[fic] Your Heart Is A Bad, Bad Thing - 1/1
Title: Your Heart Is A Bad, Bad Thing
Author:
garnetice
Pairing: Miles/Bass (side of Miles/Rachel)
Rating: M
Word Count: 8,983
Warnings: Bad words, angst, sex, S2 conflicts
Disclaimer: Revolution: not mine.
Summary: He is entrapped by Bass’s razor blade eyes. The broad expanse of his shoulders and rough swell of his knuckles are an addiction that grows daily. And in the night, when I love you’s spill guttural from Bass’s throat, self-loathing crushes against Miles’s ribcage, hot and guilty. He falls to his knees, a victim on love’s altar, convinced the blood that pools in every footstep he takes is worth it.
Author's Notes: Ahhhh god, okay, so I started writing this midway through season 1 and never finished it, and then I never got around to season 2. I know they introduced new family members, etc, including Miles’s dad, I think? Which means that everything I wrote is probably hella AU now. But I’m posting it anyway, because 8k words probably shouldn’t go to waste. Please try to ignore any inaccuracies that arise in S2. (Also, like, based on my math, which is awful and probably wrong, Miles is really bad at being a Marine. But I’m going to gracefully consign that to the sucktastic math on the show (Danny was the shrimpiest four year old I’ve ever seen, trufax).
---
There is a time when blood means shots at the doctor’s, a stinging puncture mark welling red. Death is represented by zombie movie marathons with Bass, his teeth against Miles’s throat as he messes around.
He does a terrible imitation of a brain-hungry corpse, but it never stops him from trying.
These early days, the apocalypse is a joke and family is a burden, Ben getting snappish whenever the blare of Miles’s music gets too loud.
“You’re irresponsible,” Miles’s dad says, iron in his voice. “You need to grow up.”
His disapproval weighs as much as mountains, sits heavy on Miles’s chest and makes him want to puke. He’s going to do better, be better, one day, but for now he’s fifteen years old, and the first rays of sunrise wash away all his promises.
Summer stretches on endless, marked with laughter, laziness, and girls. Bass has a string of perky brunettes on speed dial while Miles is into pretty blondes. Ben watches them both with judgey eyes, but he isn’t exactly a role model when it comes to healthy relationships. He barely even talks to female-kind, poised as he is to fly off to college, where he can comingle with the loves of his life, Grace Murray Hopper and Marie Curie.
Miles and Bass drag him out for fun anyway, to baseball games and bowling night, and on one memorable occasion, karaoke. Ben sings about giving peace a chance while Miles and Bass belt out Bob Dylan. None of them can carry a tune, but that doesn’t matter in the least as they egg each other on, the way only teenagers can manage.
Next thing Miles knows, Bass is onstage singing Cyndi Lauper and the girl he’s come with is discretely exiting through the back door.
Bass doesn’t give a whit. He comes bounding down the stage with sweat-slick curls, wrestling Miles to the floor with a declaration of, “You’re next, bitch.”
Miles’s rendition of Like A Virgin isn’t all that high energy, but his big brother and best friend still applaud long and loud.
They stumble out of the parlor around nine to a spun sugar sunset, limbs loose and free as they talk over each other’s hoarse exclamations.
The words they say mean nothing and everything, the car ride home filled with nonstop babble.
Ben idles by the curb when Miles walks Bass to his front door, but that doesn’t mean Miles is inspired to rush. Knowing Ben, he’s probably already absorbed in one of the many paperbacks he keeps tucked in the backseat. Miles and Bass could stand on the Monroe’s front porch for hours without hearing a single complaint.
Miles says, “Tomorrow we’re going to act like men.”
Bass smirks. “Paintball and chocolate milkshakes?”
“You read my mind,” he agrees happily, heat blossoming beneath his skin. That expression of Bass’s is Miles’s favorite, cocksure and delighted. He is inexplicably proud of himself for having a hand in its appearance.
The corners of Bass’s lips twitch higher, laughter quivering through his thin shoulders - filling out, broadening even as he stands there - and he says, “You really rocked Madonna.”
“Tell anyone and you’re dead,” Miles warns, low and amused.
The porch light ticks on, Bass’s mom waving at them from inside the living room. Behind her, Bass’s little sisters play with blocks, building turrets and towers straight from their imagination. It’s all picture-perfect domestic, the scent of Mr. Monroe’s home cooked macaroni drifting from beneath the door, and Miles likes that Bass lives here.
More than anything else, he prefers his best friend happy, because it tugs on his heartstrings and makes Miles happy too.
That might be weird.
That’s probably weird.
But whatever, who cares? Weird is subjective, and Miles can’t imagine feeling any other way. He bids a merry goodbye to Bass (and his mom) before charting a path straight into the passenger seat of Ben’s car.
“Want to hit up some takeout?” Ben asks with a grin, and this too makes Miles’s chest feel warm. Approval isn’t often a thing that he gets, but this is a good night.
No, this is a great night.
He tells his big brother, “I can go for a burger,” and they drive off into a horizon choked with stars so bright they can’t even be drowned out by the electric hum of city lights.
---
With Ben gone, nothing is right. Miles never thought he’d miss his stupid big brother so fiercely.
But it’s unbearable at home, without Saint Benjamin to broker peace between Miles and their dad. The Matheson house becomes the DMZ, spit words like gunfire. Miles can’t possibly endure another lecture about responsibility or honor.
So in all of his teenage wisdom, he decides to make himself scarce.
He crashes most nights in Bass’s bed, curled beneath his blue comforter while Bass complains that his gangly limbs take up too much room.
He whines and he bitches, but he never kicks Miles out. He doesn’t even think to try.
In the dark of night, curled into the warmth of Bass’s scrawny body, Miles counts out his best friend’s heartbeats and tells himself it’s not strange.
Mornings see him marching back home to sneak lunch money from his mom. Sometimes she’ll ask with mock-suspicion, “You’re not getting up to trouble again, are you?”
Solemnly, Miles will reply, “That’s all I know how to do.”
She laughs, always, endlessly indulgent with her youngest son. She kisses his cheek and tells him to scram off to school.
As the screen door slams behind him, Miles can hear the rough tread of his dad’s boot-steps on carpet, his over-large voice inquiring who was at the door.
Miles speeds his pace.
The problem isn’t that his dad is a bad man. It’s Miles’s inability to be a good one. That’s why they fight, so frequently and with such volume, blood boiling in their veins. They come from a long line of Matheson men, soldiers every one - except for Ben, Ben is gifted - and Matheson men believe in doing the right thing, always and forever, on into the end days.
Miles the playboy, the quick-talker, the underage drinker is such a disappointment. And what’s worst is the part where he doesn’t care. He’d rather have fun than be stuffy and pompous. He’d rather be anything but a Matheson.
Ben never got that, not even a little bit, because Ben’s life goal is to be epically boring, but he was a willing (if not condescending) buffer.
Miles resents his absence.
More so when Ben comes home for summer break.
His brother, his blood - Ben - hasn’t been lonely while Miles was gone. He’s got a pretty new girlfriend, a real live woman hopelessly devoted to his existence. Miles thought he’d have to wait until Ragnarök to see Ben happy, so he’s delighted for his big brother, honestly and for real.
Just.
Rachel likes loud music.
Rachel likes tequila shots.
Rachel likes to dancesingsmilelaugh. She’s different, for an egghead, so beautiful she glows with it. Kindness and love shines beneath her skin.
Yes, Miles decides, Rachel is entirely too good for Ben by measures, even if she is the first girl to ever lure him completely out of his shell.
One day she’s going to be the mother of Ben’s children, probably, but Miles doesn’t think about that, or how when she grins, he takes notice.
Instead he focuses on that word, family, on Ben and the kids none of them have yet gotten to meet, on how pretty Rachel will be in her wedding dress and the weight of Bass’s gaze between his shoulder blades every time Miles stares when he shouldn’t.
He stares a lot. Miles is on the brink of manhood, strong and powerful, but he doesn’t yet understand the meaning of honor. He is one hundred percent confident that he can take something that doesn’t belong to him. Although he doesn’t plan on trying.
He doesn’t, until he does.
The first time he has sex Rachel is also the last time. They’re both wasted, blitzed beyond all belief while Ben snores away back home. In the back of Miles’s car, Rachel is fully clothed, almost, but Miles is stripped to nothing, and it’s the kind of blazing hot he didn’t think reality could be. She fucks like a wildcat, with more heat and intensity than any other girl Miles has ever been with. He’s completely infatuated.
She’s completely not. Afterwards, she looks at Miles so coldly that he kind of feels like he should apologize. There’s this awful bile-flavored soup where his stomach should be, harshing his post-coital buzz. Saying sorry to a girl for sticking his dick in them goes against Miles’s nature, so he does something else abnormal instead. Head buried between Rachel’s neck and collarbone, he confides, “I’m thinking about enlisting.”
She surprises him for the eight millionth time, scoffing and saying, “Of course you are.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means I know you, Miles Matheson. This is your duty,” she says, “This is your future. To kill. To be a beast when no one else wants to. You owe it to your country, to your family. To me.” She pushes cool fingers through Miles’s sweaty hair and continues, “You’ll live your life owing everyone around you, because you are a Matheson.”
With a start, Miles realizes he’s heard this speech before, from his dad. Ben must have recited it all back to Rachel, who is too clever by far.
She amends the end, choosing not to verge off on a tangent about glory and god. Her correction to dear old dad’s happy recruitment monologue goes, “But one day, you’ll go too far. That line, once you find it, that’s where honor starts. It is the thing that will make you stop caring what you owe the world and begin wondering what you owe your soul.”
Rachel pins Miles with her ice floe eyes and asks, “What do you think you deserve, Miles? The only woman your brother’s ever loved?”
He knows right then that she sees the apologies he didn’t give voice to. He tries, “I’m sor-“
Only Rachel doesn’t stop. She says, “I don’t want to see you again,” and Miles hears an unsaid, I’m sorry.
Rachel turns up at his front door a few days later. For all of five seconds, Miles entertains something akin to hope, but then she cups his cheek and says, “I’m not here for you.” Half a week later and she’s engaged to Ben.
Enter Emma. She’s kind and easy and she can’t make sense of advanced engineering equations. She’s essentially the anti-Rachel, if not every bit as lovely. Months fly past with her by Miles’s side, never quite assuaging the aching wound Rachel represents.
When Miles buys her a ring, Bass tells him, “You’re doing this for the wrong reasons.”
Miles wants to mouth along the rugged line of his jaw, to press his lips to the indents of Bass’s hidden dimples and up, ghosting over the blond lashes that border his stupidly blue eyes. But he can’t have that, can’t taste or touch or want, because he’s in love with a girl (not the right girl) and aching on the inside, and Bass can’t fix that. He doesn’t know a goddamned thing about love.
(Miles knows he fucked Emma. Miles knows, and that hurts too, but their engagement is a farce, and maybe their friendship is too, but letting Bass go isn’t ever going to happen).
Rachel wants to pretend she can do this, be a wife and a mother, a charming, pliant fixture in Ben’s life?
Whatever. Two can play at that game. He can find the things she accused him of lacking, be the man his father always swore he wasn’t.
Miles knows how to play pretend.
---
Then comes the days when blood is all Miles ever sees and death makes him retch in his mouth, the taste vile and sour. He chokes it back down because he’s been conditioned to and because the ribbing from his platoon isn’t worth the hassle.
This the job, a voice that sounds a lot like his dad’s chides in his mind, disgusted by his weakness.
Bass asks in a voice edged with worry, “Are you okay?”
