[Original: The City Adel] Elfin-verse] (Pevi/Ivahn) "Between You and Me" Theme #19: Post-Apocalyptic Title: Between You and Me Author/Artist:ivoryandhorn Fandom: The City Adel Pairing: Pevi/Ivahn Rating: R Warnings: m/m Length: 10,162 words Theme: #19 - post-apocalyptic Summary: And on certain days--on certain days, well, there're other reasons that he can put up with the exhausting most days and the shitty some days and the guilt-laden other days. Author's Notes: I had so much fun with this piece. Enormous props to my beta, starriheavens on LJstarriheavens, for her detailed crit of this monster. :D
Most days he spends at his computer. The job was tiring before, and it’s even worse now. His seat’s all shaky metal that’s hell on his back, ass, whole damn body. If he’s not working, he’s sleeping on this godawful bed built from salvaged scrap metal. Food is either lackluster gruel or from tins and tubes, washed down with thin chemical soup, tepid water that tastes of plastic, or—most importantly of all—CofFix, which is basically disgusting but it’s about the only ficial coffee available these days. His work’s hell on the eyes, perm tacts and all, and even more draining: there’s only so much even a genius can do before inspiration and motivation run dry. Most nights he goes to bed feeling vaguely pissed at the world in general, cranky as all get out with a sledgehammer migraine, but it’s not like there’s any fucking aspirin left to chase it away.
That’s most days, anyway. There’re some days when his inability to eat and sleep like a normal human being catch up to him and he ends up at the wards with a cold or something, feeling like crap. Other days he takes a day off before he starts pitching shit at the walls and deliberately fucking up just for the hell of it—the latter of which would be much, much worse then wasting a day on video games. And on certain days—on certain days, well, there’re other reasons that he can put up with the exhausting most days and the shitty some days and the guilt-laden other days.
Certain days like today.
*
Eventually he’d managed to gather that his (their) first time was pretty strange, as far as cherry-popping went. He’d only roomed with Pevi for—what, three weeks?—when the guy had, totally out of the blue, asked if he wanted to fuck. Which had led to the usual stammering breakdown in vocabulary on Ivahn’s part, but instead of laughing, Pevi had, all deathly seriousness, offered to take his virginity within the next two hours. And well, yeah, Ivahn kind of did want to just lose it already, even if his reason for it was the basic and pretty mortifying “I don’t want to die a virgin,” which at the time had looked more than a little likely. And it wasn’t like Pevi wasn’t good-looking or anything, all pale muscle and animal grace, so Ivahn had kind of managed to get a hold on his speech centers and say, well, um, o-okay.
And then, well, that had to led to him stumbling backwards onto the bed with Pevi’s tongue down his throat, and then hands were fumbling with shirts and peeling back pants and then he was sprawled on the bed, frame creaking in protest, Pevi’s blue-green eyes, heavy with heat, flicking along his body, and—he didn’t even know if it Pevi’s first time too, but from the way Pevi acted so utterly confident of what he was doing the answer was probably not, but it wasn’t like Ivahn had anything else to compare him with or something so maybe…
And then Pevi reached over and yanked off his boxers and pushed him up against the wall, and—whenever Ivahn poked at this little bundle of a memory, for some reason the only thing that was really clear to him was that Pevi had been…not gentle, exactly, but maybe more like…careful, making sure he didn’t go too fast or anything—like he totally knew Ivahn was more nervous then he let on, but also didn’t want to call him on it and make it worse. Even all Ivahn remembered of coming was less then crystal, almost pure sensation—nameless, formless; nerves and synapses sparking chaotic under his skin. The only coherent thing was Pevi, setting him down on the bed afterwards so he could have a break to put his brain back in order.
And after that was over Pevi had leaned over and said my turn but before Ivahn could ask what the hell was that even supposed to mean—Pevi had knelt between his legs, sucked him hard again before slinging a leg over his hips and riding Ivahn until he bucked and came once more in the clinging heat of Pevi’s body. The very last thing he remembered of that particular night was still a memory of Pevi, of the other man spooning up behind him, and of being too tired to tell him that no, they were not going to cuddle, no matter what, and finally deciding to just let Pevi stay there, since the smug bastard probably wouldn’t have listened to him anyway.
That was the first time.
*
If you exit the mess from the northeast and take the second right and keep going, you’ll eventually hit the atrium chamber. Inside there’s a huge screen mounted on a wall, and on it’s a list of which squads are being rotated in—or out. The people who gather around it are generally of the tough soldierly ilk, but he usually manages to put his bony elbows to good use and squirm to the front of the crowd. This morning, like every morning for the past eight months or so, Ivahn scans the letters and numbers and symbols scrolling up and down the screen. Most days, he never finds what he’s looking for. But this isn’t most days, and under the INCOMING column he finds KAPPA 368 in bold neon. The 1430 HRS in the next column over tell him when KAPPA 368’ll be back.
That’s how he knows that this isn’t going to be most days, or even some days—definitely not one of his other days. KAPPA 368’s on its way—home, for lack of a better word. KAPPA 368’s on its way home. And with it—
The rest of the day, he can’t concentrate. He has fuck knows how much on his plate but—KAPPA 368’s coming back, how the hell is he supposed to work at a time like this? After this there’ll be plenty more most days for him to put nose to grindstone, and anyway he deserves a day off, considering the rate he’s been churning out those fucking cryptions for the CIC. KAPPA 368’s coming back.
1430 HRS can’t come fast enough.
*
They’ve had this ritual for a little over a year now. It’s a pretty strange one, he guesses, but he welcomes it all the same. Every time Pevi’s squad gets rotated back into Mountain Town, the first thing they do is, well, fuck.
It’s this tradition they’ve developed, ever since that first time. The minute Pevi’s in the door the both of them make a beeline for what passes for his (their) bedroom, and usually what happens is Pevi rides him hard, ‘cause Ivahn’s stamina is still spectacular crap compared to his, and then Pevi finishes himself off by screwing Ivahn however he wants. The specifics change, but the generics never do.
