Strain

by Amelia C. Gormley

  So much strength in such a thin, frail shell.

  Darius didn’t know even a fraction of what Houtman and his father had done to Rhys. But he knew the boy had faced the prospect of certain death so that his sister and her baby could get away and live. And every blow that he’d been dealt since, every act he’d considered demeaning, he still managed to lift his chin and cling to his dignity when it was over. Every fight he’d put up had been not to save his own life, but to save something more essential. The indefinable something within him that maybe, just maybe, was what made it so important that he live.

  Maybe he’d rather die than break. Maybe Darius was wrong to deprive him of that option. In the process of saving Rhys’s life, was Darius destroying the very thing that was so worth preserving?

  But he’d do the same if he had to do it again. No looking back.

  “If I didn’t care if you lived, we wouldn’t be here. It was always an issue of weighing the cost.”

  “But you were willing to let me die before, so why not now?”

  “I could say because I’ve come too far, invested too much in seeing you live, compromised my principles too deeply to give up now. All that would be true.”

  “But?”

  Darius frowned at the wall beyond Rhys’s head. “But it wouldn’t be the whole truth.”

  “Then what would?”

  “That you give us hope.” It had taken him some time to figure that one out, to realize the source of the fascination that had compelled Xolani to argue so hard in favor of Rhys’s survival that day and that had compelled Darius to give in. “You gave us hope the moment you told us to kill you to protect ourselves. Knowing people like you exist, people who won’t lie or kill or whore themselves out for another day of pointless breathing, people who actually believe in something—even if it’s just yourself and what you know is right—it makes it worth it, boy. Everything we’ve lost. Everything we’ve destroyed. Everything we’ve fought for. Me. Xolani. Titus. All of us. We can look at someone like you and think that maybe this world ain’t such a shithole after all. Maybe there’s something in it to give meaning to spending the rest of our lives doing what we do now.”

  “It isn’t fair to put that on me.”

  “No.” Darius looked down at the bedspread, sighing. Rhys had never asked to be their talisman. “It isn’t. But it’s already done.”

  Rhys rolled to his back, staring up at the ceiling. It was getting toward evening, and the room was filling with shadows. “So, are you going to send me to someone else?”

  “Is that what you want?”

  Rhys scoffed. “Since when does what I want matter?”

  “It matters in this. Given my choice, I’d rather keep you here. Can’t send you to the barracks with Houtman there.” Rhys’s eyes flashed back to him with alarm. “I don’t need to know what he’s done to you to know you’re scared of him, boy. I won’t put you within his reach. But if you’re scared of me, I can put you out of my reach, too. Titus and Xolani would let you bunk with them. Xolani would find men for you. There’s about a week to go until she thinks having more than one partner won’t make a difference. After that, she’ll find you someone steady. Someone a lot nicer than me. Toby and Joe would probably take you. Maybe Luis.” Darius’s knuckles whitened around his knee, and he drew a deep breath. “What I can’t do is give you the choice of quitting. I can’t even give you a promise that I won’t force you again if you try. But you can choose who it will be, as long as for the next week there’s more than one and at least one for a few weeks after that. I can give you that much.”

  “And what’ll happen if I stay with you?”

  “If you stay with me, your ass is still mine.” He met Rhys’s gaze evenly. “You won’t have a choice because I won’t let you handicap yourself with that damn modesty of yours or whatever it is that makes you fight this. I’ll fuck you wherever and whenever and however I want. I’ll pass you around to others, and you won’t have a say in it. And when the next week is up and you don’t have to have anyone else, I’ll keep you all to myself until you don’t need me anymore.”

  And I’ll enjoy every minute of it way more than I have any business doing.

  Darius decided not to add that.

  Was it fear or something else that made Rhys’s breath come quick and shallow after that speech? That made his pulse throb visibly at his throat? Darius wanted to slip his hand under the blankets and check, but he kept his hand on his knee and made himself wait.

  Rhys closed his eyes and swallowed once, hard.

  “I’ll stay with you.”

