“What do you think you’re doing, boy?” Darius rasped between pants.
“Your blood’s no danger to me.” His gaze drifted up to meet Darius’s. “I mean, I guess that was always the case before, but now we know—”
Darius closed his hand over Rhys’s, which trembled in his grasp. He drew the razor closer to his own skin and pressed it against the muscle just below his collarbone, twitching at the chill of the steel. Then he went still, waiting.
A small flick of Rhys’s hand, and he felt the blade catch on his flesh. Almost painless, but he winced anyway. They both stared at the welling spot of blood as Rhys fumbled to set the razor aside again without taking his eyes from it. He licked his lips and leaned forward, and Darius shuddered to feel the sting of Rhys’s tongue pressing on the tiny wound.
That was all. Just that one taste, and then Rhys was scrambling for Darius’s mouth, straddling Darius’s lap to get their flies open and grasp their cocks together. Darius rocked, but Rhys was in the driver’s seat, humping, thrusting, generating friction as their cocks slid against each other in his grip. Rhys opened wide to Darius’s tongue and met it with his own, his teeth firm against Darius’s lips, the noises rising from his throat hungry. His other hand twisted in Darius’s unbound hair, and they ground together urgently until, one after the other, they pumped seemingly endless streams of cum between their bellies.
Afterward, Rhys wrapped himself around Darius and clung to him unusually tight, like he was shaken and needed shelter and safety to pull himself back together. Darius was happy to provide it, to wait kneeling on the hard ground until Rhys finally drew back and looked at him with wide, stunned eyes.
“I don’t know why I just did that,” he said, clearing his throat and blinking, as if coming out of a trance.
Darius huffed an affectionate laugh, refusing to let go. “I do.” Rhys’s brow furrowed as he waited for Darius to explain. “Since we got that summons for you from the Clean Zone in the fall, you’ve been tryin’ to tell me not to treat you like you’re weaker. Nothin’ to do with you not being a Jug, just weaker in general, you know?” He traced his fingers down Rhys’s spine, mapping each bumpy ridge. “You’ve been determined to make your own decisions. You won’t let me shield you, won’t let me decide what’s best for you. You’re not that scared kid we found in the monastery. And sure, I can hurt you and cut you, because you allow that. You want it. But you can cut me too. If you wanted to.”
He searched Rhys’s eyes, wondering if Rhys understood that he wasn’t talking about the razor anymore. For months, the ground between them had been shifting, becoming more level. Rhys frowned, but he relaxed into Darius again, laying his head on Darius’s shoulder. “I don’t want to. I never have.”
“No.” Darius shifted to take the burden off his knees, sitting on his ass and holding Rhys in his lap. “But maybe it’s important to know that you can.”
Rhys was quiet the rest of the day as they left the Garden of the Gods behind and began picking their way through the ruined and uninhabited portions of Colorado Springs. It would take a couple more days to get back to camp, if they kept up their leisurely pace, and Darius tried not to be disappointed that their time alone together was ending.
That night, Rhys sat on their bedrolls as Darius lay behind him, staring into the fire, his knees drawn up to his chest. It was a long while before he spoke. “If I asked you to mark me, the way Joe is marked, would you?”
Darius frowned. Rhys had practically turned green the first time he’d seen the scars on Joe’s skin. Before the plague, Joe’s husband had carved words into his flesh—slurs and insults that appealed to Joe’s well-known humiliation kink. Toby had never added to those, but he’d left his own marks, as well. Typically burns.
“I’ve left marks on you.” Darius dragged his fingers down Rhys’s back, where under his shirt, the faintest scattering of silvery lines remained from times when whipping Rhys had left welts that had split the skin.
“Barely.” Rhys turned to look over his shoulder. “Would you?”
“Are you asking me to?”
“I don’t know. I just wondered if it’s something you’d consider.”
“Guess that depends on if you’d really want it. And why.”
