaten much since yesterday but it all comes up in a hot, burning rush. And it doesn't stop, the heaves wrenching at him long after there's nothing left to bring up. He half collapses against the wall, shaking, tears streaming down his cheeks. He hadn't even been able to make out any of their faces. They hadn't been close enough. If they'd passed on by he never would have even known they were here.

It's not right. He can see how easy it is to kill them, all of them, and it's not right.

“Mike,” he whispers, but Mike is far behind him, lying in the dirt with the blood of vanished people all around him, his nerves gone dead.

Tom isn't sure he's ever envied anyone so much.


* * *


By the time they start moving again the last of the executions have been done. Tom hadn't seen them but he'd heard them, still crouched against the wall, unable to move or turn or maybe just unwilling, his very muscles rebelling against what he's trying to make them do. He's heard stories of this kind of thing, soldiers physically locking up when it all gets to be too much for them. Stories like this kind of thing. He's been in war zones. He's seen death. It shouldn't be this hard by now.

At some point after the shooting and the wailing had stopped and silence had fallen, he'd felt a touch on his shoulder and finally he'd been able to loosen and turn. Florence, standing over him in the afternoon sun, her face grave and sad and still tear-streaked.

“Okay,” he'd said roughly, wiping at his mouth like he might be able to wipe away the taste of bile and dust. “Okay.”

Past her, three Guardsmen carrying something man-shaped and swaying limply between them. Mike. He had felt a lurch in his chest but nothing more. If Mike were dead he wouldn't be there at all.

Slowly, feeling every ache in his body as if it were the sole sensation, he straightened up and looked towards the convoy. Soldiers were beginning to congregate around it, talking in low voices that he couldn't make out, and again there was that sense of being unsettled, But less so, now. And it made sense. The Guardsmen who had already been here, he didn't need to be told what their mission was. Contain. Control. Stop the spread. So they had all felt that their mission was done.

Even though it's probably impossible by now.

As he had approached the convoy, following Mike's body and the men carrying it, he'd heard a long, high pitched shriek from the right, and he had turned just at the same time as every other face. A little boy, a little red-eyed boy, running out of the mouth of an alleyway, face blank with terror and sickness.

“Mommy!” he was screaming, and even at that distance Tom could see the red spittle flying from his lips. “Mommy!”

“Peters, fucking do it!” someone had yelled, and Tom had seen, out of the corner of his eye, a raised gun, the barrel shaking very slightly. Don't, he had thought, even as he'd known there was nothing else to do, and the gun had bellowed. The boy stumbled, fell to one knee, then wrenched himself up and staggered on, blood streaking down his cheeks from his eyes. “Mommy!”

Another shot, a solid crack in the otherwise still air, and less than five yards away from them the boy had fallen a second time, crumpling onto his face, shuddering violently, and dissolving into light.

“Jesus,” the man called Peters had breathed, and before Tom had managed to get a good look at his face he had lowered his gun and turned away. A long breath. Another one. A profound numbness, and he had felt burned out, deadened. Maybe it was a blessing. One more dead kid. There were probably thousands.

He had climbed back into the humvee and slumped against the seat, listening to his breathing and the roaring pulse in his ears.

So by the time the convoy moves again the last execution has happened. Mike is seated between them, still motionless, though he has enough control over his muscles to sit upright. He can blink, he can breathe, and he seems to be able to swallow, mostly, though when they'd shoved him up onto the seat Tom had seen a thin line of drool running down his chin.

“Pricks,” he'd whispered, face twisting into a ghastly kind of smile.

They drive. The sun begins to sink towards the horizon, half blocked by a bank of clouds rolling in from the north. No more towns, no more people, no more Guard other than what's with them. Could there be a Realm without people? What would that even look like? Or as the last of its processors died away, would the entire world itself begin to collapse, finally stuttering and freezing into a colossal system failure?

Meet the virus that can end the world.

“Shouldn't've stopped me,” Mike croaks, eyes closed. Tom stares at him.

“I didn't.” He doesn't know what else to say. He knows what Mike's saying and he doesn't have the first idea how to answer it.