  The look Darius gave him was filled with so much heat, Rhys was certain Darius would rip the covers back and fuck him then and there. God, he ached for it. Even sore and bruised as he was, he wanted Darius again. Now. Here. In privacy, where he didn’t have to be ashamed of who might hear him. He didn’t know why Darius would want him, skinny weakling that he was, but if it would get him through these final few weeks, he wouldn’t question it.

  Darius did pull the covers back, but he didn’t touch Rhys. He merely stared at him, his eyes passing up and down Rhys’s body.

  “Roll onto your stomach, boy,” Darius said almost kindly.

  Rhys obeyed, laying his face in the cradle of his arms. His cock had begun to fill, growing stiff and eager when Darius had described what life would be like if Rhys stayed with him. He felt no need to fight just now, not here in private, and wasn’t that strange? He thought he might be fine with anything Darius chose to do to him as long as it was done where no one else would see or hear, especially Jacob. How could just that one detail make everything better?

  Darius’s hands settled on him, their touch odd. Not rough. Not arousing. They passed over Rhys’s skin, manipulating his limbs, lifting and moving him until Rhys realized what Darius was doing.

  Inspecting him. It had been three weeks or more since his exposure to the blood of the revenants at the monastery. The first patches of the Rot could appear any day now.

  “Anything?” He could barely force the whisper through the narrow pinhole his airway had become.

  “No. You’re clean, boy.”

  Rhys blew out a long breath, his body melting into the bed as he relaxed. “Thank God. If, um, if I do get it, how much time will I have?”

  “Hard to say.” Darius’s hand rested between Rhys’s shoulder blades, its weight comforting. “Sometimes the catatonia begins before the Rot appears. You’ll start . . . slipping away. Losing sense of time, unable to focus, finding it harder to speak and keep track of your thoughts, and it’ll get worse over the course of a few days until you just zone out and don’t come back. If the Rot shows first, the catatonia will set in soon after. You might have a day or two to decide how and when you want to go.”

  Rhys swallowed, rolling his head on the pillow to face Darius. “Okay.”

  “If it’s Gamma, you’ll become volatile. Temperamental. Aggressive. Violent. You’ll get stronger, as if you were a Jug. In that case it’ll be up to us to recognize it and put you down before you hurt someone. You won’t . . . You won’t have a chance to come to terms with it.”

  “Okay,” Rhys whispered again. Darius’s hand passed over him once more, this time caressing. Rhys closed his eyes and let that touch push away the fear until all he remembered was the anticipation he’d felt when Darius had first set hands upon him after coming out of the shower.

  “Don’t worry, boy. There’s no reason to think that’s gonna happen. So you just enjoy the ride until you’re in the clear.” Darius’s touch disappeared, and when it returned, his slick fingers slipped into Rhys’s crack. One thick digit worked into him, and Rhys moaned softly, lifting his hips to open for it.

  “I’ll be taking you to meet the rest of the company here on base tonight.” Rhys felt himself clamp down around that finger as the words sank in. His head came up, tension instantly ratcheting through his body.

  He heard the sharp crack almost before he felt the burn of Darius’s
open hand landing on his ass. Rhys yelped, twisting, trying to roll over to protect his vulnerable backside and dislodging Darius’s finger in the process, but Darius grabbed him by the hip and pushed him down.

  “Relax, boy. I got something special in mind for you, something you might even like. But you’ll have to trust me. That might be hard after the last few days, but it’ll be better for us both if you can manage it.”

  Another finger, prying his tight muscles loose, wedging into him. Rhys groaned, letting his head fall back onto his arms. A shudder rippled through him as the stretch started to burn, so much later than it once had. He almost missed the ache, missed the ordeal. Like fighting back, the pain made it better, somehow. Okay.

  “I don’t understand,” he mumbled into his arms.

  “What’s that?”

  He turned his head. “Why you think I’d be afraid of you. You haven’t done anything you didn’t tell me you’d do from the beginning.”

  The fingers within him stilled.

  “Because I did something to you most people couldn’t ever forgive. Shouldn’t ever forgive.” Darius’s voice sounded a bit raspier, strained.