“It scares me.” The shiver that ran down Rhys’s spine under Darius’s fingers testified to the truth of his words. “Makes me ashamed. Advertising it—the things we do—like Toby and Joe. It shouldn’t, I know. Everyone knows. Your squad has seen it, and I’ve stopped minding about that, but the rest of Delta Company . . . Since it’s been just you and me, we’ve kept it all private. I’ve been comfortable with that.”
“Then why ask?”
“I don’t know. I can’t stop thinking about it.” With a disgruntled sound, Rhys turned and lay down beside Darius, facing him. “Maybe it’s like you said earlier, about wanting to prove I’m not weaker. No one would think Joe wasn’t as strong as Toby. I may be taller than you now, but I’ll never be as strong. I’ll never be a Jug.”
The tension in his voice made Darius sit up, looking down at Rhys. “That’s a problem?” he asked, frowning.
“No. Yes. Hell, Darius, I don’t know.” Rhys rolled away, but Darius grabbed his shoulder and rolled him back.
“Spit it out, boy. What’s going on?”
Rhys pressed his lips together, plucking at the blankets of their bedroll. “I— I guess I— I think I always held out for it, you know? That maybe one day the Alpha strain would just . . . take hold. Then I’d really be one of you. I wouldn’t just be your ‘pet civvie.’”
Did Rhys hear how much bitterness bled into his voice on those last words? It made Darius’s jaw clench, not in anger at Rhys but at the rare but persistent remarks, both subtle and overt, that had left Rhys feeling that way.
“Anything you had to prove, Rhys, you’ve proved.”
His shoulder was tense beneath Darius’s stroking hand, rigid. “Have I?” Rhys’s eyes sought out Darius’s in the firelight. “Because it sure feels like a lot of people are waiting for me to slip up and demonstrate that I’m not one of you.”
Darius watched him a long moment as Rhys’s hands twitched restlessly. “This is still about Schuyler, ain’t it?”
“Not just about her.” His eyes darted around, unwilling to meet Darius’s again.
“Maybe you’re the one who feels you don’t fit.”
“Says the man who tried to convince me to leave and go live with a bunch of strangers.”
Ouch. He had that coming. Still . . . “I want you to have a future.”
Rhys shook his head as if dismissing the idea. “I just want today not to be awful. That’s all I need. And when I’m with you, it’s not.”
The words, spoken so simply and with such complete candor, made Darius’s chest tighten. His boy set the bar for happiness so low. A little kindness. A little affection. Some pleasure and maybe some pain, so long as Rhys got to choose it himself. It wasn’t right, and Darius shouldn’t let him settle the way he was. He should make Rhys demand more for himself, but Darius was selfish enough that he couldn’t, no matter how much he knew he should.
He planted his hands on either side of Rhys, caging him in.
“And I won’t ever let it be, if I can help it,” Darius promised instead, punctuating the vow with a short, hard kiss. “You ever come to me and say you want my marks on you because it’s what you want, I’ll give you anything you ask for. But not if it’s to make a point to anyone else. We ever do that, it’s gonna mean something just between you and me.”
Contrary to Darius’s hopes, everyone they’d traveled to Colorado Springs with was still at the lakeside camp when they returned from their walkabout. Xolani was fuming because her address to the Congressional Science Committee had been put off due to scheduling conflicts.
“I don’t understand,” Rhys said as the sun sank, staring into the fire from where he sat next to Xolani. Titus and Toby were curled on their bedrolls across camp, while Joe an
d Darius had disappeared into the woods to patrol the perimeter. The light of the fire Schuyler’s squadron was clustered around flickered some ways down the reservoir, tiny in the distance. “Why did they postpone it?”
Xolani made a disgusted sound, tossing twigs into the fire. “I think all this running around and logistical crap is a delaying tactic. They have no intention of hearing me. They just want to keep us around because they know that when we leave, you go with us.”
“Why? Why won’t they even consider rescinding the GDM if they’ve got a viable population?”
The gaze she turned on him was one of affectionate pity, and it filled Rhys’s heart with worry. Xolani never looked down on him, never made him feel intolerably naive. She might tell him outright that he was being a dumbass, but she didn’t condescend.