Miles isn’t sure how to be okay when Iraq feels like the end of the world has come and gone. He misses home and his family, he misses burgers and air conditioning. Basic training was hell, but he didn’t die, Semper Fi. He thought boot camp taught him what it was to suffer.
Now he knows that he was being trained for this, and they failed, oh, how they failed.
All the same, Bass never leaves his side. Not back in South Carolina when they were both facing disciplinary action for being punk-ass ingrates, staring down weeks of hard labor and permanent marks on their service record, and not here, where the sun is so hot it could turn sand to glass. The least Miles can do is grit his teeth and say, “M’fine,” every time that question arises.
There’s something very grand and romantic about dying for your country, until you’re actually faced point blank with the option, but Miles is strong, stronger than this, and he has a cause to fight for. There is Bass and there is Ben, and they are all he’s ever needed. Miles doesn’t plan on letting either of them down; he will line his stomach with steel if he has to.
(You’re weak, his father told him, before he enlisted. You need to learn what honor is. Miles told him honor was a line he hadn’t yet crossed, only to remember that lecture didn’t come from his dad.)
Bass says, “You’re looking green.”
War isn’t hitting him in quite the same way, because Bass believes in truth, justice, and the American way, while Miles believes that following in the footsteps of his father and grandfather is the only option he’s got.
Wearily, Miles rejoins, “A black eye might help you see more clearly.”
They both flash fevered grins, feeding each other’s courage when nothing else will.
(Honor looks like blood and bloodlines and so much blood.)
Desert sand sifts beneath the steady clomp of their boots as they become something more than boys and something less than men, nightmares and heroes in equal measure. Their shadows are linked, their hearts pumping in time. On the opposite end of the globe from home, they are still Bass-and-Miles, Miles-and-Bass. They shield each other better than body armor can, preparing for the day when sacrifice might become more than a word.
But Bass can’t shield Miles from what comes next.
---
“It was a nice wake.”
“It was a fucking wake,” Bass spits back, rubbing his fists over tired eyes.
They’ve returned home from their second tour hale and whole, to learn that death is synonymous with a broken heart. Not death in glory, or death in honor, but death, grim and meaningless. Miles watches Bass wrap his lips around the mouth of a bottle and wonders if soon enough he’ll see all that pouty pink on a gun. He’s been drinking nonstop since he heard the news. It’s like Bass is trying to flood himself with alcohol to wipe out the stain of blood left behind, to bury the apocalypse-sized hole in his soul with a deluge of Jim Beam.
Miles isn’t a psychic, but he’s good at reading Bass, and yeah, this isn’t working. Bass is the kind of man who believes in truth and justice, honor and duty. He’s the All American dream, corn-fed good looks and easy going charm, but more than that, he is inherently good, right at his core, and Miles can’t understand why something so awful has happened to him. His best friend’s sorrow pricks uncomfortably beneath his skin. Helplessness infests his bones. Miles has known Bass longer than anyone else on Earth, now, but he’s floundering for a way to put him to rights.
He tries, “They would have liked it.”
“They would have liked living better,” Bass grits out.
It’d be easier if he wasn’t running on anger, fueled by pure hatred for a man he’s never met. Miles tries not to take it personally. The guy’s already been locked up; the only punching bag Bass has is Matheson-shaped and familiar, and hey, Miles is a Marine. He can handle the bruises.
He says, “Okay,” and, “Pass me the bottle,” and hopes he won’t shatter Bass when he knocks their shoulders and ankles together.
For a long time after that night - long enough that Miles is almost fooled into believing he’ll be okay - Bass keeps it together. It takes a cemetery and Bass’s service revolver to disillusion him from that fantasy. He’s barely ripped the gun from Bass’s hands before he’s submitting a request to move back to Parris Island.
Living in the barracks again definitely isn’t Miles’s idea of a good time, but they can’t stay in Chicago and outrun Bass’s ghosts.
Getting BAH is nearly impossible unless their ranks spike upwards. That blows. Miles does manage to pull a few favors, though. He scores them a thimble sized room that he and Bass can barely cram into. Bass is characteristically appreciative.
“I knew your natural charisma would come in handy one day,” he says sardonically, examining their new digs with a critical eye.
“At least it has a lock. I’m going to disembowel the first teenager that hits me up for beer.” Miles is sulking. A little. Not a lot. A lot would be really unbecoming, because he is a Marine, damnit.
A bit miserable, Bass replies, “You don’t have to do this. I’ll behave, I promise. I don’t need a babysitter.”
Punching him in the bicep with barely any force, Miles retorts, “Yeah, no, I do. I get lonely.”
Bass regards him skeptically. “I’m not going to cuddle with you.”
If they were kids, Miles would demand if Bass preferred to snuggle. He’d dig his fingers beneath Bass’s ribs and tickle him into submission until they both dissolved into giggles and it was established that Miles was master and commander of the universe.
Instead, he jabs his fingers against Bass’s shoulders, shoving him back against the nearest bed. It’s a very adult and mature thing to do. Bass lets loose with a startled yelp. Miles follows up with a body slam, throwing the entirety of his weight across Bass’s middle, pushing the air from his lungs. He deadpans, “Baby, you wound me.”
Bass bucks up, but he doesn’t thrash. He uses the leverage he gets to try to throw Miles onto the floor, but as far as grappling efforts go, it’s weak. Miles shifts onto his side, solidly pinning Bass beneath him. Bass’s chest rumbles with laughter.
He says, “Nice comeback.”
“I thought so,” Miles agrees, dryly. “Repent your grievous insult.”
The smile that graces Bass’s face is equal parts incandescence and wicked mischief, familiar in a way that makes Miles ache. He hasn’t seen Bass wear that grin in nearly a year. He’d worried it was gone forever, lost beneath the dirt and the heavy crush of headstones. Enticed, Miles sways forward, too close, too close.
Bass cranes his head up and, in a low whisper, he confides, “Marines never surrender.”
Then he catches Miles’s kidney with a carefully aimed elbow, which hurts like fire and knives, fuck. Miles instinctively flips on his stomach to protect the rest of his soft parts from assault.
That’s where it gets awkward.
They’re not so young that their bodies that betray them. But their eyes…Different story. Bass has irises cut from stretches of summer sky, blue so rich, so true, so utterly beloved. Miles loses himself in Bass’s gaze. Thigh to thigh, chest to chest, their noses close enough to touch,
Bass says, “We could.”
They can do a lot of things, Miles thinks, wants, fantasizes. His pulse kicks up a steady bassline, Bass’s mouth pink, plump, right there. But permission doesn’t mean anything, doesn’t mean they can kiss and they can fuck, they can obliterate over twenty years of absolute camaraderie. He and Bass have hovered on the edge of…whatever this is before, but it is the first time Bass has said so out loud, the first time Miles’s desperate panic has threatened to overwhelm his senses.
He wants that quartz-crystal gaze of Bass’s, so clear and open for the first time in months, to stay squarely where it is, trained on Miles’s face.
And he can’t have it, because right now, Miles is Bass’s only anchor to the Earth. What happens when he inevitably fucks up, the way Miles has with every girlfriend he’s ever had?
He didn’t have the stomach for war, but he muddled through by sheer force of will, until he didn’t feel the horror any longer. Bass was different. He believed he was a soldier, so he became one. He does the same for Miles, all the time, invests total faith in him when history shows how very inadvisable that is. Miles is insensitive, moody, occasionally cold. They complement each other as best friends, as brothers, but as anything more and Miles would ruin it. He’d take Bass’s loyalty and twist it and turn it, using the inexplicable trust they’ve always shared to warp him into something completely un-Bass-like, without even meaning to. Bass wouldn’t even know what had gone wrong until the world crashed down around his shoulders.
That’s the inescapable truth of Miles Matheson; he only wants what he can’t have and he breaks everything he gets.
He’s not old, not by a long shot, but he’s put too many years behind him to feel this small and petrified. Miles rolls off of Bass, and even that tiny act twinges in his marrow, regret gone physical. “No. We can’t.”
Bass folds his hands behind his head, boring a hole into the ceiling with his midsummer eyes. His smile has disappeared, every ounce of joy on lockdown. “Why not? Scared?”
There’s a challenge in his voice that turns in Miles’s belly. Of all the reckless, stupid things Bass has done, this is the worst.
“It’s not that. It’s you.”
Bass’s lips press into a thin line. He nods tightly, shrinking into himself even as he jumps to his feet. “Right. Think I’m going to break a few
rules tonight. You in?”
No. No. No. He’s not supposed to shut down this way. He’s not supposed to shut Miles out. “I didn’t mean it like that-“
“I know exactly what you mean,” Bass answers brusquely.
Miles sighs, because he really obviously does not.
“Don’t get us kicked off base. Haven’t even unpacked yet.”
“The night is young and I make no promises.” Bass pastes on a hellion’s grin, sharp edged and crazy. Miles wants to shake him, to make him
listen, but there’s no way to force the issue without kissing Bass breathless. He’s stubborn. No way he’s going to want to hear that realistically, what he’s after is the worst idea ever.
Miles made a promise. He said they were brothers. He swore he’d never leave. And as much as Miles wants to believe that sex wouldn’t make him a liar, he isn’t stupid. Getting his dick inside Bass, or vice versa, would change things, for better or worse. Because that’s who Miles is. He takes what he thinks he deserves.
That doesn’t make pushing Bass away any easier, punchdrunk on the scent of his cologne and closeness between them. Bass stumbles home in the middle of night stinking of whiskey and heady perfume. Miles can’t figure out how he made it through the gates without reprimand, but he also can’t bring himself to ask. He buries his head in his flat, uncomfortable pillow and tries not to think about any of his sweaty, late night dreams, the ones where Bass is stretched out in front of him, naked and wanting.
The ones he could have made true.
---
Fire rains down from the sky. The Earth trembles beneath their feet. This is the shape of Ragnarök, Armageddon, Meggido; the Renaissance of human technology skidding to an abrupt halt.
In the midst of it all, the wolves meant to eat the world sit back on their heels and wait for orders that never come. Patience might be a virtue, but it’s driving Miles insane. The lights went out. That’s it. Nothing more. People all over the world have lived without electricity their entire lives, but in America? It’s the fucking apocalypse.
All he wants is to find Ben. But big brother’s thousands of miles away, and who knows if he’s even alive? He wouldn’t be the first body down in this catastrophe.
(Miles knows that first hand, now. The air smells of wood smoke and decay.)
That doesn’t mean he’s giving up. He pounds the pavement, relentless, intent on reaching Chicago in record time. He entertains the idle idea that Ben might try to search him out too, but he hopes Ben doesn’t. Blood demarcates days better than the rise and set of the sun. Splattered on walls, squishing beneath feet, oozing from wounds and festering with disease. Ben can’t fight that - he has Rachel and the kids, and most of his practical combat experience involves fending off the bullies that harassed him in grade school.
Miles has Bass and a Beretta M9. Much use that’ll be if they can’t get to Ben.
Bass is the one tasked with keeping Miles sane. It’s not the easiest job. Miles might even bother appreciating that if he wasn’t busy being all sullen and fretful. “We’re sticking to the map.”
“Where’s your sense of adventure?”
They’re leaning up against the chain link face surrounding an abandoned baseball pitch, reveling in their first break for miles. It’s nice out, nice enough that there should be kids running and screaming and laughing. Their absence is more telling than the cars sitting empty in the middle of the road.
Miles says, “I left it in Carolina.”
“Find it again,” Bass nudges their knees together. “This is just like the good old days.”
