Flanked

by Lolly Walter

  Voices carried through the air.

  Aria rolled off her sleeping bag and snatched the rifle from Flix’s hand before he did more than jerk in surprise. She crept to a window, inched a bit of the barrel into the opening, and peered outside. Her shoulders drooped, and she lowered the rifle. “About Goddamned time.”

  Flix wanted to jump up, to see Joe and Peter for himself, to do something, but he was still tangled up with Devin. So he waited, stroking Devin’s hair, feeling that heartbeat as his own pulse skyrocketed.

  It took forever, it felt like, listening as the voices got closer, and then Joe was in the doorway, hair wet, cheeks pink, his mouth grim. He strode across the room, then knelt next to Devin’s chest, his hands usurping Flix’s on Devin’s body. He stroked Devin’s cheek and nudged him onto his back. When Devin stirred a bit, Joe smiled in a way no one had ever smiled for Flix. “Hi there, papi.”

  Devin reached out and traced his way up Joe’s chest and neck to his face. He grabbed Joe behind the ear and pulled him close. Their heads bumped hard enough to make Flix wince, then Devin’s deep grumble said something, but Flix couldn’t make out the words.

  “I had to so you could get well,” Joe answered.

  Aria kicked at Joe’s hip. “Scoot over so I can work on him.”

  Joe climbed halfway over Flix’s legs and stayed there, sitting on Flix’s shins. Flix doubted Joe even noticed he’d made a human chair, he was so focused on Devin, but Flix felt trapped, like he was intruding on something private and unable to stop watching.

  “This is probably going to hurt,” Aria said, crouching next to Devin, a syringe and a computer tablet in her hands. She poked at the screen on the tablet a few times, then uncapped the syringe and aimed it at the meat of Devin’s shoulder. “Stay still.”

  Flix’s stomach turned. The needle was really big. He didn’t like shots at all, and the thought of those little robots, the nanotech, swimming around inside Devin’s body added to his queasiness. He looked away.

  “Fuck!” Devin shouted.

  “Sack up, Devin,” Aria said. “It’ll be over soon and you can sleep.”

  Almost by reflex, Flix slid his fingers into Devin’s hair. Soothe. Comfort. Except Joe’s fingers were already there.

  “Done.” Aria tapped again on the tablet. “The instructions say he’ll be out the whole time the nanobots do their thing. They’ll tell us what’s wrong, fix it if they can. But no guarantees.”

  “I understand,” Joe said. “How long will it take?”

  “I’ve never done this before. Hours, probably. Get some rest.”

  Joe bent over and kissed Devin’s forehead. “Rest well, sweet prince.” His hands shook as he traced them over Devin’s face, thumbing his eyebrows, nose, and lips; over his neck, his chest, his stomach. Shoulders. Arms. He bent for another kiss.

  “Fuck off,” Devin grumbled right before he began to snore.

  Joe snickered and pressed his cheek to Devin’s chest.

  “Maul him later,” Aria said. “Get out of my space so I can keep an eye on him.” She paused. “You did good.”

  Joe patted Flix’s thigh. “Come outside with me for a few minutes.”

  That was the last thing Flix wanted. He wanted to stay with Devin, to watch him get well; to see Joe, maybe not on his lap, but in the same room; he even wanted to watch Peter, who had already curled up in a ball in the corner and fallen asleep.

  But he’d never been able to say no to Joe. Flix followed him outside and into a little cemetery surrounded by a wrought iron fence. The graves were old, the kind with hard stone markers that told who had been buried there.

  Flix sat on a stone bench against the fence, but when Joe sat next to him, he hopped up and sat across from him on one of the grave markers.

  “Get off that,” Joe said.

  Flix peered down at the stone. “Vera’s been dead for seventy years. Her soul in heaven doesn’t care if I sit here.”

  “I care.”

  Flix considered refusing. That deep worry he’d been feeling when Joe was gone had almost all crumbled away, and in its place was the same irritation he’d become so accustomed to. He walked back to the bench and sat as far from Joe as he could. “What do you want?”

  Flix waited, but Joe didn’t speak. The silence stretched long enough that Flix couldn’t stand it. He started to rise, but Joe caught his arm.

