Fic: "Lab Rat," Inception, Nash/Yusuf, R

[_beetle_]

Like giving birth, this.

Lab Rat
Author:
beetle_comma_the
Fandom: Inception
Pairing: Nash/Yusuf, Ariadne
Rating: R
Word Count: Approx. 10000
Disclaimer: Look over there! ::runs away::
Notes: Set post-Inception by six months.
Summary: Written for a prompt (which I can't find, now) from
kirstenlouise who wanted Nash in COBOL's hands and Yusuf discovering him, and eventually planning an escape attempt.



Nash doesn’t know how long he’s been in COBOL’s holding tank, but he knows they’ve been in to clean him up and shave him more times than he can keep track of. And he can’t keep track of much between the unchanging fluorescence of the lab and the massive amounts of Somnacin in his system.

Sometimes he hums Wagner while mentally Building places he’s been. Not because of the Somnacin, but out of sheer boredom and something he chooses not to identify as loneliness.

The scientists rarely talk to him. They just shove needles into him and take notes. Hook him up to PASIVs (or not) and take notes. Leave him in his tiny tank for endless hours to moan, shake, and sweat Somnacin out of his pores like a fucking junkie . . . and take notes.

Nash can only imagine what they write, and suspects he doesn’t want to know. It’s enough to know that he spends most of his life these days naked and strapped to a table, with IV’s running out of what seems like every inch of available skin.

“I-I’m a p-porcupine,” he tells one of the scientists solemnly. It’s the first thing he’s volunteered since COBOL caught up to him in Kuala Lumpur. The first thing he’s said in forever that wasn’t a response to a direct question.

The only reply he receives is more notes taken (scribble-scribble-scribble-scratch) and one of the assistants gags him before he can say anything else.

I’m a porcupine, Nash thinks as the latest batch of Somnacin sweeps him under.

Even in the dreams they have him construct-always of the lab-he’s gagged and shaking, and when he’s finally allowed to kick, sometimes waking life lab is filled with hoarse, muffled screams that he’s too delirious to recognize as his own.

After one awful batch, all he knew beyond those horrible screams was that his skin was burning and he couldn’t even move to claw it off.

“Compound fifty-seven is a wash,” one of the COBOL scientists had said as Nash struggled and writhed, seeming completely unsurprised. He’d even frowned down at Nash like it was his fault, too. “Tell Halstead he owes me £500.”

The assistant had nodded. More notes were taken while the screams continued and Nash was baked alive in his own skin.

That was one of the bad batches. One of the bad days.

*

Totems are for saps like Cobb and Arthur, who actually give two fucks about which reality they waste their lives in.

And yet, in the early days of his imprisonment, Nash had wished desperately for one. He’d thought, back in those dim, terrible first weeks that it would have been handy to have some way to tell dream from reality, since he was trapped in both.

Unable to escape from both.

But as time wore on, he had realized once more that, dream or reality, it simply didn’t matter. Both were the same, except in one, he occasionally got to Build. Building itself had become a sort of totem (if he was Building, he was sleeping) after awhile. But by then, he honestly didn’t care. Nothing mattered anymore except his next dose of whatever experimental variants of Somnacin they chose to give him. Granted, it made bad things happen sometimes, such as screaming, and baking alive, and laughter that wouldn’t abate no matter how deeply he’d been sedated.

But, simply put, Somnacin keeps the shakes and the sweats away. It keeps the screams and hallucinations away. It keeps the burning and laughter away.

It keeps a bullet in the head away but only, Nash knows in his relatively coherent moments, for as long as he’s a useful, mostly sane little lab rat.

So, even though he’s still occasionally a porcupine, he knows better than to talk about it anymore. He never says anything, except in response to the seemingly pointless questions they ask him.

*

The new scientist smiles a lot.

From the farthest corner of his tiny holding tank, Nash watches with dull, barely comprehending eyes as the scientist bustles around the lab rearranging this, tweaking that, directing lab assistants, and muttering to himself about this or that.

He never, ever scribbles notes, and laughs whenever the assistants show him something on a clipboard. Then he takes the clipboard and has the assistant move a table or a chair. The offending clipboard gets dropped in the trash.

Finally, after he’s got the lab resituated just the way he likes, the scientist drifts over to the tank, hunkers down till he and Nash are at eye level and peers in for a long time.

“Well. They could at least dress you . . . but I suppose that would make you too human a lab rat, eh?”

It’s a direct question, of sorts. One Nash doesn’t understand. So he opens his mouth and says the first thing that comes to mind:

“You c-can’t kill me if I’m n-not a p-porcupine.”

The scientist blinks, surprise showing in his dark, dark eyes. Then he frowns-why do they all frown, as if Nash has any power over his situation, let alone enough power to displease them?-and looks over his shoulder.

“I was told the volunteer was reasonably sane.” The scientist looks back into the tank and frowns again, as if seeing Nash for the first time. “I was also told he was a volunteer.”

Another scientist comes over to the tank and frowns down at Nash. “He is still sane, Dr. Dadali . . . after a fashion,” this one huffs, crossing his arms. He looks naked without a clipboard, and it makes Nash giggle.

“Sane. Right.” The new scientist stands up. At full height, he’s got a few inches on the other scientist, though his shoulders are a bit stooped. “And why, again, is he being kept in a holding tank if he’s volunteering?”

“As I said before . . . sir . . . he’s recently become violent and had to be contained for our protection.” The scientist is frowning down at Nash harder than ever, as if daring him to say something. And it’s then that Nash recognizes him as the one who was owed £500 by Halstead.

Maybe he never got it. Maybe that’s why he frowns so much.

“Violent, eh?” The new scientist looks at Nash again and smiles a little. “What is your name, oh, Violent One?”

“Nash.” It comes out after a moment of thought, and is followed by his last name. The new scientist smiles a bit wider, showing even white teeth.

“It is a pleasure to meet you, Nash. You may call me Dr. Dadali. I’ll be heading the research and development portion of the program.”

He seems to expect Nash to say something in reply, so Nash digs around in the soupy morass of his mind for an appropriate answer. “N-nice work, if you can g-get it.”

Surprised again, Dr. Dadali laughs. “Yes, I suppose it is,” he says when his laugh tapers to a few chuckles. “Now, you must tell me: are you truly violent?”

Nash shrugs. There are times he blacks out-especially after a particularly intense kick. Who knows what he does when the world goes out like a faulty light bulb?

“I see.” Dr. Dadali is frowning again, and Nash finds he misses the smile. “And are you truly a volunteer for this program?”