The sun bakes into Miles’s skin. He’s warm on the outside, but at his core, he’s filled with ice. It leeches the heat from his extremities, makes his toes curl inside his boots and his fingers scrunch inside his pockets. The glacial grip on his guts is a constant reminder that Ben is out there, alone, unprotected. He says, “I hate to break this to you, but no one calls the Civil War era the good old days.”
“I meant Iraq,” Bass clarifies patiently, light eyes dancing. The sun catches against blue, turning his irises ethereal, pale and clear. He takes Miles’s breath away.
He’s also an idiot.
“Good isn’t the word I’d use there, either.”
“Obtuse bastard,” he scolds, knocking his knuckles pretty solidly against the meat of Miles’s bicep. Bass kicks one foot out towards the empty suburban streets and says, “It’s you and me, brother. Us against the world.”
Agreeably, Miles replies, “Back on the battlefield.”
Bass shakes his head, expression darkening. “This isn’t a battlefield.”
“Funny. It feels a lot like one.” Miles pushes off the fence, taking a few steps forward. Down the block, there is a flutter of fabric. Curtains falling back into place. A face disappearing from view.
He doesn’t blame them for spying. Two big men lurking around the neighborhood with their guns holstered at their hips aren’t exactly nonthreatening. The faceless stranger is right to be afraid.
If he or she was up close, they’d see dog tags and regulation boots. Months ago, those things would have marked Miles and Bass as safe, as protectors. Now? Not so much. All it means in the midst of this chaos is that they are deadlier than the average civilian.
It smarts that Miles doesn’t get to be Superman anymore. He’s feared in his own country. If the barbarism that’s greeted them on every block wasn’t enough to convince him humanity has devolved, this does it.
Bass stretches up on his tippy toes, the shape of his thighs almost visible beneath his fatigues. Not that Miles checks. He twists sunwarm chainlinks under his fingers and says, “Make a decision already. This place is giving me the heebiejeebies.”
Miles spins on his heel. “Fine. Let’s take the woods.”
The days are cool, and at night, frost sparkles against the concrete. Miles misses the strangest things; the radioactive green glow of traffic signals, the low hum of power lines, and that overplayed British boy band he heard on every radio he ever passed just a few months ago.
He’d give a kidney for a working flashlight and a space heater.
Bass would probably do the same for a hairdryer. The apocalypse is hell on his hair, which grows shaggy as a lion’s mane and every bit as beautiful as they cut tracks across the country.
He presents Miles with a shiny pair of scissors somewhere shy of Louisville, joking about being presentable with insecurity edging his voice.
Miles does what he’s told, and that night he dreams about cutting Bass out of his clothes instead of touching his hair, using the flat of the blades to circle his navel threateningly before he swallows his cock.
They’re spending too many nights together, with no other outlets. It’s getting to him.
In the evenings, they sleep where they can; in the shells of what used to be homes, in abandoned cars. On one memorable occasion, they make their beds on the floor of a child’s tree house. Other nights, they have no choice but to settle down beneath the Milky Way.
It’s as freeing as it is horrifying, living in the wreckage of civilization, and their trek across the continent is painstakingly slow. Even when Bass doesn’t want to go off-roading, there’s only so much a person can do on foot. But they cover more ground than most people could. They’ve been through survival training; they’ve been shaped by their tours overseas.
No one is more suited for the apocalypse than a Marine.
Still. Worrying isn’t something Miles is great at. He wants to get to Chicago and do it fast. Nervous energy floods his system, sets him on edge.
In the mechanic’s shop they choose to hunker down in a few nights after the baseball pitch, he’s blowing off steam.
Bass says, “Put the machete down.”
Miles ignores him, dragging the blunt end of the weapon against the walls, showering sparks that die before they hit the floor. “It’s like a knife.
Like a really big knife. What do you think they kept this thing around for?”
“Zombies?” Bass suggests. “Killer weeds? How the hell should I know? Seriously, drop it before you poke out an eye.”
Agreeably, Miles lets the machete fall to the concrete with a clang. “Thank god for guns.”
“Have you seen these cars?” Bass brushes his fingers longingly across a Bugatti’s shiny finish. “This baby’s my dream. Always wanted the chance to drive one.”
“The lights could come back on.”
Bass lifts a noncommittal shoulder. “Yeah, sure. And then I could win the lottery.” He tilts his face towards Miles, eyes pale as ice in the dying sunset, the shaggy ends of his hair burnished gold. He says, “You’re so damn jittery. You’re making me nervous.”
“I have to make sure my family’s okay. I have to. You don’t understand. You don’t-“
Miles regrets what he’s said almost instantly. He watches as Bass’s fingers curl into fists.
“I don’t have a family anymore.” There is a hollowness in Bass’s voice that is all Miles’s fault. He always does this. He always goes straight for the throat without meaning to.
Miles tries to wrap his hands around Bass’ wrists, to say he’s sorry or avoid getting slugged in the face.
He misses his mark. Abruptly, Bass tells him, “I know why you’re doing this.”
His tone heralds nothing good. Circling Bass, wary, Miles suggests, “Enlighten me.”
With the taunting surety of a bully, Bass says, “You’re in love with that sister in law of yours. You always have been.”
Miles snarls instinctively, a pointed thing flaring beneath his ribcage at the mention of Rachel. It dies down almost as quick. He’s over her. He’s almost certain he’s over her. Rachel and Ben have a family now, are family, and Miles barely ever feels a twinge of regret about it. That’s the very definition of over it, right?
“You’re wrong.”
“Am I? Save Rachel and you can be the big, grand hero.”
“What does it matter if I am? She’s my brother’s wife, Bass.”
The words echo all around the garage, a Greek chorus of forewarning that Miles chooses to ignore. Bass accuses, “You always wanted everything Ben had.”
And Miles can’t help shooting back, “Please, Ben never had anything worth wanting.”
He sounds like a child.
He cements Bass’s certainty.
“Until now. Come on. You want to be there, with her. You want to be the one with the kids and the picket fence. You wish you’d never enlisted with me-“
“If I’d never enlisted I wouldn’t know how to save anybody. Puts a real damper on your theory.”
Bass is breathing hard, his absolute conviction pissing Miles off. Yeah, Rachel lit his flame. But she wasn’t nearly as important as-
His thoughts skid to a halt. He doesn’t know how to finish that sentence. Or he does, but he won’t, because there is only one person more forbidden than Rachel.
Bass slumps back against the grease-stained wall. “You care about them all so damn much, but leaving base? Breaking protocol? You’re doing it for Rachel.”
“Does it matter?” Miles steps in close, clapping one hand against Bass’s shoulder. It’s the most brotherly, easy display of affection he can manage, but the solid muscle beneath his palm is warmhotBass, and maybe touching him at all was a bad idea.
Bass makes a frustrated noise. “It matters. If you’re going to be a liability because you’re so desperate to protect Rachel, then I need that intel.” He drops his head, the darker curve of his eyebrows shading whatever he’s thinking from Miles’s view. Almost spitefully, Bass tacks on, “Love makes men weak.”
Irritation pricks beneath Miles’s skin. He spits out, “Then Rachel isn’t the problem. I’ve got you.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Bass demands, a scowl deepening the age lines that are only beginning to carve out his jaw. They make him look distinguished, where the rivers and streams beginning to crease Miles’s face only provide him with a perpetual scowl.
Irritably, he rebukes him, “What do you think? How can you even talk about Rachel when you were off screwing every twenty two year old within fifty miles of Parris Island?” His voice is growing louder without his permission. He doesn’t want to fight, not when he’s so tired he can feel it down to his toes, this deep-seated exhaustion that is only bearable because Bass is sharing it with him. But he can’t take the way Bass is staring at him, chips of darkness in his otherwise quartz-crystal gaze, rage simmering right beneath the surface. “How was that supposed to make me feel?”
Lowly, Bass replies, “You never had a problem with it.”
“Yeah, I had a problem with it,” Miles shouts back, because this is ridiculous. He didn’t sign up for a touchy feely chat in some backwater garage. He didn’t ever plan to say any of this out loud. “But what was I supposed to say? Hey, Bass, stop leching on college kids and fuck me instead? Right, that would have gone over well.”
They’ve crowded in on each other, too close, too intimate. Miles’s heart tries to catapult out of his chest. He presses his palm over its persistent pounding, trying to remember how to breathe, and Bass tracks the movement. He’s so near his features blur, his face all angles and a dark silhouette.
“You could’ve tried,” Bass tells him, and the accusation is there, this unspoken allegation of cowardice that’s simmered between them for close to two years.
Miles steels himself to fight it off, againagain, he’s always fighting, but this time Bass doesn’t give him the chance.
His mouth burns fever hot. His kisses sting and bite. Miles’s bones quaver like a tuning fork, hot under his skin, and he has to walk Bass back against the surface of the Bugatti or risk falling to his knees.
“I’ll give you whatever you want,” Bass pants against Miles’s teeth. “Don’t turn me away this time. Miles. Don’t. I-“
Miles kisses him, hard, drowning the reverberation of his words beneath the growl that trembles through his own throat. He paws at Bass’s shirt, trying to tear it off, to touch the golden planes of Bass’s skin waiting underneath, only he’s thwarted by the way that Bass’s fingers twist in his jacket, shoving it back and off. Damned thing catches on Miles’s elbows, but Bass doesn’t care, tugging the front of Miles’s t-shirt up until he can touch the skin of his stomach, shove his hand up under the cloth and touch fucking everywhere. Tangled and trapped, Miles struggles the rest of the way out of his coat, sucking bruises beneath the line of Bass’s jaw, leaving burning handprints across his hips.
Heavy fabric falls underfoot, but Miles kicks it out of the way and shucks off his shirt in one smooth movement. He looks up and Bass’s is gone, a magic trick over and done with. Miles can reach out and touch skin, can cup his heartbeat in his hands, feel Bass strong and solid under his palms. They’ve been best friends since before they knew what sex was, all their history thrumming electric in the spaces where their bodies aren’t fitted snugly together. Miles can take what he wants.
So he does.
He twines his fingers into Bass’s dog tags, relics of the world they’ve left behind. The metal of the chain has leeched warmth from Bass’s body heat. It slips hot between Miles’s fingers as he tugs Bass’s head out of the way and latches his lips against Bass’s throat. He marks him red, black, and blue, licks stripes and bites stars. Bass groans obscene and stumbles back against the hood of the car, but that just makes it better.
Miles shoves him down until he’s perched against cherry red, his knees pressing hard bruises into Miles’s hips. They kiss rough and deep, but not fast. Miles has long since learned that rushing isn’t the only way to show his enthusiasm. He leans in between the cradle of Bass’s legs, taunting himself gradually with the fever heat of his best friend’s dick through khaki, but Bass is such an impatient fuck. He palms Miles’s ass and pulls them flush.
He is hot, heavy, ready, and he mumbles Miles’s name beneath his breath, soft and urgent, followed by, “That’s right. Fucking finally, touch
me, you asshole.”
Miles is a marine. He’s excellent at following orders. His hands rove, skimming the dip of Bass’s lower back, the ridges of his spine. The light touch has Bass bucking against him, not quite urgent, not quite yet. Bass smoothes his thumbs over the jut of Miles’s hipbones, and there, that’s it. That’s all it takes for him to lose it.
“Get your pants off,” Miles snarls, helping Bass shove them down around his hips even as the words spill from his mouth. Bass’s boots make a wretched noise, scraping across the bumper of the car, but his butt wiggles in the air, bare as the day he was born, free for grabbing.
The slow burn of his bare skin against the rough fabric of Miles’s pants makes it hot. Bass’s fingers fumbling over the zip make it hotter. Once Miles is free, Bass falls to his knees. His mouth sucks stars and licks stripes just above the bristling curls nestled around Miles’s cock.
