Three times Lincoln met Peter Bishop - Teaser ficlet
Notes: This is some weird alternate universe, where Peter grew up in the redverse instead of being kidnapped into the blue, but things are still screwed up in their world. AKA, that fic I keep warning people I might eventually write, where it's the Observers who are responsible for the original breach into redverse, and not 'our' Walter.
AND THAT ONE TIME…AT BAND CAMP…WHEN LINCOLN LEE MET PETER BISHOP. NO. WAIT. SORRY. WRONG UNIVERSE.
MEETING ONE:
The netting near the batting cage stumbles like a drunkard in the hot wind, a rattling of rusted metal and the sharp crack of a ball striking bat. There’s a shout from the kids, a mad scramble as an outfielder gives chase and the batter bolts for first, then second, base.
Lincoln keeps one hand pressed firmly against his essay.
There’s a question mark at the bottom of the page, penned in Mr. Glasbury’s handwriting, his outdated prose. Master Lee, it says ominously below the C minus, we should schedule a talk you and I. Glasbury’s bald, overweight, and sometimes talks as if featuring in a Victorian novel. Lee has to admire someone who would purposefully expose himself to so much student ridicule.
It’s Friday, Lincoln’s day off. His old man takes Saturday as his due and Lee opens the Hardware store in the morning, works the till for the weekend renovators. Friday though, he’s not expected anywhere. He tells his dad he’s going to the game to see the lines ease from his forehead, to hear the gruff approval in his voice when he says. “Give ‘em hell, kid.”
Lee’s perched halfway up the bleachers. He comes here to get out of his dad’s hair, to prove he has a social life beyond the store and school. To watch the kid’s in their baseball uniforms, tight butts in tighter pants, socks pulled up their calves in an anachronistic uniform.
Sadly, it’s schoolkids today, jeans and t-shirts, ratty sneakers. Lincoln’s never played a single game.
Across the field, a beaten up Buick coughs sickly as the engine turns over, a plume of bluish exhaust staining the air. The driver’s side door is wide open. Lincoln can see a yard length of thigh as the driver sprawls half in, half out of the seat. Lincoln’s certain he saw the same Buick parked outside his dad’s store the other day. He stares at Glasbury’s note then stuffs the essay into the bottom of his knapsack and stands up.
He’s sweating, dark circles under his armpits, hair flat to his skull. He misses New Jersey. Lincoln pulls his t-shirt away from his torso, lets the hot breeze dry the perspiration and drops to the ground, the dirt kicking up in puffs as he lands. He readjusts the knapsack on his shoulder and strolls past the catcher and batter.
“Got tired of staring at our asses?” The catcher asks. Derek is eighteen, he dates Alicia Voston, and yeah, his butt looks fantastic in baseball attire but frankly, Lincoln spends more time ogling his girlfriend. The staring, apparently, has been duly noted. Lincoln’s step hitches in surprise. Derek’s voice is sly, mean; it comes out of leftfield like a fastball pitched by Randy Johnson.
“What?” he says, stupidly.
“What?” Derek parodies. He lifts his mask from over his face; smile coyote-wide, all lolling tongue and sharp teeth. His voice carries across the field. “Well I figured you for a queer. All you do is sit in the stands and stare at our bums.”
There’s a distant snigger. Lincoln sees the batter laugh, his bat swinging idly at his side. He stands frozen. The smart thing to do is walk away, put his head down and let Derek’s verbal joust slide over his shoulder. To stay...small. Adrenalin rushes through him, his muscles keying with tension, even though Lincoln hasn’t said or done anything. For a moment, he thinks it’s hard to breathe.
“Well,” Lincoln drawls precisely, slowing his speech in a manner he doesn’t normally do. “I was trying to watch the game, but your wide load kept blocking my view.”
“What?” Derek says, stupidly.
“It’s not that I’m dismissing your butt, I do have standards, but yours is like the Death Star, taking up the solar system, it’s a little hard to see past it.”
And yeah, that’s his heartbeat. Jackrabbiting.
Lincoln’s seventeen, he guesses there comes a time, a branching, where he could make the smart choice, or the choice that’s going to give him the beating of a lifetime. That will let him smile with a bloody lip and a straight spine. He’s scared shitless.
