by Damon Suede
Ox’s deathly stillness made Runt anxious enough that he pressed a hand to his heart to satisfy himself with its slow drumming.
I’m here. We’re here.
Runt rolled his heroic partner onto his back. Straightening his legs and checking the bite for leakage. Everything looked safe. Luck itself had cheated on their behalf.
A little longer.
Using disinfectant and a cloth, Runt spent a few minutes wiping the gore from Ox. Better, he reasoned, to wake clean than blood-soaked. He scrubbed the red from the floor and the furniture and his skin until the only stains were on Runt’s clothes.
He retrieved the sonic stiletto and put it in the case. In his panic, he’d jumbled the other paraphernalia, but he left them crooked.
This advanced weaponry belonged to a corporate assassin. Runt knew that in his gut. Undetectable organic alloys, quick-dose emergency meds . . . all in a low profile case that could fit under a worksuit. No venom-gun, but those needed a surgical holster which Ox did not have on his body.
Runt spat. He picked up the tooth and froze, not wanting to break the spell, not wanting to see Ox hurting again, not wanting to have the argument already congealing in the air around them.
Just a few more seconds.
He checked the wound again: stable.
Runt sat on the bed, knowing that the clock’s seconds flicking by on the ceiling above his head only brought Ox closer to waking up and knowing. His stomach boiled and flipped.
Time for truth. He had everything to lose and no choice. The two of them had to discuss the deadly retirement package. A lot needed to be dragged into the light.
A lot.
Runt shuddered, dreading the discussion. In some ways, what came next would be worse than the bite, the tooth, the knife. His angry heartbeat slammed in his ears.
The eel’s iridescent black tooth sat on the bed between them. Five centimeters long and jagged as a whipsaw.
I need to wake him and check his vitals.
The concealed arsenal was either a secret he had kept from Ox or a secret Ox had kept from him.
Lose-lose, pretty much.
Odds were, HardCell had intended Runt’s early termination. Very likely Ox had arrived as a fugitive and a felon. Runt knew tonight had probably claimed all his luck for the year. His life. At least.
More like lose-lose-lose-lose.
Runt hoped the truth didn’t require him dying.
Time’s wasting. Death’s waiting.
Both of them liars, Runt had snooped and Ox had come to retire him. In half a moment, they’d stand on opposite shores of a toxic sea.
Pulling an adrenal pen from the kill-kit’s lid, Runt sank the needle into Ox’s sturdy chest and pumped the ichor into him. He stood up to put the needle away.
Wham!
Ox’s eyes snapped open to the whites and his face twisted in shock. His muscled back bowed off the bed and his legs pushed against the foam. A horrible whistling gasp came out of his grimace as he sucked air into his ribs.
“Shhh. I’ve got you. Huh?” Runt patted him, standing beside the bed. “All good. Look what I found.” Runt held up the nasty tooth. “Huh?”
Ox didn’t seem able to focus his eyes. He scooted back a little bit so he could sit up.
Runt spun the tooth and cocked a grin that felt fake on his face. A mask over a mask.
The larger man blinked and shook his head. The synth-skin over his ribs had stabilized already, beginning to fuse with the muscle underneath. “Does your side hurt at all? I hit you with a ton of meds.”
Sore, but safe.
Runt put the tooth inside the termination case between the shunt and a grenade. It almost seemed to belong there with all the other deadly shit. “I didn’t know how to calculate your dosage—”
Ox’s eyes focused finally, but not on the tooth. He stared at Runt’s hand on the case of weapons. He swallowed. His face hardened.
“Accident.” Runt faced Ox almost eye to eye. “Just rotten luck is all. The hive, yeah? I mean the heat popped the panel and a caterpillar found the knives . . . You lied to me and you can’t even talk.”
Ox’s eyes stayed on the retirement package resting on the bed beside his thick thigh.
“You’re trying to think of another lie to not tell me.”
Ox watched the kill-kit as if the weapons were a jar of wasps thumping against glass.
My murderer. “They are yours. They must be.”
Ox shook his head.
“You brought these here. With you. To retire me.”
