Bridge_Bridge & Sword_Apocalypse

by JC Andrijeski

  Wreg stopped them. His hands felt like iron.

  Pinning Jon’s arms, he glared down at him.

  “No!” Wreg snapped. “Goddamn it, Jon! No! Not like this!”

  “I didn’t,” Jon managed. “I didn’t. I swear to the gods… I didn’t touch anyone, Wreg. Not Jorag. Not Revik. No one.”

  He saw Wreg’s eyes harden, turning flint-like.

  He didn’t need to read him to know the other man didn’t believe him.

  “I didn’t,” Jon repeated, his voice pleading. “I swear to the gods, I didn’t, Wreg. Not once. That’s not what this was about. It was never about that. It was never about other people. It was me, Wreg. I was the problem.”

  Wreg shook his head, his eyes showing that wall once more, if anything, more closed and angry than before. Jon felt bare flickers off the other man, even from behind that dense shield. Jon glimpsed images, feelings. He couldn’t pin any of them down, other than the overall flavor, which still felt closest to distrust.

  “The whole fucking construct saw you with Nenz,” Wreg said finally, his voice cold as ice. “They saw him ask you for sex. Fuck, I saw it. I saw him pin you to the wall. I saw him kiss you, Jon.” His voice grew colder. “He never left your room that night.”

  Jon felt his face warm, but he only shook his head.

  Wreg’s words grew biting. “I saw it, Jon. I fucking watched him kiss you. I saw you let him. I watched him leave your room the next morning––”

  Jon shook his head again, feeling his chest clench as he saw the situation through Wreg’s eyes. He could see Wreg that night, his unwillingness to watch after that first, drunken kiss, then later, being pulled back to it anyway and not being able to see anything, just hitting a blank wall of Revik’s light. Wreg obsessing on it anyway, waiting for Revik to leave, maybe to confront him, maybe to hit him, maybe to hit Jon, or yell at both of them, maybe just to confirm it to himself. Maybe just to know, without a doubt, what had occurred.

  It wasn’t going to be enough.

  It would never be enough for Jon to tell Wreg what he hadn’t done. Not for Wreg, not even for himself. Jon shook his head again, fighting for words, trying to use his light to make the other understand.

  “He was drunk,” Jon began.

  “No shit,” Wreg growled.

  Wreg started to pull away, shoving off his light, but Jon tried again, gripping the other man’s shirt tighter in his hand, trying to get him to listen.

  “…He was really drunk, Wreg. He came to my room.” Wincing even as he said it, Jon blurted, “He asked if he could give me head. All right? He just asked.” When Wreg’s expression darkened more, Jon added quickly, “You know as well as I do what he wanted. He wanted to use me to get to Allie. I knew that. I could feel it, even then.”

  When the other man’s face only hardened more, Jon clenched his fingers tighter, trying to get Wreg to look at him.

  “He could barely fucking stand, he was so drunk,” Jon said, softer. “He didn’t even know what he was asking me, Wreg. He kissed me, yeah… and with the pain and everything, he caught me off guard. He tried to talk me into it after he asked… but when I said no, he passed out on my bed. I slept in the damned chair. That horrible, ugly, yellow thing by the window.”

  Trailing as tears came to his eyes, he shook off his own reaction, feeling the anger grow more prominent in the other man’s light. Jon’s voice turned gruff.

  “I’m not making excuses,” Jon said. “I’m telling you how it was. He was gone before I even woke up. I’m surprised he even remembered it well enough to feel guilty. Maybe he figured he tried to force himself on me.”

  Wreg continued to stare down at Jon’s face. Jon felt wisps of anger on the other man’s light, but more than anything, he felt that wall there between them, the distrust woven into it.

  Something told Jon this information wasn’t entirely new to him, though.

  Wreg must have had some version of this conversation with Revik already.

  Regardless, he couldn’t seem to let it go. Maybe he didn’t believe either of them, or maybe it didn’t even matter at this point. Maybe it was only a detail, after everything else Jon had done. Maybe it was everything else that Wreg couldn’t move past, too many things for the other man to list out.

