by Lolly Walter
Joe squirmed under the onslaught, torn between want and guilt. He’d held off talking about how exactly he’d gotten the nanotech, told himself he was waiting for Devin to fully recover. When Devin pressed his knee hard between Joe’s legs and moved lower to scrape his teeth over Joe’s throat, Joe pushed back the best he could, made some space, and said, “I need to shower.”
“I need to fuck.” Devin grinned. “But we can shower first.”
The little bathroom held them both, much to Joe’s surprise. The lukewarm water that trickled from the overhead shower nozzle gave him goosebumps. He shuddered when Devin’s soapy hands settled in his hair from behind, rubbing and pulling, making him clean. So soothing, the touch. The love. His head fell back against Devin’s chest, but as his eyes drifted closed, he caught sight of himself in the mirror.
Skinny body. Dark circles under his eyes. The big scar on his shoulder where he’d been shot. “I look terrible.”
The Devin in the mirror grimaced. “You look like a selfless dipshit who cares more about everyone else than he does himself. You will eat, and you’ll regain the weight.” His fingers smoothed along the slope of Joe’s neck. “You are always beautiful to me.”
Time slipped past as smoothly as Devin’s hands over Joe’s skin. The cleaning turned into caressing and kneading until the water had run cold and Joe’s skin was on fire. When Devin pressed his dick, hot and hard, into the small of Joe’s back, Joe inhaled sharply and exhaled the truth.
“I let someone touch me.”
Devin’s hands stilled on Joe’s ribs. “What?”
“A blowjob. To get the nanotech. He didn’t finish, and I didn’t even taste any pre, so he probably couldn’t have given me anything, but I thought you should know before we have sex.”
Those hands on Joe’s ribs clenched into fists. “You think disease is the part of that story that’s gonna piss me off? You dick.”
Joe’s hands shook. Whether that was an effect of the hunger that had made a comeback after he’d resumed eating or it was because of nerves, he wasn’t sure.
“Turn around and get on your knees,” he said. “You’re too tall.” He pulled the soap from Devin’s fist and lathered up all that fine blond hair on top of Devin’s head. “I did what I had to do to save you. If you’re going to fault me for it, first ask yourself what you’d have done if our roles were reversed.”
Joe knew the answer, even if Devin wasn’t ready to admit it out loud yet, so he kept himself busy, washing Devin’s hair, his face, his neck and shoulders. When he’d done both of Devin’s arms, he knelt behind him. The broad frame of muscle and bone covered by a canvas of soft, peachy-gold skin held all of Joe’s attention. He soothed himself by sliding the soapy washcloth over that expanse, feeling the muscle bunch and release underneath, watching the skin where he pressed turn paler then rebound to its Devin-only shade a moment later. So soft and smooth. So powerful and fragile all at once. When he’d taken his fill, he wrapped his arms around Devin’s middle and kissed the nape of his neck. “It’s freezing. Lie on the bed with me.”
The dingy, too-thin towel left Joe’s skin damp, and he was shivering by the time he checked the bed carefully and climbed under the covers. Scratchy sheets dragged at his sensitive skin.
The bed creaked and dipped under Devin’s weight. Joe turned his head to ask what Devin was thinking, but Devin cut him off with his warm mouth, his insistent tongue.
They stayed that way for a while. Devin taking. Joe letting himself be taken. Despite their fervor, the kisses never turned into anything more.
Devin broke away, finally, his lips red and wet. “I was certain I’d never see you again. When my eyes went wrong. Potentially an entire life of blindness, and what made me want to scream and punch the fucking walls was that I might never see your face.”
“I’m right here.”
“I hate the life we’ve had to live. I don’t hate you for living it.”
Joe rolled over onto his side, facing Devin. From so close, every brown eyelash stood out. Every tiny wrinkle. The way the blue of Devin’s eyes was lightly striated, one intense sky blue bleeding into a cloudy day before turning back into the blinding heat of the summer. Joe could stare forever.
“I’ve been scared,” he told Devin. “Scared since we got to Navarro’s and saw the wall.”