Miles takes it for as long as he can, right up until the point where he’s got fireworks bursting behind his eyes, and then he shoves Bass away, his mouth red, abused, wet. He takes a deep breath and reins himself back in.
“C’mere.”
Bass obediently finds his footing and presses a kiss against Miles’s mouth, his own plumper now, salty tasting and desperate. Miles splays him out across the hood of the car, so that the naked span of Bass’s back, pale and starred with freckles, stretches long and lean in stark contrast to the glossy redredred.
The metal is icy under Miles’s hands. It must sting at Bass’s chest, but he doesn’t complain, only bucks his ass back against Miles’s dick, quietly urging. The lube thing is a problem, but they work with what they have. It’s messy. It makes Miles harder.
He nips into the sinew and muscle of Bass’s shoulder, and a strangled groan transforms into a harsh pant when Miles pushes inside of him.
Bass fits around his cock tight and thrumming on the inside, his blood calling to Miles, and Miles - he fucks Bass the way he’s always wanted to, fast and hard, without letting the creeping edge of doubt break the mood.
It’s vicious, it’s hell, the way everything is just right. Miles is going to go insane if he doesn’t come, if he can’t let go of the way Bass is running rampant in his bloodstream, tighthotslick on his cock, the crescendo of his moans crashing down over Miles’s ears.
He wraps his hand around the shape of Bass’s dick, pumps it against the cold metal of the defunct car. Bass bucks his hips back against Miles, fucking himself against Miles’s cock and into Miles’s hand, desperate and uncertain about which direction’s better. He gets crazy, impossibly tight, squeezes back so hard it’s almost the wrong side of painful, but then he’s shuddering, shivering, his entire body quaking as he spills wet and sticky across Miles’s knuckles.
He can see his reflection in the tinted glass of the windshield, the angry slash of his mouth and the fire in his eyes. He tries to hold Bass’s wrists down, but Bass’s fingers press into Miles’s palms, the callused pads so familiar, but the touch too intimate.
He guides Miles’s hands up until he can feel Bass’s pulse jumping beneath his skin. Miles comes like that, with his hands wrapped around Bass’s throat, flooding sticky wet inside of him while Bass stains the Bugatti, cum dripping down into the grill.
And all he can think as he collapses against his best friend’s fever hot spine is this:
Bass can make hell feel like home.
---
It takes years for things to settle down, and even then, nothing’s quite right.
It’s the worst in the cities, where food is scarce and automatic weapons are not. Miles wonders why people don’t leave, but he understands it.
Human beings are fond of concrete jungles; they feel familiar and safe, even when they are no longer either of those things.
Besides, outside it’s surreal. Everyone’s gone medieval. All of two months pass, and he meets his first traveling bard. He carries a Gibson instead of a lute or whatever, but it still fucking blows Miles’s mind.
He gets a similar feeling when he reads the first ever copy of the Monroe Militia’s handbook, created on a hand cranked printing press. The letters of each word feel old, raised beneath his fingertips, ridged across recycled paper the men made themselves.
Last time he was on the road with the Militia, they stopped at an Inn that served gamey venison and apple tarts, the pastry crust so sweet and flaky that it melted against Miles’s tongue. He’s living the life of a traveling knight in the twenty first century.
Jeremy thinks the never ending RenFaire is fantastic, now that no one’s trying to smash his face in with their boot, but Jeremy also thinks he’d look great in garter hose, so he doesn’t get an opinion.
“Uh, I totally get a say,” Jeremy objects, a tumbler full of moonshine sparkling with the yellow-orange lick of flames in his hand. “Don’t get cross. It’s not my fault you can’t pull of a codpiece.”
Miles chokes on his own drink. The grain liquor burns sour when he finally manages to swallow it down. Darkly, he tells Jeremy, “There’s something wrong with you.”
Bass finds it all hilarious. He kicks his heels against the filthy brick of the fireplace they’re gathered around, camped as they are in the empty skeleton of what was once a home. Bringing his glass up in a toast, Bass cheers, “Jeremy, you’re brilliant.”
“I am,” Jeremy agrees without a trace of sarcasm.
The firelight gleams like blood against their glasses, and all of them are trying not to think about death. This is how they live, in the middle of the apocalypse.
“Why is he brilliant?” Miles demands. “He’s an idiot.”
“Hey,” Jeremy objects.
Bass’s words are honey slow, his pronunciation excruciatingly precise as he disagrees. “No, no. We fight with swords. Like barbarians. We should have armor. And chainmail.” The blue of his eyes glitters sharp. “And codpieces.”
Jeremy cheers.
Miles’s outrage is lazy, moonshine is liquid fire in his stomach. The stuff tastes like dirt, but it still does the job. “Don’t encourage him.”
Jeremy smirks and says, “I want one in gold. Gold will really accentuate what I have to offer.”
Bass shakes his head. The older he gets, the sharper his features grow, the more rugged his jaw line. But his curls still cling to the curve of his ears the same way they did when he was five, lending Bass a wild boyishness that drives women crazy. He says, “Platinum. I’m going to buy all my officers matching platinum codpieces, lovingly engraved with the mark of the Monroe Militia.”
“This just got really gay,” Jeremy marvels, although he doesn’t exactly sound shocked.
Miles grins, letting it all sink in. Getting Bass onboard with the idea of the Militia took more work than he cares to admit, because everything is different now. In the beginning, Bass tried to convince Miles that vigilante justice is no kind of justice at all, but he came around. How can he not, when Miles his brother, Miles his lover is the one making the argument?
It made sense to put Bass’s name on the Militia’s brand; he believes in America in a way Miles never has. He wants to create, where Miles only knows how to survive.
“What about the female officers?” Miles asks, because they have quite a few. “What do they get?”
Solemnly, Bass replies, “Breastplates. Platinum breastplates.”
There is a pricetag on their relationship, bearing the names of every person they brutalized or killed. But it’s good to know that laughter is something they both still can share.
“Why don’t they just go naked?” Jeremy suggests, eyes dancing. “That’s something I can get behind.”
Miles nudges him with his boot. “That’s because you’re a chauvinist. Quit thinking with your gun.”
“If we’re going to be knights, we should have titles. Sir Jeremy has a nice ring.”
“That no one would believe,” Bass retorts, taking a long, slow sip of moonshine. “What about Miles?”
“Hmm. I’ll call you the Butcher of Chicago,” Jeremy tells Miles with glee. “See, it’s funny, because you like to pork Bass.”
Bass makes a noise in the back of his throat that is halfway between a snarl and a snort.
Totally straight-faced, Jeremy corrects, “See, it’s funny, because you like to pork General Monroe.”
It’s a different dynamic than Miles has ever known. He’s no longer a soldier in a family of soldiers. He’s an equal, a leader. It’s all changing and evolving, and his worst fear is that eventually, having each other won’t be enough.
He remembers when he first signed on for the military. His dad said, “People will depend on you. Never take advantage of that,” and clapped his arm and did not say that he was proud.
But this is the first time that Miles has felt important enough that his dad’s words have become true. He and Bass and Jeremy; they’ve made themselves gods because they’re sick of being men, helpless to stop the ever-flowing tide of death.
They’re not going to be helpless anymore.
Bass says, “Hey, have you seen what they’re doing in Georgia? It’s all so very civilized.”
“Want to model the militia after the South, boss?” Jeremy wrinkles his nose, turning his cup over and over, just to make sure there’s not one more drop left.
“No. What we’re doing is good,” Bass replies, with a glimmer in his eyes that borders on ferocity. “We’re going to revolutionize the world.”
They are, Miles and Jeremy agree.
They will.
---
Miles tells all his new recruits, “Ride your fear or your fear will ride you.”
Only his fear is massive. It could swamp a cruise ship in its relentless deluge.
He never wanted to hurt people. He’s still entirely opposed to it, but they’re up against chaos, against hunger and bloodlust. You are what you fight.
Bass wants to fight the world, now, and to a degree Miles understands. It’s easier to imagine demons drifting in thin air than to face the ones that lie inside your own heart.
Blood and death haunt them through the night, and when they wake in the midst of the apocalypse, they only have each other to hold. But increasingly, that is becoming the wedge that is driving them apart.
Bass is losing it, Miles thinks. He stares down the barrels of guns and Miles wonders if he still wants to eat a bullet, even a little. He wants to save him, but every time he tries, Bass twists his words and tries to drive him away.
Which isn’t something Miles can allow.
Love is not fragile. Miles can’t crush it in his hands. This thing that lives inside him, hemorrhaging red, aching raw; it fights back. It is has teeth and claws, it tears gaping wounds in Miles’s flesh.
He is entrapped by Bass’s razor blade eyes. The broad expanse of his shoulders and rough swell of his knuckles are an addiction that grows daily. And in the night, when I love you’s spill guttural from Bass’s throat, self-loathing crushes against Miles’s ribcage, hot and guilty. He falls to his knees, a victim on love’s altar, convinced the blood that pools in every footstep he takes is worth it.
For Bass, he sheds his humanity. For Bass, he becomes a monster. For Bass, Miles loses himself.
But what is lost inevitably must be found.
---
Now, blood means family and it glitters the crystalline blue of Charlie’s eyes. She holds her head up to the wind, her face strong and surly. Miles is convinced she practices those expressions in every mirror they find.
The apocalypse came, the apocalypse went, and the biggest change of all occurred deep inside Mile’s heart.
He’s got a picture of himself and Ben tucked inside his now defunct wallet, from Ben’s freshman year of college. Their smiles are so painfully bright they’re nearly Techni-color, backed by the cocky surety of youth. But there’s something disingenuous to the tilt of their lips, maybe because he remembers how off-balance they were at that age, Ben too awkward, Miles too bigheaded and fraught with confusion.
He’s calmer now, his confidence quieter. When he smiles at himself in the reflection of cool river streams, it’s small, but very real.
Even so, he dreams about Bass touching him.
In the shadowy netherspace of sleep, where nightmares and fantasies spin sugar-sweet through his brain, he imagines it. The fire opal glow of heat shimmering between the twisted geometry of their bodies. The rough curl of Bass’s desert browned fingertips against his cock. The frantic beatbox pant of their shared breaths.
He misses him. Every second of every day, he misses him. He misses karaoke and zombie movie marathons, desert sand and easy camaraderie, and the way that Bass used to watch Miles with longing in his eyes. He wishes the way Bass’s long fingers would grip his hips, the electricity that arced between their connected bodies, and the impossibly intoxicating idea that in the Monroe Militia, Miles belonged.
If he could go back, he thinks he would, for one more minute - one more second of Bass’s mouth on his. But if his grandmother had handlebars, she’d be a bicycle. If’s are just wishes that won’t ever come true.
“Miles,” Charlie calls, her voice a measured bark. She’s got something to complain about, because she always does. Charlie’s a lot like Bass that way; she wants the truth, and she wants justice, and she’s got this idea that the world should be a certain way. Neither of them will ever learn what Miles already knows:
Nothing will ever go back to the way it was, but maybe that’s okay.
The way the world was never did any of them any favors. But now they are knights, gods, monsters, and heroes. They fuck up and they fix it and then they do it all again. The change made them mythic, and the apocalypse has become a fairytale.
Maybe, for a while, everything will suck - he’s lost Bass, and Ben, and so many countless other people. There is death and blood, and blood, and blood. But now Miles knows who he is; and it isn't the bad kid his father said he was. He is a man who no longer breaks whatever he touches, because he knows what he wants, and how to fight for it. And he will fight for it, of course, because that’s the thing about fairytales:
They always have a happy ending.
