“I think it’s really sweet that you did this,” Eoran said, soft eyes surreptitious in a sidelong glance, so easily captured by that creature who held his fondness. “How long were you planning it?”
“Five days? Six?” Honestly Kasse wasn’t sure. He’d found his way onto this makeshift rampart earlier in the week during one of Eoran’s hospital check-ins and knew it would be here. He’d begun stashing an overnight supply kit piece by stolen piece, hidden away where no one could see in the hollows of walls, much in the same way he hoarded together little emergency escape packs—just in case something went awry and he needed to disappear.
Nevermind that his survival packs had gotten larger of late, made to brave the desert as a pair instead of alone.
Rising slow, he was still a bit weak in the knees, but it soon passed. First retrieving the towel to clean himself up a bit, the adjunct then found his pants, pulling both his lighter and his cigarettes out. Placing one of the filters between his lips, he returned his lover’s gaze, face lit by the bite of flame. He leaned half seated against the cinderblock parapet that flanked them on all sides, resting his hands on his bare thighs, humming in thought. “I don’t know. I didn’t want to rush. This just felt like the right place, you know?”
“Mm,” the other boy nodded his agreement as he spread out their makeshift bed. When the rectangle was laid, he moved atop it, smoothing our errant creases with a series of half-committed poking motions with his toes.
Eoran sat on the blanket and cracked open the bottle of water to take a sip, then laid himself back for a moment of relaxation before the rest of their night hit him, arms stretching long above his head.
“I’m glad we waited for a little while,” Eoran announced in a velvet contemplation. His aphotic eyes shifted to scan the sweeps of light highlighting the other PFC’s angles. Silent, Eo watched his friend re-realized in the new light of them, in the stillness between the gales of their bliss.
“… You’re so beautiful,” he said after a moment, “When you’re under strain, when you come. Will you come be next to me?”
With the barest incredulity tarnishing his eyeroll demeanor, Kasse grabbed the beers and crossed to the blanket on the ground, setting the cans at the perimeter. He laid himself out on his stomach, propped up on his elbows, smoke curling from his lips with his to-and-fro glances. He kissed Eoran’s shoulder, resting his chin there a moment later.
“…You shoulda seen your face when I asked you to undress me, though,” Kasse teased, fingers to his lips to grant himself another drag of nicotine. Hollow cheeked and pale eyed, his demeanor was easier alone with Eo in the dark—hardly the razor lined stare he maintained when they were back on the base. “You blushed so hard—it was real fucking cute.”
“You caught me completely off guard,” Eoran laughed. “I thought you had a bag full of chips and candy and we were gonna spend the night making ourselves sick on trash. No one’s ever asked me to undress them before—I’m used to encounters being clumsy and fast; quick before my parents or brother get home, hushed to keep from being discovered by a teacher or heard through walls. When you said that, it was like the weight of that intimacy hit me, that I was going to be able to savor this out in the place where it makes the least sense. Or would make the least sense, if I wasn’t now aware of how much time-wasting dumb shit is involved in being in the army.”
Eo laced his fingers together and cradled the back of his head, watching the imperceptible shifting of the wide sky above.
“Do you know anything about star maps?” He asked, eyes unable to make sense of the feverish way the night was splattered.
“I know some of the stories, but I’ve been trying to learn a more about the actual charting, since we get to see them out here.” Kasse was shortchanging his interest: he had grown highly motivated to learn to navigate by the stars, spending a decent amount of his free time on base reading books on astronomy and how their positions helped older cultures find their way. Reaching out, he plucked Eoran’s water bottle from where it rested and took a deep sip. “You should be studying them too, Mr. Navigator. If you’re gonna be an engineering sergeant one day, you gotta make sure you can find our way around.”
“I will. I’d just rather learn how they would want me to learn it rather than take a chance on teaching myself wrong. I’d have to forget and start over. Can’t wait for all those slide shows and work books and math tests and field exercises where they take you out into the middle of nowhere and give you three days to find your way back though. I guess blowing stuff up will make all that worth it.” Eoran grinned, turning his chin to shun the glittering night for his friend. “Do you like being in the army?”
“I like being with you.” The older boy was a bit too quick on the response, hiding the shy recoil of his delivery behind his cigarette. He looked away, biting his lip.”The army is just what I gotta do to stay at your side.”
It wasn’t all bad. Kasse was particularly skilled at the sort of mayhem and destruction that the army required of objectively good soldiers—never mind his tendency to go off course or willfully disobey in favor of following his own path toward achieving objectives. His rebel streak of independence was why he liked Brint as a CO so much—the sergeant gave him enough room to make his own choices and, for the most part, Kasse had used the opportunity to perform admirably.
Leaning over, Kasse pressed a smoke stained kiss to the corner of Eoran’s mouth, gracious smirk just so fucking happy they were both here at all.
“I mean, you don’t enjoy it, do you? All the killing, the uncertainty of combat. Everyone calling us traitors. You looked so stressed in Biko—like your were gonna puke the whole time.”