He wasn’t lying about Derek’s butt, but haunches that size generally imply other, bigger things as well, and Lincoln’s not only outsized, he’s outgunned by the entire baseball team.
Across the field, the Buick peels out of its parking spot, gravel spitting in its wake.
Lincoln draws a breath, feels his pulse pound, his lungs strain. Derek drops his catcher’s mitt on the ground and strolls out of the cage.
As fights go, it’s unceremonious. Lincoln dodges a lazy swipe to the jaw, but misses the body rip, a dull fist that lands squarely in his mid-riff. What little air he had, is gone. Lee’s half-doubled over when Derek charges, hands to Lincoln’s hammies. He lifts and dumps him in one move. Lincoln’s back hits the hard-packed earth. There are spots in his eyes, breath rasping. He has the presence of mind to raise his fists, to cover his head, but then the blows come quick and sudden, and he can’t breath, he can’t… Derek doubles over, wheezing, one hand steadying on the ground, his mouth white-tipped, pulled into a snarl.
The Buick skids to a stop, tyres spinning for traction. “Get in.” The words are a buzz. Lincoln can barely make them out. He pushes at Derek, unseats him enough so he can scramble out and upright, butt sliding backward, knees drawn to his chest. “Fuck wits!” The driver shouts, exasperated. “GET IN! Can’t you tell the air’s going bad?”
Lincoln turns his head. It’s a kid, probably nineteen or twenty, no more than three years older. He’s dressed in cargos and a wife-beater, red converse sneakers, hair sandy brown, eyes sky-blue. The driver’s side door is wide open in invitation. The Buick engine growls.
In the distance, the warning siren sounds, a mournful wail, like the air raids of the second war. The words, once senseless, suddenly become clear.
His heartbeat jackrabbits again, for entirely different reasons. The kids scatter, racing for bikes or piling into Derek’s (much newer) car. Lincoln launches forward and slides over the driver bodily, taking the passenger seat in the Buick. “Go. Go.”
He doesn’t. The driver waits an extra beat, tracks the kids with his mouth tight, until Derek’s racer screams out of the car park, then floors it.
“Radio?” Lincoln says, tightly.
“Not working.”
Because of course Lincoln chose the museum piece to escape in.
Which direction, Lincoln thinks frantically, which direction? He cranes his neck around, sees darkness on the horizon, a smudge, distorting the trees, the baseball field, creeping forward. The siren keens like a banshee. “It’s behind us.” The backseat is piled with junk-food wrappers, a sleeping bag, clothes stuffed in the foot-wells.
The driver must be a transient.
Amber, Lincoln knows, leaves a lot of people homeless. There are tent cities and RV convoys, of cars that drive aimlessly from one corner of the city to another. If the driver was parked at the baseball field, then chances were he was there for the locker room showers. “Lincoln,” he introduces quickly. “Drive faster, I don’t want to be ambered, or be sucked into a black hole.”
“When the wind was blowing, which direction did it come from?”
“North-east,” Lincoln says automatically. “Why?”
The car fishtails. The driver pulls on the steering wheel as if driving a tank. He turns the nose southwest. “Wait! The highway’s in the opposite direction." If he’s not a local, then the driver’s probably lost. “Wait!” Lincoln says frantically. “Follow Derek!”
“The amber will come from that direction.” He sounds grim, eyes tracking the potholes in the unmade road. “Fringe division will use any natural advantages for widest dispersal.”
“How do you know?” Lincoln grabs the handhold, almost concusses himself on the roof when they hit a pothole hard enough to ricochet.
The kid grins without humour. “Let’s say I have an inside know, and having amber blow in the wrong direction because of the wind, isn’t a good factor.”
Lincoln considers that, then says crossly. “I don’t even know where this road goes.”
“Away,” the driver says pointedly. “And that was an entire sentence you finished without gasping.” He says it with a whole truckload of sarcasm, as if Lincoln were an idiot for not noticing the air quality was going bad mid-fight.
He'd seen a firestorm roll in once, where the smoke had ghosted forward in streaks of orange and red, nature’s first warning, hours before the flames rushed by. It looks like smoke, or eddies of soft cloud. He could make out dragons in the configuration, in the roiling mass of amber that rises behind them in a gaseous wall. Lincoln has one second to think of Derek, of the kids piled into his car. “It’s coming. Fast.”