Author:
garnetice
Pairing: Miles/Bass (side of Miles/Rachel)
Rating: M
Word Count: 8,983
Warnings: Bad words, angst, sex, S2 conflicts
Disclaimer: Revolution: not mine.
Summary: He is entrapped by Bass’s razor blade eyes. The broad expanse of his shoulders and rough swell of his knuckles are an addiction that grows daily. And in the night, when I love you’s spill guttural from Bass’s throat, self-loathing crushes against Miles’s ribcage, hot and guilty. He falls to his knees, a victim on love’s altar, convinced the blood that pools in every footstep he takes is worth it.
Author's Notes: Ahhhh god, okay, so I started writing this midway through season 1 and never finished it, and then I never got around to season 2. I know they introduced new family members, etc, including Miles’s dad, I think? Which means that everything I wrote is probably hella AU now. But I’m posting it anyway, because 8k words probably shouldn’t go to waste. Please try to ignore any inaccuracies that arise in S2. (Also, like, based on my math, which is awful and probably wrong, Miles is really bad at being a Marine. But I’m going to gracefully consign that to the sucktastic math on the show (Danny was the shrimpiest four year old I’ve ever seen, trufax).
---
There is a time when blood means shots at the doctor’s, a stinging puncture mark welling red. Death is represented by zombie movie marathons with Bass, his teeth against Miles’s throat as he messes around.
He does a terrible imitation of a brain-hungry corpse, but it never stops him from trying.
These early days, the apocalypse is a joke and family is a burden, Ben getting snappish whenever the blare of Miles’s music gets too loud.
“You’re irresponsible,” Miles’s dad says, iron in his voice. “You need to grow up.”
His disapproval weighs as much as mountains, sits heavy on Miles’s chest and makes him want to puke. He’s going to do better, be better, one day, but for now he’s fifteen years old, and the first rays of sunrise wash away all his promises.
Summer stretches on endless, marked with laughter, laziness, and girls. Bass has a string of perky brunettes on speed dial while Miles is into pretty blondes. Ben watches them both with judgey eyes, but he isn’t exactly a role model when it comes to healthy relationships. He barely even talks to female-kind, poised as he is to fly off to college, where he can comingle with the loves of his life, Grace Murray Hopper and Marie Curie.
Miles and Bass drag him out for fun anyway, to baseball games and bowling night, and on one memorable occasion, karaoke. Ben sings about giving peace a chance while Miles and Bass belt out Bob Dylan. None of them can carry a tune, but that doesn’t matter in the least as they egg each other on, the way only teenagers can manage.
Next thing Miles knows, Bass is onstage singing Cyndi Lauper and the girl he’s come with is discretely exiting through the back door.
Bass doesn’t give a whit. He comes bounding down the stage with sweat-slick curls, wrestling Miles to the floor with a declaration of, “You’re next, bitch.”
Miles’s rendition of Like A Virgin isn’t all that high energy, but his big brother and best friend still applaud long and loud.
They stumble out of the parlor around nine to a spun sugar sunset, limbs loose and free as they talk over each other’s hoarse exclamations.
The words they say mean nothing and everything, the car ride home filled with nonstop babble.
Ben idles by the curb when Miles walks Bass to his front door, but that doesn’t mean Miles is inspired to rush. Knowing Ben, he’s probably already absorbed in one of the many paperbacks he keeps tucked in the backseat. Miles and Bass could stand on the Monroe’s front porch for hours without hearing a single complaint.
Miles says, “Tomorrow we’re going to act like men.”
Bass smirks. “Paintball and chocolate milkshakes?”
“You read my mind,” he agrees happily, heat blossoming beneath his skin. That expression of Bass’s is Miles’s favorite, cocksure and delighted. He is inexplicably proud of himself for having a hand in its appearance.
The corners of Bass’s lips twitch higher, laughter quivering through his thin shoulders - filling out, broadening even as he stands there - and he says, “You really rocked Madonna.”
“Tell anyone and you’re dead,” Miles warns, low and amused.
The porch light ticks on, Bass’s mom waving at them from inside the living room. Behind her, Bass’s little sisters play with blocks, building turrets and towers straight from their imagination. It’s all picture-perfect domestic, the scent of Mr. Monroe’s home cooked macaroni drifting from beneath the door, and Miles likes that Bass lives here.
More than anything else, he prefers his best friend happy, because it tugs on his heartstrings and makes Miles happy too.
That might be weird.
That’s probably weird.
But whatever, who cares? Weird is subjective, and Miles can’t imagine feeling any other way. He bids a merry goodbye to Bass (and his mom) before charting a path straight into the passenger seat of Ben’s car.
“Want to hit up some takeout?” Ben asks with a grin, and this too makes Miles’s chest feel warm. Approval isn’t often a thing that he gets, but this is a good night.
No, this is a great night.
He tells his big brother, “I can go for a burger,” and they drive off into a horizon choked with stars so bright they can’t even be drowned out by the electric hum of city lights.
---
With Ben gone, nothing is right. Miles never thought he’d miss his stupid big brother so fiercely.
But it’s unbearable at home, without Saint Benjamin to broker peace between Miles and their dad. The Matheson house becomes the DMZ, spit words like gunfire. Miles can’t possibly endure another lecture about responsibility or honor.
So in all of his teenage wisdom, he decides to make himself scarce.
He crashes most nights in Bass’s bed, curled beneath his blue comforter while Bass complains that his gangly limbs take up too much room.
He whines and he bitches, but he never kicks Miles out. He doesn’t even think to try.
In the dark of night, curled into the warmth of Bass’s scrawny body, Miles counts out his best friend’s heartbeats and tells himself it’s not strange.
Mornings see him marching back home to sneak lunch money from his mom. Sometimes she’ll ask with mock-suspicion, “You’re not getting up to trouble again, are you?”
Solemnly, Miles will reply, “That’s all I know how to do.”
She laughs, always, endlessly indulgent with her youngest son. She kisses his cheek and tells him to scram off to school.
As the screen door slams behind him, Miles can hear the rough tread of his dad’s boot-steps on carpet, his over-large voice inquiring who was at the door.
Miles speeds his pace.
The problem isn’t that his dad is a bad man. It’s Miles’s inability to be a good one. That’s why they fight, so frequently and with such volume, blood boiling in their veins. They come from a long line of Matheson men, soldiers every one - except for Ben, Ben is gifted - and Matheson men believe in doing the right thing, always and forever, on into the end days.
Miles the playboy, the quick-talker, the underage drinker is such a disappointment. And what’s worst is the part where he doesn’t care. He’d rather have fun than be stuffy and pompous. He’d rather be anything but a Matheson.
Ben never got that, not even a little bit, because Ben’s life goal is to be epically boring, but he was a willing (if not condescending) buffer.
Miles resents his absence.
More so when Ben comes home for summer break.
His brother, his blood - Ben - hasn’t been lonely while Miles was gone. He’s got a pretty new girlfriend, a real live woman hopelessly devoted to his existence. Miles thought he’d have to wait until Ragnarök to see Ben happy, so he’s delighted for his big brother, honestly and for real.
Just.
Rachel likes loud music.
Rachel likes tequila shots.
Rachel likes to dancesingsmilelaugh. She’s different, for an egghead, so beautiful she glows with it. Kindness and love shines beneath her skin.
Yes, Miles decides, Rachel is entirely too good for Ben by measures, even if she is the first girl to ever lure him completely out of his shell.
One day she’s going to be the mother of Ben’s children, probably, but Miles doesn’t think about that, or how when she grins, he takes notice.
Instead he focuses on that word, family, on Ben and the kids none of them have yet gotten to meet, on how pretty Rachel will be in her wedding dress and the weight of Bass’s gaze between his shoulder blades every time Miles stares when he shouldn’t.
He stares a lot. Miles is on the brink of manhood, strong and powerful, but he doesn’t yet understand the meaning of honor. He is one hundred percent confident that he can take something that doesn’t belong to him. Although he doesn’t plan on trying.
He doesn’t, until he does.
The first time he has sex Rachel is also the last time. They’re both wasted, blitzed beyond all belief while Ben snores away back home. In the back of Miles’s car, Rachel is fully clothed, almost, but Miles is stripped to nothing, and it’s the kind of blazing hot he didn’t think reality could be. She fucks like a wildcat, with more heat and intensity than any other girl Miles has ever been with. He’s completely infatuated.
She’s completely not. Afterwards, she looks at Miles so coldly that he kind of feels like he should apologize. There’s this awful bile-flavored soup where his stomach should be, harshing his post-coital buzz. Saying sorry to a girl for sticking his dick in them goes against Miles’s nature, so he does something else abnormal instead. Head buried between Rachel’s neck and collarbone, he confides, “I’m thinking about enlisting.”
She surprises him for the eight millionth time, scoffing and saying, “Of course you are.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means I know you, Miles Matheson. This is your duty,” she says, “This is your future. To kill. To be a beast when no one else wants to. You owe it to your country, to your family. To me.” She pushes cool fingers through Miles’s sweaty hair and continues, “You’ll live your life owing everyone around you, because you are a Matheson.”
With a start, Miles realizes he’s heard this speech before, from his dad. Ben must have recited it all back to Rachel, who is too clever by far.
She amends the end, choosing not to verge off on a tangent about glory and god. Her correction to dear old dad’s happy recruitment monologue goes, “But one day, you’ll go too far. That line, once you find it, that’s where honor starts. It is the thing that will make you stop caring what you owe the world and begin wondering what you owe your soul.”
Rachel pins Miles with her ice floe eyes and asks, “What do you think you deserve, Miles? The only woman your brother’s ever loved?”
He knows right then that she sees the apologies he didn’t give voice to. He tries, “I’m sor-“
Only Rachel doesn’t stop. She says, “I don’t want to see you again,” and Miles hears an unsaid, I’m sorry.
Rachel turns up at his front door a few days later. For all of five seconds, Miles entertains something akin to hope, but then she cups his cheek and says, “I’m not here for you.” Half a week later and she’s engaged to Ben.
Enter Emma. She’s kind and easy and she can’t make sense of advanced engineering equations. She’s essentially the anti-Rachel, if not every bit as lovely. Months fly past with her by Miles’s side, never quite assuaging the aching wound Rachel represents.
When Miles buys her a ring, Bass tells him, “You’re doing this for the wrong reasons.”
Miles wants to mouth along the rugged line of his jaw, to press his lips to the indents of Bass’s hidden dimples and up, ghosting over the blond lashes that border his stupidly blue eyes. But he can’t have that, can’t taste or touch or want, because he’s in love with a girl (not the right girl) and aching on the inside, and Bass can’t fix that. He doesn’t know a goddamned thing about love.
(Miles knows he fucked Emma. Miles knows, and that hurts too, but their engagement is a farce, and maybe their friendship is too, but letting Bass go isn’t ever going to happen).
Rachel wants to pretend she can do this, be a wife and a mother, a charming, pliant fixture in Ben’s life?
Whatever. Two can play at that game. He can find the things she accused him of lacking, be the man his father always swore he wasn’t.
Miles knows how to play pretend.
---
Then comes the days when blood is all Miles ever sees and death makes him retch in his mouth, the taste vile and sour. He chokes it back down because he’s been conditioned to and because the ribbing from his platoon isn’t worth the hassle.
This the job, a voice that sounds a lot like his dad’s chides in his mind, disgusted by his weakness.
Bass asks in a voice edged with worry, “Are you okay?”