  Slowly, Darius’s fingers resumed their stroking. Carefully. Far more careful than Darius usually was with him. Rhys shook his head. “No. You made me do something I had to do but couldn’t. It’s like—”

  “Like what?” Darius’s question was a hoarse whisper.

  “Like shoving someone out the window of a burning building into a river far below. Pushing someone out a high window is a lousy thing to do, and it might hurt, but if it saves their life . . .”

  “Jesus.” He barely heard the whisper behind him. Darius’s hand, the one that had slapped his ass moments ago, caressed his back softly. “Is that how you really see it?”

  “How do you see it?”

  “That I raped you.” Rhys startled at the bald statement, tightening around Darius’s fingers, which had gone still again. He’d never considered that. “You chose to risk death rather than let anyone fuck you, and I took that choice away from you by force.”

  “I don’t want to die. I never wanted to die.” Rhys shivered as his eyes burned. “I was going to, to save Cady and Caleb. And earlier today when I was in the river it seemed like it might be easier if I did, but I never wanted it. I just . . . I couldn’t. Don’t you see? When I thought about letting Gabe hear what I was doing, what I’ve . . . what I’ve become, everything locked up. I couldn’t move, couldn’t make myself . . . So you threw me out the window to save me. That’s how I see it.”

  He heard Darius swallow, and then his fingers were gone and something cold and hard—the plug, of course—was spreading him open instead.

  “Maybe someday I won’t think you’re giving me more credit than I deserve.” Darius snorted behind him. “I don’t know if I’ll ever understand the way your mind works, boy.”

  “Yeah, well, if I ever figure it out, I’ll let you know.” Rhys chuckled weakly, groaning at the first stretch, then sobered. “I didn’t fight because I’d chosen to die. I fought because it felt good to fight.”

  “Why?” The in-and-out advance of the plug slowed, allowing him to think a bit more clearly.

  “Because I never have. I’ve always given in. Father Maurice. Jacob. You . . .”

  Darius was silent, silent enough that unease started to make Rhys’s heart race. Rhys gasped and groaned as, with a final push, the plug slid the rest of the way inside him and lodged, seated by its narrow stem. But then Darius’s hands went away, no longer caressing or working him open or doing anything at all.

  “You’re not fighting now.”

  Something in Rhys’s stomach felt hollow and fluttery as he rolled up on his side, gasping when the plug shifted. “No.”

  “Why? Because now no one can hear?”

  “Maybe. Partly.” Rhys shrugged, struggling to meet Darius’s eyes, which were dark and intent upon him. He looked deadly sober. “But mostly because of what you said about . . . about hope. About why you want me to live.” He swallowed hard and made himself return the gaze, though his own pulse threatened to choke him. “I matter to you. You’re not just doing it because you have to. And that makes it not feel wrong anymore.”

  That fierce stare pinned him in place, drilling into him as though Darius would strip Rhys down to the bone with just his eyes. Then Darius was on him, stretched above him, crushing their mouths together in a brutal, twisting grind of lips and tongues. Darius’s towel was bunched between them, and they were both hard. So hard. Moving against each other, rubbing to get more.

  More. Rhys wanted more. He wanted Darius to fuck him, not to try to infect him but just because Darius actually wanted him. That was more than Rhys could ask for, though. Maybe someday, once Rhys was a Jug, someone would want him just because. But not now. For now it was enough that he mattered.

  When Darius pulled away, his breath was harsh and ragged, his dark eyes burning with something that both terrified and thrilled Rhys. He was hungry for Darius as he hadn’t been since that morning in the dormitory. Rhys reached for him with groan full of yearning, but Darius dodged his hands.

  “You’ll make me forget what I was doing, boy.” He chuckled, sounding somewhat pained. “Behave.”

  Suddenly self-conscious again, Rhys subsided, looking away as he tried to figure what to make of Darius’s withdrawal. But Darius caught his chin and turned his head, compelling his gaze.

  “Later. Don’t think I’m stopping because I don’t wanna keep going. But right now we got something else we need to do.”

  Something else turned out to be a party. Or at least it felt like one.