Nash is about to shrug again-he honestly can’t remember and doesn’t know what to say-when a small motion catches his eye.

The other scientist is glaring at him, and nodding his head slightly.

Nash returns his gaze to Dr. Dadali, who’s watching him with some alien emotion in his eyes.

“Yes. I’m a v-volunteer.”

The doctor doesn’t seem satisfied, but he nods once and turns away, calling to one of the hovering lab assistants.

“At least find a hospital gown and robe for him, man-it’s freezing in here!”

Nash supposes it is. He’s always covered in goose-bumps, always slightly numb. But he prefers that to baking alive. To sweat that’s both thick and bitterly chemical-smelling.

The scientist who made a bet with Halstead is still glaring in at him, and Nash cringes, trying to wedge himself further into his corner.

“I’m not a p-porcupine!” he whispers, hiding his face and closing his eyes. Waiting for that bullet to shatter plexi-glass before it shatters his skull.

The next time he looks up, he realizes he must have blacked out while waiting for the bullet because the lab is empty and for the first time, most of the lights are off.

Near the code-locked door of his cell is a small pile of fabric. Tentative examination reveals a hospital Johnny, matching pants, and a thin blue hospital robe.

Unused to the darkness after so long, Nash spends his first ersatz night warm, but shivering and wishing Dr. Dadali would come back and ask him questions. Anything to make the darkness less heavy.

*

The screaming has been going on forever, it seems. Lying in his sweat-soaked hospital clothes, Nash couldn’t care less, however. All he can think about is Somnacin.

The lab’s gone dark at least five times since the last batch of tests was run. Five days since Dr. Dadali became his keeper, and not once has Nash been given a dose of Somnacin, perchance to dream.

“Why was he allowed to become addicted to the compounds, Dr. Leitich?” Dr. Dadali had asked the scientist who may or may not have gotten his £500. As usual, Nash gets frowned at.

“Our testing schedule was what you might call rigorous, doctor,” Leitich had said with a truculent sigh. “We didn’t have time to ween him off of every compound we tested.”

“I see. But you do realize that his addiction to Somnacin and the remains of . . . was it sixty-three different compounds? That such a high level of chemicals in his system would have muddied your research rather thoroughly.” Dr. Dadali had turned his frown on Leitich, who held his defiant stance for a few moments longer before sighing again, and looking chastened.

“Before we run any more tests, he must be allowed to detoxify.” Dr. Dadali had glanced at Nash, that alien emotion on his face once more.

“But the next tests-“

“Will be done correctly, or they won’t be done at all.” Dr. Dadali had said, his voice as cold as stones on icy ground. And that had been that.

Since then, Nash has been hot and cold, cramping and rubbery-limbed, happy and sad, sweating till it feels as if he’ll drown in it, and so dry he thinks he might scratch his skin clean off. He’s been sleeping so deeply, the assistants weren’t able to wake him to feed him. He’s been so wired he hasn’t sleep for two days straight. He’s been ravenous and nauseas, constipated and incontinent.

He’s been all of these things for all of these days-sometime within a span of hours. The only thing he hasn’t been, is dreaming.

This is day five, and if Nash had ever been a religious man, he’d think he was in Hell.

“Please,” he husks around his dry throat as two assistants help him out of the tank and to the showers. He’d soiled himself halfway between the narrow bunk and the toilet in his cell when his legs had suddenly given out. “I n-need Somnacin.”

Dr. Dadali, sitting at his workstation, hadn’t looked up, squinting from behind glasses at his computer screen. But he had stopped typing, one finger hovering over a key. “I apologize, Nash, but the Somnacin build-up in your system must be purged before further testing can happen.”

Then Nash is past Dadali, being dragged by the two disgusted assistants, who curse him roundly, and leave him in the showers to clean himself as best he can without properly working legs. Halfway through a bad job of it, Nash blacks out again. . . .

. . . only to wake in a proper bed. A hospital bed, in a dimly lit room four times as large as the holding tank. He’s hooked up to machinery that beeps and blips, and cuffed by the wrist to one rail of the bed. When he can summon the energy to turn his aching head, he can see Dr. Dadali watching him from a chair next to the bed. He looks rumpled and weary, but his eyes are intent and bright.

“Are you violent?” he asks quietly, those dark eyes demanding nothing less than the absolute truth. Nash groans and turns his head away, thinking that at this point, a bullet to the head might be kinder than the Hell of the past few days.

“No,” he whispers, closing his eyes again, shutting out fate and fluorescent lighting. What he can’t shut out is that perennial hospital smell of industrial cleaners and sickness, the latter coming entirely from himself.

After a few minutes he feels a light touch on his head that gets heavier as a large hand settles firmly on it, a thumb gently stroking his temple.

He falls asleep under that warm, anchoring caress, waiting for a bullet that never comes.

*

When next he wakes up he’s still in the hospital room, but the machinery is gone.

He is no longer cuffed to the bed.

*

He awakes many more times and falls asleep many more times. Sometimes the machinery has reappeared and Nash has a fever so high, he thinks his brain must blister.

Other times, the room is bare of everything except Nash, the bed, the IV through which, he suspects, he is fed, and the catheter.

Sometimes, he wakes up in the night to a hand stroking his head, though most times he doesn’t.

Other times, he wakes up to whey-faced lab assistants prodding him and checking their ever-present clipboards.

Nash has a dim memory of someone-Dr. Dadali?-throwing out clipboards like they were made of knives and fire, and it makes something long dormant within him finally start to wake up.

“What’d you do-fish that out of the garbage, sweetheart?” Nash asks one time, or tries to. His voice is almost completely gone, and his lips immediately split when he licks them. Half words come out on a bloody whisper.

The lab assistant looks at him startled. Then her lip curls. “You’re awake. Dr. Dadali will be thrilled,” she says flatly, her tone both displeased and disapproving. She scribbles something brief on the clipboard then slides the pen under the clip.

Swimming up from the recesses of somewhere, Nash lunges for and holds onto that very important facet of himself that’s been long sleeping-long submerged under a river of Somnacin.

He blows her an ironic kiss, and feels blood drool down his chin. That curl of her lip turns into an outright moue of disgust. She starts to move away, but Nash reaches out, snake-quick, and grabs her wrist-the one with the clipboard. She immediately drops it on the bed and yelps, her eyes rolling toward the corner of the room opposite the door.

There’s a CCTV cam there, and Nash snorts. “You think they could get here faster than I could snap your bony wrist?”