“Wasn't talking about... you.”

“Pinocchio...” He shakes his head and looks away. He doesn't want to talk about this. Guilt seems pointless, and if that's so then the only thing more pointless than guilt is penance. No guilt, no penance, no redemption. That little boy's bloody face doesn't fit into a world that contains any of those things. There's none of them. There's just suffering.

Mike makes a quiet groaning sound but he falls silent again, and the entire car is silent, and Tom is grateful. He needs to compose himself. He's never been sure like this before, but he's never seen anything like this firsthand, and there's no denying the stark truth of it.

No cure, no containment. So it's just a matter of time.

He's not going to go home. He's not going to see Sophie again. He's never going to see the face of his child.

In a way it's almost a relief.


-15-

He practically stumbles back into his room. Dexter is waiting for him and the little dog yips excitedly, hopping down off the couch and running towards him, jumping up at his knees. He bends, lifts the dog into his arms and just holds him, though Dexter struggles a little, feeling the warm furry body against his face and smelling the clean, living animal smell.

Maybe it won't affect animals. Until the very end.

He puts Dexter down again and looks at the kitchen for a while, feeling the gnawing of his profoundly empty stomach, but in the end he decides against it, and heads to the bathroom instead. The shower is long, so long he loses track, and he's left standing there under chilling water, only realizing it once the shivering becomes too great to ignore. So he gets out, towels off, gets back into his clothes. His own clothes. He's not wearing the new ones, not anymore. And he's not sleeping in that goddamn bed. Even if he tried he doesn't think he could.

He goes back into the living room, sits down cross-legged on the floor, flips on the TV. A news broadcast, what looks like some kind of gameshow, and he stops on an old movie. He doesn't even identify it past the fact that it's black and white, a little gauzy, old. Dexter curls up next to him. He leans back against the couch and closes his eyes against the droning sound. No screams. No firing. Maybe eventually he'll sleep.


* * *


He doesn't know if he does or not, but the knock at the door startles his eyes open. He sits up; the movie is still going on, and with no idea of what's happening he has no way of knowing how long it's been. The knock comes again, soft but insistent, and he gets stiffly to his feet, moving over to the door. When he opens it, Mike's standing there, and of course he'd already known it would be him. He stands aside without a word and Mike walks past him, and in the dim light of the TV and the single lit lamp he looks haggard and wan. Old. He turns and meets Tom's gaze, and Tom turns away only long enough to shut the door again.

“I can't sleep.”

Tom simply nods. He can't sleep either. Dexter can, snoozing peacefully on the carpet. He's gradually become sure that for all intents and purposes, Dexter has no memory.

“I just don't...” Mike trails off and shakes his head, raising clenched fists next to his temples before he drops them again. “It's so fucked up. It's all so fucked up.”

“No argument there,” Tom says quietly. He crosses his arms over his chest, not knowing what else to do with them.

“It's my fault.” Mike is almost glaring at him, daring him to challenge the statement. Tom sighs and shakes his head.

“They would have made it with or without you, Mike. You know that.”

Mike sneers. “Is that supposed to make me feel better? You saw them, Hobbes. They were... she was...” He trails off again, swiping a hand down his face, and then his face stays covered. Tom can see that he's shaking, very slightly. It might just be the last of the neurotoxin. It might not. Suddenly he wishes so much that Florence was here, that it had been her room that Mike had gone to.

He's not even sure why he's here.

“Mike...” he says softly, and he takes a hesitant step forward, unsure, as if Mike's an animal that might bite him if he moves too quickly. There's still the numbness, but under it there's something aching and tired. He had never wanted it to end this way.

What would you do with your last days on earth?

Mike drops his hand, looks up at him, lips slightly parted. “What?”

He's never hugged Mike. Not ever. They've grappled, sparred, carried each other away from gunfire, held each other back from firefights. It's not like they've never touched. But they've never touched like this before, and a hug is what it starts as, but that's not how it finishes. He reaches for Mike and Mike stares at him, confused through every other emotion breaking across his face, but he doesn't pull away. Hands on shoulders, and he can feel the trembling more strongly now, and every instinct that still has anything to say is telling him to get away, get away now.