Ox looked up at him with eyes that seemed clear, cold, and a hundred years old. He looked like he was going to vomit.
“I need for you to look me in the eye and tell me the fucking truth: you’re an assassin.”
No response. Ox attempted to elbow himself up to a sitting position.
“And I can’t— I’m not gonna—”
Ox leaned forward, brow creased.
“—kill you. So I guess you need to—” Runt took a raspy breath. “—Kill me, Ox. You’re killing me.”
The larger man ran his hands over the weapons, with nausea or respect.
“I’m not a shitwit; if you disobey your orders, they’ll send another one to retire us both.” Runt leaned over the bed and pushed his face close to Ox’s. “I don’t mind, huh? Time to know and have done. I don’t mean—”
A broad finger prodded his chest.
“—Much.” Runt stepped back to stand apart from the bed. Awful. Ox’s blood smeared all over the pearly room. “Will you fucking answer me?”
As Runt watched, Ox lifted and replaced each weapon in its molded cradle. He knew what they were, obviously.
“I s’pose you’re the best friend I’ll ever have. I s’pose—” His voice shook a little ’til he swallowed. Runt tipped his head to the side, baring his throat. “If you terminate me, you’ll do it right. Clean.”
Ox’s nostrils flared.
“I just don’t think I can look at you when—”
Runt lifted his gaze to Ox’s angry face, which wasn’t angry at all. His eyes looked dead, their light buried.
“I’m already a dead man.”
Runt shoved Ox and Ox let him. “What are they? Who sent them? Truth. The truth now.”
Ox pursed his lips then, a child’s frown, but he didn’t shake his head. He closed the not-his kit. He locked it. His eyes stayed on it, like he expected it to lunge at him.
“But you brought them. You hid them when you welded the hive. Tell me.”
Ox patted the weapon set, then handed it to Runt. Wincing, he held a hand to his wound.
Runt swatted the case away. “Stop conning me!”
Ox scooped up the case and pressed it against Runt with a nod.
Runt reared back and raised a defensive fist. “No more shit.”
Ox’s eyes were wide and empty. He pressed his big paw to his bandaged wound and then pressed it against Runt. His calloused fingers spread over his bandage, and then thumped Runt’s sternum gently. He looked terrified. He swung his feet, tried to stand, and hissed. He sat back down, swallowed, and then stood up gingerly. He walked into the live-space, unsteady on his legs.
Runt followed him. “Oi! Then whose are they? Answer me.”
Ox stood in front of the dark holo-vid projector, looking down at the bencho where he’d slept the first few nights. He couldn’t seem to stand still on the gory floor. But for the synthetic skin, he showed no sign of the ragged bite or losing so much blood. His perfect, oversized muscle gleamed like armor in the waxy light.
“Ox!”
No response.
Runt went at him, getting angrier. He shoved Ox. Shoved him again.
Ox staggered and slipped on the damp live-space floor. Face broken, eyes wet, he fell to a knee hard and his weight shook the habitat. “Human Resources sent you? Was I expendable? Ox.” Runt kept his voice level and approached his cofarmer as if they were having a reasonable conversation, about crop rotation or eel-traps
. “The truth now: did HardCell send you to retire me and you changed your mind? What did they do to you? Why come here? Why am I not dead?”
Ox gripped the bench’s back hard enough to rip it out of the floor. His knuckles went pale with tension as he managed to pull himself to his feet.
Angry? Afraid?
Ox wiped his mouth and looked over the live-space without seeing it. He took an open bottle of water from the table and took a sip. Took another. As if deaf and sleepwalking, he walked out the door.
Runt pursued him out of the habitat into the moonlight.
His giant trudged toward the black water. The moons sat low still and the sky was pocked with stars.
“Oks’ayn.”
Ox stopped. The waves washed and shushed down on the cove. A few bold bee-moths were checking the trees that shaded the habitat.
“Why help me? Why lie? Did you kill someone back there wherever? Are you hiding? Fucking tell me. Who is it? Who are you?”
Still facing the waves, Ox shook his head, shook his head again.