  The Jugs had converted one of the wards in the early twentieth-century hospital at Fort Vancouver into a lounge of sorts. Titus had set up his still there, Darius told him, and old hospital beds were clustered around the room like strange chaises, along with a number of mismatched chairs, sofas, and tables they had hauled in from houses in the area.

  “We got a mess hall, but this is a little more cozy,” Darius explained when Rhys asked, trying to distract himself from the pressure of the plug inside him. “There’s the big ward on the main floor where everyone gathers to socialize, but then there are small rooms upstairs, too, for people who want more privacy than they can find in the barracks.”

  “Bet you didn’t think of that, did you, Rhys?” Xolani patted the foot of the bed where she and Titus lounged, inviting him to sit. She offered him a glass of something clear that smelled like paint thinner as Rhys perched gingerly, trying to find a comfortable position. “Embarrassing as you may find it, the fact of life in this unit is, if it weren’t for public or semipublic sex, a lot of us wouldn’t get laid at all. Of course, Titus and I got lucky this time around and won the lottery for one of the private apartments.”

  Rhys flushed and took a drink of the liquor, wheezing and coughing as it seared its way down his esophagus.

  “I guess I didn’t think of that.” He handed the glass off when he could breathe again. He didn’t know what he’d assumed about the Jugs’ communal living arrangements, but he’d thought surely they must get more privacy than he’d been afforded while they were out on patrol. He’d regarded the public sex as a perversion and an assault on his dignity, never considering that none of them found it degrading in the slightest because they all did it.

  Just a fact of life.

  Would he have felt better about it if he had known?

  Darius squeezed his shoulder encouragingly and wandered off, shaking hands and making conversation, clearly catching up with people he hadn’t seen in some time. Rhys scanned the crowd for faces he knew. There was Kaleo, reclining on another bed, nuzzling a redheaded woman who Rhys could only assume was Schuyler. Gina was there, draped over another woman. Toby and Joe, too, across the ward. Joe was shirtless, his scars visible for all to see. He knelt at Toby’s feet and . . . was that a leash around his neck?

  Then Joe turned to say something to Toby, and Rhys’s stomach
clenched in horrified fascination. Joe’s back was a mass of bruises and welts, crisscrossing and striping him from his shoulders to the waistband of his fatigues.

  Rhys knew those welts. He’d seen them in the mirror on his own backside after Father Maurice had done his worst.

  Xolani nudged him with her foot, drawing Rhys’s attention to the fact that he was gawking. “Remember, everyone celebrates coming home in their own way.”

  Rhys swallowed and nodded, tearing his eyes away from the sight.

  People began to approach and introduce themselves, starting with Captain Luis Martinez, who welcomed him to Delta Company. He was followed by a stream of others. Cato. Jackson. Sanchez. Giovanni. Soon Rhys lost track of the names. Some of them tried to flirt with him, but he found himself tongue-tied, unable to respond aside from ducking his head and stammering. Lord help him, it was like that first time with Kaleo all over again. He wished he could be interested in them, but he couldn’t. All he felt was a vague dread that they might expect a reaction from him or demand he accompany them somewhere for sex.

  “Relax, Rhys.” Someone passed Xolani a pipe. She took a deep drag off it, closing her eyes, holding her breath, and finally exhaling slowly. It was only after the sweetly cloying scent of the smoke hit him that Rhys realized it wasn’t tobacco. She smiled and leaned back against Titus, looking softer than Rhys had ever seen her. “No one here’s gonna bite you. Unless you ask, of course.”

  Relaxing would be a lot easier if he had the slightest idea what Darius had planned. But he couldn’t bring himself to say that. “Where’s Jacob?”

  “Guess someone forgot to tell him where the party was.”

  “Damn shame, that,” Titus rumbled, and Xolani chuckled, inhaling again before passing the pipe to Titus.

  A whoop from the other side of the room made Rhys’s head snap around to see Gina falling back on a sofa, pushed by the woman she was with. She laughed and arched her spine as the other woman reached for her belt. Rhys looked quickly away, his face growing hot, only to have his gaze land on Kaleo, whose hands were working Schuyler’s shirt up over her breasts.