But what would you do with your last days on earth?

“What would you do?” Tom whispers, not even really meaning to, and as he leans in he tilts his head back slightly, and Mike tilts his forward, and he feels a hand at his side, warm breath on his face, warmer lips on his. It's very easy. You just don't think about it too hard.

It's chaste, at first, just a soft press of lips, and for a moment he's content to let that be all it is. Because he's never wanted a man. Because he's not supposed to want anything in the world but Sophie. But Sophie is very far away, and he's never going to see her again. And she's never going to know. And after three years of chastity, of self control, of watching Mike grinding up against some half-dressed woman in a bar, getting a glimpse of him getting his dick sucked in an alley, listening to him jerking off at night and trying to be quiet, this entire part of his life that he had to ignore, after three years of it maybe he wants just a taste.

Maybe he wants to know what it's like to just be touched again.

And then Mike's lips part, just a little, and a quiet sound drifts up out of his throat, low, barely there, and hungry. “Hobbes.”

And the whole thing goes to hell.

There's a feeling of plunging into something, ducking entirely beneath the surface of a cold lake because slipping in bit by bit is far too painful. His lips part and his tongue practically forces its way into Mike's mouth, slipping past his teeth, lashing against him. Hands up, threading into Mike's hair, crushing them together as he moans breathlessly. He's never kissed Sophie like this. He's not sure he's ever kissed anyone like this.

They stumble against each other and then stumble back, Mike's hands groping at his waist, trying to hold them together. All this time, pinned together in foxholes, and with the stories he's heard and the things he's seen and the overwhelming loneliness, maybe it's strange that it hasn't happened before now. He's aware in a vague kind of way that they're headed for the bedroom, and as they stagger backwards he slips his hands up under the hem of Mike's shirt, feeling up over the flat muscles of his stomach and skin that somehow manages to be rough and smooth at the same time. Not like a woman. Nothing like. The back of his knees hit the foot of the bed and he clings to Mike and manages to keep from falling, half laughing into the kiss. He hadn't realized they'd made it that far. In the living room, the TV is still on.

“Hobbes.” He can't tell what's in the word, whether Mike is asking him to stop or asking him to continue. Then, “Stop, we can't--” And he knows which way Mike is leaning, at least.

“Shut the fuck up.” Can, can't, it all seems very abstract at the moment. He pulls back enough to stare at Mike, at the way he's gone from pale to flushed, at the slightly swollen touch to his lips. His palm is flat against Mike's back, a broad, strong expanse. Mike is stronger than him, not by much but he is. He's never fucked anyone stronger than him. He's never fucked anyone other than Sophie. He stares up at Mike and he knows without fear or shame or really even any emotion at all that this is going to happen. It's not even his choice. Sometimes life flips you over and rapes you.

“You can keep going or you can leave, Pinocchio.”

He stares at Mike and Mike stares back, mouth working very slightly, unquantifiable things passing behind his eyes like shapes through dusky blue windowpanes. Then something subtle in his face seems to shift, some kind of decision reached, and Tom groans with need and a kind of grim triumph when Mike kisses him again, harder, teeth and tongue and the scrape of stubble against his jaw, and a taste he's never had in his mouth and yet somehow knows immediately and well. There's a lot of hands pulling at clothing, so easy to lose track of who is where, but he's on the bed with his shirt gone, Mike's shirt gone, Mike lying over him and the distractingly strange feeling of skin that's very much like his, and the press of a body that's no curves and all angles.

He moans thickly, arching up, legs spread and Mike sliding between them. He's really not sure how this is going to go, how it could go, but he hadn't planned in advance and now that he's in the middle of it any attempt at planning seems beyond pointless. Just to be touched again... Mike's breath is hot on his neck, hands big and rough on his chest and sides, and there's a hunger in every single touch that makes him want to cry with relief. Someone wants him. Mike wants him. Maybe it's just a mindless grope, like he'd thought; maybe he's just a lay and tomorrow it won't mean anything. But he thinks he could be okay with that. A world where a bleeding child crying for his mother can be gunned down in front of him isn't a world that needs romance.