It’s not a welcome back fuck, or at least Ivahn’s almost hundred percent sure that’s not why he goes along with it. But it’s what they’ve done for months and months now, and somewhere along the line he’s developed this habit of taking the northeast way out of the mess in the mornings to check the atrium screen, even though it puts him twenty minutes out of his way. And somehow the sight of KAPPA 368 under the INCOMING column started giving him this awkward lump of anticipation in his stomach, one that made it hard to concentrate on anything at all until he had Pevi pressing him into the mattress, trailing lips and tongue along his jaw.
And it’s kind of strange in that they don’t usually touch each other any other time, or at least not in that way. They’ve developed this habit of huddling together in bed for warmth, because Mountain Town has no heating whatsoever, and the inside of a mountain is fucking cold, but other then Pevi’s distressing tendency to sometimes ignore the concept of personal space, that’s about it. Ivahn’s usually too tired and cranky any other day to even think about sex, and Pevi’s usually prepping or training or whatever for KAPPA 368’s next turn at the barrier.
If any of this is supposed to mean something, it’s a mystery to him. But he’s kind of okay with stumbling around in the dark, and maybe that’s all that matters.
*
Ivahn spends most of the day working on his little unofficial things, sets aside a few hours for what games he’s managed to scrounge while trawling the scavsalv piles over at Mount Temperance for upgrades for his comp—best thing about the invasion, as long as he can find it, he can snag the best stuff without having to pay through the nose. The day zips by a hell of a lot faster then actually attempting to work, and the guilt of wasted hours barely makes a blip on the radar. KAPPA 368’s coming back, after all.
‘Cept it turns out 1430 HRS was kind of an optimistic estimate, ‘cause KAPPA 368’s arrival keeps getting pushed back, back, back, until it’s the next freakin’ day. 0245 HRS, the screen says, when he stumbles out of the mess after some long belated dinner, CofFix-filled mug in hand. And even that estimate proves false when the PA switches on in a few hours with a burst of static—LEVEL 3 BREACH AT DELTA STATION, REPEAT, LEVEL 3 BREACH AT DELTA STATION, ALL NONCOMBANTS IN LOCKDOWN, REPEAT, ALL NONCOMBATANTS IN LOCKDOWN—and the rest of the night is spent huddled between some jerk from Weaponry and two teenagers who won’t stop sucking face, all of them tucked behind three-feet blast doors while KAPPA 368 gets rerouted to fight off the Squids.
Ivahn tries to fall asleep, and fails. Maybe it’s the CofFix. Maybe it’s the unfamiliar weight of a gun tucked against his stomach, maybe it’s the tag that hangs heavy from his wrist. Maybe it’s the images that keep flashing across his eyes—flying limbs, crackling plasma, gaping holes oozing blood—bodies in fatigues and t-shirts and body armor, Squids with their too-many limbs and too-bright eyes and too-high screeching crawling right over the mounded corpses, swarming through the faltering purple-blue of the barrier. In his head, in his dreams, each and every dead face has dove-grey hair and blue-green eyes that spark red in the night.
*
No one knows where the Squids actually come from. The old-timers cried Iraq! when they showed up, the younger crowd China! or even India! And while it’s true that the invasion, as it was, did start in the Middle East, China’s advanced enough to pull off the kind of splicing that would’ve been needed, and he’s pretty sure India and Russia and a few other places would’ve had the tech needed too, up to and including the US, so. It could’ve been anyone, government or private, building a secret lab in a desert where they didn’t think anyone would give a shit if something just happened to go wrong.
Anyway, he’d really been just a kid when the Squids popped up, and it wasn’t until much later that he found out what was nominally the truth about the invaders’ origins—something which happened right when he was called up for his own peculiar kind of conscripted service. Apparently, the government had mysteriously found a few disks, and after he’d decrypted them, the story came out. The Squids’ Queen was one of several aliens that had been found in the desert; eventually, she’d been the only survivor. While some studied the craft’s tech, some other scientists studied the aliens’ gene structure, figured out how to splice it with human DNA, and decided to try for some supersoldiers—typical, really. There’ve been how many super-soldier programs already? And every single one a fucking failure. You’d think the bio freaks and gene geeks and splice fiends of the world would take a fucking hint already. But anyway…the splicing worked, the lab got superanimals, and decided to try for superhumans.
That was more or less where everything went to hell.
Because the Queen was part of a hive mind. She couldn’t work with rabbits and whatnot, too primitive in their thinking or whatever, but with sentient humans? Even half-alien, that was enough for her—and she was stronger, so much stronger then those poor tottering hybrids. She smashed her way into their brains and took over. Just like that. The Queen somehow managed to turn the scientists at this lab into hybrids, too, and under her control they figured out to make the gene code so that it could be made to infect people, like a disease, except not really contagious. Then she had the lab destroyed so there wasn’t anything left to make an antidote from—the ruins were where the disks had been found.
The Squids spread across the Middle East like a plague. Wave after wave of troops were sent to contain them, all miserable failures—Africa fell like a castle of cards, and once the Squids had basically infected or killed everyone in India and then in China, that’d been it for the last significant resistance in Asia, which was a pretty big blow itself, considering the resources India and China had to offer, not least of which was shitloads of people ripe for the infecting. Europe put up more of a fight, and as far as Ivahn knows there’s still some resistance left—especially far north where the Squids don’t do so hot.
But after Great Britain went down, well. It’d only been a matter of time before the Squids set off across the Atlantic for the sunny wastelands of the Americas.
*
The next day, after the LOCKDOWN LIFTED, REPEAT, LOCKDOWN LIFTED buzzes through the cavern shelters, Ivahn makes a total beeline for the mess—for food, for CofFix, and most importantly of all: news. The screen still has KAPPA 368 listed under INCOMING. But there’s no time listed beside their name now, just a word—UNKNOWN. Transports got shot up, he tells himself. No big. They’ll just walk back; fuck knows the inner squads have the training for it. It’s not that big a deal, right? Right. The barrier is a miles away; they’d either be walking through a desert or climbing sheer mountains, and it’s not like there are roads leading right up to Mountain Town’s front door or anything. His mood is not improved one bit by the mail waiting for him—specifically a terse note in his inbox that reads,
UH-OH! THOSE WEAP CRYPTS WERE DUE TWO DAYS AGO! WHY AREN’T THEY IN? GET THEM TO ME ASAP—OR I’LL HAVE TO NOTIFY THE BRASS. – TB
That night he falls asleep at his desk despite the ever-present mug of CofFix sludge, not even halfway through his backlog.