“I know you’ve been uncertain.”
Joe shook his head. “That doesn’t even begin to cover it. It was a gnawing feeling back then, but it’s gotten worse and worse every day since.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“You were in so much pain. I didn’t want to add to it.”
“That was stupid.”
Joe laughed lightly. “No, it wasn’t. I was worried you’d leave me when —”
“Asshole.” Devin thumped Joe’s chest with the back of his hand, but his voice remained soft, yielding. “You know I’d never leave you.”
“It wasn’t really about you. I thought I wasn’t enough. Not smart enough, white enough, rich enough. I kept thinking my dad must have left me and not come back for a reason. He must have known I’d fail, or he realized it once he got to Minneapolis.”
“You don’t fail.”
“Come on, papi. We both know that’s not true.” Joe laid his hand on Devin’s hip, stroked over the microchip embedded there, its edges more prominent than they had been months ago, before they left Flights of Fantasy, back at the carnival when Joe had first told Devin about citizenship. How Devin had it and Joe didn’t. “I screw up as much as anyone else. But I know who I am, and I am not giving up on my dream just because my dad might not have believed in me.” He stopped the rhythmic petting of Devin’s hip and pulled him close enough that they touched from their toes to their stomachs. “And you are part of my dream.”
Devin made a sound somewhere between a growl and a moan, his hips flexing under Joe’s hands. His thick arms wrapped around Joe, locking him in place as his hands began to wander. “I damn well better be.”
He slapped gently at Joe’s ass, and Joe squirmed, rutting against that tight, soft-skinned body. When Devin’s fingers grew insistent against the cleft of Joe’s ass, Joe wrapped his leg over Devin’s hip and said, “I need you to fuck me.”
“God yes.” Devin’s teeth scraped over Joe’s throat.
The sting of it, the animal vulnerability of baring his throat to another man, God, Joe arched into it, tried to rub every part of himself at once all over Devin. He felt for and found the lube under the pillow, in just the same place as they’d kept it in the bed back in Purcell, and practically threw it into Devin’s chest. He rolled onto his belly and spread his legs. They didn’t normally do it this way, but Joe wanted Devin’s weight on his back.
He looked back over his shoulder. “Get a condom from the box in the backpack.”
Instead, Joe felt the familiar fullness, the soft stretch. Strange, still, how what for so long had just been work could become so much more when it happened with the right partner. Joe breathed slowly and relaxed into the sensation.
Devin nudged Joe’s knee up and leaned over his back. “I expected you to argue.”
“Do you want me to?”
“I know what I’m doing. No condoms.” And then Devin was right there, his breath on the nape of Joe’s neck, his fingers replaced by his dick. One hand splayed on the bed in front of Joe’s face, the other clutched at his hip. Devin groaned. “Fuck, it’s been too long.”
Almost two months. Joe arched his back a little, shifted to let Devin in. Oh, God. There. Just like that.
Devin thrust slowly, his hips rocking, filling Joe and backing away. In and out, that hand on Joe’s hip holding him still, keeping him steady and safe, and Joe let go, let the rhythm of the act bear him away. They kissed sloppily, again and again, reaching and connecting, drifting apart.
When Devin’s movement grew erratic and he put all his weight on Joe’s back and his hand left Joe’s hip for his dick, Joe was ready. Devin’s big body
hot and heavy on top of him, ragged, low moans in his ear, the crashing, insistent fullness inside him, and that hand, jerking and stroking just right.
Joe cried out when he came. Didn’t care if people heard. Seconds later, Devin’s soft cry was muffled in the meat of Joe’s shoulder. They collapsed together, liquid bones and stuttered breath.
“Love you, papi.”
He felt Devin’s grin in his hair.
“I love you, too. I always will.”
Joe nestled in and held on tight.
TWENTY-FOUR
The last miles passed quickly. As the highway led through populated suburbs, Joe kept his shoulders straight and his head held high. Nine years he’d spent dreaming about Minneapolis. Wondered and hoped. Now here it lay, its outskirts stretched out before him like a mirage. So many people, walking and biking and riding mechanized scooters and skateboards on and off the highway. Homes with lights on. Businesses with flashing signs. Hotels. Clothiers. Restaurants. Theaters. Anything he’d ever imagined.