Just a little bit of life. Just a spark of it, flickering and dying in the encroaching darkness. Mike is pulling his zipper down, slipping one of those big rough hands into his pants and feeling for him, whispering in his ear is it okay can I and he answers with a sobbing moan, trying to shove his waistband down his hips, and that's enough. It better be.

They get each other's clothes off in a frantic rush, and he swears he hears something tear but it's not like it matters. For all he knows they might not even need those clothes again. They roll over each other, hands fumbling for any kind of hold, and it feels like fighting as much as it feels like sex. Tom gasps when their cocks rub together, gasps again when Mike reaches down between them and takes the both of them in one hand and strokes. It's clumsy but it's enough, and far too soon he's coming, muffling the sound against Mike's shoulder, his clenched fist punching blindly into the muscle of Mike's arm. Mike comes silently but for a sharp intake of breath, shaking, and he knew it would be that way. He's heard it, in the night, trying not to hear it but unable to stop it. Curiosity. Maybe something else.

Maybe a lot of other things.

At first there's just the sound of their heavy breathing, the faint drone of the TV. Mike's face is tucked against his neck and he reaches up and slides his fingers into Mike's hair, holding him there, closing his eyes against the blurring in his vision. Once when he'd been a small boy he'd climbed a tree, slipped, fallen about ten feet, hit the ground hard enough to knock the wind out of him and send bright spots dancing across his vision. And as he'd laid there in the cool grass trying to make his lungs restart themselves, he'd realized that he had no idea how he had come to be there. There had been the tree and the ground, and a kind of rushing blankness in between.

He's fallen. He doesn't know how.

“I'm sorry,” Mike whispers, and Tom makes a quiet shushing sound, and he holds him there with the sheets tangled around them, damp with sweat, come sticky between them. It's not like a woman. It's not like anyone else.

He knows he should feel sorry. He knows there should be guilt. But he doesn't, and there isn't, and even though it was never supposed to be this way he finds himself sinking into it, not comfort, exactly, but something in the same ballpark. Nothing after this can be the same. But nothing before it was good. Everything was already fucked. Whatever is coming next as a result of this can't be any worse.

After he feels Mike's breathing slow and deepen against him he lets himself sleep. In the bed, after all.


* * *


When he opens his eyes again it's some unknowable length of time later, Mike still pressed warm and sleeping against his side. From the living room, instead of the drone of voices, there's the soft fuzz of static. He shifts a little, slides his hands across Mike's back, and all at once they're both awake and looking at each other. Some sort of permission is exchanged. Mike turns onto his back, Tom moving up and over him, everything as swift and easy as if they've done it a hundred times before.

This time it's slower, more of an exploration, hands and fingers and lips tracing over Mike's skin, the roughness, the many scars. Mike's light gasps and soft moans. The rush of power at realizing all the ways Tom can draw those sounds out of him. He settles between Mike's spread thighs and he's captivated; the heat of Mike's dick, the skin so amazingly soft, the glistening head and the sharp taste of it when he tugs it gently into his mouth. He's not very good at it, he can tell, but Mike's hand settles on the back of his head and guides him and it seems as though it gets better, pleasure soaking out of the noises Mike is making and into the air and into Tom's ears, his brain, his nerves, everything tingling just a little as though high in a thunderstorm, lightning cracking overhead. Then there's a flash from the window, a shattering boom overhead and he almost laughs.

What would you do? He left sanity behind on the living room floor. He pulls away, ignores Mike groan of disappointment, pulls himself up and over and straddles Mike's hips. Mike stares at him, eyes suddenly wide, groping for his thighs.

“You don't... you don't have to...”

“I want to.” He wants to do this once, he wants to know what it's like. Hitchins knows. He should know too. It seems only right. He's never seen this but he thinks he knows how it's done, the basics of it, and he spits into his palm, reaching behind him and rubbing it over Mike's dick.