After he makes it to the mess for some breakfast the next day, he checks in at the atrium, only to find that KAPPA 368 is no longer anywhere on the screen.
His stomach turns while he frantically scans the squad lists. Nothing under INCOMING, so at least no more UNKNOWN. But nothing under OUTGOING, either. Not even a PEND ASGN.
Which means that KAPPA 368’s in limbo, and Ivahn has no idea where to start looking—there wasn’t any FAMILY AND FRIENDS OF EPSILON 778 REPORT TO BRAVO WARD type announcements, or god forbid FAMILY AND FRIENDS OF THETA 314 REPORT TO MORGUE types, either. He’s still got that knot of anticipation congealing in his gut; he’d so much rather find Sarha and badger her into playing some chess with him, or maybe go log a few more hours on that old Final Fantasy he found in the scavsalv heaps last month, but—he really does need to get to work before his division head chews him out for real, and an afternoon with TB is less than desirable no matter the reason.
It’s just not fair, he thinks, he feels so cheated of his certain day but it’s not like Pevi planned for the station breach to screw up his return or anything, and Ivahn’s already wasted a whole twenty-four hours on Pevi’s non-arrival. So there’s really nothing left to do but head back to his room, power up the computer, get to work. It’s the same old thing as usual, but for once he’s almost grateful for it, for the work waiting to suck his brain out through his eyes. It’s not long before he gets lost in it, letters and numbers and symbols and code flying across his screen.
*
He met Pevi because the brass decided, as always, to interfere. After the new apartments were carved out of Vapor Peak—sorry, Mount Charity—he was all set to move in, pumped to get his own place at last instead of being stuck in the young adult male dorms, which reeked of old socks and sweat even after it’d just been cleaned. Except brass wouldn’t let him in without a roommate, for some bizarre reason; said they needed to save space, or some such bull. But fortunately, they had a roommate all lined up for him, no worries. Right.
And that roommate was Pevi, number #108748 of squad KAPPA 368. Ivahn expected to hate him—considering Pevi’s a soldier on an active squad assigned to some kind of barrier duty and Ivahn’s your mostly typical introverted geek in Cryption, they should’ve had approximately zilch in common. But somehow Pevi squirmed his way into his life, and weird mission-end rituals aside—Ivahn’s kind of gotten used to Pevi’s coming and going. And to Pevi’s being a blanket hog and his loud and repetitive comments about the disgusting swill that is CofFix, and Pevi’s occasional penchant for jerking off without remembering that the bathroom door is actually a foldout screen that blocks zero decibels, and the way he kind of waves his hand and says he’s “just a soldier” whenever he gets asked to do something that just might need some thought. And Ivahn’d never say it but the most days sometimes seem just that little bit shorter, when Pevi’s mooching around in his boxers making snide comments at the fuzzy monitor in what passes for their living room.
The most days seem to drag on just that little bit longer, when Pevi’s off fighting the good fight. And his (their) bed isn’t nearly as comfy.
*
2230 HRS rolls by on the clock before he takes a break. By some unholy surge of effort he’s cleared a good-sized chunk of his assigned work, and even made headway on that one new crypt he’s been picking at for the past three weeks. After he finally remembers that hello, growling stomach equals need for food, he hurries in the mess, where he tries not to think too closely about the slop he practically inhales—it’s the day’s leftovers, hanging around for the night shifts, and while it’s not exactly haute cuisine, at least it’s food, right? Or at least it’s a food-like substance. As soon as he finishes, he hurries out of the eerily empty mess, taking his regular northeast exit but walks straight past the atrium chamber with its KAPPA 368-less screen. On the way he hears some people from Supplies mentioning how some delivery they were expecting never made it to Mountain Town, but whatever. The Squids are everywhere; it’s to be expected, right?
Since it’s so late, the caves’re almost deserted, and the daylights in their niches are so dim they cast barely enough light to see by. Instead of walking back to his apartment, he wanders around a little—Mountain Town’s walkways are close to empty, and his shoes barely make a sound as they scuff over the metal. The silence is only every interrupted by sounds barely heard, too muffled and overlaid with echoes to identify. Ivahn mostly thinks while he walks, doesn’t really pay attention to where’s he’s going—turning over algorithms, worrying at that one level in Final Fantasy XXXVsomething that he can’t pass, dreaming of all the dreams that’d been lined up in the time before.
But even with Pevi stuck in limbo, Ivahn can’t seem to get him out of his head—without even thinking about it, he winds up at the wards. On the off-chance Pevi was brought in? Hell if he knows, though the thought of Pevi lying injured in a bed is at least marginally more comforting then Pevi lying injured in the dust. Alpha Ward’s for general complaints, Bravo for surgery and emergencies, Charlie for…he’s pretty sure Charlie’s the long-term patients, or maybe that’s Delta. No, Delta’s the one for the nutcases. Isn’t it? He’s trying to figure all this out, and also what the hell Enigma Ward even needs to do since between Alpha through Delta they seem to have all the bases covered. He almost doesn’t notice the group that walks out of one of the ground-level doorways.
The minute he does, though, he can’t pull his eyes away. It’s maybe eight or ten people, dressed in regular squad clothes—fatigues, boots, t-shirts. Even this deep into Mountain Town, most of them still have their gear—guns strapped tight, hands trailing packs and body armor.
But all of this is sort of secondary info, as it were, ‘cause he can’t stop staring at the insignia stitched on their sleeves, the one thing that unites their myriad tees. It’s got a fancy looking K, a 3, a 6, and an 8 in its circle, and that’s all he cares about. KAPPA 368.
*
The squads thing was all CIC Hewlett’s idea. The barrier stations are maintained by five man teams, each guarded by two squads of soldiers, and all of them are rotated regularly to keep the people fresh.
But the barrier stations do get attacked, and sometimes the barrier and border guards fail, so what Hewlett’s done is have a few squads on rotation duty. These inner squads don’t get assigned anywhere in particular, they just wait out there in clumps behind but close to the barrier, and go wherever they’re needed to back up and patch up the defenses. Sometimes a Squid or three manages to get through the barrier without calling attention—it’s still got a few kinks, but a hell of a lot less than there used to be, thank god—and part of the inner squads’ job is also to take those stray infiltrators out before they can maybe get out and call a few more Squids in.