“Rhys,” she said gently, and there was something bleak in her demeanor. “Have you noticed anything about the Clean Zone population, at least what little you’ve seen of it? About the survivors we rescue and how they’re . . . different than we are?”
“Um, no?”
One corner of her mouth lifted, but she didn’t seem amused. “They almost all look like you.”
“Like me?”
“They’re white, Rhys. And the Jugs are mostly people of color—Black, Latino, Asian, Middle Eastern, indigenous . . . Now, that’s because we’re military, and that was one of the few career paths open to us that had any hope of advancement. It kept us out of tenement serfdom. It offered some of us an opportunity to, say, go to med school.” She smiled tightly, then turned her face away from him, and the next twig she threw into the flames was launched with a particularly violent motion. “But the brown people who weren’t military? They were in cheap, overcrowded housing. They were the people who didn’t have the money for supplies to isolate themselves while the first wave of the plague ripped through the population. They were the people who were shot on sight for being out of quarantine and for looting when they tried to scavenge for supplies. The people who survived the plague, besides the Jugs, are mostly wealthy white people.”
Rhys frowned and wrapped his arms around his knees. He thought about all the survivors he’d seen come through quarantine in his two years with the Jugs and realized she was right. The difference was so marked it was amazing he hadn’t noticed before. “Okay. But I’m not sure I understand what that has to do with the GDM.”
“Think about it,” she said briskly. “You have a white population who doesn’t really dare go anywhere outside their settlement, while out in the world are these groups of mostly brown people doing things that they don’t know about. And the white people rely on the brown people to exterminate the revs and bring in more survivors, which puts them in a position of weakness. Those brown people are armed, trained, and not answerable to them.” She made a horrified, aghast face, then sneered. “What’s worse, some of them have a major grudge about being exiled. Sooner or later, they’re going to come together and form their own settlement. That has to be pretty intimidating. And traditionally, when white people decide that they’re afraid of brown people, it doesn’t go well for the brown people.”
“But you’re Jugs. You can defend yourselves.”
Xolani shrugged. “Definitely. And if they go on the offensive against us, we’ll shut that shit down fast. We’re more capable of defending ourselves than our ancestors were, and a fuck of a lot less trusting. But that also makes us more threatening.”
Rhys blinked. “What do they think you’ll do?”
“Does it matter? What happened with Charlie Company aside, they don’t have to have a defined threat.” She shook her head, picking up another twig to snap. “They exiled us. And now, all they need to stir up panic is to intimate that there is something dangerous in the fact that we’re out there and we’re stronger than them. That we can’t be trusted. And our weakness is that our numbers are limited.”
Rhys nodded. He’d been there the day Xolani had informed Emmy that she would have to abort the baby she had been carrying when she’d been infected. Childbirth involved blood, she’d explained, and so any infant a Jug delivered would be infected with the Rot as it was being born. “So you think that’s the reason for the GDM? They’re trying to explode the Clean Zone’s population, balance the Jugs’ strength with numbers?”
“Possibly. Let’s be charitable and assume it’s purely defensive. Maybe they think if they grow their population fast enough, they’ll have sufficient forces if we attack.” Xolani’s scarred cheek flexed. “In that case, my attempts to have the GDM repealed could look like a subtle strategic maneuver. It might seem like I’m trying to discourage them from achieving tactical parity. Which would then make them wonder what we have to gain by such a ploy, what we’re up to out there where they can’t keep an eye on us.” She sighed heavily, her shoulders slumping. “Then we become even more threatening. Now, if they took the long-term view, all they would need to do is wait a couple generations for us to die out. But who knows what we could get up to in the meantime? The best defense is a good offense.”
Rhys swallowed. “But they couldn’t seriously mean to attack you?”
“I don’t know what they intend. And honestly, I don’t know what we would do if they did go on the offensive.” She gave him a bleak look. “A lot of us resent the fuck out of them for the way they treated us after the overthrow, but we don’t want to fight them. We can’t. It’s too risky. They’re the only ones who can reproduce.” She snorted bitterly. “They’re the fucking hope of humanity.”