  “My mother died when I was five or six. I don’t remember her. But I remember visiting her grave. The last time I went there with my dad, some vandals, kids or something, had knocked over her tombstone.” Joe shook his head. “We tried to lift it back up, but it was just the two of us. It’s so much easier to destroy than it is to build. Or to fix.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Joe turned and met Flix’s eyes. “The point is, I have reasons for the way I feel, for what I ask you to do; I’m not trying to make your life harder or to cause you harm.”

  “I never said you were.” But Flix had thought it. So many times. He’d been so angry that he hadn’t known about the chip, that Joe had let him and Marcus come north and never told them there was nothing there for them. He’d blamed Joe for those things when all Joe had really done was the best he could. Once Flix had left Flights of Fantasy, there had been no going back, and what was Joe supposed to do? Leave three fifteen-year-olds to fend for themselves? Flix had tied Joe’s hands. The end point hadn’t mattered back then. All that had mattered was surviving one more day. And one more day after that.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t keep Marcus safe,” Joe said. “I know that’s not what you want to hear, but I am sorry. I tried, and I failed, and it hurts me because he was a good boy who deserved so much better.”

  Flix’s throat closed. He couldn’t answer.

  “You and I,” Joe said, “we’re going to butt heads because you’re smart and strong and capable, in ways I never considered back when we were at Flights of Fantasy. I’m proud of who you turned out to be.”

  No one had ever told Flix that they were proud of him. Only Joe had ever called him strong, the night of the explosion in Purcell, when Joe had said they were warrior brothers, when they made a pinky promise that maybe they’d both broken.

  Joe slapped the bench lightly. “I’m going to go check on Devin.”

  He’d reached the cemetery gate before Flix worked up the nerve. Or the humility.

  “Joe?”

  Joe met his gaze with those chocolate eyes, so deep and knowing, and then he waited.

  Flix cleared his throat. He wanted to make his voice as powerful as his conviction. “You are still my warrior brother.”

  Joe’s expression softened, and Flix caught a glimpse of something like grace. “Thank you, Flix.”

  Joe went inside, and Flix leaned back against the posts of the fence. He watched the shadow of an old willow tree on the other side of the cemetery shorten and then lengthen until it touched his face. Then he made his way back inside, to the family he had left.

  ***

  Devin woke gradually, some brightness past his eyelids dawning strange but familiar. He stretched his arms over his head and felt a heavy weight on his chest. He pawed at the weight and felt hair, curly and a little too long, dirty and far removed from its usual silky feel. Joe.

  Cupping the back of Joe’s head with one hand, Devin slid his other across the expanse of Joe’s back, shoulder to shoulder and down his spine. Too thin. Joe had always been a skinny shit, but not like this.

  Devin took his time going back up, counting the vertebrae, then sliding over and counting the ribs. He’d done that on occasion back at the Flats when he couldn’t sleep. Even before they were together, when they were strangers sharing a bed, he’d touched. It’d given him comfort to be reminded that someone so coldly intense had been human after all.

  Now, as then, Joe wriggled a bit under the touch, but this time the movement against his belly aggravated Devin’s bladder. He pushed at Joe’s shoulders. “Let me up. Gotta pee.”

 
Joe rolled off him, and Devin sat up and opened his eyes. Good fucking God, so bright. He winced and squinted, trying to block out as much light as he could. He was sitting on his sleeping bag, which had been laid on the ground and had a little fortress of smooth rocks piled around it. They were in a building that had no roof and from the looks of it, no bathroom, either.

  Devin climbed to his feet, but all his body parts felt either too small or too big, and as he made his way to the exit, he stumbled and bumped into the door frame. Outside, a little cemetery ringed by a fence sat off to the right, so he headed left and made it around the corner before getting some relief. He was still watering the ground with the strength of a fire hose when he heard a rustling behind him and looked over his shoulder. “Why are you all watching me piss?”

  They were, too. Even Peter was standing there, his eyes darting between Joe and Devin. Aria had a rectangle, some sort of computer. Flix and Joe, shoulder to shoulder, wearing matching expressions of confusion. And dammit. Joe’s cheeks were sunken.