Instinctively, the driver looks over his shoulder. His foot flattens against the pedal.
Lincoln braces his hand against the window-screen and warns. “Dead end!” There’s a line of trees up ahead, bush scrub and low hanging ferns where the road widens into a U-turn.
The driver doesn’t ease up on the pedal until the last moment. The Buick nose comes to a stop within kissing distance of a California red-wood, the width of the trunk three bodies wide. The driver has the door open and is out of his seat before Lincoln has a chance to unbuckle.
There’s no sound of wildlife. No birdcalls. Even the warning siren has fallen silent. Branches snap in their passing, their feet skidding against rotten leaves, the distant sound of flowing water urges them on. On foot, it’s useless. On foot, the amber will overtake them; will seal them mid-flight. Their bodies straining: leaping over fallen logs, frozen like a painting or a sculpture, a tribute. Youth in flight, Lincoln thinks, drunkenly.
Ahead, the driver is a flash of movement, long legs eating up the ground. Like his nameless rescuer, Lincoln refuses to stop, or face death with any kind of dignity.
He’s seventeen, if Lincoln gets out of this alive, he won’t lower his gaze for anyone.
He chances one look over his shoulder, sees the amber snake between the trees, caress over green moss, lick forward.
He almost runs straight into the driver’s back. There’s a roar of running water, a two-metre drop into a churning river. The driver turns, chest to chest, and looks over Lincoln’s shoulder. “Peter,” he introduces belatedly, and hooks his hand into Lincoln’s belt. His breath is hot. He smiles once, lopsided, and loops his other arm around Lee’s shoulder, pulling him close, intimate as a lover.
He’s three or four years older, both heavier and taller, when Peter steps back, topples over the embankment, he takes Lincoln with him.
***
They wash up six miles downstream. Lincoln can’t breathe, although this time it’s the river-water rushing from his mouth and nose rather than the poor air quality. He hacks, everything shuddering with cold, shock, with the knowledge he’s still alive.
There’s a dome of malicious yellow behind him.
He hacks until he throws up, belly down in the slimy dirt, with Peter’s hand on his forehead. The older boy is staring back the way they came. He remembers movement, rocks, pain, he remembers Peter screaming to take a deep breath, before he pulled them both under the water. He remembers being turned around, and turned around again, how when he looked up, it was like a layer of ice had formed over the river, as if someone had peed on it, a sickly yellow.
He remembers his lungs straining to burst - until they broke the surface of their underground river. It wasn’t yellow ice above but blue skies and buttery soft clouds.
He shudders, miserable, as the last of river-water empties from his lungs.
Peter looks like a drowned rat. There are abrasions on his forearms, contact from rocks and scrapes from dragging Lincoln out of the water. Droplets hang from his eyelashes, the point of his chin; there are goose bumps on every surface of exposed skin. “Okay?” he asks.
He sounds nonchalant, as if okay is the only acceptable answer in the current circumstances. If Lincoln detects a waver in his voice, sees the way his hand has sunken into the mud, fingers kneading, he ignores it. “Okay,” Lincoln agrees.
Peter stands up. The wife-beater is like a second skin, showing the slope of shoulder, the trapezius flowing into latissimus dorsi, the tapered V of body structure from shoulder to waist. His cargo’s, water-logged, hang low on his hips, showing skin, the first hint of swell leading from the small of the back to his buttocks.
Like the earlier oxygen deprivation, Lincoln’s feeling a little drunk.
“Fringe will have agents scouting the perimeter of the amber blockade,” Peter says authoritatively. “First concern will be the heavily populated areas, bushland and scrub will come last. Might be a day or two. Feel like walking?”
“You sure?”
He shrugs. “Pretty sure. It was Secretary Bishop’s mandate.”
“Ex,” Lincoln corrects automatically. He’d done his school assignment on the White House disaster, had listened to the first, final, broadcast, where Secretary Bishop had given the order to amber. Ninety-six people sealed inside, including the President, his family, key members of the White House council, and the scientist and his wife who created the substance to begin with. “Secretary Myers seems a little looser with the protocols.”
Peter looks at him, expressionless. “Myers is a dick.”