“You don’t want to harm me in any way,” the assistant says shakily, her watery blue eyes saucer-wide in her pale, pale face. “Even Dadali won’t be able to save your worthless carcass, if you do.”

Eyebrows quirking up, Nash squeezes her wrist until she moans. “Is that so? Well, lemme tell you what I think. I think people like you are a dime a dozen around here, and me? Not so much. In fact, I think that I could do pretty much anything to you . . . and they’d just dispose of the body. And then they’d find some other plain-jane to scribble notes about me and suck Leitech’s pencil-dick.”

The assistant colors so quickly, Nash knows he’s hit a nerve. Whether about her value to COBOL, her connection to Leitech, or both, he can’t tell.

But then she’s turning pale again, and Nash can tell. It’s both, but especially the realization that she’s worth less than nothing to COBOL. And that Nash could, indeed, do anything to her.

She starts tugging on her arm in earnest, but Nash, despite his overall weakness, still has a grip like a vise.

“Don’t worry, babe,” he says, grinning, knowing he looks like a bloody death’s head. He lets the assistant go and she falls flat on her lack of ass. “I wouldn’t fuck you even with Leitech’s dick . . . so go on. Am-scray.”

Startled tears in her eyes, the assistant gets to her feet, and hurries out, slamming the door open and shut. There’s a click as a lock engages, and Nash knows someone out there in pencil-dicked scientist land still thinks he might try to escape.

What they don’t know is there’s nowhere and no one to escape to. Cobb and Arthur had been Nash’s last bridges, and he’d thoroughly burned them. And even assuming he had the impetus and wherewithal to escape, COBOL’s clutches are global. They’d catch up to him, eventually.

This is it for Nash. He’s a lab rat till they get tired of him. Till they decide all he’s worth is the cost of replacing a bullet.

Wiping his mouth on the back of his hand, he eases himself up a little and grabs the clipboard. Though it takes a bit to make his eyes focus properly, eventually they do, and the first thing he looks for is the date. When he finds it, he can’t believe it’s right, but then . . . what would be the point of COBOL lying on its own private records?

For a while he just sits there, staring at the date with unseeing eyes, tears rolling down his face unheeded.

“Six months,” he breathes, his throat working and clicking against thirst and unshed tears.

Pashing down the stirrings of anger before they can become full-on rage, Nash scans the rest of the notes. Each sentence starts with the phrases subject exhibits or subject displays.

Licking his stinging, coppery lips once more, Nash takes out the pen, and carefully scrawls:

Subject exhibits a craving for KFC. Subject also displays curiosity about who he has to fuck to get solid food in this place.

His handwriting, though it hasn’t improved for shit, is legible enough.

He slides the pen back into the clip and tosses the clipboard at the locked door.

He falls asleep listening to his stomach growl.

*

Nash is bored.

He’s finished all the water in the small pitcher beside his bed, as well as taken the pills left next to it (Vitamin D, Nash recognizes without surprise. He’s always had a deficiency).

After what feels like hours of trying to go back to sleep, he’s taken to rooting through the small table next to his bed, and finds, of all things, a Gideon bible, a small mirror, a comb-which is really a laugh, since the first thing his captors had done upon getting him to this compound was to shave his head-and a remote control for a television that’s apparently been removed.

So Nash takes out the mirror and sees what there is to see.

Well, he was never a prize, but now, after six months of a starvation diet and drug addiction, he’s pathetic-looking. With his closely-shorn head, sunken eyes, and hollowed out cheeks, he reminds himself of pictures he used to see of Holocaust victims, skeletal and hopeless.

But his eyes are still lively, surrounded though they are by dark circles. His lips are indeed cracked and grimed with dried blood, but when he smiles-carefully-it’s the same lazy, crooked smirk he’s always had.

Oddly satisfied, Nash puts the mirror away and takes out the bible.

Flipping through it is just as rewarding as it’s always been: which is to say not at all.

In the end, he entertains himself by idly snapping teeth out of the comb and shying them at the pitcher. More often than not, it’s nothing but net.

He’s down to his last two teeth when the door clicks.

Tossing the comb back in the drawer, Nash pushes himself up a bit more, running a hand over his head (the hand comes away fairly greasy). When the door opens, it’s Dr. Dadali, smiling his wide, white smile. His lab coat is wrinkled, as are the clothes underneath it-dark slacks, and a hideously patterned brown and yellow sweater over a yellow shirt. His hair is a riotous halo of slightly too-long curls and he’s not wearing his glasses.

He looks human, unlike most of the COBOL drones and thugs Nash has had the pleasure of meeting.

“Good afternoon, Nash,” Dadali says brightly, closing the door behind him. “How are you, today?”

Smirking, Nash lays back in the pillows, linking his hands behind his head. “Hungry as a motherfucker, and I have to piss.”

Without losing a beat, Dadali laughs. “Both good signs, I’d say.”

“Yeah. I’d be horny, too, if not for the damn catheter-and if you had better looking lab assistants. I may have to complain to the management about how you guys treat your guests,” Nash adds. Dadali approaches the bed and looks down at Nash for so long, it makes him fidget. “What?”

“Just . . . curious, I suppose.” Dadali says consideringly. “You don’t seem like the type to volunteer for-well, anything. Let alone for scientific research that includes mind-altering chemicals in large doses.”

“Yeah, well, maybe you’re not as good a people reader as you think.”

Smiling again, Dadali takes one of Nash’s wrists and tugs it free, his large, warm fingers feeling for Nash’s pulse. He counts to himself then nods approvingly. “Still about one-twenty over eighty. And as I said, I was merely curious about COBOL’s most important guest.”

Ignoring the way his skin prickles up in goose-bumps all over, Nash huffs and doesn’t pull his hand out of Dadali’s gentle grip. “Didn’t you hear? Curiosity killed the cat.”

“Ah, but satisfaction brought him back, did it not?” When Dadali lets go of his wrist, Nash immediately tucks it behind his head again. “In any event, we can have the catheter removed and get you started on semi-solid foods again.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

“Unfortunately I can’t do anything about the lab assistants,” Dadali says dryly. Nash sighs with put-on sadness.

“I thought not. In that case, at least tell me what’s for dinner?”

“For the invalid, the cafeteria is serving mulligatawny soup with lime jello for dessert.” Nash makes a face and Dadali laughs again. “But if Mrs. Noddings is on duty, I may be able to get the jello changed to tapioca pudding, instead.”

Nash rolls his eyes. “You like me. You really, really like me.”