  Too many things for them to even talk about.

  Jon thought about how he’d feel, if their positions were reversed. He wondered if he could even ask the question now, of whether Wreg had started sleeping around himself. Given Preela in the downstairs lobby, the fact that Jon had already overheard some of the younger recruits with crushes on him, and that he’d just seen Dante checking Wreg out in that conference room, minutes earlier, he couldn’t make himself ask.

  Looking up at Wreg’s dark eyes, Jon felt that lost feeling return to his heart. He fought back a caught breath, fighting to decide what to say, what he could say to him. That time, he couldn’t look away. He could only stare up at Wreg’s eyes, trying to reach him.

  He felt every part of his light turn submissive.

  He couldn’t stop it. He saw the change hit Wreg’s light, the openness or maybe the vulnerability or whatever else turning those obsidian irises nearly opaque. Wreg closed his eyes while Jon watched, and Jon softened his body as much as his light.

  He felt desperate. He’d never felt so fucking desperate in his life.

  “What do I have to do?” Jon blurted. He could hear it in his voice. Begging. He was begging him. He’d never begged another man. Never. He’d never done anything but walk away when someone told him they didn’t want him anymore.

  He did it anyway.

  “Wreg… please. What do I have to do?”

  The other man wouldn’t look at him. Jon flinched when he saw tears form in those dark eyes. That wall was still there, too. It wasn’t the same as before, but Jon felt it.

  “Wreg!” he said. “Is it over for you? You don’t love me?”

  Wreg turned at that, staring down at him. His eyes held a kind of blank incredulity.

  “Wreg… goddamn it. Please. Please talk to me.”

  The seer’s jaw hardened. He leaned his weight on Jon before he spoke, and when he did, his words held a density of light that felt almost physical.

  “I won’t do this again.” His words thickened with his accent. “I won’t.”

  Jon shook his head. “No. Gods, no, Wreg. I promise. I promise––”

  Wreg shook his head, his face still hard with pain.

  “You’re not hearing me, Jon,” Wreg said. “Either we sever it, or we finish it.”

  “Finish it?” Jon said.

  “As in, we finish the bond.” Wreg’s voice hardened. “As in now, Jon. Today. I don’t give a good goddamn if you hear that as an ultimatum or not…”

  His voice caught.

  “…It is a fucking ultimatum. We’ve talked about this. Either you want this with me or you don’t. If you don’t want it with me now, we need to sever it. If that happens, I’m not saying it would never happen with us, but I won’t stay in this place, this being connected to you but not, having to watch you in Nenz and whoever else’s light. I’m not doing this again, Jon. I’m not.”

  Jon could only shake his head.

  Relief flooded his light, a stunned, lost relief that nearly made him lose touch with the room. He gripped the seer tighter with the hand Wreg didn’t have pinned down.

  “I have to talk to Revik,” Jon said.

  Wreg’s eyes grew dangerous, but Jon shook his head, gripping him tighter.

  “…Military, Wreg. I have to talk to him about the military side. He’ll want assurances he can pull me if he has to. And I need to tell him, in case––”

  Wreg’s expression had already cleared though.

  Jon knew “military” was a language the other seer understood.

  “Yes,” Wreg said. “Yes, I understand why this needs to happen first.” He gave Jon a wary look. “When, Jon?”

  “Now.”

  “He’s wit
h his wife now, Jon.”

  “I said now, Wreg,” Jon repeated. “Now. You said now, didn’t you?”

  He was still looking up at the other man’s face, fighting relief, hope, a kind of lost fear that wouldn’t leave him––when Wreg gave what felt like a reluctant smile, shaking his dark head. Clicking softly, maybe to himself, he looked back at Jon, that thread of doubt still in his eyes. As Jon looked at him, however, Wreg’s light gradually grew more open, less protected, even if only the barest amount.

  That harder tension relaxed briefly in his dark eyes.