He wanted to ask more questions, but Xolani cut him off with an impatient gesture. “This is too fucking frustrating to talk about. Go to bed, kid. Zach said he’d be here early to check if you and Darius were back, so you need to be all fresh and ready to be poked and prodded again in the morning.”
Rhys almost forgot about what he and Darius had done when they were alone together out on their walkabout until Zach made a distressed sound when he took off his shirt.
“Oh God. Rhys.” Zach’s voice cracked, and when Rhys spun around, he had tears in his eyes. He was whispering under his breath, and it took Rhys a moment to make out the almost-inaudible prayer. “What do I do? Lord, I don’t know what to do.”
“Stop that!” Rhys jerked away and yanked his shirt back on, suddenly feeling exposed. They had stepped away from camp to talk and do the exam, but Zach’s reaction still made him self-conscious. Grappling for some dignity, Rhys looked around at the trees. Propped against one was a bicycle Zach said he rode to get around the Clean Zone when he was doing interviews and exams for the DPRP.
“I can’t do it,” Zach murmured, his voice heavy with grief. Then louder, as though making a declaration. “God help me, I can’t do it.”
“Can’t do what?”
Zach wiped his eyes and sat on the ground, hunched over in defeat. “Can’t ask of you what I was planning to ask.”
“Zach, I don’t expect you to understand, but I like it when Darius does this. I ask him to do it. Literally.” Rhys clenched his fists when Zach shook his head in denial. “I do! You don’t get it. This is my choice. I want it, and I’m not going to let you make me feel wrong for that, not when I’ve just gotten to the point where I don’t hear your dad telling me what a pervert I am every time I let myself be myself.”
The hope in Zach’s eyes was strange. Almost like it wasn’t about Rhys at all. “Really?” His voice was still dubious. “I just don’t understand. After what you say my father did to you . . .”
“This is different.”
“Why?”
Rhys threw up his hands, pacing across the clearing. “I don’t know, Zach. It just is. Does it matter?” He planted his hands on his hips and spun to face Zach. “I’m telling you I want this, that I’m okay with it. More than okay. I choose to do this. You don’t need to understand my reasons, even if I could explain them.”
“I’m sorry.” Zach put his head down on his drawn-up knees, and Rhys suspected he was praying again. “
It’s just . . . I was going to ask for your help with something, but I don’t want to see you victimized. Not after what my father did to you, and especially not if Darius is—”
“He’s not,” Rhys growled. “And maybe you should tell me what you were going to ask and let me make my own choice about it rather than just assuming I’m a victim.”
Zach didn’t look up at first. Whatever it was he was praying about, he was praying hard. But finally, he lifted his head. “Secretary Littlewood is a monster. And I was going to ask for your help stopping him.”
“Tell me . . .” Rhys dropped down to the earth and sat directly in front of Zach, locking eyes with him. “Everything.”
Zach swallowed hard and nodded. His lashes were spiky, and his expression conflicted. “I . . . knew someone. After the first wave of the pandemic. Before the overthrow. He had been a pros—a sex worker before everything fell apart. And one time, he was hired to seduce Secretary Littlewood. Only, it turned out that Littlewood wasn’t what he appeared to be.” Zach shuddered. “The man I knew said he was a predator of the most dangerous sort, and the only thing keeping him from being deadly was that he had too much to lose if he was caught.”
Zach took a deep breath, tracing patterns with his finger in the reddish dirt. “Before the overthrow, there was a series of violent rapes of young men here in the Clean Zone. There was even one fatality. That one stays with me. He was brutalized so badly internally that we had to either euthanize him or watch him die a slow, painful death.” He looked off into the distance, his eyes haunted. “We never found out who did it, but the doctor I worked with suspected it was someone living inside Cheyenne Mountain, because the attacks stopped when the Jugs laid siege to the underground facility. But when the military government surrendered and my . . . Nico saw the people who came out, he realized Littlewood had made it here. He was sure Littlewood was the rapist.”
Bane Page 8