“As evidenced by this palatial suite I’ve had you moved to,” Dadali crosses his arms and rocks back on his heels. “So. Other than hungry, having to piss, and being not-quite-horny, how do you feel?”

“Hunky-dory.”

Dadali bends a stern look at him-one that’s hardly convincing on such round, congenially handsome features. But Nash caves anyway; he’s always been a sucker for a pretty face.

“Okay, okay, I feel . . . kinda weak, but not as weak as I did before. My head is clear for the first time in, oh, six months.” Nash serves Dadali’s stern look right back at him, and the man rocks back on his heels again. “I dunno. I feel like I’ve gone through cold-turkey Hell.”

Dadali hmms. “Well, that sounds about right. We did cut off the Somnacin rather abruptly, but the levels in your system were dangerously high. Your brain was practically a pudding. It’s a miracle the damage wasn’t permanent.”

I’m a porcupine, Nash thinks, and shudders. “Yeah. A miracle. So when do you guys start testing again? A day? A week?”

“Actually, that depends entirely upon you.” Dadali smiles a little, just a tiny upward quirk of his full lips. “As a volunteer you do have the right to, at any time, opt out of the proceedings. Or you should have that right.”

Nash rolls his eyes again. “Why doctor, whatever are you implying?”

That tiny smile becomes the wide one that Nash can’t help returning. “Implying? Nothing. Just putting forth a hypothesis.” Nash snorts and Dadali shrugs. “I can have Nurse Onyango remove the IV and the catheter, and help you to the en suite, if you’d like.”

“That sounds like a slice of fried fucking gold.” Nash scratches his greasy scalp and makes a face. “Please tell me there’s a shower in there?”

*

Turns out, Nash doesn’t need help getting to the bathroom and draining the lizard. But by the time he’s done with his shower, his legs are shaking and barely support him. The room is even spinning, just a bit.

Leaning against the bathroom lintel, he watches as Nurse Onyango quickly and efficiently strips his bed and remakes it with fresh sheets and military corners. Her silence and understated competence remind him of Arthur and he feels a rather unexpected pang of . . . something. Maybe nostalgia, though Nash is too unfamiliar with the emotion to be certain.

“All clean, are we?” Nurse Onyango doesn’t even look up, and Nash has the impression she knows exactly how long he’s been standing there.

“Clean as a whistle and sharp as a thistle, mum,” he says, copying her faint-but-there English accent. She glances at him, then double takes.

“You should have called me,” she says reprovingly as Nash staggers out of the doorway stark-ass naked. But she’s quick to help him, and steer him toward the bed, bearing up under his admittedly slight weight like it’s nothing.

“Didn’t think you’d still be out here,” Nash grunts, sitting down with relief so great it’s almost like sexual release. Which makes Nash’s scrubbed-raw dick twitch with interest his body is currently in no shape to do anything about. Nonetheless he sighs and thanks Nurse Onyango when she brings him his robe. Then he thanks her again when she helps him into it.

“So I heard a rumor that a man could get some lunch. . . ?” he hints, belting the robe loosely. Nurse Onyango puts her hands on her ample hips and glares down at him.

“You need rest more than you need food, young man,” she tsks, like the mother Nash barely had.

“I can rest after I eat. Please? Dr. Dadali said I could have some soup and tapioca pudding.” Nash makes the most pathetic face he’s capable of, and judging by what he saw in the mirror earlier, that’s pretty damn pathetic.

And it works. Nurse Onyango’s stern, dark face thaws just enough that he almost smirks.

In the end, he winds up with a small bowl of volcanically hot soup, dry wheat toast, and two small, tepid cups of tapioca pudding-thankfully sans raisins.

All in all, it’s pretty standard hospital fare, and the best thing Nash has ever eaten.

*

“So . . . how long do I get to stay in these cushy digs?” Nash asks the next time Dadali pokes his head in, two days later.

“As long as you wish. Though I don’t know why you weren’t given this room to begin with. That holding tank isn’t meant for-er-“

“People?” Nash smirks at Dadali’s discomfort. “No shit, Sherlock. I used to sleep on the floor and shit in a bucket, the first few weeks I was in there. When they put the bed and toilet in, I thought I’d died and gone to the Ritz-Carlton.”

Dadali searches Nash’s eyes, his own gone soft with that alien emotion that Nash finally realizes is concern. It’s been so long since he’s seen that emotion in regards to himself, he’s not even certain that’s what it is, till Dadali speaks again.

“They’ve treated you quite badly, haven’t they?”

Nash shrugs. “Better than I expected, actually.”

“Which says rather a lot about your expectations,” Dadali notes softly, and Nash shrugs again.

“Beggars can’t be choosers.”

Tilting his curly head, Dadali frowns. It’s as unnatural a look on his face as a smile would be on Leitech’s. “Is that what you were before you decided to sign on with COBOL? A beggar?”

Far from offended-it takes a lot to offend him-Nash is amused. “You might think that,” he laughs, laying back in the bed and looking Dadali over. Today’s outfit of rumpled lab coat, brown slacks, purple sweater-vest and cream-colored shirt is slightly less eye-insulting than the last outfit Dadali had worn.

But beyond the dumpy clothes, he’s a tall, solidly built man with broad, if stooped shoulders, and an air of relaxed curiosity about him that Nash should dislike . . . but doesn’t.

“So, if not a beggar, what were you?” Dadali persists, and Nash can’t help but let his own surprise show.

“They didn’t tell you? It’s not sitting in a confidential file somewhere?”

Dadali clears his throat. “It is in your background file, of course. But I prefer to avoid preconceptions and hear from the volunteer who and what he is.”

“Ahh. So . . . I could tell you I was . . . I dunno, a rent-boy, let’s say, and you’d believe me?”

With another considering tilt of his head, Dadali hmms. “No.”

Vaguely hurt, Nash lets his lip curl. “Not pretty enough to turn a profit, I guess.”

“On the contrary. I simply cannot imagine you willingly kneeling to or rolling over for anyone, no matter how high the price.” This time, Dadali’s the one to shrug, and he looks everywhere but Nash’s eyes. Nash can’t tell if that’s because the man is lying, or because he’s not.

“Oh. Huh. Clearly you don’t know me very well.” he looks away, thinking about how easily he’d rolled over on Cobb and Arthur . . . how willingly he’d been ready to throw them to the wolves to save his own skin. He’d literally gone to his knees to beg for Saito’s protection and at the time, it’d seemed like . . . not the right thing to do, but the necessary thing.