“I don’t. The fear of losing hit me pretty hard. I thought I was going to be outed as a wright, and then when I realized they were talking about you, I was worried about that. More and more I find myself trying to plead with fate or tip the scales of chance before we’re sent out—I’m not sure what I believe, it just feels like time is unraveling sometimes. I kinda regret not paying more attention to my dad’s stories of Varonian when I was younger.” Despite the fading gloom in Eoran’s voice, the boy unwove his fingers from the back of his skull and captured the ghost in an embrace that sought to keep him near.
“But I think some of the stuff we do is interesting: I like watching the landscape with you. I like the sudden rush of cool air that the shade brings after being in the sun for hours. I like being completely worn out and sleeping deep enough for my dreams to be a tarry-black, like I’ve sunken into a k-hold of exhaustion. And I like being with you too. Most of all, I like being at your side. You always smell like a summer afternoon.” He smiled, “Or a summer afternoon on fire, if you’ve been smoking. Which you always have.”
Eoran lingered in a kiss returned, like he missed the taste of that boy already, like their side by side proximity was still too far away for his liking. He was sly in the skimming of his supine accretion; his hands to hold, his legs to entice.
“Is it better, knowing you’re not alone? That you’re not the only wright out here? Is it easier to keep this a secret together?” The ghost was so easily compromised by Eoran’s flytrap charms, shifting from stomach to side to better facilitate his capture. “I’ve never really been with another wright before. Lia knows, but she isn’t like us. She’s more like a really aggro raccoon raised by computer ferrets who learned how to use the human internet real good.”
Even after all the time they spent talking about life back in Port Haven, their friends, family—or lack thereof—Eoran was still unsure if the colorful language Kasse used to describe his friend was meant to be complementary or affectionately disparaging. Either way, It sure did paint a vivid picture of the girl.
“I don’t think it’s better or worse. It’s just… normal, which I guess is pretty sad when you think about it. A lot of my friends are wrights, we try to stick together. I’m used to holding that type of secret close.” Carefully, the bloodwright’s fingers traced the rolling crests of Kasse’s spine, bound for the small of his back. “When you say ‘been with’ do you mean known?”
If he were completely honest, the language he used to describe Lia was neither complementary nor disparaging: it was simply the only way he knew how to describe his best friend back in Port Haven.
“Yeah—I mean been close with. There were a ton of us scattered all over the streets, running around homeless in Stokkram and Holm so I knew of other adjuncts, a few bloodwrights. Wright kids turned out and in hiding. I guess I decided pretty young it was just easier for me to stay free on my own.” Looking a little wistful, Kasse looked just past Eoran, line of sight grazing that pretty jaw. “You’d always hear when the trenchants raided a safehouse. They would call them nests in the papers, burrows and foxholes on the news. Described the kids they caught like they were criminals, the ones that died in the raids like they were cockroaches.” He looked down, tracing his lover’s clavicle with an affectionate eye. “And they’d never show their faces—so you’d only know who died if they talked about their utility, if you didn’t see them around the rooftops in Wrightbog anymore.”
Lips pressed together, he glanced back up, dark expression melting into a smirk.
“I mean, I’ve also never really been with another wright before either… not like this.”
“You’re the only person who has ever made me feel like this.” Dampened by parallels easily drawn between the conflicted streets of his home and the war-blasted lands they currently occupied, the bloodwright was happy to steer the conversation away from the beckoning pit of matters less pleasurable than the face he observed before him.
“I—” Eoran paused in the mire of a thought, tongue dawdling on the taste of a syllable then pressing forward, “I want to spend as much time with you as possible, Kasse. You’re so special. I dunno where they’re going to push us off to next, but I hope that we don’t ever get split up. I think I would actually die.” The laugh that followed was barely recognizable as one, traveling on a blunt exhale that quickly dissipated in the little space Eoran had neglected to fill between their bodies. His wandering palm smoothed along the convex of the other boy’s side, mapping the sharp ridge of his hip.
“I don’t want to talk about that right now.” Kasse cut through the space between them with his words like a wall, his eyes glittering in the broken glass moonlight, his skylight grey all shattered in burglary to permit their escape from such a speculative trial. “Use your mouth for better things, all the things you wanna do that we just gotta grin about when people’re watching—do that. I’ll do the same. I gotta learn how to be quiet when you fuck me. Gotta learn to call out in the space in between instead of out loud.”
Parted knees, cigarette held above their imminent tangle, Kasse pulled his lover between his thighs and smiled.
“We’ve been apart too long, already. Don’t make me wait.”
“I’m going to make you howl,” Eoran said, a promise with the cadence of a warning, “Until the only voice I hear in my head is yours, pierced in rapture.” Already he was smothering himself in the smoke-rimmed edges of that other boy, already he led them down the path to still more destruction.
Eoran was attentive and so easily swayed by the promise of gratification—he was always so ready to set fire to the sweet pliancy of his lover’s flesh; so ready to exploit every sound from the mangled heaving of their straining lungs.