Miles isn’t sure how to be okay when Iraq feels like the end of the world has come and gone. He misses home and his family, he misses burgers and air conditioning. Basic training was hell, but he didn’t die, Semper Fi. He thought boot camp taught him what it was to suffer.
Now he knows that he was being trained for this, and they failed, oh, how they failed.
All the same, Bass never leaves his side. Not back in South Carolina when they were both facing disciplinary action for being punk-ass ingrates, staring down weeks of hard labor and permanent marks on their service record, and not here, where the sun is so hot it could turn sand to glass. The least Miles can do is grit his teeth and say, “M’fine,” every time that question arises.
There’s something very grand and romantic about dying for your country, until you’re actually faced point blank with the option, but Miles is strong, stronger than this, and he has a cause to fight for. There is Bass and there is Ben, and they are all he’s ever needed. Miles doesn’t plan on letting either of them down; he will line his stomach with steel if he has to.
(You’re weak, his father told him, before he enlisted. You need to learn what honor is. Miles told him honor was a line he hadn’t yet crossed, only to remember that lecture didn’t come from his dad.)
Bass says, “You’re looking green.”
War isn’t hitting him in quite the same way, because Bass believes in truth, justice, and the American way, while Miles believes that following in the footsteps of his father and grandfather is the only option he’s got.
Wearily, Miles rejoins, “A black eye might help you see more clearly.”
They both flash fevered grins, feeding each other’s courage when nothing else will.
(Honor looks like blood and bloodlines and so much blood.)
Desert sand sifts beneath the steady clomp of their boots as they become something more than boys and something less than men, nightmares and heroes in equal measure. Their shadows are linked, their hearts pumping in time. On the opposite end of the globe from home, they are still Bass-and-Miles, Miles-and-Bass. They shield each other better than body armor can, preparing for the day when sacrifice might become more than a word.
But Bass can’t shield Miles from what comes next.
---
“It was a nice wake.”
“It was a fucking wake,” Bass spits back, rubbing his fists over tired eyes.
They’ve returned home from their second tour hale and whole, to learn that death is synonymous with a broken heart. Not death in glory, or death in honor, but death, grim and meaningless. Miles watches Bass wrap his lips around the mouth of a bottle and wonders if soon enough he’ll see all that pouty pink on a gun. He’s been drinking nonstop since he heard the news. It’s like Bass is trying to flood himself with alcohol to wipe out the stain of blood left behind, to bury the apocalypse-sized hole in his soul with a deluge of Jim Beam.
Miles isn’t a psychic, but he’s good at reading Bass, and yeah, this isn’t working. Bass is the kind of man who believes in truth and justice, honor and duty. He’s the All American dream, corn-fed good looks and easy going charm, but more than that, he is inherently good, right at his core, and Miles can’t understand why something so awful has happened to him. His best friend’s sorrow pricks uncomfortably beneath his skin. Helplessness infests his bones. Miles has known Bass longer than anyone else on Earth, now, but he’s floundering for a way to put him to rights.
He tries, “They would have liked it.”
“They would have liked living better,” Bass grits out.
It’d be easier if he wasn’t running on anger, fueled by pure hatred for a man he’s never met. Miles tries not to take it personally. The guy’s already been locked up; the only punching bag Bass has is Matheson-shaped and familiar, and hey, Miles is a Marine. He can handle the bruises.
He says, “Okay,” and, “Pass me the bottle,” and hopes he won’t shatter Bass when he knocks their shoulders and ankles together.
For a long time after that night - long enough that Miles is almost fooled into believing he’ll be okay - Bass keeps it together. It takes a cemetery and Bass’s service revolver to disillusion him from that fantasy. He’s barely ripped the gun from Bass’s hands before he’s submitting a request to move back to Parris Island.
Living in the barracks again definitely isn’t Miles’s idea of a good time, but they can’t stay in Chicago and outrun Bass’s ghosts.
Getting BAH is nearly impossible unless their ranks spike upwards. That blows. Miles does manage to pull a few favors, though. He scores them a thimble sized room that he and Bass can barely cram into. Bass is characteristically appreciative.
“I knew your natural charisma would come in handy one day,” he says sardonically, examining their new digs with a critical eye.
“At least it has a lock. I’m going to disembowel the first teenager that hits me up for beer.” Miles is sulking. A little. Not a lot. A lot would be really unbecoming, because he is a Marine, damnit.
A bit miserable, Bass replies, “You don’t have to do this. I’ll behave, I promise. I don’t need a babysitter.”
Punching him in the bicep with barely any force, Miles retorts, “Yeah, no, I do. I get lonely.”
Bass regards him skeptically. “I’m not going to cuddle with you.”
If they were kids, Miles would demand if Bass preferred to snuggle. He’d dig his fingers beneath Bass’s ribs and tickle him into submission until they both dissolved into giggles and it was established that Miles was master and commander of the universe.
Instead, he jabs his fingers against Bass’s shoulders, shoving him back against the nearest bed. It’s a very adult and mature thing to do. Bass lets loose with a startled yelp. Miles follows up with a body slam, throwing the entirety of his weight across Bass’s middle, pushing the air from his lungs. He deadpans, “Baby, you wound me.”
Bass bucks up, but he doesn’t thrash. He uses the leverage he gets to try to throw Miles onto the floor, but as far as grappling efforts go, it’s weak. Miles shifts onto his side, solidly pinning Bass beneath him. Bass’s chest rumbles with laughter.
He says, “Nice comeback.”
“I thought so,” Miles agrees, dryly. “Repent your grievous insult.”
The smile that graces Bass’s face is equal parts incandescence and wicked mischief, familiar in a way that makes Miles ache. He hasn’t seen Bass wear that grin in nearly a year. He’d worried it was gone forever, lost beneath the dirt and the heavy crush of headstones. Enticed, Miles sways forward, too close, too close.
Bass cranes his head up and, in a low whisper, he confides, “Marines never surrender.”
Then he catches Miles’s kidney with a carefully aimed elbow, which hurts like fire and knives, fuck. Miles instinctively flips on his stomach to protect the rest of his soft parts from assault.
That’s where it gets awkward.
They’re not so young that their bodies that betray them. But their eyes…Different story. Bass has irises cut from stretches of summer sky, blue so rich, so true, so utterly beloved. Miles loses himself in Bass’s gaze. Thigh to thigh, chest to chest, their noses close enough to touch,
Bass says, “We could.”
They can do a lot of things, Miles thinks, wants, fantasizes. His pulse kicks up a steady bassline, Bass’s mouth pink, plump, right there. But permission doesn’t mean anything, doesn’t mean they can kiss and they can fuck, they can obliterate over twenty years of absolute camaraderie. He and Bass have hovered on the edge of…whatever this is before, but it is the first time Bass has said so out loud, the first time Miles’s desperate panic has threatened to overwhelm his senses.
He wants that quartz-crystal gaze of Bass’s, so clear and open for the first time in months, to stay squarely where it is, trained on Miles’s face.
And he can’t have it, because right now, Miles is Bass’s only anchor to the Earth. What happens when he inevitably fucks up, the way Miles has with every girlfriend he’s ever had?
He didn’t have the stomach for war, but he muddled through by sheer force of will, until he didn’t feel the horror any longer. Bass was different. He believed he was a soldier, so he became one. He does the same for Miles, all the time, invests total faith in him when history shows how very inadvisable that is. Miles is insensitive, moody, occasionally cold. They complement each other as best friends, as brothers, but as anything more and Miles would ruin it. He’d take Bass’s loyalty and twist it and turn it, using the inexplicable trust they’ve always shared to warp him into something completely un-Bass-like, without even meaning to. Bass wouldn’t even know what had gone wrong until the world crashed down around his shoulders.
That’s the inescapable truth of Miles Matheson; he only wants what he can’t have and he breaks everything he gets.
He’s not old, not by a long shot, but he’s put too many years behind him to feel this small and petrified. Miles rolls off of Bass, and even that tiny act twinges in his marrow, regret gone physical. “No. We can’t.”
Bass folds his hands behind his head, boring a hole into the ceiling with his midsummer eyes. His smile has disappeared, every ounce of joy on lockdown. “Why not? Scared?”
There’s a challenge in his voice that turns in Miles’s belly. Of all the reckless, stupid things Bass has done, this is the worst.
“It’s not that. It’s you.”
Bass’s lips press into a thin line. He nods tightly, shrinking into himself even as he jumps to his feet. “Right. Think I’m going to break a few
rules tonight. You in?”
No. No. No. He’s not supposed to shut down this way. He’s not supposed to shut Miles out. “I didn’t mean it like that-“
“I know exactly what you mean,” Bass answers brusquely.
Miles sighs, because he really obviously does not.
“Don’t get us kicked off base. Haven’t even unpacked yet.”
“The night is young and I make no promises.” Bass pastes on a hellion’s grin, sharp edged and crazy. Miles wants to shake him, to make him
listen, but there’s no way to force the issue without kissing Bass breathless. He’s stubborn. No way he’s going to want to hear that realistically, what he’s after is the worst idea ever.
Miles made a promise. He said they were brothers. He swore he’d never leave. And as much as Miles wants to believe that sex wouldn’t make him a liar, he isn’t stupid. Getting his dick inside Bass, or vice versa, would change things, for better or worse. Because that’s who Miles is. He takes what he thinks he deserves.
That doesn’t make pushing Bass away any easier, punchdrunk on the scent of his cologne and closeness between them. Bass stumbles home in the middle of night stinking of whiskey and heady perfume. Miles can’t figure out how he made it through the gates without reprimand, but he also can’t bring himself to ask. He buries his head in his flat, uncomfortable pillow and tries not to think about any of his sweaty, late night dreams, the ones where Bass is stretched out in front of him, naked and wanting.
The ones he could have made true.
---
Fire rains down from the sky. The Earth trembles beneath their feet. This is the shape of Ragnarök, Armageddon, Meggido; the Renaissance of human technology skidding to an abrupt halt.
In the midst of it all, the wolves meant to eat the world sit back on their heels and wait for orders that never come. Patience might be a virtue, but it’s driving Miles insane. The lights went out. That’s it. Nothing more. People all over the world have lived without electricity their entire lives, but in America? It’s the fucking apocalypse.
All he wants is to find Ben. But big brother’s thousands of miles away, and who knows if he’s even alive? He wouldn’t be the first body down in this catastrophe.
(Miles knows that first hand, now. The air smells of wood smoke and decay.)
That doesn’t mean he’s giving up. He pounds the pavement, relentless, intent on reaching Chicago in record time. He entertains the idle idea that Ben might try to search him out too, but he hopes Ben doesn’t. Blood demarcates days better than the rise and set of the sun. Splattered on walls, squishing beneath feet, oozing from wounds and festering with disease. Ben can’t fight that - he has Rachel and the kids, and most of his practical combat experience involves fending off the bullies that harassed him in grade school.
Miles has Bass and a Beretta M9. Much use that’ll be if they can’t get to Ben.
Bass is the one tasked with keeping Miles sane. It’s not the easiest job. Miles might even bother appreciating that if he wasn’t busy being all sullen and fretful. “We’re sticking to the map.”
“Where’s your sense of adventure?”
They’re leaning up against the chain link face surrounding an abandoned baseball pitch, reveling in their first break for miles. It’s nice out, nice enough that there should be kids running and screaming and laughing. Their absence is more telling than the cars sitting empty in the middle of the road.
Miles says, “I left it in Carolina.”
“Find it again,” Bass nudges their knees together. “This is just like the good old days.”