Nash has always provided himself on making the hard, but necessary decisions, but now, many of them sit like lead and acid in his gut when he thinks about them. If he had to put a name to the feeling, he’d call it shame. Another alien emotion, and one he’d rather do without.

“Are you alright?”

Nash starts when a heavy hand settles on his shoulder, and he glances up to see open concern writ large on Dadali’s face again.

“I’m fine, just-hey, can I ask you something?”

“Anything.”

“What’s your first name?”

Dadali’s eyebrows shoot up and he removes his hand, shoving it into the pocket of his lab coat along with the other one. “That’s not at all what I expected. But my name is Yusuf.”

“Dr. Yusuf Dadali.” Nash tastes the words like they’re wine. It’s a musical sort of name, and he likes it. “Can I call you ‘Yusuf’?”

Dadali hesitates and Nash grins his most charming grin, aware that in his current state it’s probably more scary than charming. But Dadali sighs and picks at the hem of his ugly sweater.

“It would be very improper. Especially in this place.” He rolls his eyes to the CCTV cam and back to Nash meaningfully. Nash rolls his own eyes but for a different reason.

“Don’t you run this joint?”

Drawing himself up, Dadali huffs. “This division, anyway. But yes.”

“So . . . what do you want me to call you?”

Dadali pinches the bridge of his nose and shakes his head, curls bobbing and bouncing. “You are quite impossible.”

“Not for you, I’m not,” Nash murmurs under his breath, giving Dadali an appraising once-over. He can just about imagine the body that’s hidden under all the muted clothing, and he likes what he imagines very much, judging from the low-down, dirty tingle going on south of the border.

“What?” Surprised dark eyes meet Nashs’s own, and Nash lets his grin turn into that lazy smirk that’s gotten him laid and punched out in equal measures.

“Nothing.” Linking his arms behind his head, Nash doesn’t bother to pretend he was doing anything other than checking the good doctor out. “So tell me, Dr. Yusuf, who’s a guy gotta blow to get some tv up in this bitch?”

*

The television arrives later that afternoon.

Nash watches reruns of Taxi till well after midnight, then spends a little time in the bathroom with Rosy Palm and her five sisters.

Instead of his usual masturbatory aides-he’d have gone on his knees for Arthur in a heartbeat, and let Cobb fuck him raw-he strokes off to images of Yusuf doing nothing more titillating than clacking away at his keyboard, an absent frown on his face.

When imaginary!Yusuf looks up at Nash and smiles, Nash comes so hard it hurts-comes so hard his groans and curses echo off the walls.

Leaning on the wall and still panting minutes later, Nash finally pulls himself together enough to clean up. He flushes the toilet and hobbles off to bed on legs that are shaking once more, but for a much different reason.

He falls soundly asleep almost immediately and doesn’t dream at all.

*

The next morning when Yusuf comes to check on him, bright and early, as always, Nash submits to the blood pressure test and the cold shock of the stethoscope.

“Hey, uh, Yusuf . . . I never did tell you what I did before becoming a professional lab rat,” Nash says hesitantly. The stethoscope moves a little lower on his back, and he takes another deep breath.

“And one more,” Yusuf says as the stethoscope move to the left. Nash obeys. “Good. Your lungs are clear, and your breathing isn’t nearly as constricted as it was even a day ago. Your blood pressure’s good and you’re putting on a little weight. You’re doing very well, Nash.”

Nash nods, pulling his brand new plain white tee-one of ten that had arrived while Nash was sleeping, along with five pairs of sweatpants-down and swinging his legs off the bed. Yusuf is smiling one of his sunny smiles and the dirty low-down tingles Nash gets aren’t quite as dirty or as low-down as they normally are. In fact, they’re more like flutters in the pit of his stomach than the telltale prickling in his balls and at the base of his spine.

“We aim to please, Doc.” His face heating for no reason, Nash looks down at his hands. His fingernails have gotten too long-longer than they usually are, anyway. He hasn’t bitten them down in two weeks, nor has he felt the urge to since waking up sober.

He doesn’t suppose Yusuf would give him a pair of scissors, or even nail-clippers. . . .

“So, what did you do before you found yourself here?” Yusuf asks softly, and Nash glances up then away from his gentle concern and peaked curiosity.

“I, uh . . . I was a small-a Architect. Graduated from BU and couldn’t make a go of it. Then, I fell into dream-sharing and became a capital-A Architect.” Nash smiles a little, though he doesn’t feel especially happy. The state of his fingernails is really bugging the piss out of him. “I was hooked up with this guy-an Extractor, who was basically only with me because he wanted a pet Architect he could trust and shove around.”

And boy, had he backed the wrong horse. He’d wound up with a bullet in the heart, courtesy of the South African mob. Nash had wound up keeping his life by dint of shilling for the mafia, and thanks to his willingness to bite the hand that fed.

(Not that that hand had fed particularly well. And it’d had a habit of flying rather frequently in Nash’s direction.)

“After we, um, parted ways, I worked a lot of freelance jobs for a few years,” Nash says simply, choosing to omit the grisly details of his first and only failed attempt at a relationship, and of his sketchy, unprincipled life since. The mafia had only been the start. “Then I was at loose ends, and eventually wound up a guest of COBOL.”

“Ah,” Yusuf says, and sits on the bed next to Nash. “And how exactly did you end up here?”

It was this, or a shallow grave, Nash thinks, but he remembers the promise on Leitich’s sallow face and sighs. “Let’s just say they made me an offer I couldn’t refuse.”

“Ah,” Yusuf says again, and they sit there in silence for a while. It’s not exactly uncomfortable, but it is expectant, as if both of them expect the other to say something. But Nash, for one, has no idea what to say next.

“Do you miss being an Architect?” Yusuf asks suddenly, and Nash has a feeling that’s not what he really wanted to ask. But he answers anyway.

“I miss sketching mazes and drawing up plans. I even miss Building a little. But I don’t really miss the life, you know? Always on the run, looking over my shoulder. Betrayals, bullshit, and drama, left, right, and center. . . .” Nash sighs, scratching his head. His too-long nails rasp through grown-out peach-fuzz. “I miss cityscapes, most of all. Finding a quiet place to sit and draw them.”

“When was the last time you were outside?” Nash can hear the frown in Yusuf’s voice.

“Six months ago-as you can clearly see from my lovely tan.” Nash holds up his bony, china-white arm. He can see the blue veins under the skin and seemingly the throb of blood in those veins.