“Am I not your friend?”
Ox jerked his head sharply. His eyes were hidden in the shadow of his brow. He searched the sand for a moment as if an answer were buried there. Then he pressed both hands against his legs, his face, his chest, and then pressed them at Runt.
As if Ox trusted Runt with every part of himself. Because they were friends, the best of friends.
“But you came to retire me.” Runt stuck his jaw out. “Why hide an assassin pack in the wall?”
Ox closed his mouth and ran his eyes over Runt.
“Fine! Fuck it. I don’t care . . . Y’hear? I don’t give a speck about that. But—”
For the first time since he’d arrived in the cargo container, Runt could see Ox struggling with his silence.
Runt walked to him, and they stood close to the fire pit they’d used only a few days before to grill the eel.
He almost died.
“I don’t care about the weapons. I don’t care about HardCell.”
Ox took a step closer, and then another step, his eyes moving side to side as they scanned Runt’s face.
“I don’t care about any of that shit. See? I want to ask something, but I don’t know if I should.”
The big man nodded. Ox stood close now, his arms over his wide chest, the hairs on his forearms scrubbing against his fuzzy pecs. The synthetic skin on his ribs had blended completely. No sign of injury. No evacuation team. No proof of the past two hours but the blood on Runt’s clothes and the weapons on their bed.
Tell me another lie.
For an instant, Runt could almost imagine he’d dreamed the whole horrible night. He had forced fate into action. Or all his luck had come home to nest. He was so caught in that fantasy that only Ox’s touch brought him out of it.
Ox was petting his shoulder the way Runt usually stroked Ox’s during holo-vids. His anxiety shrank to a size that actually fit inside his skin, and his skin stopped feeling like shredded webbing holding three kilos of pissed-off spiders.
Ask.
“Why—” Before Runt wasted any words between them, he tried to decide exactly what it was he wanted to know. Runt rummaged around in the events of the past hour and tried to get at the real question.
“Are you in danger?”
Ox laughed with grim humor and pointed at Runt as if to say, “From you.” No smile, though.
“Ox. I need to know this. I only want to know this one thing. You watch the sky sometimes, like you’re waiting. Like you’re not supposed to be here and someone will come.”
Ox wrinkled his mouth and stuck his chin out, his brow clouded.
“Were you in danger when you came here?” Runt wouldn’t look away, afraid he’d miss the answer, however it came. “And that’s why you hid your weapons?”
Why pretend they aren’t his?
Like the spaceport thief he’d been, Runt kept his eyes glued to Ox for the flicker of a tell. “I don’t need to know everything, but I need to know why you’re afraid. So I can help. Let me be your partner.”
Ox swallowed and looked at the alien stars, as if reading letters written overhead. He had a secret then. He looked down at his hand holding the bottle of water.
“I know how exceptional you are. Brain. Muscle. Reflexes. And I know that I’m not.” Runt pressed. “If that isn’t your retirement package, it could be easily and you know it. I know this can’t have been your first choice. This . . . place. This— me.”
Ox did smile then. He smoothed the sand into a flat plate with his palm, calmly, slowly, as if he were petting the planetoid.
For one minute, Runt expected the ground to purr the way Ox did, but it slept on underneath them. “Is someone chasing you then?”
The pulse under Ox’s square jaw throbbed.
Runt watched and counted the heartbeats, waiting: One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven—
Finally Ox beckoned him closer with his big paw, and Runt knelt beside him. Ox lifted the bottle of water and filled his entire mouth, but rather than swallow it, he spat it onto the sand.
Runt yelped in surprise and pulled back, then realized it wasn’t a joke.
Ox poked Runt’s arm hard enough to bruise, then leaned forward and wrote a single word in abjad, carving the demi-Arabic in the wet grit as if carving plasticrete for a monument.
BROTHER.
Runt looked up startled. “You have a brother.”
Ox nodded once, his face grim. Then shook his head, once.
“He died?”
Ox pounded his own heart with a fist. Poom. The resonant boom startled Runt.