The sun bakes into Miles’s skin. He’s warm on the outside, but at his core, he’s filled with ice. It leeches the heat from his extremities, makes his toes curl inside his boots and his fingers scrunch inside his pockets. The glacial grip on his guts is a constant reminder that Ben is out there, alone, unprotected. He says, “I hate to break this to you, but no one calls the Civil War era the good old days.”
“I meant Iraq,” Bass clarifies patiently, light eyes dancing. The sun catches against blue, turning his irises ethereal, pale and clear. He takes Miles’s breath away.
He’s also an idiot.
“Good isn’t the word I’d use there, either.”
“Obtuse bastard,” he scolds, knocking his knuckles pretty solidly against the meat of Miles’s bicep. Bass kicks one foot out towards the empty suburban streets and says, “It’s you and me, brother. Us against the world.”
Agreeably, Miles replies, “Back on the battlefield.”
Bass shakes his head, expression darkening. “This isn’t a battlefield.”
“Funny. It feels a lot like one.” Miles pushes off the fence, taking a few steps forward. Down the block, there is a flutter of fabric. Curtains falling back into place. A face disappearing from view.
He doesn’t blame them for spying. Two big men lurking around the neighborhood with their guns holstered at their hips aren’t exactly nonthreatening. The faceless stranger is right to be afraid.
If he or she was up close, they’d see dog tags and regulation boots. Months ago, those things would have marked Miles and Bass as safe, as protectors. Now? Not so much. All it means in the midst of this chaos is that they are deadlier than the average civilian.
It smarts that Miles doesn’t get to be Superman anymore. He’s feared in his own country. If the barbarism that’s greeted them on every block wasn’t enough to convince him humanity has devolved, this does it.
Bass stretches up on his tippy toes, the shape of his thighs almost visible beneath his fatigues. Not that Miles checks. He twists sunwarm chainlinks under his fingers and says, “Make a decision already. This place is giving me the heebiejeebies.”
Miles spins on his heel. “Fine. Let’s take the woods.”
The days are cool, and at night, frost sparkles against the concrete. Miles misses the strangest things; the radioactive green glow of traffic signals, the low hum of power lines, and that overplayed British boy band he heard on every radio he ever passed just a few months ago.
He’d give a kidney for a working flashlight and a space heater.
Bass would probably do the same for a hairdryer. The apocalypse is hell on his hair, which grows shaggy as a lion’s mane and every bit as beautiful as they cut tracks across the country.
He presents Miles with a shiny pair of scissors somewhere shy of Louisville, joking about being presentable with insecurity edging his voice.
Miles does what he’s told, and that night he dreams about cutting Bass out of his clothes instead of touching his hair, using the flat of the blades to circle his navel threateningly before he swallows his cock.
They’re spending too many nights together, with no other outlets. It’s getting to him.
In the evenings, they sleep where they can; in the shells of what used to be homes, in abandoned cars. On one memorable occasion, they make their beds on the floor of a child’s tree house. Other nights, they have no choice but to settle down beneath the Milky Way.
It’s as freeing as it is horrifying, living in the wreckage of civilization, and their trek across the continent is painstakingly slow. Even when Bass doesn’t want to go off-roading, there’s only so much a person can do on foot. But they cover more ground than most people could. They’ve been through survival training; they’ve been shaped by their tours overseas.
No one is more suited for the apocalypse than a Marine.
Still. Worrying isn’t something Miles is great at. He wants to get to Chicago and do it fast. Nervous energy floods his system, sets him on edge.
In the mechanic’s shop they choose to hunker down in a few nights after the baseball pitch, he’s blowing off steam.
Bass says, “Put the machete down.”
Miles ignores him, dragging the blunt end of the weapon against the walls, showering sparks that die before they hit the floor. “It’s like a knife.
Like a really big knife. What do you think they kept this thing around for?”
“Zombies?” Bass suggests. “Killer weeds? How the hell should I know? Seriously, drop it before you poke out an eye.”
Agreeably, Miles lets the machete fall to the concrete with a clang. “Thank god for guns.”
“Have you seen these cars?” Bass brushes his fingers longingly across a Bugatti’s shiny finish. “This baby’s my dream. Always wanted the chance to drive one.”
“The lights could come back on.”
Bass lifts a noncommittal shoulder. “Yeah, sure. And then I could win the lottery.” He tilts his face towards Miles, eyes pale as ice in the dying sunset, the shaggy ends of his hair burnished gold. He says, “You’re so damn jittery. You’re making me nervous.”
“I have to make sure my family’s okay. I have to. You don’t understand. You don’t-“
Miles regrets what he’s said almost instantly. He watches as Bass’s fingers curl into fists.
“I don’t have a family anymore.” There is a hollowness in Bass’s voice that is all Miles’s fault. He always does this. He always goes straight for the throat without meaning to.
Miles tries to wrap his hands around Bass’ wrists, to say he’s sorry or avoid getting slugged in the face.
He misses his mark. Abruptly, Bass tells him, “I know why you’re doing this.”
His tone heralds nothing good. Circling Bass, wary, Miles suggests, “Enlighten me.”
With the taunting surety of a bully, Bass says, “You’re in love with that sister in law of yours. You always have been.”
Miles snarls instinctively, a pointed thing flaring beneath his ribcage at the mention of Rachel. It dies down almost as quick. He’s over her. He’s almost certain he’s over her. Rachel and Ben have a family now, are family, and Miles barely ever feels a twinge of regret about it. That’s the very definition of over it, right?
“You’re wrong.”
“Am I? Save Rachel and you can be the big, grand hero.”
“What does it matter if I am? She’s my brother’s wife, Bass.”
The words echo all around the garage, a Greek chorus of forewarning that Miles chooses to ignore. Bass accuses, “You always wanted everything Ben had.”
And Miles can’t help shooting back, “Please, Ben never had anything worth wanting.”
He sounds like a child.
He cements Bass’s certainty.
“Until now. Come on. You want to be there, with her. You want to be the one with the kids and the picket fence. You wish you’d never enlisted with me-“
“If I’d never enlisted I wouldn’t know how to save anybody. Puts a real damper on your theory.”
Bass is breathing hard, his absolute conviction pissing Miles off. Yeah, Rachel lit his flame. But she wasn’t nearly as important as-
His thoughts skid to a halt. He doesn’t know how to finish that sentence. Or he does, but he won’t, because there is only one person more forbidden than Rachel.
Bass slumps back against the grease-stained wall. “You care about them all so damn much, but leaving base? Breaking protocol? You’re doing it for Rachel.”
“Does it matter?” Miles steps in close, clapping one hand against Bass’s shoulder. It’s the most brotherly, easy display of affection he can manage, but the solid muscle beneath his palm is warmhotBass, and maybe touching him at all was a bad idea.
Bass makes a frustrated noise. “It matters. If you’re going to be a liability because you’re so desperate to protect Rachel, then I need that intel.” He drops his head, the darker curve of his eyebrows shading whatever he’s thinking from Miles’s view. Almost spitefully, Bass tacks on, “Love makes men weak.”
Irritation pricks beneath Miles’s skin. He spits out, “Then Rachel isn’t the problem. I’ve got you.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Bass demands, a scowl deepening the age lines that are only beginning to carve out his jaw. They make him look distinguished, where the rivers and streams beginning to crease Miles’s face only provide him with a perpetual scowl.
Irritably, he rebukes him, “What do you think? How can you even talk about Rachel when you were off screwing every twenty two year old within fifty miles of Parris Island?” His voice is growing louder without his permission. He doesn’t want to fight, not when he’s so tired he can feel it down to his toes, this deep-seated exhaustion that is only bearable because Bass is sharing it with him. But he can’t take the way Bass is staring at him, chips of darkness in his otherwise quartz-crystal gaze, rage simmering right beneath the surface. “How was that supposed to make me feel?”
Lowly, Bass replies, “You never had a problem with it.”
“Yeah, I had a problem with it,” Miles shouts back, because this is ridiculous. He didn’t sign up for a touchy feely chat in some backwater garage. He didn’t ever plan to say any of this out loud. “But what was I supposed to say? Hey, Bass, stop leching on college kids and fuck me instead? Right, that would have gone over well.”
They’ve crowded in on each other, too close, too intimate. Miles’s heart tries to catapult out of his chest. He presses his palm over its persistent pounding, trying to remember how to breathe, and Bass tracks the movement. He’s so near his features blur, his face all angles and a dark silhouette.
“You could’ve tried,” Bass tells him, and the accusation is there, this unspoken allegation of cowardice that’s simmered between them for close to two years.
Miles steels himself to fight it off, againagain, he’s always fighting, but this time Bass doesn’t give him the chance.
His mouth burns fever hot. His kisses sting and bite. Miles’s bones quaver like a tuning fork, hot under his skin, and he has to walk Bass back against the surface of the Bugatti or risk falling to his knees.
“I’ll give you whatever you want,” Bass pants against Miles’s teeth. “Don’t turn me away this time. Miles. Don’t. I-“
Miles kisses him, hard, drowning the reverberation of his words beneath the growl that trembles through his own throat. He paws at Bass’s shirt, trying to tear it off, to touch the golden planes of Bass’s skin waiting underneath, only he’s thwarted by the way that Bass’s fingers twist in his jacket, shoving it back and off. Damned thing catches on Miles’s elbows, but Bass doesn’t care, tugging the front of Miles’s t-shirt up until he can touch the skin of his stomach, shove his hand up under the cloth and touch fucking everywhere. Tangled and trapped, Miles struggles the rest of the way out of his coat, sucking bruises beneath the line of Bass’s jaw, leaving burning handprints across his hips.
Heavy fabric falls underfoot, but Miles kicks it out of the way and shucks off his shirt in one smooth movement. He looks up and Bass’s is gone, a magic trick over and done with. Miles can reach out and touch skin, can cup his heartbeat in his hands, feel Bass strong and solid under his palms. They’ve been best friends since before they knew what sex was, all their history thrumming electric in the spaces where their bodies aren’t fitted snugly together. Miles can take what he wants.
So he does.
He twines his fingers into Bass’s dog tags, relics of the world they’ve left behind. The metal of the chain has leeched warmth from Bass’s body heat. It slips hot between Miles’s fingers as he tugs Bass’s head out of the way and latches his lips against Bass’s throat. He marks him red, black, and blue, licks stripes and bites stars. Bass groans obscene and stumbles back against the hood of the car, but that just makes it better.
Miles shoves him down until he’s perched against cherry red, his knees pressing hard bruises into Miles’s hips. They kiss rough and deep, but not fast. Miles has long since learned that rushing isn’t the only way to show his enthusiasm. He leans in between the cradle of Bass’s legs, taunting himself gradually with the fever heat of his best friend’s dick through khaki, but Bass is such an impatient fuck. He palms Miles’s ass and pulls them flush.
He is hot, heavy, ready, and he mumbles Miles’s name beneath his breath, soft and urgent, followed by, “That’s right. Fucking finally, touch
me, you asshole.”
Miles is a marine. He’s excellent at following orders. His hands rove, skimming the dip of Bass’s lower back, the ridges of his spine. The light touch has Bass bucking against him, not quite urgent, not quite yet. Bass smoothes his thumbs over the jut of Miles’s hipbones, and there, that’s it. That’s all it takes for him to lose it.
“Get your pants off,” Miles snarls, helping Bass shove them down around his hips even as the words spill from his mouth. Bass’s boots make a wretched noise, scraping across the bumper of the car, but his butt wiggles in the air, bare as the day he was born, free for grabbing.
The slow burn of his bare skin against the rough fabric of Miles’s pants makes it hot. Bass’s fingers fumbling over the zip make it hotter. Once Miles is free, Bass falls to his knees. His mouth sucks stars and licks stripes just above the bristling curls nestled around Miles’s cock.