“Even prisoners get to see the sunshine once in awhile.” Yusuf reaches up and puts his hand on Nash’s forearm, drawing it back down. When Nash’s hand touches the bed, Yusuf’s own covers it briefly, giving it a reassuring squeeze. Then Yusuf is standing up, clearing his throat brusquely. “I must go.”

“Uh, okay.” Nash bites his lip uncertainly, watching Yusuf stride to the door. “See you tomorrow, Yusuf?”

He receives an absent, over the shoulder smile that doesn’t bode well. “Bright and early, as you say.”

Then Yusuf’s gone, and the door closes and locks with a click, leaving Nash to wonder what in the Hell he’d said or done wrong.

“Fuck. Fuckfuckfuck!” Nash flops down on the bed and glares up at the ceiling.

He’s a funk for the rest of the day.

*

The next morning, Yusuf doesn’t show up.

The only exercise Nash gets these days is pacing the confines of his hospital room, so pace he does, and tell himself he isn’t worried about Yusuf, or worried about the possibility that he’s scared the man off, somehow.

His breakfast sits on the hospital tray, untouched, unwanted, and cold.

A few hours later, around the time he should be getting another delightful, semi-solid meal, the door clicks open. Nash turns, smiling and expecting to see Yusuf. . . .

But the entrant is a big guy in a big suit. Nash has never seen him before, but he looks like every ubiquitous COBOL goon: shaven head, thick neck, forbidding features, and eyes deader than a shark’s.

He’s carrying a small plastic bag, and there’s the telltale bulge of a pistol under the right arm of his jacket.

“Well, well-whatchoo want, Grisly Adams?” Nash asks irritably, though he already knows what the goon wants. The only reason he hasn’t lost control of his bowels is because he’d tapped a kidney last night.

The goon doesn’t so much as blink.

“Put these on,” he orders in a flat, choppy South African accent, tossing the bag at Nash, who fumbles it, then bends over to pick it up. Inside the bag are blue flip-flops.

“We’re going for a walk,” the goon says when Nash looks at him questioningly.

“Okie-dokey, Smokey,” Nash says shakily, putting on the flip-flops. “But you should know I don’t put out on the first date.”

The goon doesn’t crack a smile.

Nash runs a hand over the back of his head, wondering if he’ll even feel the bullet, or if the world’ll just suddenly go black.

*

When the last in a series of doors opens without ceremony, Nash hisses and shades his eyes.

“We haven’t all day,” the goon says impatiently, the first hint of humanity he’s shown so far. “Come on.”

Nash squints his eyes open little by little, and steps toward the goon’s voice, his entire body shaking as he opens his eyes a little wider . . . a little wider . . . a little wider, still. A few yards ahead is a mish-mosh of greens and browns and reds, and he staggers past the goon toward it, like a moth to a flame.

He wants to ask the goon if this is a dream, but then he feels it-feels the warm, welcome, syrupy weight of sun on his shoulders, and he doesn’t say a thing. Doesn’t notice the tears running down his face.

Kicking off his flipflops, Nash laughs and steps out onto still dewy-grass. A few yards on he turns a cartwheel and nearly breaks his neck.

If this is a dream, he doesn’t want to know.

*

Lunch is late that day, and eaten with gusto, as is dinner, a few hours later.

Nash follows his usual routine of reruns, jerking off, then bed, in a haze, and when he sleeps he dreams of greens and golds. Of his feet slipping on grass as he runs and runs, imprisoned by nothing but the brilliant, blue sky above and cool, damp grass below.

*

When Yusuf shows up the next morning, Nash is jammed into the corner directly under the CCTV cam, in it’s blind-spot.

The good doctor forgoes his usual good morning to ask: “What are you doing in the corner, Nash?”

Nash smirks and crooks his finger.

Yusuf frowns but approaches Nash without hesitation. Just when he’s-hopefully-out of the camera’s range, Nash reaches out to yank Yusuf forward by the lapels of his lab coat.

“What-?” Yusuf starts to say, surprised, but not worried. The next words are muffled when Nash bounces up on his toes and covers Yusuf’s mouth with his own.

Yusuf freezes, his eyes opening wide as Nash’s flutter shut. Taking advantage of the moment, Nash teases Yusuf’s lips with his tongue and they open automatically.

Nash mmms, slicking his tongue into wet warmth that tastes of expensive coffee and something cinnamon-y sweet. Yusuf makes a muffled sound but when Nash deepens the kiss a bit, he responds for a too-brief moment before pulling away reluctantly.

“Nash,” he begins, and Nash pecks his lips one more time to shut him up.

“Thank you,” he whispers simply, smoothing Yusuf’s lapels and slipping past him. Ignoring the racing of his heart, he flops on the bed and risks a look at Yusuf, who’s still facing the wall-eyes the broad line of his shoulders and the way his head is still tilted at the same angle it was at when Nash kissed him.

“Doc?” Nash ventures when Yusuf hasn’t moved for nearly a minute.

Yusuf shakes himself and turns around, confusion stamped on his face. But it’s quickly erased by a professional smile and a nod.

“Right,” Yusuf says, clearing his throat, and glancing at the CCTV, then at the door. He looks like a man who wishes he were anywhere but here. It’s a look Nash is used to, but not from Yusuf . . . not from Yusuf. “I . . . think it’s best if I have one of the assistants check your vitals, for today.”

Imagining the way his body might react to Yusuf’s hands on his body, even in a strictly clinical manner, Nash nods, and looks at his fingers and their too-long nails.

“Perhaps that’s best,” he agrees demurely, kicking himself for probably fucking up the only good thing in his god-forsaken life.

When the door shutd behind Yusuf, Nash buries his face in his hands and groans.

*

He doesn’t get much sleep that night, and Yusuf, rather unsurprisingly, doesn’t show up the next morning.

Or the next.

Or the one after that, and Nash knows he only has himself to blame.

He stares unseeingly at his reruns, occasionally flipping through channels. Once more, the goon shows up to take him outside, and once out there, all Nash does is lay in the grass and brood. The goon stands at a discreet distance, staring impassively into the afternoon sun.

That night, Nash tries to jerk off for the first time in three days, and can’t even get it up-another practical joke played by a dick of a universe.

He falls asleep watching The Facts of Life, and dreams that Tootie and Blair take him roller-skating, then laugh at him when he falls down and can’t get up.

They don’t help him up, and he doesn’t ask. He simply crawls to the edge of the rink and watches everyone skate happily by.

*

The next morning, the latest in a line of bored, cold-eyed lab assistants asks him how he’s feeling. He recognizes her as the same one he’d grabbed three weeks ago.

He tries to care less, and gives it up as a bad job when he can’t.