This was what he’d expected, way back in Purcell, after crossing the border into New America. People and opportunity and just...life, as green and robust as the fields they’d seen on the way here. And both the city and the fields so different from the dead, dry misery of Austin.
In the middle of the highway, a line of people stood on a fenced-off ramp. The ramp led to the mouth of a long, opaque tube that stretched as far north as Joe could see. At the beginning of the ramp, a faded red sign read, “Start here” in big, loopy letters. Next to the sign, a gray-haired woman sat on a stool and pointed a VICE-shot at anyone who came near her. Despite her threatening posture, Joe watched a couple of groups approach her, then after a brief exchange, get into line on the ramp.
“We should check it out,” Joe said, nudging Devin as discreetly as possible.
Devin nodded. “Flix, walk with me.” He strode confidently to the gray-haired woman and exchanged a few words. His hands tensed, and he half-turned back to Joe. Before he finished the motion, he seemed to change his mind and instead pointed toward the line.
The woman’s face turned to stone. She shook her head and spit on the ground at Devin’s feet.
His face redder than Joe had ever seen it, Devin grabbed Flix’s elbow and stormed away. He stopped a foot from Joe and exhaled so heavily that the breeze from it ruffled Joe’s hair.
“What happened?” Joe asked.
“Háblame en español,” Flix interrupted, his hand closing around Joe’s wrist.
“It was that bad?” Joe kept the conversation in Spanish and hoped Devin or Peter would at least understand enough not to complain.
“He asked about the line,” Flix said. “It’s to get into the dome.”
“So?”
“Do you see the goddamned dome?”
“Of course not. I assumed we’d have a several-mile wait.”
“Try fourteen.” Flix jerked his eyes toward Devin. “He tried to bribe the old lady to get ahead in the line.”
“I take it that didn’t go well?”
“She told him to go fuck himself.”
Joe could appreciate the sentiment. He spoke to the group in English. This wasn’t his decision alone. “Are you ready to begin the last part of the trip? Flix says the entry to the dome is fourteen miles of waiting. If there’s no other way in, we’re going to have to be patient.”
“I’m ready,” Peter said, his eyes sharp and trained on the point where the tube disappeared on the horizon.
Joe was sure Devin and Flix were ready. “Aria?”
Aria hesitated. “I just...” She shook her head and gestured all around.
Joe got it. She was the only one who hadn’t chosen this path. All that stuff with the Sons, equality and fairness, taking back what had been stolen from them — Aria was a believer. Life might be hard out here, and there might be prejudice, but inside that dome their treatment could be a whole lot worse.
“You can choose to stay behind,” Joe said. “I understand.”
“No.” Aria grimaced, and for a moment, the resemblance to her sisters was so clear. “Lili and Navarro trusted you. So do I.”
“Thank you,” Joe said.
They walked back to the woman at the tube’s entrance, where the line on the ramp had whittled away. Joe let loose his most charming smile. “Excuse me, ma’am. Is this the fastest way into the dome?”
The woman regarded Joe with milky, narrowed eyes. “You white?”
Hating himself. “Yes.”
“Well, unless you’re traveling from dome to dome, son, the tubes are the only way in. Next tube is sixty miles in either direction, but the lines are just as long.”
So this was it. They could put it off for another day or two, study the tube, ask around for information. Make sure this was their best option. But after all this time, Joe wanted in. All along the way, he’d had chances to change his mind, to take another path. He’d already chosen. All he had to do now was follow through. He stepped onto the ramp, its grated metal shifting a bit under his weight.
A few steps forward. A few more. Devin on one side of him. Flix on the other. Peter and Aria right behind.
Joe brushed his knuckles against Devin’s. Took a deep breath. Stepped into the entrance to the Minneapolis dome.