Inner barrier rotation is a really taxing detail, or so he’s heard. You have to be on the alert 24/7, and you have to be able to travel like that, all over the area behind the barrier, and just charge into the hottest fighting and wipe out all the Squids in sight, usually without a really clear idea of what’s going on—people frantically calling for help are generally not the most observant of folks, after all. The station squads have their little bunkers with cannons and machine guns and what have you, but the inners just have their body armor and grenades and rifles. Inners tend to take the most casualties, since they’re the ones in the thick of things. Sometimes, if the Squids are starting to get a little bolder for some obscure Squid reason, a few squads get assigned outside the barrier—like a vanguard, or a patrol, or so they can put any bar-station-attacking Squids in a pincer, or whatever. The squads who’re permanently on inner duty are talked about like the heroes of old—Odysseus, Gilgamesh, Beowulf. Legendary warriors; best of the best.
He has no idea what Pevi’s squad does. He kind of suspects inner—Pevi’s assignments are a little too erratic to be on bunker rotation, but Pevi never comes back from his assignments looking seriously beat up, so. He does know for sure that Pevi’s not part of raiding parties—he’s usually hanging around the apartment or already on duty when those leave, with its guard squads protecting the scavsalv squads as they, well, scavenge and salvage what they can from the old city ruins.
Beyond that—for all he knows, KAPPA 368 is a squad dedicated to keeping up barrier morale with burlesque and blowjobs. He fucking hopes not, but it’s not like he knows any better. And it’s not like Pevi would tell him if he asked. Right?
*
For a moment he’s so terrified he almost can’t breathe. Pevi’s not with them. He can’t see that dove-grey head bobbing between the neon green and cerulean blue and hot pink and—and when the hell did Pevi get a clone? Whoever she is, she looks just like him—sterner, maybe, with hair that’s more steely then dove, a dress shirt on instead of the regular t-shirt, hair pulled back in a bun. She has his eyes, though—that exact shade of nebulous blue-green. For a moment something jerks and knots inside of him, because with that scowl they’re almost, but not quite, just like Pevi’s, and he has no idea where Pevi actually is and oh god, Pevi can’t be dead, can he?
“Are you a clone?” he blurts out, before he can stop himself. Fucking nerves, maybe, or fear and stress—hell if he knows, all he wants to do is rewind time to before he opened his stupid mouth. “I-I mean—” he stutters, because the mysterious Pevi-clone is about to paint the walls behind him in Fresh Organic Red with her eyes alone.
KAPPA 368’s almost abreast of him and they all stop to kind of stop and stare at him and now he’s totally noticing that he left the apartment in his usual ratty scavsalv heap jeans and wrinkled tee, and he kind of wishes he’d taken some time to change but it’s not like he even expected to be at the wards, much less find KAPPA 368 there.
“No,” the maybe-clone says, after an impossibly long moment where Ivahn contemplates the chances of the floor swallowing him whole. “I am not a clone.”
“It, it, it’s just that—um, just that I, I, I know someone who, um, kind of, you know, looks like. Looks like you. Except. Not really. I mean, he’s—well, he’s a, y’know, he’s a he and he just—you know—looks a lot like you. Except. With a smile. And. You know. The eyes. You have the exact same eyes. Mostly, anyway, I don’t—I don’t think he looks so, um, mean. Not that you look mean! Except. You kind of do. Um. Yeah.” He stares at his feet. If he meets any eyes he’s probably going to implode into a black hole composed of pure humiliation.
“I see,” she says, staring at him. Maybe figure out where to hide the corpse? “Hypothetically speaking—if I was, a clone, who exactly would the genetic source be?”
“Um,” he says. “Um. His number is. It’s 10—8, 10874…8, yeah, 748, I mean,” he hastily adds, “that’s his number, right, his name is, is, it’s Pevi. Um. Same squad as you? I think? I mean. I know. KAPPA 368. Yes. That’s him.”
One of the other women in the group kind of rolls her eyes. “Don’t tell me this is—” but Pevi-Clone’s glare shuts her right up. “Pevi,” his maybe-clone says flatly. “You know Pevi?”
“I, um, um, I. I mean, we. I mean. Um. …kind of?” he says weakly. “I mean. We. Th—that is to say, we. We. Live together, but not like that! Not like that, if—if you know what I mean, um. Or..maybe we kind of d—your gun! It’s a Plasimar! A Plasimar 809! You’re almost out of fuel look at the gauge! Yeah. I mean. Yes.”
The Pevi-clone just stares at him like she needs to go scrape off her boot soles, and soon. “Really now.”
Ivahn’s never met Pevi’s squad before. He’d kind of hoped that in the event he did he’d make a better impression then some skinny fish-belly geek who can’t keep his mouth shut.
*
He’s a genius. He is, in that scientifically proven way, it’s not a boast or anything. He doesn’t like spreading the fact around because everyone keeps expecting that past a certain point of smarts, someone’s too intelligent to not be all cool and stuff but seriously—he knows, deep down, that he is simply an incurable geek, no matter his IQ.
After he’d graduated from the McGraine Institute of Technology (top of his class since before he was old enough for anyone to care), he got this offer to go to the Strotholm-Remings Military Institute for college. Good old SRMI, home of the Eagles—private on paper, public in practice. Getting fuck knows how many millions in government funding, supposedly for research only, like the government doesn’t know the funds leak their way into the budget for, well, everything at SRMI. And the school’s certainly got enough high-up alumni who can spare a few hundred k or more a year for the ol’ alma mater.
He was offered a scholarship for full tuition regardless of major, with dorm fees and a living allowance included. Sure, it was basically selling his soul—he wasn’t stupid enough to buy that govschol shit about just wanting to “help the gifted youth of our nation reach and exceed their full potential.” Accepting a government scholarship would be like signing over his professional career—and signing on the dotted line in blood to boot, but hell. SRMI was the place to go for basically any major you could name and a few you couldn’t. Every major advancement in genetics, physics, medicine, whatever, from the past two decades had been in SRMI research labs or made by a SRMI alumni.
SRMI wasn’t in the Ivy League. The Ivy League huddled in its shadow.