“Oh, I’m in fighting trim. Il perfecto, that’s me.” Nash says, his eyes ticking back to the television screen. Fonzie’s about to jump the shark.

He sees the assistant nod out of the corner of his eye. “Okay, and how’s your-“

“Fine, fine. Everything’s fine. In fact, I’m well enough to start the testing again. You can tell Dr. Dadali that, okay?” He meets her surprised gaze for a moment then rolls his eyes. “Now beat it, I’m trying to watch my show.”

The assistant huffs and flounces out of the room.

Fonzie jumps the shark without incident and everyone is happy.

Then The Facts of Life comes on and Nash turns the television off for the first time in eight days, and wills himself to sleep.

When he wakes up, the lights are out, except for the lamp at his bedside. The lunch and dinner trays are gone.

He rolls onto his other side and goes back to sleep. He doesn’t dream.

*

Dr. Leitech shows up the next morning, smiling for once. There’s a goon behind him-and not the one who takes Nash for walks.

“Glad to see you’re back with the program,” Leitech says smugly. Nash doesn’t even care enough to roll his eyes.

“Where’s Dr. Dadali?”

Leitech makes a faux apologetic face. “Unfortunately our head of R & D is away on business. For the next few days, I’ll be your attending.”

Now Nash rolls his eyes, though he feels a tickle of unease. “Whatever, champ. When do we start?”

Still smiling that smug smile, Leitech nods at the new goon. “Now.”

Nash sits up slowly, sizing up the new goon, who sizes him up right back.

“Well.” He smirks, curling his hands into fists. “Let’s dance, big man.”

Leitech’s smile widens and the new goon steps forward.

*

When the new goon finally gets a bruised and battered-but still fighting-Nash to the table, and the assistants get him strapped in, Leitech is still smiling.

“Why are you fighting? No one cares whether you live or die, anymore,” he says with great satisfaction. “Not even Dadali.”

He’s not telling Nash anything he doesn’t already know, but hearing it hurts, nonetheless. “Maybe that’s true. But when you die, there’ll be a line of people waiting to dance on your grave.” He horks a bloody loogie in Leitech’s direction and misses . . . but that damn smile is finally gone.

It’s totally worth getting gagged.

*

Whatever’s in the latest batch of Somnacin, Nash takes forever to go down, and almost immediately starts throwing up when he kicks. He spends the next day and a half with a fever so high, testing is once more suspended.

But as soon as the fever breaks, he’s cleaned up, and strapped down for more tests.

The next batch works just as slowly, but finally sends him under and keeps him there, trapped in a formless nothingness he can’t control or re-Build into a dream.

He kicks after an eternity, tugging on his restraints and weeping. The screams he used to sometimes hear when he kicked are back, and for the first time, he recognizes them as his own.

When he feels the familiar, edging darkness that means he’s about to black out, his struggles begin in earnest, and even he can hear the groan of the restraints as he bucks and writhes.

Before the black can take him, he’s sedated. For how long, he doesn’t know, but when he wakes up, groggy and muzzy-headed, he’s back in the holding tank. Outside the glass, the lab buzzes and bops to its own familiar beat, assistants rushing to and fro, sometimes stopping to laugh or talk with each other. Leitech is nowhere to be seen.

Reality-whichever one it is, waking or dream-spins like a top, attempting to pitch him off itself like an animal shedding a parasite.

His stomach heaves, and he leans over the side of his bunk. He throws up green bile until he starts to think his body is trying to turn itself inside out.

But the puking eventually turns into dry heaves, turns into shudders and coughs. Nash spits several times and lays back on his bunk, panting and afraid to close his eyes. But the fluorescent lights make them hurt and he curls into a ball on his bunk his face turned to the wall in an attempt to block out the light.

He doesn’t even have the mental reserves to wish he were dead.

*

The next batch of Somnacin doesn’t do a damned thing but get him high as a kite.

Instead of putting him to sleep, it cranks him up to a whole ‘nother plane of existence, like LSD. It makes him feel relaxed, yet super-charged. For the first time in two weeks, he even gets hard, something that makes Leitech really frown.

“Number sixty-six seems to cause . . . intense euphoria in the subject, doctor,” one of the assistants notes delicately. He’s a cute little thing, not even remotely Nash’s type, but at the moment, he’d jump anything with a working dick and a tight asshole. Or would, if he weren’t being restrained.

“Baby, I’d fuck you so good,” he tells the assistant, who pales, then blushes. “So good.”

“Or maybe our lab rat’s becoming immune to the effects of Somnacin.” Leitech posits, sneering disgustedly at Nash, who laughs till his face hurts. The man looks like a grown-up Cabbage Patch Kid. An evil one.

“Wh-what should we do, sir?” the cute assistant asks, his eyes locked to Nash’s hard-on with horrified fascination.

“Simple. We get another lab rat.”

Nash laughs and laughs till he cries. Till the next dose of sedative works its magic and sends reality far out of reach.

*

The next batch of Somnacin-which Nash is just coherent enough to realize will likely be his last-is so powerful, Nash is instantly gone.

The assistant who delivers it is young, small, and pretty in a way that should have nothing to do with a place like COBOL, and everything to do with homecoming dances and proms.

“You’re gonna feel a slight pinch, then coolness,” she warns kindly, but firmly. Nash grins.

“You’re pretty,” he tells her, and she blushes, smiling as she searches for a vein. “You should go to prom with me.”

Surprisingly, she laughs, her cheeks turning a lovely pink. “But neither of us has anything to wear,” she says regretfully, and Nash feels the pinch, and a cool rush into his veins.

He rolls his eyes toward the ceiling and everything goes away. He’s sunk in darkness so deep, he can’t think or feel, only exist and float in pitch-black nowhere.

Time doesn’t seem to pass-he has nothing with which to measure time even if he could. There’s just darkness, and no memory that there’d ever been anything else. . . .

*

. . . then everything comes screaming back with a jolt. Blood, bones, muscle, all of it cramping and aching and burning.

“Clear!” A familiar voice says, and another jolt thrills through Nash’s body causing it to twitch and arch, and reality whites out and leaves him floating, this time in greens and golds that taste like newly mown grass and feel like dew between his toes.

It is dew between his toes, and he’s walking through a grassy field that stretches on endlessly with a blameless blue sky above. The sun beats hotly down on his bare shoulders and he heaves a contented sigh.

In the far distance, he sees someone walking toward him. It’s a long time before they’re close enough for him to make out that the someone is a she, and she’s smiling.