“Right,” Lincoln says and pushes to his feet. “Let’s walk.”
He’s alive, Lincoln thinks giddily, he’s still alive. It takes them an hour to reach a main road, another hour until they flag someone down, ironically, a Fringe agent. “Need help?”
“Hospital,” Peter informs her easily, leaning his forearms against the window. “The kids a minor, swallowed half a river, wanna make sure he doesn’t drown unexpectedly in the middle of the night.”
The agent looks at Lincoln sharply. “Not a kid.” It seems ludicrous, coming from someone barely out of their teens themselves. Lincoln feels himself bristle.
Peter grins at him, eyes tracking down Lee’s body lazily, coming to rest on his mouth. “You haven’t finished growing yet. In my books, makes you a kid.”
“He’s right,” the agent says calmly, and smiles when Lincoln scowls at her. “Juvenile’s are given free access to medical assistance. It’s best if someone takes a look at you. Do you have someone you need to contact?”
Lincoln lurches, hit suddenly with urgency. “My dad. He owns Hardwick Hardware. Can you tell him? Tell him I’m okay? He needs to know.”
“Will do. And you?”
Peter’s watching him, he startles when the agent redirects her question. “No. I’m good.”
“He was in the same river,” Lincoln corrects. “And I’m pretty sure he swallowed the same amount of water.”
“I’m not a juvie.”
He was living in the back of his car, his now ambered car. Lincoln blinks rapidly and says without thinking. “My dad can spot you.”
Peter’s face goes hard, closed off, for a second, he looks like Derek, ready to bust a fist on Lincoln’s nose. “I don’t need anyone to spot me…kid.”
“Climb in,” the agent says briskly. “You two princesses can argue about it at the hospital, I have an actual job to do.”
The hospital is a madhouse, over-run with the type of accidents that occur when mass panic hits. There’s a spree of car accidents. Lincoln sits in his sodden clothing, one knee jiggling until Peter frowns at him and wanders off. He comes back with a tea in a plastic cup, a blanket in one hand. He keeps the hot beverage for himself but he gives Lincoln the blanket, and takes the seat beside him, pressed close, his hand a loose bracelet around Lincoln’s wrist, thumb pressed against the delicate veins. “He’ll be here soon.”
“Thank you, for stopping the fight. For…well, stopping.”
“No worries. I wanted an up close, and personal, view of the idiot who would take on a giant.”
“Derek,” Lincoln says softly. “His name was Derek.” He had the fastest car in town. There are razors in the back of his throat; his voice feels shredded, head pounding. There’s nothing left in his stomach to throw up.
Peter sips his tea, says nothing.
The doctor arrives before Lincoln’s dad does, checks him over quickly, efficiently. He gives Lincoln the tick of approval and sends him on his way in the span of eight minutes, tells them both politely to wait outside and quit clustering their hallways. “Bedside manner goes to shit when the world’s ending,” Peter mutters sourly. He turns a slow circle outside, head craned toward the sun.
Lincoln’s quiet. He keeps his head down. He’s never done an outrageous thing in his life. He appreciates the girls as much as he appreciates the boys, and Peter’s got a cute derriere, especially in wet cargos. In the plus column, he probably saved Lincoln life today.
The kiss is awkward, mostly because Lincoln didn’t telegraph his intention so much as launch at the other boy. Because he made a promise, a choice, to never sit in a corner again.
Peter turns his head at the last second, and the kiss lands on his chin, below the corner of his mouth. Frustrated, Lincoln fixes both hands behind the other’s boy’s head, grabs him by the ears, and tugs him into position. Muffled, he thinks Peter yelps. Lincoln takes the opportunity to push his tongue inside, let’s their teeth clash. He tastes blood, river-water, his heart thundering like the fight, the wild dash through the trees and the current that swept them down, down, and away. It’s quite possibly the worst kiss in his very short lifespan. Peter’s hands settle on his butt, slide into his jean pockets, squeeze, and Lincoln corrects himself. It’s the best kiss ever, right up until he’s shoved away.
“Minor!”
“You’re only three years older!”
“Outside a hospital! With police!”
“It’s been a stressful day!”
“Son?” Lincoln’s dad says.
“A very stressful day!”