***
Inside the still, muted air of the tube, a phalanx of heavily armed soldiers greeted them. Joe noted the metal VICE-shots peeking out from behind the soldiers’ thick, impact-dispersive bullet shields. The point soldier, his eyes hidden behind solid black tactical goggles, told them to disarm.
Joe and the others laid their guns and knives into a heavy-looking steel longbox. They were each examined, poked and prodded both by hand and with a metal detector. After it seemed the point soldier was satisfied, he motioned to the one who’d been examining them, and that soldier locked the longbox and affixed it to a rail that ran along the ceiling. As soon as the box was attached, it began to vibrate, showering sparks on Joe’s skin, then sped off deeper into the tube.
The point soldier addressed Devin. “Name?”
Devin only glanced Joe’s way for a fraction of a second before answering.
The soldier repeated Devin’s name, followed by a long string of letters and numbers, into a comm fastened to the shoulder of his uniform. “Proceed.”
Joe paused. He had so many questions. “Sir, will our —”
“Control your poc!” the soldier barked at Devin.
Devin’s big hand wrapped tight around Joe’s upper arm, and Joe lurched forward, forced to move whether he wanted to or not.
Devin kept hold as they squeezed through the soldiers, his grip too fierce and so high Joe’s shoulder kept banging his jaw. When they reached the other side of the armed guards, Devin continued on another ten yards before whispering, “I’m sorry,” and letting go.
Joe rubbed his arm. He’d bruise for sure. And they had no idea if they’d get their weapons back or how long they’d be stuck in the tube. He’d been dumb to try to ask, to forget for a minute that here, he wasn’t just an undesirable. He was practically inhuman. He’d coach Devin to ask questions, to look for opportunities to learn more. It’d be fine.
The walls and ceiling of the passageway were the same opaque material that made up the outer walls. Grated metal slats comprised a floor about four feet wide, and underneath it, a stream flowed back toward the mouth of the passage. Narrow gray benches lined the walls, and thirty feet or so deeper into the tube, the line began.
Joe recognized a few of the groups whom he had watched enter earlier, their members standing, looking back toward the guards and the ramp before turning forward again. A woman held hands with two toddlers. Beyond them, another woman, this one with a high, sleek blond ponytail, leaned back against the chest of a towering monster of a man, his dark eyes and harsh mouth both handsome and scary at once. In front of the woman, a stout little man, all bald head and round glasses, spoke animatedly. Whatever he was saying, the woman rolled her eyes.
Farther on, past the other new arrivals, were people Joe figured had been here a while. They sat on the benches, slack-jawed, heads against the wall, and either stared at the newcomers or slept.
Days. It would take days to get through the line. Weeks, maybe. But this was their new beginning. Joe had traveled a thousand miles and walked for the better part of three months; he could sit on his ass for a couple of weeks.
Peter pulled his shirt up over his nose. “It smells like fecal matter in here.”
Joe tapped the grated floor with the toe of his shoe and tried to keep his voice appropriately respectful, the way New America expected a Latino to talk to a white man. “It’s the sewage system running under the floor.”
Peter and Flix both grimaced, and Joe fought back a laugh. Sure, the passageway stank. He’d smelled worse.
Another group of hopeful dome entrants approached from the mouth of the tube. A father and two young teen boys. Joe looked away.
“May we sit, sir?” Flix asked.
It took Joe a moment to realize Flix was talking to Devin.
Devin’s jaw tightened, and he gave a jerky nod. He tried to sit before removing his backpack and almost slid off the shallow bench before he righted himself. A long time ago, Joe would have laughed. Instead, he shrugged out of his backpack and sat across from Devin on the opposite bench. Flix sat next to him, and Aria sat next to Flix. Peter took a seat next to Devin.
They all stared at each other. Joe felt it. He stared at Devin; Devin stared back. The weight of it, the pressure, as they looked across at each other, like a line had been drawn down the middle of the tube, separating one side from the other. Joe extended his leg.
Devin matched the gesture, stretching his long legs wide until his calf rested against Joe’s ankle.
Joe exhaled heavily and laid his head back against the wall. From that position, he could see that the rounded roof was made of the same material as the walls.