  Devin tucked himself back in. “Why the hell haven’t you been eating? You look like a skeleton.”

  Aria glanced at Joe. “You see that, Devin?”

  “Be hard to miss. Why haven’t you all been making him eat while I was...” Wait.

  “Does your head hurt?” Joe asked.

  “No. I...” What?

  So slowly it was like waking up all over again, Devin remembered. The debilitating headaches. The weeks in agony. The blindness. The fear that he’d never recover. Poof. Like it had never happened. All he had left was some disorientation and the feeling that he’d missed far too much.

  Joe rushed forward and flung his arms around Devin’s neck. His shallow, rapid breaths tickled Devin’s neck, and all Devin could do was wrap him up in a hug so fierce that Joe’s back cracked. A chuckle vibrated against Devin’s skin and cooled the sudden wetness there.

  A ragged whisper. “Papi.”

  Devin drank in the sight of Joe’s shoulder against his chest, the blue of his shirt, Flix’s somber, watery eyes. Beyond Flix, the brown dirt and dead weeds stretching out in all directions. The rough red bricks of the building. The road. “You left.”

  Joe lifted his head. “I had to. We had to get you well. I’m not apologizing for it.”

  This big part of Devin simmered. He hadn’t wanted Joe to risk himself like that, walk out with only Peter to watch his back. But Devin had been so sick. He wouldn’t have been able to travel, and fuck, it had felt like he was dying. Maybe he had been. And having someone who loved you enough to risk their lives to help you — that wasn’t something to be pissed about. “We can talk about it later. What was wrong with me?”

  “It was bad,” Aria said, her eyes on the little computer in her hands. “Subdural hematoma. Bleeding inside your skull. Thank God it was a slow bleed or you’d be dead. But it’s fixed now. I don’t even think you’ll have any lingering effects.”

  “These nani things put me back together?”

  “Nanotech. More advanced than I’ve ever heard of. Joe saved your life.”

  So much of the time since they’d left Purcell was a blur. The parts that Devin could recall seemed like they’d happened to someone else and he’d just heard about them. How long had it been since he’d lived his life? “How long was I —”

  “You’ve been recovering for five days,” Joe said.

  Devin stumbled over that. “I remember the whites-only store and the dome in Kansas City and the farmer and his wife. It feels like we left Purcell maybe a week ago, but —”

  “It’s been forty days.” Flix wiped underneath his eyes. “Forty.”

  Devin’s knees went weak. Fuck. All that lost, jumbled time. Bits of memory floated into his consciousness — heat and cold and sound, soft skin, shivering in the dark. They fell away before he could grasp them and force them into an order, something that made sense.

  Joe pulled back and grasped Devin’s face between his hands. His stern face and molten chocolate eyes calmed Devin’s breathing. “Concentrate on where we’re going.”

  Joe kissed Devin then, his rough lips warm and familiar and safe. That sensation, Devin remembered.

  “We’re almost there,” Flix said.

  Devin glanced at Joe, who nodded. Cupping Joe’s cheek and pulling him close one more time, Devin said, “Let’s finish this bastard.”

  ***

  Joe had never before seen the season called spring. Along the improving roads, farmlands and fields grew lush and green. Early flowers, red and gold and a fragrant purple, flecked the roadside. The whimsy of spring, the beauty, the damp freshness of the smell — it was beyond anything he’d ever imagined. The world burst with life — grass in the cracks of sidewalks, potholes lined with mushrooms and moss. People everywhere in this little town twenty miles outside Minneapolis. Joe was so close to reaching his goal.

  Two weeks had passed in a giddy haze. As they walked Wizard of Oz-like toward a city that loomed on the edge of the horizon, Joe reveled in having Devin, his Devin, back, and the insecurity that had plagued him since he first saw the wall at the New American border had been replaced by an almost savage pride at what they had accomplished and an eagerness to discover what came next.

  They’d walked over a thousand miles. Been beaten and broken. Survived fire and tornadoes, hunger and loss. So many times, they had failed; along with the grief, Marcus’s death would always be a point of guilt. But they’d also succeeded, even thrived.