  “I did say now,” he said. “…Didn’t I?”

  Before Jon could think how to answer, the Chinese seer gripped his arm and side tighter. Jon felt a whisper of jealousy from the other man, what might have been more of that distrust. He lowered his mouth before Jon could decide how to react, and then they were kissing again, slower than the first time, as if Wreg made up his mind how far he wanted to go with each passing breath. For the first time, Jon felt the intensity of the other man’s fear.

  The vulnerability there paralyzed him, even as he realized that wall he’d felt, that iron-clad density around Wreg, was slowly starting to shift.

  Jon felt Maygar there briefly too, but shoved him away from his light.

  By the end of that kiss, Jon forgot where he was again.

  He followed Wreg’s mouth up when the Chinese seer ended it, straining against Wreg’s hands, aware of Wreg’s erection against his hip from where he leaned against him. Jon let out a low groan, from somewhere deep in his chest, unable to help himself.

  When he opened his eyes next, Wreg’s black eyes looked glassed.

  “We need to talk to him,” Jon said, his voice breathless. “Now, Wreg. Right now.”

  “I told him.”

  “You told him we were coming up?”

  “Yes.”

  “Now? He knows we’re coming up right now?”

  Wreg gave him a humorless smile. “I think he figured that out, yes, brother.”

  Jon nodded, fighting to think.

  He fought to hold onto that one thought, what remained of his presence of mind, long enough to have that conversation with Revik. He fought to control his light, telling himself it was the last thing, the only thing that could feel remotely important before he let himself go into this, before he finally just surrendered to it.

  He must have had a funny expression on his face, because Wreg surprised him again, even as he released his arms. He laughed.

  Grabbing hold of Jon’s hand to pull him to his feet, he wrapped his arms around Jon’s body once he had, pulling Jon against him, using strong hands to grip muscles in Jon’s back and neck.

  Jon fell into him, into a kind of wordless relief.

  Through those few seconds of embrace, he could only hold the other man in his arms and hands, hoping like hell he wasn’t imagining this, that nothing would happen to make the world fall apart again before they could have that last conversation with Revik.

  Even as the thought hit him, a shiver of misgiving hit Jon’s light.

  It was enough to get him pushing Wreg towards the door leading out of the fancy executive office, towards the hallway, towards the elevators.

  …Towards Revik.

  32

  WIFE

  REVIK SLUMPED INTO the couch, rubbing his eyes with a hand as he swept the packet of hiri off the coffee table. He hadn’t smoked hiri very often the last time he’d been in New York.

  He’d found himself craving them incessantly for the past few months in San Francisco, however.

  He didn’t know if the fact that Allie didn’t smoke curbed his own cravings before now, but truthfully, he’d barely thought of hiri as more than an occasional distraction for the past few years––since even as far back as their time together at that cabin in the Himalayas. He couldn’t remember smoking much when he’d been working with the Rebels, either, not even when he and Allie had been kept apart by that fact.

  The only exception had been the Tank.

  When Allie had been deprogramming him in the Tank, he’d wanted to smoke, but rarely when Allie herself had been there, with him.

  Now, he couldn’t sleep from craving the fucking things.

  He cupped his hand around the silver lighter, letting the flame lick the edges of the dark-colored leaf wrapper as he inhaled. Once he had it lit, he dropped the lighter back on the table and leaned back into the leather couch, resting his head on the cushion as he exhaled smoke up towards the ceiling.

  Allie was asleep.

  She’d been the one to want to come up here.

  Once they’d gotten here, once they were alone, she’d been as direct with him as she had been that day in San Francisco. More direct, maybe.

  He hadn’t been any more difficult to seduce this time, either.

  His throat closed, right before he took another drag off the hiri.

  Wreg pinged him a few seconds before, so at least he had an excuse to be awake.

  He could use the distraction. He would take any excuse to think about something other than the sex he’d just had, the confusing mess it had been for him and possibly for her, too.

  He grimaced at the thought, rubbing his forehead with the hand holding the hiri.