“You'll hurt yourself,” Mike is gasping, reaching for him. “Don't, let me—”

He's too late, it's too late, and Tom sinks down onto Mike's cock, tilts his head back, yells. He hadn't expected it to hurt this much; a sensation of huge invasion, his body being torn from the inside. But he chokes back a sob, arches, face twisting, and after a few moments he thinks he feels it beginning to ease. It's not pleasure. It's also not really pain, not anymore. It's some rich cocktail of the two. He manages to get his eyes open, stares down, and Mike's face has gone pale again, his mouth twisting like he's in pain. But his hands move up to settle on Tom's hips, and slowly he presses up and deeper, a high whine escaping his throat, and Tom drops his head back and whimpers in chorus with him.

He could have done this so it didn't hurt so much, he knows that. He's not sure he would have even if he'd stopped to consider.

“Fucking... do it.” He practically spits the words out, leaning forward with his hands braced on Mike's chest, fingers over the small rectangular scar there, and when Mike moves next Tom moves along with him, and soon it isn't anything he has to think about anymore.

He doesn't come. Mike does, bucking up and into him with a low shout, and Tom slumps across his chest, feeling a burn that begins in his ass and moves all through him, briefly intensifying when he shifts and Mike slides out of him. He crumples to the side, breathing in short stuttering pants, and Mike curls strong arms around him. No more apologies. There isn't anything to apologize for. None of it was ever real anyway.

After a while he sleeps again.


-16-

Before dawn, everything is silent. Even the Guardsmen on patrol walk with exaggerated softness, as if the noise of their footsteps might offend something, or rouse it from its sleep. Before dawn the silence is joined by a sense of desertion, and even the people who walk the halls seem to be not there at all. Before dawn, everyone is a ghost.

No one sees the man quietly leaving a room that isn't his and heading for the elevators, taking the car down and down. No one sees him when he exits through the silently opening door and walks down the corridor, which is as quiet and pristine as everything else. White. Spotless. No one sees him except the surveillance cameras, those ubiquitous eyes that have only gone dead once before now. Hallway, another hallway, a door and then the hiss of an airlock. The first man who sees him is the Guardsman on duty by the row of transparent cells, and the soldier nods in a kind of doubtful deference, as though he's wondering what exactly is still due to his position in this case.

“I just want to talk to her.”

“She's awake.” The soldier shrugs, looking faintly grim. “She don't sleep much anymore. They say it's the pain in her joints.”

“You fuckin' talk about me like I'm not even here.” The two men turn and she's there, hands against the clear wall, and it looks as though without the support she might not be able to stand. She's skinny, emaciated, her skin hanging off her bones as though her muscles have all atrophied at once and shockingly fast. The IV stand is still there, but the needle is no longer in her arm, though the bandage remains. Her skin is greyish, her hair looks patchy. There's a trickle of blood at the corner of her mouth, from one nostril. The corner of her eye, and her eyes are a brilliant crimson. She coughs, almost bent double with it, and spits bloody phlegm onto the floor. The floor is spattered with red stains.

“I'm here. For now. You talk about me like that all you want once I'm gone.” Her red eyes narrow and her lips pull back from her teeth. “What the fuck you wanna talk to me about?”

“Kiana.” The man steps forward. “You remember me. I'm Mike.”

“I remember you,” she says, her voice grating and oddly wet-sounding. “What the fuck are you, some kinda big-shot?”

“I'm not a big-shot.” He looks down at his boots, at the clean tile floor. Like a giant bathroom. Something that can be easily hosed down. Wash away the blood and the piss and the shit like it was never here. He looks up at her again. “Not anymore.”

“So why the fuck're you here?” She coughs again, leans her forehead against the glass. She looks exhausted beyond almost anything he's ever seen before. “The other guy. He wanted to apologize or some shit. Like he owes me one.” She snorts a rough laugh, swiping at her nose with the back of one hand. “Like I'd take it.”