And she’s holding out her arms.

And she calls him by name, her dark eyes shinning.

Grinning, he runs toward her like the child he once was, ready to leap when he gets close because he knows she’ll catch him. She always did.

So he leaps-

*

-and lands in something molasses-thick and lead-heavy.

He struggles to be free of it, but can’t quite. It surrounds him, conforms to him, like wet cotton. It drags him down into smothering darkness and he fights as hard as he can . . . fights to get back to the gold and green, and to the only woman he’s ever loved.

It’s a losing battle, but he fights anyway, till all his fight is gone, and he’s left with nothing but powerful regret and the sense that he’s being slowly devoured by something that throbs and contracts around him like a giant fist.

*

Swimming to the surface of consciousness is a tiring process, but swim he does, until his brain aches and his soul is just about ready to give up.

But finally he surfaces to that wet cotton-feeling. He wakes up smothering and struggling to be free. . . .

“Sleep,” a soft, familiar voice says. “You’re safe, now. Sleep.”

Nash moans, and so doing, understands what the throbbing fist surrounding him is. It’s his body . . . after an eternity without one. The darkness he’s currently in is nothing more complicated or confining than a blink.

With that realization comes the instinct to open his eyes, the lids of which weight ten thousand pounds each. When he finally cracks them the slightest bit, they’re speared by pain, and he cries out.

“Wait a moment, let me turn the lights down,” the familiar voice says. Then, after a few moments: “Alright, the room is fairly dim, but take it slowly. Your eyes will be extremely light-sensitive for the next few days.”

Nash risks opening his eyes again, and though the light is much, much dimmer, it still makes his eyes ache. And all he can make out are blurry shadows.

“Fuck . . . fuck a duck. . . .” he croaks out, and he hears a startled laugh. A warm large hand comes to rest on his head, and another hand takes his and squeezes it. Pulls it up and presses it to warm, stubbled skin. Lips press themselves to his palm, and he risks opening his eyes wider.

He can tell he’s in a dim, cave-like space, and that the light is flickering and wavering, like candlelight. . . .

Leitech not being the romantic type, Nash knows he’s not in the lab.

“Where the Hell am I?” he asks, trying to get past the insistent exhaustion clouding his brain. The last thing he remembers is . . . a pretty little lab assistant shooting him up, and something about prom. . . .

“You are in Osaka, Japan."

What the fuck? He uses every bit of energy he can summon to clasp at the hand still holding his, and he tugs on it. An instant later, there’s a weary, relieved face over his own.

“Y-yusuf?”

“In the flesh.” That wide white smile isn’t quite so wide-or so white in the yellow candlelight-but it’s the most beautiful thing Nash has ever seen. He returns it, even though his facial muscles are as tired as every other muscle in his leaden body.

“You went away,” Nash says, and Yusuf nods, his smile slipping a bit. “But you came back.”

Yusuf kisses his hand again, his dark eyes closing. “Of course I came back, Nash. You were the only reason I left in the first place.”

Nash flinches, mortification and regret filling him like water fills a pitcher. “Scared you off.”

“No,” Yusuf says quietly, quickly, opening his eyes and staring hard into Nash’s. “Quite the contrary.”

“Then why’d you go?” Nash husks, his thready voice breaking. There’s another alien emotion in Yusuf’s eyes, and he hopes like Hell it isn’t pity.

“I . . . I had to ask a very powerful benefactor for a very large favor.” Yusuf sighs and bows his head over Nash’s hand. “I needed get you out of COBOL before. . . .”

“Before they killed me,” Nash finishes, remembering Leitech’s conversation with the cute, young assistant. Yusuf nods, sighing again. It sounds as weary as Nash feels.

“I left it too long-I was almost too late. Another day, and you-“ Yusuf cuts himself off, attempting that brilliant smile and falling far short. “Anyway. It’s a long story-one that can be told when you’re feeling better. For now, get some rest.”

Nash snorts weakly. “Seriously, dude? You think I can rest at a time like this?” But the last words turn into a yawn, and Yusuf laughs.

“Yes, I do,” he says, sitting on the bed next to Nash and squeezing his hand once more before placing it gently on the bed. The hand on his head shifts until it’s cupping his face. “I think you can and you will. You’re safe, now, and I’ll be here when you wake up.”

Yawning again, Nash tries to sit up, but Yusuf easily holds him down with a hand on his chest.

“Rest, Nash,” he says once more, leaning down to kiss Nash’s forehead then his lips. “I’ll be here when you wake up. Alright?”

“Okay,” Nash murmurs straining up a little for another kiss, which Yusuf gives him . . . long, slow, and sweet. His lips are soft, slightly chapped, and he tastes like coffee and cinnamon.

Nash moans happily into the kiss, and when it ends, Yusuf is stretched out on the bed next to him and holding him tightly. It feels better than anything has in a very, very long time.

He buries his face in Yusuf’s neck inhaling the scent of warm, clean skin. This moment is absolutely perfect in a way Nash has never before experienced. At least not in waking life.

“Oh, fuck,” he breathes softly, wetness gathering in the corners of his eyes and rolling down his cheeks. He shakes his head in denial even as he knows-knows all the denial in the world won’t change a damned thing. “This is all a dream, isn’t it? I’m dreaming . . . or dying. . . .”

“I assure you, you’re not dying, Nash.” Yusuf turns Nash’s face up to his own. His eyes are fierce and worried. “And despite my expert advice, you’re wide awake.”

But that’s what a projection would say, isn’t it? Nash thinks, closing his eyes again to stop more tears from falling. It doesn’t work, but Yusuf kisses them away. It’s a stupid, sappy gesture, and Nash thinks he might be in love . . . but he has no previous frame of reference.

Whatever he is, despite his achy weariness, he feels better than he ever has, and doesn’t want it to end.

“If I’m dreaming, I don’t wanna wake up, okay? And if I’m dying . . . I don’t wanna know.” He lifts one ten-ton arm until he can cup Yusuf’s face in his hand. He can see Yusuf gearing up to protest again, and kisses the words from his lips, memorizing that coffee-cinnamon sweetness just in case. “Okay?”

Yusuf searches his eyes, and nods, smiling gamely, tears shining in his own eyes. “Okay,” he promises quietly.

One last gentle kiss follows Nash down into a softer darkness than he’s used to, and he knows it’s going to be okay. It’s okay if he’s dreaming, because whether he’s awake, or in the eternal moments between life and death, he’s finally somewhere far beyond COBOL’s long reach.

He’s safe, at last.

It’s okay.