Whatever else he would have said is cut off, squeezed into oblivion when his father drags him into a bear hug. Hands clutching, voice a rumble like an underground river Thank god, oh Christ, thank god you’re okay and refuses to let go. When he’s finally released, Peter’s gone.
Lincoln doesn’t realise his wallet is missing from his back pocket until sometime after the witching hours, when the police knock on his father’s doorstep and inform them the Hardware shop’s been robbed.
“Looters, probably. This kind of thing happens in a high panic.”
Except both doors are locked, the place hasn’t been overturned, the cash register untouched. Their supply of copper, rare in their world and becoming increasingly rarer, has been cleaned out. Its price would raise a small fortune on the black market. Everything else remains perfectly intact.
“Security cameras were taken out. We found a generic tread-mark in the loading bay and your forklift was hot-wired, the copper was loaded and by now, probably long gone. Chances are he already has a seller on the market. We’re flagging down transport trucks but with today’s disaster going on, resources are stretched thin. Might be best if you leave this one to insurance.”
Lincoln’s wallet, with its twenty-one dollars and sixty-eight cents in change, is left on the countertop, along with his key to the shop. He stares at it blankly, remembers coldness, the way Peter had kissed him, pressing into it, licking across Lincoln's bottom lip, and for the first time that day, feels like a kid.
MEETING TWO:
AND THAT ONE TIME, AT BAND CAMP:
WHERE THE FLUTE PLAYER MET THE OBOE PLAYER AND THEY DECIDED TO KICK THE PIANIST TO THE CURB…
NO. WAIT. SORRY WRONG UNIVERSE
AND THAT ONE TIME…AT BAND CAMP…WHEN LINCOLN LEE MET PETER BISHOP. NO. WAIT. SORRY. WRONG UNIVERSE.
MEETING ONE:
The netting near the batting cage stumbles like a drunkard in the hot wind, a rattling of rusted metal and the sharp crack of a ball striking bat. There’s a shout from the kids, a mad scramble as an outfielder gives chase and the batter bolts for first, then second, base.
Lincoln keeps one hand pressed firmly against his essay.
There’s a question mark at the bottom of the page, penned in Mr. Glasbury’s handwriting, his outdated prose. Master Lee, it says ominously below the C minus, we should schedule a talk you and I. Glasbury’s bald, overweight, and sometimes talks as if featuring in a Victorian novel. Lee has to admire someone who would purposefully expose himself to so much student ridicule.
It’s Friday, Lincoln’s day off. His old man takes Saturday as his due and Lee opens the Hardware store in the morning, works the till for the weekend renovators. Friday though, he’s not expected anywhere. He tells his dad he’s going to the game to see the lines ease from his forehead, to hear the gruff approval in his voice when he says. “Give ‘em hell, kid.”
Lee’s perched halfway up the bleachers. He comes here to get out of his dad’s hair, to prove he has a social life beyond the store and school. To watch the kid’s in their baseball uniforms, tight butts in tighter pants, socks pulled up their calves in an anachronistic uniform.
Sadly, it’s schoolkids today, jeans and t-shirts, ratty sneakers. Lincoln’s never played a single game.
Across the field, a beaten up Buick coughs sickly as the engine turns over, a plume of bluish exhaust staining the air. The driver’s side door is wide open. Lincoln can see a yard length of thigh as the driver sprawls half in, half out of the seat. Lincoln’s certain he saw the same Buick parked outside his dad’s store the other day. He stares at Glasbury’s note then stuffs the essay into the bottom of his knapsack and stands up.
He’s sweating, dark circles under his armpits, hair flat to his skull. He misses New Jersey. Lincoln pulls his t-shirt away from his torso, lets the hot breeze dry the perspiration and drops to the ground, the dirt kicking up in puffs as he lands. He readjusts the knapsack on his shoulder and strolls past the catcher and batter.
“Got tired of staring at our asses?” The catcher asks. Derek is eighteen, he dates Alicia Voston, and yeah, his butt looks fantastic in baseball attire but frankly, Lincoln spends more time ogling his girlfriend. The staring, apparently, has been duly noted. Lincoln’s step hitches in surprise. Derek’s voice is sly, mean; it comes out of leftfield like a fastball pitched by Randy Johnson.