His dad had been totally rich enough to pay for any university in the nation. But for some bizarre reason, probably connected to the fact he wasn’t actually Ivahn’s father, he kept pushing for Ivahn to go to some pansy-ass state school—really good rep, sure, and excellent programs, but hello, this is an offer for SRMI, okay. Nothing beats SRMI. Especially an SRMI sans fees.
So he took a deep breath, said screw my dad—and took the offer.
*
The Pevi-clone pulls the Plasimar off her shoulder and checks the panel—it’s still got a couple bars on it, way down low, one goldenrod yellow, one deep orange-red. “Excuse me?” Her voice has a dangerous kind of feel to it now—mechanical, quiet and efficient and inexorable, crushing everything in its path without a backwards look. “I’d say it’s still good for a few more shots.”
He coughs nervously. This is. This is even worse then practically telling Pevi’s maybe-clone that he and Pevi—he and Pevi are. That they. They. Augh. “Did—did you know that there’s this one trick to the Plasimar? I mean. I mean, not, you know, not really a trick, it’s not actually all that, um, that awesome or—or funny, but, but it’s. It’s. This thing. That it does. I mean.” Get to the point, he tells himself. Come on, you know how to speak like a cognizant human being. Don’t you? “You know, the gauge? The fuel gauge it, um, it counts the, um, digerin amoxide—um, I mean, the fuel, digerin amoxide is like it’s scientific name even though it really isn’t because the fuel’s actually, like. This kind of plasma. And we just use digerin amoxide to. To make the plasma. I mean, to make the reaction that makes the plasma in the fuel cell itself and um, anyway!—The gauge. It. It measures the fuel that’s still in the, the—the works, you know, not just what’s left in the cell and if the flaw’s still, still in the rifle Waltzen must be kind of, you know, turning in his grave except he kind of, um, never really got one, I don’t think, which is kind of, um, terrible, I mean. It is terrible. But anyway, I—I guess the brass kept, um, kept pushing for a field-ready version? Or something? So if the flaw is still, you know, part of the, um, the final design, then…that means that when, um, when the gauge gets, really really way down low like that, you know, with two bars almost totally red, it means—it means the rifle’s running off of, of what’s already in the works alone, not—not what’s in the fuel cell. So—it’ll last maybe another twenty shots on low, really low, but that’s it, and you do have a scope attached—um, it’s a Halo, right? That’s pretty awesome, I heard those things were supposed to be hell to adapt for, um, well, anything other then another Halo so. So that’s pretty cool. Right? Um. Um. But the scope’ll probably throw the estimate down a little, and…and…yeah,” he finishes lamely. Maybe he scared them off with his incoherent babbling and he can sneak off to quietly die of embarrassment in a dark corner where his still-blushing corpse will never be found.
There’s a sharp click and the fuel cell pops out—the woman glances down at it briefly, shows him its state of emptiness, then rams it back in. “I’d already figured that one out, but. Not bad. How’d you know?”
The entire squad is sort of murmuring at each other and staring at him. He wants to die. He really wants to die. There are—there are maybe ten people who could break him like a twig and he’s babbling at them about the gun they’ve been probably been using for months, maybe years, by now. He might actually turn tail and run right now, except, except, they’re KAPPA 368. Maybe—maybe they know where Pevi is? His clone seems to know of him, at least, which makes sense since they’re kind of on the same squad and all, and maybe if he just gets a hold on his speech centers he’ll eventually get around to asking why Pevi’s not with them. “Um, um, I was on. The design team. Yeah. I mean, just sort of like, kind of on it, but I was, um, more like an, um, an assistant, but. I mean. So, yeah, I was, you know. An assistant. For the team that—that designed the rifle.”
*
At SRMI he’d eventually decided on a double major. It was basically committing academic suicide, but he’d been really torn—he wanted to do Cryption alone, but at least Weapons Design seemed to appease his dad, who’d looked kind of more pissed at him than usual because he’d actually been asked and even wheedled into attending SRMI while his older brother had had to buy his way in and had flunked out within a semester anyway.
His Cryption major was in both En and De, and he’d really loved that more then WeapDe, though that eventually grew on him, much like a fungus he didn’t want to scrub out. He almost took a minor as well, but decided against it at the last minute: he liked philosophy, and had figured he might as well take advantage of SRMI’s liberal arts programs while he was there, but he liked Cryption way more, and WeapDe involved tougher courses then he’d thought. He ended up taking as many philosophy courses as he could fit in his schedule, though. Mostly in the summers, so he wouldn’t have to go home.
He graduated from SRMI with honors, but afterwards had wanted to go back and get another degree in Cryption, because he was pretty sure that that was what he wanted to do with his life. But in the meantime, Dr. Waltzen—he’d done some internships at the Carney College of Weaponry, Firearms Department, under the professor—offered him a job on his research team as an assistant, and even though Ivahn’s dad had relented and agreed to pay for tuition at SRMI’s grad school, Ivahn did still need to eat and sleep someplace, and he liked Dr. Waltzen well enough. Besides, people frothed at the mouth to work with Waltzen, not as a lowly intern, but as an actual part of his research team, and Carney really had awesome labs, and it seemed likely that he might get a cut if a patent came through, and even a tiny one promised to translate into a hell of a lot of money, so Ivahn had said yeah, he’d love to.
That was how he repaid the government for sending him to SRMI: by helping the design team of the state-of-the-art Plasimar firearms series.
*
Pevi-Clone arches an eyebrow at him, and he can’t really blame her. Who would believe that a twiggy geek like him worked with the professors on one of the hottest projects at SRMI? He wouldn’t have, except it had actually, y’know, happened to him. “Really,” she says.
“Um. Yeah.”
“Any other little tricks I should know?”
Ivahn carefully took the rifle from her, weighed it in his hands. It was all scratched up, and somehow looked alien from the pristine protos they’d had in the lab—those had been docile specimens in Petri dishes, and this was mold growing wild and breaking down bodies and—had he actually made a bio reference? Clearly he was going insane, betraying his beloved chem and physics for biology.
“Um, not really, I guess,” he said at last. “But they ended up going with the low-d plastic combo for the casing of the production version, instead of the double-three-c, which is kind of a pity but I guess Dr. Clarner’s research didn’t really, um, take off like he hoped.”