“You died? You’re not dead. I’d notice.” Runt tried to read something in his friend’s shadowy eyes. “Is he as overgrown as you?”
No answer. Ox wiped his wet mouth.
Runt looked at the sand-writing again, trying to put the pieces together. No one had died, but they weren’t brothers. Anymore, at least.
“He hurt you.”
A vein pulsed on Ox’s forehead and his face flushed. Even the mention of his brother made him look monstrous or panicked or both.
“So you came here.”
With your brother’s weapons.
“Your brother was a corporate assassin.”
Ox rubbed the hated word from the wet ground, erasing it.
“Oks’ayn.” The sweet word filled Runt’s mouth. He wanted to say it again and stopped himself. Suddenly, he wanted to say it a thousand times. A million.
Ox’s face and neck flushed very red.
“Hey. Hey! Doesn’t matter, yeah?” Runt reached out and wiped the sand as well, even though the word was long gone, as if he could erase history. “He’s on the other side of nowhere and look what you built. We’ve built.”
The bigger man seemed to be holding his breath. He twisted his fingers together.
“That doesn’t matter. Hey. This does.”
Ox shook his head, once, but his ruined eyes stayed down.
Thlip. A drop fell from Ox’s chin into the wet sand.
“You still have a brother.” Runt tapped himself. “Y’know?”
Ox looked up, not bothering to wipe his eyes.
Runt grinned hopefully and stood next to the seated giant; even so, his face was only higher by a few centimeters.
Ox flashed an almost-grin, then nodded once.
“Good.” Without thinking, Runt leaned forward and kissed his cheek.
Ox’s breath hitched and his body slowed suddenly . . . his head turning, his hand lowering, the motion taking three times as long as it should. His brows crinkled into an unasked question.
Runt sat back slowly, shocked at what he had done. His face felt hot. His lips buzzed. “Sorry. I didn’t mean—”
Still moving with painstaking care, Ox squinted and cocked his head, then leaned forward to press a kiss to Runt’s throat . . . his hard lips dry on Runt’s pulse, the damp sandpaper cheek pressed to Runt’s collarbone. He didn’t pull back, but kept his gi
ant head there, breathing deeply and testing the stubble with his lips.
As never before, Runt felt hyperaware of the half-meter difference in their sizes. Standing beside Ox, their faces still so near. He didn’t feel like a child, but he felt safe here, close as this.
They stayed like that, breathing a moment, not embracing only because their arms hung at their sides. The warmth knocked between them.
Runt could feel the big heart next to him beating-beating-beating-beating, and then Ox tipped the handsome Cro-Magnon face up and brought their lips together.
And Runt let him.
Pleasure licked down his spine and extremities. His breath caught and his chest rumbled with tapped pleasure.
Ox sat back again, watching Runt’s eyes.
“We have—” Runt raised his stubby fingers to Ox’s rugged features without touching the high curve of his cheekbone, the heavy brow, the rough jaw. Their atoms swirled and blurred, entangling them. “We’ve—”
Grown together.
Without stopping to think, Runt crushed their lips together, pushing with his tongue inside Ox’s sweet mouth. He braced his hands on those impossible shoulders.
Ox grunted in pleasure and lifted a powerful hand to cradle the back of his skull carefully.
Runt pulled back, but only enough to say, “You’re still injured.”
Ox’s brow furrowed into a question.
“Why don’t we go to bed?”
Ox took Runt’s hand to stand, and didn’t let go of it until he tugged his partner back home and onto their mattress as if the waiting hurt.
There’s too much of him. I’m not big enough to make him feel good.
Ox’s cock was ruddy purple-brown and painfully engorged, the foreskin retracted. Runt could barely get both hands around the shaft. He licked the wide side; there was no way to get the knob into his mouth.
Size of a fucking apple.
Runt blinked, his mind flicking through the known options. This is why homosex had always seemed pointless and perilous: a bit of fun, but where did anything go really? Being small gave everyone the wrong idea.
Runt groaned in lust and frustration. He silently cursed at his shortcomings, then looked up at Ox, bracing for the disappointment there.