  He didn’t know if he could take thinking about her end of things, in addition to his own. He couldn’t really make himself focus on whether he might be confusing her, given her current mental state––especially since he didn’t seem to be able to be intimate with her physically without having some kind of emotional breakdown in the process.

  Taking another drag of the hiri, he exhaled even as he tried to push the thoughts out.

  The pain was getting worse, too. Not better, worse.

  Revik knew that might continue to happen.

  Hell, he still didn’t know if he could survive like this, ultimately, with only half of his wife here with him. It might just kill him slower. Or it might leave him in a constant state of deprivation that was worse.

  He had to think about the child.

  He knew, even before Tarsi said it aloud, that the child was the only thing that mattered now. Cass didn’t matter, not at base. Terian and Shadow mattered only to the extent Cass did, meaning: all three of them needed to be eliminated if the survivors of this plague were to have even half a fighting chance.

  For Revik himself, negative motivations had never been enough for long.

  His anger remained, but the hottest part of that had been sucked out of him when Allie opened her eyes. He couldn’t explain to himself why, exactly, or what it meant, but Allie being awake managed to put their child––her child––back at the forefront of his mind.

  Maybe that was Allie’s doing, too.

  Sighing, he fought to clear his head.

  He was exhausted. It wasn’t the telekinesis. He’d felt pretty high from that––hopeful, even. He’d felt like maybe they would actually pull this off.

  He knew now, the real source of his optimism had been Allie. He’d felt her so much, all through that fight at the airstrip. Some part of him started to believe she was coming back. When she’d pushed him to bring her up here, that hope remained.

  After a few hours of being in bed with her, though, he felt depressed all over again.

  She’d been aggressive with him.

  Aggressive, but so fucking distant.

  She wanted him, but she didn’t seem to notice him at all in that want.

  He’d wanted to hit her at one point, the same impulse that shamed him so much in that house on Alamo Square. He didn’t hit her, of course, not this time, any more than he had that first time in San Francisco, but the wanting to do it, the feeling of that violence, made him feel even worse about what he’d let happen between them.

  Some part of him even understood where the impulse to violence came from.

  It wasn’t a genuine desire to hurt her. He wanted to bring her the fuck back, force her to see him. It might even be an instinctive pull of some kin
d, related to their light connection, like when one of his loved ones was in danger behind the Barrier, and his instinct was to slam into them from the space, or even hurt them physically.

  It wasn’t that crazy, really. Causing a seer physical pain could sometimes be the only way to jerk them out. Allie had hit him in the past, to get him back in his body, away from the Rooks––away from Menlim or whoever else had taken his light from hers.

  The pain in his chest worsened.

  He raised his hand to it mindlessly, rubbing the spot, fighting to breathe past it.

  Fuck. He didn’t know how much more of this he could take.

  She’d been attentive to him, physically, that is––which almost made it worse.

  He felt like she’d been servicing him almost. Or maybe he’d been servicing her.

  She’d undressed him and pushed him to a chair, and… gods, he didn’t even want to think about what she’d done. She’d used things she must have learned from the Lao Hu, things she’d never shown him before. She worked over his light and body, and he’d been crying by the end, jealous and angry and crying. The sheer irrationality of it, how out of control his mind and heart and light got with hers frightened him.

  Now she slept in their bed––the bed they’d shared after their wedding. Only instead of him, she slept with the wire around her neck, likely not even noticing his absence.

  Pain throbbed his temples, making him sick.

  He should eat. Once Wreg and Jon left, he should go look for food. He’d been forgetting to eat lately; he knew it would cause problems if he let himself lose too much weight. Maybe he’d hit Jorag up for some time in the ring, too.

  Wreg would be otherwise occupied.

  Even as he thought it, a low tone came from the door to the outside corridor.

  Revik rose to his feet, deciding to ignore his relative state of undress.

  Hell, he was wearing pants. If they wanted to come over at this time of night, they would have to suck up seeing his bare chest.