“They were going to use double-three-c?” The Pevi-Clone still has that hard look in her face, but she sounds kind of interested, so maybe Ivahn’s babbling hasn’t completely convinced her he’s an idiot. He has a feeling she actually knows what double-three-c is, which is pretty cool, because the only other person he personally knows who does is Sarha over in Weaponry’s Research Division.
“Well, we did some, um, calcs based on the samples Clarner gave us, and the weight would’ve been, mmm, maybe, um, two-thirds of low-d? Maybe? His double-three-c was this totally new configuration, almost not even double-three-c at all; I think the patent counted it as a different category of polymer entirely? I’m not sure, I never really worked with him, so…um, his double-three-c would’ve been a lot stronger and it was way more ductile, so more of the P-809 could’ve been made out of it, and it was tons more heat efficient, but Clarner was having trouble coming up with a process for reliably producing large quantities. The one prototype we managed to get fully tricked out was at least as good as the low-d in testings. Lot of the people who tried it out said it was way better in the survey.”
The whole time he was talking, he’d been running his hands along the rifle, checking everything out—it was totally automatic, he hadn’t meant to do it, but part of his job as a lowly assistant had been to clean out the prototypes and stuff after testing and whatnot, and it looked like his hands still remembered what to do even if he didn’t want them to be doing anything at all. He lowered the rifle from where he’d been sighting along the barrel, feeling like he’d been caught with his hand in a cookie jar or something—what was he doing, playing with some soldier’s tried-and-true weapon like it was some delicate prototype, like he had a right to be touching it at all?—and lowered it, hoping he wasn’t as red as he thought, and knowing he was. “Um. Good scope, though. Nice job, um, adapting one of, of Halo’s for the 809’s, um, body and, you know, it’s range.”
“Thanks,” one guy says from the side. All of KAPPA 368’s been staring at him, maybe kind of gaping. Pevi-Clone looks a little less like she wants to smear him on the walls. Which is a good thing, definitely.
“Interesting.” She looked at him, kind of thoughtful, like she was considering him, or something about him. “I’m Yelina, #108749, squad KAPPA 368. Just to clarify—you are looking for Pevi. Yes?”
“Um,” he said uneasily. “I. Yeah. I. Um. I am. Do you. Do you know wha—” he corrected himself, just because the squad was walking out of the wards didn’t mean Pevi had to be in one of them, and pigs may well fly within the walls of Mountain Town one day. “I mean, do you know where—where he is?”
“Pevi’s still in the wards,” she says. “Stuck with someone from high-up, he’ll be out in a few.”
“Speak of the devil.” It’s the guy who said thanks at Ivahn’s scope comment. He’s got pale blue hair, sky-colored, Ivahn would’ve said, except he can’t really remember what color the sky is anymore. At least the squads and barrier crews get to see what it looks like outside of Mountain Town.
*
When things had started looking really bad, and the anarchists and fatalists and terrorists and zealots starting out in full force—as what looked like the end days drew closer, courtesy of the Squids—an angel appeared amidst the chaos to answer the cries of the broken populace.
Well, not really. What happened was a bunch of high-up military officials staged a quiet coup. They declared a new government under Commander-in-Chief Angela Hewlett, and basically started reorganizing society along the lines of the military.
Angela Hewlett was a pretty smart woman, tough as nails, and given the fact they were in the middle of, you know, an alien invasion, she knew about as much as anyone could’ve what she was doing. But in the end it just wasn’t enough—the Squids had numbers, their infection, and their goddamned Queen. As they pushed the lines further and further back, everyone left alive and untouched in easy reach was herded into this one corner of the country before the main fighting force was finally but inevitably forced to retreat—for good.
The stronghold they’d fallen back to had originally been a super-secure ops center in the making from before the coup, and Hewlett had had secretly refitted and expanded for the past few months, in the event that it would be needed for protecting what remained of the people. She started making sorties to gather more civilians, not that there were many left by then, all the while trying to keep the Squids away from Mountain Town proper. Then they’d managed to get a few old school energy field generators upgraded and set them up inside the bunkers surrounding the place, forming the barrier—and thus, Mountain Town was born.
They were in contact with other little pockets of humans the world over, but uniting the effort was slow going—language barriers and less-than-secure comms made it hard to coordinate anything, plus they were scattered all over the world in little enclaves and terribly, vastly, outnumbered. The barrier was in constant need of repair and maintenance, and almost never worked at peak efficiency, and the population of Mountain Town just kept growing; the building crews had still been there when they’d retreated in, and they were still going strong, hollowing out mountains and building inside their shells.
But bizarrely the barrier managed to keep holding the bulk of the Squids out despite almost daily attacks, and in the light of the invasion at least all the brutally divisive alliances and feuds of before had crumbled in the face of imminent doom, and the labs cobbled together in the newly renamed Mount Diligence were actually coming up with effective weapons against the Squids and ways to keep fed and clothed and stuff, and…well. Despite the odds, the people of Mountain Town were surviving, and in whatever cosmic register was keeping track—that had to count for something.
*
He automatically turned to look at the wards—and there was Pevi, leaning heavily on another guy, face totally lit up like Chrismas had come early, and his present had been top-notch porn, or possibly genuine grain alcohol, or both. For a moment, something tensed inside him—then it unknotted, leaving him feeling—flooded. Flooded with…relief. Pevi’s alright, he’s alright, limping maybe, but he’s not dead or maimed or anything and—and that’s good. That’s really, really good. Ivahn can’t stop himself from smiling back. It feels a little awkward on his face and probably looks it too—he usually doesn’t smile a whole lot, but…it doesn’t feel quite as awkward as it used to be.
The fact that the ward Pevi’s walking, okay, limping, out of has a fancy Greek letter ENIGMA over the doorway is, he decides, none of his business.
He can tell he’s been spotted because Pevi kind of starts in surprise when he sees Ivahn, and his eyes kind of flick from Ivahn to the maybe-clone to the Plasimar he’s still clutching and back again—but by the time he and his human crutch have made it to the group, Pevi’s all smiles again. But they’ve never actually had to interact in public before, Ivahn realizes, so he feels kind of tense, apprehensive—he’s not sure what to do. Do they act the same as they do alone? Does the fact they have happen to sex a lot make them—more then roommates, or are they just casual kind of fuckbuddies and what does that even mean for them, or out here are they strangers but only out here, or what, and—
Pevi favors him with an even larger grin and a jaunty wave before he croons, “D’awwww, did my little bitch come to see if his master was alright?”