“I don't want to apologize.” A slow shake of the head. His head is half bowed, as though in a church or some other sacred space. “I just wanted to see you.” He raises his head slightly. “You're gonna die soon.”

She stares at him, then spits blood against the glass. “Fuck you. Prick.”

“We both know it. They all know it. I'm not gonna blow smoke up your ass, honey.” His words come out flat, emotionless, arms crossed over his chest, and he doesn't once wonder what he's doing here. He's known for hours. “We're all of us on borrowed time now. This thing doesn't discriminate.” He smiles thinly. “It's kinda nice that way.”

Her eyes narrow. “You know something about it, do you?”

“I've seen it enough by now.”

“No, I think you know things.” She's still glaring at him, but her mouth is stretching into a thin, ghastly smile, humorless, very close to lifeless. A death's head grin. “You tell me what you know. You come down here to fucking gloat at me, tell me I'm dying, I think you owe me something.”

He takes a breath, but he doesn't shake his head, doesn't seem shaken. He glances back at the Guardsman behind him, who looks back placidly. “You said the other guy didn't owe you anything.”

“He wasn't you. He wasn't an asshole.” Something in her face seems to soften. “He was sad. I didn't...” She pounds one fist against the wall, weak but it still echoes through the room. “You fucking tell me. If I'm gonna die soon anyway it doesn't matter, right?”

The man stays silent, looking straight ahead at her, no wavering in his gaze. Some decisions you make, and some decisions are made for you and you can align yourself with the results or not, as you choose. But that in itself is a decision. Finally he speaks.

“I helped make it. The thing that's killing you. I was in charge of the team.”

She looks back at him, her gaze as steady and level as his, though there's a trembling in her, a wavering in the focus of her eyes that suggests that even that much effort is almost beyond her. But she's calm, for a few seconds, and then she screams, screams until bloody foam sprays from her lips and onto the glass, pounding against it with her fists. She's screaming obscenities, accusations, half of it unintelligible, the rage exploding out of her dying body as red as her own blood. My family. My mom and dad. My friends. You killed them. You killed them all.

The man turns back to the soldier. “Open the cell.”

The soldier looks back at him nervously, casting a shaky glance at the girl flinging herself against the wall. “Sir... Look, I really can't do that.”

“You can.” The man is already moving towards the airlock set into the wall. “You can and you will. You can leave me in there if you want. You know they're just gonna kill me anyway.”

“Sir...”

“I remember you.” The man's voice is very gentle. “We were down in Delaware. We were pinned down. I drew them off, got you home safe. You remember that, soldier?”

A gulp. “Y—yeah.”

“Do this for me and we're even. C'mon.” The man stands aside, glances back into the cell. Kiana has slumped against the wall in a kind of exhaustion, staring at him with murder in her eyes, though she doesn't look as if she could even stand under her own power. “Just this one thing.”

The Guardsman taps in a code and the airlock hisses open, and Mike Pinocchio steps inside, gives him one last look, a single nod. It hisses shut after him, the hum of a scan, then the door in front of him opens and he steps into the cell. There's a stench of blood and waste, and under it the dry, sickly sweet smell of death, as though she's already decomposing, though no human body has ever done such a thing in the Realm. She stares at him, fear passing briefly over her face. He opens his arms.

“It's okay. Come on. It's okay.”

She pushes herself up and away from the wall and she goes to him. Not tearing at him, not furious. Cold and calm again. She goes to him, almost slipping in the blood on the floor, more blood trickling from her eyes and nose and running down her chin. She goes to him and he catches her, folding his arms around her, and she's nothing more than a little sack of bones against him. Her blood smears on his shirt. He drops to his knees, still holding her, and she looks down and slowly, deliberately, spits into his face. It's thin, bloody, and it pools at the corners of his closed eyes, and he blinks and lets it in. It trickles down over his lips and he licks them.

After a few moments she sags against him and he lifts her in his arms, carries her back over to her cot and lays her down in the filthy sheets. No one seems to have changed her bedding in a long time. He sits down on the floor, his back against the bed, and waits for the men in the suits to come for him.