  Joe beamed at Peter and Flix as they walked ahead of him, Peter’s arm slung over Flix’s shoulder. Such good, strong boys they’d turned out to be. Peter had managed the grief of his parents’ murder and his own kidnapping. He’d learned to put aside the prejudice that had probably been drilled into him since he was old enough to understand words. He’d saved Joe’s life. And Flix. He was a natural leader, smart and tough and fair. Joe never would have imagined that the silly, flirtatious boy from back at the Flats would have grown into such a formidable young man.

  They wouldn’t finish the journey tonight. The sun was already sinking off to the west, and Joe was ready to stop for the day. He bumped against Devin gently. “See the hotel over on the left? Let’s splurge and sleep in beds.”

  Devin’s newly-sharp eyes focused on the three-story brick and metal building. Joe looked it over again, too. Its awning drooped and a few of its roof-top solar panels appeared loose, but the hanging sign out front promised electricity and water, and in small print said, “Pocs allowed (when accompanied by Whites).” The town itself seemed heavily populated. Joe didn’t want to take a chance on looking for an abandoned house to sleep in and run into a protective citizen.

  “Beds?” Devin said. “Maybe two rooms?”

  Joe wiggled his eyebrows and gave a small nod.

  “Round up, motherfuckers,” Devin said, waving his arms. “We’re calling it a night.”

  Aria pedaled up to them on the bike Joe had stolen from Rip the drug dealer. “Are you inviting the entire town to come along?”

  Devin shrugged and winked at Joe. “I’m happy.”

  They made their way to the awning, where two armed guards searched them for weapons and cataloged everything they were carrying. Then they were ushered into the lobby, where two more armed guards stored away their weapons in a narrow locker behind a heavy steel door and gave them the locker key.

  At the desk, a girl sat watching a video on the mini console embedded in her arm. Her feathered earrings hung to her collarbone and swung heavily as she chewed on gum with big, smacking lips. She huffed when Devin laid his forearms on the counter, but when she lazily lifted her eyes and took him in, her demeanor changed.

  She snapped to standing, jerked her shirt down so far that the edge of an areola peeked out, and leaned over the counter until Joe could see exactly what she was offering. He turned his back to her and barely restrained himself from slapping a hand over Peter’s wide, excited eyes.

  Joe shook his head and c
aught Flix’s attention.

  Flix smirked and said in Spanish, “Save it for someone who cares, sister.”

  “He likes breasts,” Joe answered, also in Spanish. “At least, he likes looking at them. But there are other things he’d rather suck on.”

  Flix burst out laughing, and Aria rolled her eyes and called them both idiots. Poor Peter still hadn’t looked away from the girl’s chest.

  “Yes, two rooms,” Devin was saying.

  Joe snapped his fingers in front of Peter’s face, then whispered, “Tell him to ask for adjoining rooms.”

  Playing his part perfectly, Peter said, “Hey bro, get adjoining rooms, man. I don’t want these pocs to be unsupervised.”

  Joe felt it, Devin’s glance his way. He kept his own eyes focused anywhere else. It was just a game. A trick to get their way.

  “What he said,” Devin told the girl.

  “Great idea,” she said. “Put your arm on up here, sexy, and let me take your payment and handprint. Maybe tonight you can send your little brother over with the pocs and I can come keep you company.”

  Devin stuck his arm in the old-style metal cylinder that would debit his money chip and record his handprint all at once. “Oh uh, thanks, miss, but... I have crotch rot. Next time.”

  “347 and 349,” the girl said, and as they walked to the stairs, Joe glanced back to find her eyes following Devin’s ass.

  Room 347 had two full-size beds with gray sheets, a dresser that leaned to the right, and a tiny bathroom with a sink, toilet, and a showerhead on the ceiling right in the center of the room. Joe barely had time to check for bedbugs before someone rapped on the connecting door from room 349.

  Joe opened the door and dodged clear as Peter stumbled through. Then Devin’s big hand grabbed Joe by the shirt collar and dragged him into the other room.

  “Close your door and leave us alone,” Devin said before he slammed the door on their side and shoved Joe up against it. Just for a moment, the room was quiet aside from Devin’s heavy, rapid breaths. Then he moved, and his mouth was on Joe’s, rough and impatient.