“What?” he sputters. “Bad dog. Bad, bad dog. Where have you been? I have boots that need licking, you know.”
And Ivahn is mortified because usually this isn’t the kind of thing he even thinks about saying in public, but something about Pevi makes him simultaneously feel crankier than usual and more like he needs to inform the world of it. Plus, if Pevi can make pervy jokes, then he must be feeling fine, so Ivahn can indulge and joke back a little, because. Because. He’s just that happy. So it’s okay. Right?
Pevi just looks kind of stunned at that, like maybe he didn’t expect Ivahn to be acting the same outside the apartment as he does inside it, but his clone is kind of smirking and there’re a few laughs rippling around, and maybe it’s not so hard to just say what he wants to say, after all. He can’t imagine why it’s suddenly such a different feeling. It’s all Pevi’s fault, probably. He’s not sure if he’s upset about it.
“See what I put up with?” Pevi says, mock-mournful. He spreads the arm not slung around his friend’s neck. “You’re not going to send me back with him, are you? I get flogged, you know. Daily.”
The Pevi-Clone replies, “You probably did something to deserve it. Gun?”
“W-What? Oh,” he stammers, once he manages to process that the last question is directed at him. He carefully hands the Plasimar back, and the Pevi-Clone slings the gun over her shoulder before taking a hold of Pevi, who carefully transfers his weight, leans on her instead. The blue-haired person to the side says, “Orders, captain?”
To his eternal surprise, it’s Pevi who waves a hand and looks back at the small crowd. He’d have never thought that Pevi would be appointed to lead—well, anything. “Dismissed. We’ve got two weeks of leave, so take care and make the most of it and for the love of god don’t knock anyone up again, Stell, there was enough drama the last time you did.” The guy with green hair just kind of gapes and sputters indignantly, while everyone else laughs. But it’s all easy, totally good-natured, no one seems to have the kind of tense unhappiness Ivahn’s sure he’d feel if something said that to him. It must be nice, having that kind of camaraderie and ease, and suddenly he feels like Pevi gives him that, and—it’s a nice feeling. He falls into step beside Pevi and his maybe-clone.
The way back to their apartment is kind of weird—Pevi just talks almost nonstop, and his clone makes little snide comments back, and Ivahn occasionally says something but without the relief-fuelled brashness of before. But he can’t help but notice that Pevi’s gaze more often than not seems to be focused on him, even when Pevi’s talking to his clone. It’s kind of like—he’s expecting Ivahn to do something, maybe ask a question but—it’s also sort of like Pevi doesn’t want to answer if Ivahn does, or is maybe afraid he won’t like the answers. But honestly, all Ivahn’s thinking is—well, they’ve gotten this far with their whatever-it-is without questions, so they can still go a little farther without them, right? So he tells himself, very firmly, that he’s not going to ask about the fact Pevi came out of the supposedly research-oriented Enigma Ward, or ask why he’s apparently got a clone when human cloning isn’t supposed to be viable yet, or how in hell he got designated captain of his squad and whether or not he really is on inner duty.
By the time they’re back at the apartment, almost an hour later, Pevi’s limp has nearly disappeared. Ivahn refrains from asking how or why, but when he looks up Pevi catches his eye and he’s pretty sure Pevi’s noticed that he noticed. “Right here,” Pevi says, outside their door. “So sweet of you to play escort, my darling my love.”
For a moment Ivahn starts—is Pevi talking to him? Like that? But no, he’s not, he’s speaking to his clone, who just kind of snorts and glares at him. “Get in and rest,” is all she says. “I expect my leave to not be interrupted by hysterical visits filled with tears and sobbing about knocking up starry-eyed groupies.”
Pevi just smirks and his eyes flick once to Ivahn, up and down his body. How much does his clone know about…about them? “Highly unlikely. But your concern warms the cockles of my heart.”
“You have no heart,” the woman states flatly. “Or if you do, it is suspiciously phallic in shape. See you.” With that, she stalked off down the metal walkway, heading for the elevator.
“I didn’t know you had a clone,” Ivahn says, as the door shuts behind them, the lock making its usual vrrrrr beebeebeep behind them. “She’s really kind of a hardass, isn’t she.”
“Don’t let Yelina hear you call her my clone,” he says with a laugh. “She’d probably castrate you with a spoon, and even I won’t stand up to her when she’s in a pissy mood like that.”
Ivahn thinks back to the my darling my love and the affection in Pevi’s voice. “Then are you two—” he begins.
“Nope, not dating either.” They’re at their box of a bedroom now, so Pevi sits down at the foot of the bed and yanks Ivahn close, nuzzling at his belly and rucking up his shirt, hands running up and down his body. It’s pretty clear what he wants, but Ivahn’s still kind of uncertain; this isn’t really the standard procedure for their weird little ritual, since there was that delay between Pevi getting back and Pevi coming home, but he wants to go along with it anyway—but if he does and this is more sex-because-I (we)-want-to instead of sex-because-we (I)-just-do what does that make them? What does that make him, relative to Pevi? What does that make Pevi, relative to him?
*
The last time they went through this, it was a little different from usual, too. He’d barely come in the door when Pevi slammed him against the wall, mouth crushed against his, before Ivahn could even ask why he was home early. And then Pevi had dragged him to the bed, dragged off their clothes and even though he moved as smooth and sure as always, he felt like he was almost—almost vibrating, and he was pretty sure that he must’ve imagined it somehow because how can anyone vibrate, like a machine or something? But Pevi had been moving with an—intensity, different from usual, or maybe it was just that it was more—focused.
Even stranger, Pevi didn’t go first—he just slipped a hand between his legs, fingered him fast and clumsy, pushed his legs up almost to his chest and fucked Ivahn first, instead of the other way around. Afterwards, they’d just lain there on the bed while he tried to get his head to stop spinning the way it always did after he came, and Pevi just stayed there half-on half-off of him, still with that weird almost-vibrating kind of feeling but—people don’t vibrate, right? And then barely ten minutes later Pevi’d started kissing again, feeling almost—desperate, or hungry, running hands up and down Ivahn’s body, and there was something in his face—something strange and vulnerable and his eyes had looked really, really weird, just for a nanosecond, the iris too big and the pupil gone, and somehow it seemed to Ivahn that Pevi had—wanted, had needed something, except Ivahn didn’t know what the hell it could be, much less how to give it to him.