Miles takes it for as long as he can, right up until the point where he’s got fireworks bursting behind his eyes, and then he shoves Bass away, his mouth red, abused, wet. He takes a deep breath and reins himself back in.
“C’mere.”
Bass obediently finds his footing and presses a kiss against Miles’s mouth, his own plumper now, salty tasting and desperate. Miles splays him out across the hood of the car, so that the naked span of Bass’s back, pale and starred with freckles, stretches long and lean in stark contrast to the glossy redredred.
The metal is icy under Miles’s hands. It must sting at Bass’s chest, but he doesn’t complain, only bucks his ass back against Miles’s dick, quietly urging. The lube thing is a problem, but they work with what they have. It’s messy. It makes Miles harder.
He nips into the sinew and muscle of Bass’s shoulder, and a strangled groan transforms into a harsh pant when Miles pushes inside of him.
Bass fits around his cock tight and thrumming on the inside, his blood calling to Miles, and Miles - he fucks Bass the way he’s always wanted to, fast and hard, without letting the creeping edge of doubt break the mood.
It’s vicious, it’s hell, the way everything is just right. Miles is going to go insane if he doesn’t come, if he can’t let go of the way Bass is running rampant in his bloodstream, tighthotslick on his cock, the crescendo of his moans crashing down over Miles’s ears.
He wraps his hand around the shape of Bass’s dick, pumps it against the cold metal of the defunct car. Bass bucks his hips back against Miles, fucking himself against Miles’s cock and into Miles’s hand, desperate and uncertain about which direction’s better. He gets crazy, impossibly tight, squeezes back so hard it’s almost the wrong side of painful, but then he’s shuddering, shivering, his entire body quaking as he spills wet and sticky across Miles’s knuckles.
He can see his reflection in the tinted glass of the windshield, the angry slash of his mouth and the fire in his eyes. He tries to hold Bass’s wrists down, but Bass’s fingers press into Miles’s palms, the callused pads so familiar, but the touch too intimate.
He guides Miles’s hands up until he can feel Bass’s pulse jumping beneath his skin. Miles comes like that, with his hands wrapped around Bass’s throat, flooding sticky wet inside of him while Bass stains the Bugatti, cum dripping down into the grill.
And all he can think as he collapses against his best friend’s fever hot spine is this:
Bass can make hell feel like home.
---
It takes years for things to settle down, and even then, nothing’s quite right.
It’s the worst in the cities, where food is scarce and automatic weapons are not. Miles wonders why people don’t leave, but he understands it.
Human beings are fond of concrete jungles; they feel familiar and safe, even when they are no longer either of those things.
Besides, outside it’s surreal. Everyone’s gone medieval. All of two months pass, and he meets his first traveling bard. He carries a Gibson instead of a lute or whatever, but it still fucking blows Miles’s mind.
He gets a similar feeling when he reads the first ever copy of the Monroe Militia’s handbook, created on a hand cranked printing press. The letters of each word feel old, raised beneath his fingertips, ridged across recycled paper the men made themselves.
Last time he was on the road with the Militia, they stopped at an Inn that served gamey venison and apple tarts, the pastry crust so sweet and flaky that it melted against Miles’s tongue. He’s living the life of a traveling knight in the twenty first century.
Jeremy thinks the never ending RenFaire is fantastic, now that no one’s trying to smash his face in with their boot, but Jeremy also thinks he’d look great in garter hose, so he doesn’t get an opinion.
“Uh, I totally get a say,” Jeremy objects, a tumbler full of moonshine sparkling with the yellow-orange lick of flames in his hand. “Don’t get cross. It’s not my fault you can’t pull of a codpiece.”
Miles chokes on his own drink. The grain liquor burns sour when he finally manages to swallow it down. Darkly, he tells Jeremy, “There’s something wrong with you.”
Bass finds it all hilarious. He kicks his heels against the filthy brick of the fireplace they’re gathered around, camped as they are in the empty skeleton of what was once a home. Bringing his glass up in a toast, Bass cheers, “Jeremy, you’re brilliant.”
“I am,” Jeremy agrees without a trace of sarcasm.
The firelight gleams like blood against their glasses, and all of them are trying not to think about death. This is how they live, in the middle of the apocalypse.
“Why is he brilliant?” Miles demands. “He’s an idiot.”
“Hey,” Jeremy objects.
Bass’s words are honey slow, his pronunciation excruciatingly precise as he disagrees. “No, no. We fight with swords. Like barbarians. We should have armor. And chainmail.” The blue of his eyes glitters sharp. “And codpieces.”
Jeremy cheers.
Miles’s outrage is lazy, moonshine is liquid fire in his stomach. The stuff tastes like dirt, but it still does the job. “Don’t encourage him.”
Jeremy smirks and says, “I want one in gold. Gold will really accentuate what I have to offer.”
Bass shakes his head. The older he gets, the sharper his features grow, the more rugged his jaw line. But his curls still cling to the curve of his ears the same way they did when he was five, lending Bass a wild boyishness that drives women crazy. He says, “Platinum. I’m going to buy all my officers matching platinum codpieces, lovingly engraved with the mark of the Monroe Militia.”
“This just got really gay,” Jeremy marvels, although he doesn’t exactly sound shocked.
Miles grins, letting it all sink in. Getting Bass onboard with the idea of the Militia took more work than he cares to admit, because everything is different now. In the beginning, Bass tried to convince Miles that vigilante justice is no kind of justice at all, but he came around. How can he not, when Miles his brother, Miles his lover is the one making the argument?
It made sense to put Bass’s name on the Militia’s brand; he believes in America in a way Miles never has. He wants to create, where Miles only knows how to survive.
“What about the female officers?” Miles asks, because they have quite a few. “What do they get?”
Solemnly, Bass replies, “Breastplates. Platinum breastplates.”
There is a pricetag on their relationship, bearing the names of every person they brutalized or killed. But it’s good to know that laughter is something they both still can share.
“Why don’t they just go naked?” Jeremy suggests, eyes dancing. “That’s something I can get behind.”
Miles nudges him with his boot. “That’s because you’re a chauvinist. Quit thinking with your gun.”
“If we’re going to be knights, we should have titles. Sir Jeremy has a nice ring.”
“That no one would believe,” Bass retorts, taking a long, slow sip of moonshine. “What about Miles?”
“Hmm. I’ll call you the Butcher of Chicago,” Jeremy tells Miles with glee. “See, it’s funny, because you like to pork Bass.”
Bass makes a noise in the back of his throat that is halfway between a snarl and a snort.
Totally straight-faced, Jeremy corrects, “See, it’s funny, because you like to pork General Monroe.”
It’s a different dynamic than Miles has ever known. He’s no longer a soldier in a family of soldiers. He’s an equal, a leader. It’s all changing and evolving, and his worst fear is that eventually, having each other won’t be enough.
He remembers when he first signed on for the military. His dad said, “People will depend on you. Never take advantage of that,” and clapped his arm and did not say that he was proud.
But this is the first time that Miles has felt important enough that his dad’s words have become true. He and Bass and Jeremy; they’ve made themselves gods because they’re sick of being men, helpless to stop the ever-flowing tide of death.
They’re not going to be helpless anymore.
Bass says, “Hey, have you seen what they’re doing in Georgia? It’s all so very civilized.”
“Want to model the militia after the South, boss?” Jeremy wrinkles his nose, turning his cup over and over, just to make sure there’s not one more drop left.
“No. What we’re doing is good,” Bass replies, with a glimmer in his eyes that borders on ferocity. “We’re going to revolutionize the world.”
They are, Miles and Jeremy agree.
They will.
---
Miles tells all his new recruits, “Ride your fear or your fear will ride you.”
Only his fear is massive. It could swamp a cruise ship in its relentless deluge.
He never wanted to hurt people. He’s still entirely opposed to it, but they’re up against chaos, against hunger and bloodlust. You are what you fight.
Bass wants to fight the world, now, and to a degree Miles understands. It’s easier to imagine demons drifting in thin air than to face the ones that lie inside your own heart.
Blood and death haunt them through the night, and when they wake in the midst of the apocalypse, they only have each other to hold. But increasingly, that is becoming the wedge that is driving them apart.
Bass is losing it, Miles thinks. He stares down the barrels of guns and Miles wonders if he still wants to eat a bullet, even a little. He wants to save him, but every time he tries, Bass twists his words and tries to drive him away.
Which isn’t something Miles can allow.
Love is not fragile. Miles can’t crush it in his hands. This thing that lives inside him, hemorrhaging red, aching raw; it fights back. It is has teeth and claws, it tears gaping wounds in Miles’s flesh.
He is entrapped by Bass’s razor blade eyes. The broad expanse of his shoulders and rough swell of his knuckles are an addiction that grows daily. And in the night, when I love you’s spill guttural from Bass’s throat, self-loathing crushes against Miles’s ribcage, hot and guilty. He falls to his knees, a victim on love’s altar, convinced the blood that pools in every footstep he takes is worth it.
For Bass, he sheds his humanity. For Bass, he becomes a monster. For Bass, Miles loses himself.
But what is lost inevitably must be found.
---
Now, blood means family and it glitters the crystalline blue of Charlie’s eyes. She holds her head up to the wind, her face strong and surly. Miles is convinced she practices those expressions in every mirror they find.
The apocalypse came, the apocalypse went, and the biggest change of all occurred deep inside Mile’s heart.
He’s got a picture of himself and Ben tucked inside his now defunct wallet, from Ben’s freshman year of college. Their smiles are so painfully bright they’re nearly Techni-color, backed by the cocky surety of youth. But there’s something disingenuous to the tilt of their lips, maybe because he remembers how off-balance they were at that age, Ben too awkward, Miles too bigheaded and fraught with confusion.
He’s calmer now, his confidence quieter. When he smiles at himself in the reflection of cool river streams, it’s small, but very real.
Even so, he dreams about Bass touching him.
In the shadowy netherspace of sleep, where nightmares and fantasies spin sugar-sweet through his brain, he imagines it. The fire opal glow of heat shimmering between the twisted geometry of their bodies. The rough curl of Bass’s desert browned fingertips against his cock. The frantic beatbox pant of their shared breaths.
He misses him. Every second of every day, he misses him. He misses karaoke and zombie movie marathons, desert sand and easy camaraderie, and the way that Bass used to watch Miles with longing in his eyes. He wishes the way Bass’s long fingers would grip his hips, the electricity that arced between their connected bodies, and the impossibly intoxicating idea that in the Monroe Militia, Miles belonged.
If he could go back, he thinks he would, for one more minute - one more second of Bass’s mouth on his. But if his grandmother had handlebars, she’d be a bicycle. If’s are just wishes that won’t ever come true.
“Miles,” Charlie calls, her voice a measured bark. She’s got something to complain about, because she always does. Charlie’s a lot like Bass that way; she wants the truth, and she wants justice, and she’s got this idea that the world should be a certain way. Neither of them will ever learn what Miles already knows:
Nothing will ever go back to the way it was, but maybe that’s okay.
The way the world was never did any of them any favors. But now they are knights, gods, monsters, and heroes. They fuck up and they fix it and then they do it all again. The change made them mythic, and the apocalypse has become a fairytale.
Maybe, for a while, everything will suck - he’s lost Bass, and Ben, and so many countless other people. There is death and blood, and blood, and blood. But now Miles knows who he is; and it isn't the bad kid his father said he was. He is a man who no longer breaks whatever he touches, because he knows what he wants, and how to fight for it. And he will fight for it, of course, because that’s the thing about fairytales:
They always have a happy ending.