Pevi had been moving over him like he wanted to, you know, do it again, but the moment Pevi’s hand moved down his back past his hips, he’d—kind of bucked, because he was really still sore, and for a moment he wished he hadn’t, because—if Pevi wanted it, if Pevi needed it, he just—wanted to be able to do something for Pevi, instead of watching those eyes bore into him with a plea he couldn’t answer. But Pevi just froze when he felt Ivahn move, pulled back and pushed off the bed, still hard, and then there was the sound of the bathroom screen sliding shut him
Ivahn stayed there in the room, feeling vaguely guilty while he listened to the faint sounds of Pevi jerking off, and he must have fallen asleep, because when Ivahn finally woke up, Pevi was all dressed in his uniform and staring at him quietly. Before Ivahn could ask any questions—like what the hell was that all about? or why are your clothes all torn and bloody, but you aren’t?—Pevi had kind of half crawled onto the bed and kissed the side of his mouth, said I’m sorry—the first words either of them had spoken, since Ivahn walked into the apartment—and then there was the sound of boots clattering on the metal floor, and the front door closing behind Pevi to the familiar tune of vrrrr beebeebeep.
Ivahn had just kind of stared at the ceiling, trying to figure out what had happened and what it meant and just hoping Pevi hadn’t left to do something stupid like—commit suicide, which was a stupid thing to worry about, but he’d been so—weird, and not like himself, and he’d left when he never had done that before, and for a moment he wondered a little guiltily whether Pevi had always been like that when they had sex, and he’d just been too self-absorbed to notice, before he’d fallen asleep once more.
*
“Family?” he hazards. “Twins?”
“Mmhmm,” Pevi says, pulling Ivahn onto the bed. “Got it in one.”
“You never mentioned having any family,” he accuses, because if Pevi did this is the first time he’s heard about it.
“Yeah, well.” He can feel Pevi’s hands under his shirt, warm against his back. “You looked pretty damn comfortable with that P-809 in your hands, O Geek from Cryption.”
“Why were you coming out of Enigma Ward?” he counters. Pevi just grins up at him and pulls him down for a kiss. “And you can’t possibly want to, to, you know, what about your leg?”
“Touché.”
Which one, he wants to ask, the ward or the leg thing, but suddenly Pevi’s got him pinned and is starting to really kiss him, and it looks like he really does want to, to, you know, leg be damned, not that he’s even acting like he’s in pain or even injured or anything—and—and—he’s getting kind of distracting, so Ivahn puts the question away for later—it can wait, but Pevi can’t or more likely, won’t, and well, neither can he, just now, so—
“WILL THE CAPTAIN OF SPHINX 553 REPORT TO MISSION CONTROL ASAP, REPEAT, WILL THE CAPTAIN OF SPHINX 553 REPORT TO MISSION CONTROL ASAP.”
Ivahn just stares at where the PA would be, in their living room, kind of appalled and also really, really put out. Now? Of all the stupid blasted times, the CIC and top brass have to speak to him now? With Pevi right here and kissing him and touching him and everything?
“Relax,” Pevi murmurs into his mouth. “It’s not all of SPHINX 553, just the captain. Relax.”
“Um,” Ivahn says, instead of asking how in hell does Pevi know what his squad is. “I’m kind of…the captain of SPHINX 553.”
Pevi pulls back and just gives him this look that’s like, you have no right to accuse me of keeping secrets now, Mr. Cryption Squad Captain on His Way to Freaking Mission Control. “Oh really now.”
He’s starting to blush, he knows he is, but he sits up and reaches for the storage cabinets mounted in the walls regardless, rummaging through his clothes for his fatigues and insignia shirt, and that damn tag. “It’s—It’s probably urgent. I need to—to go and dammit let go of me.” A moment later, he adds, “And stop trying to grab my ass, you bastard. Christ.”
“You know,” Pevi says casually, watching him scramble into what passes as his uniform, “I never really bought that just-a-geek-in-Cryption thing.”
“That’s okay,” he replies, fastening the battered metal tag on his wrist. Pevi raises an eyebrow at that; usually only the higher-ups get tags like his, but he figures Pevi deserves to know a little more about him, just to keep the odds even. “I never really bought the just-a-soldier shit either.”
Pevi just grins and hauls him down by the collar for a kiss, and well, his insignia shirt’s got enough wrinkles, a few more won’t matter. “Hurry,” he says, just as Ivahn’s about to walk out the door, “or I’ll start without you.”
He’s pretty sure that Pevi wouldn’t dare, but even so—he really fucking hopes what whatever the CIC needs him for, it’s not going to take long. Because KAPPA 368’s finally back for real, and Pevi—Pevi’s home. And Pevi’s waiting for him.
*
He doesn’t know that much about Pevi. The most info he’s ever gotten out of the other man is that he was soldier before Mountain Town. But Pevi’s got this weird dove-grey hair that Ivahn knows for a fact isn’t dyed. And his eyes are this strange blue-green color that he’s almost certain can’t be natural, and in the dark—they sometimes have this bright red gleam where, logically speaking, the back of his skull should be. Some of his scars look a little too delicate to be purely the product of getting beat around by Squids. Ivahn’s not naïve enough to think that the geniuses of the world all go on to do great good in the world—especially if they’re govschol kids from SRMI, like him. The military can always find a place for the bio freaks and splice fiends and gene geeks of the world. So Ivahn figures the “just a soldier” thing’s maybe seventy-five percent true.
Then again, all he’s ever told Pevi about his life before Mountain Town is that he was in university when the Squids swarmed the continent. If it’s ever occurred to Pevi to wonder why Ivahn wasn’t conscripted to the army or navy or whatever like every other twenty-something in the nation once the Squids starting their move across the Atlantic, or to ask why Ivahn’s allowed to work from the apartment if he’s supposed to be just your typical geek in Cryption, he’s never shown it.
All in all, Ivahn figures he and Pevi are probably about equal in the truth department, and that suits him just fine. They don’t need the past to build a future.