“What?” he says, stupidly.
“What?” Derek parodies. He lifts his mask from over his face; smile coyote-wide, all lolling tongue and sharp teeth. His voice carries across the field. “Well I figured you for a queer. All you do is sit in the stands and stare at our bums.”
There’s a distant snigger. Lincoln sees the batter laugh, his bat swinging idly at his side. He stands frozen. The smart thing to do is walk away, put his head down and let Derek’s verbal joust slide over his shoulder. To stay...small. Adrenalin rushes through him, his muscles keying with tension, even though Lincoln hasn’t said or done anything. For a moment, he thinks it’s hard to breathe.
“Well,” Lincoln drawls precisely, slowing his speech in a manner he doesn’t normally do. “I was trying to watch the game, but your wide load kept blocking my view.”
“What?” Derek says, stupidly.
“It’s not that I’m dismissing your butt, I do have standards, but yours is like the Death Star, taking up the solar system, it’s a little hard to see past it.”
And yeah, that’s his heartbeat. Jackrabbiting.
Lincoln’s seventeen, he guesses there comes a time, a branching, where he could make the smart choice, or the choice that’s going to give him the beating of a lifetime. That will let him smile with a bloody lip and a straight spine. He’s scared shitless.
He wasn’t lying about Derek’s butt, but haunches that size generally imply other, bigger things as well, and Lincoln’s not only outsized, he’s outgunned by the entire baseball team.
Across the field, the Buick peels out of its parking spot, gravel spitting in its wake.
Lincoln draws a breath, feels his pulse pound, his lungs strain. Derek drops his catcher’s mitt on the ground and strolls out of the cage.
As fights go, it’s unceremonious. Lincoln dodges a lazy swipe to the jaw, but misses the body rip, a dull fist that lands squarely in his mid-riff. What little air he had, is gone. Lee’s half-doubled over when Derek charges, hands to Lincoln’s hammies. He lifts and dumps him in one move. Lincoln’s back hits the hard-packed earth. There are spots in his eyes, breath rasping. He has the presence of mind to raise his fists, to cover his head, but then the blows come quick and sudden, and he can’t breath, he can’t… Derek doubles over, wheezing, one hand steadying on the ground, his mouth white-tipped, pulled into a snarl.
The Buick skids to a stop, tyres spinning for traction. “Get in.” The words are a buzz. Lincoln can barely make them out. He pushes at Derek, unseats him enough so he can scramble out and upright, butt sliding backward, knees drawn to his chest. “Fuck wits!” The driver shouts, exasperated. “GET IN! Can’t you tell the air’s going bad?”
Lincoln turns his head. It’s a kid, probably nineteen or twenty, no more than three years older. He’s dressed in cargos and a wife-beater, red converse sneakers, hair sandy brown, eyes sky-blue. The driver’s side door is wide open in invitation. The Buick engine growls.
In the distance, the warning siren sounds, a mournful wail, like the air raids of the second war. The words, once senseless, suddenly become clear.
His heartbeat jackrabbits again, for entirely different reasons. The kids scatter, racing for bikes or piling into Derek’s (much newer) car. Lincoln launches forward and slides over the driver bodily, taking the passenger seat in the Buick. “Go. Go.”
He doesn’t. The driver waits an extra beat, tracks the kids with his mouth tight, until Derek’s racer screams out of the car park, then floors it.
“Radio?” Lincoln says, tightly.
“Not working.”
Because of course Lincoln chose the museum piece to escape in.
Which direction, Lincoln thinks frantically, which direction? He cranes his neck around, sees darkness on the horizon, a smudge, distorting the trees, the baseball field, creeping forward. The siren keens like a banshee. “It’s behind us.” The backseat is piled with junk-food wrappers, a sleeping bag, clothes stuffed in the foot-wells.
The driver must be a transient.
Amber, Lincoln knows, leaves a lot of people homeless. There are tent cities and RV convoys, of cars that drive aimlessly from one corner of the city to another. If the driver was parked at the baseball field, then chances were he was there for the locker room showers. “Lincoln,” he introduces quickly. “Drive faster, I don’t want to be ambered, or be sucked into a black hole.”
“When the wind was blowing, which direction did it come from?”
“North-east,” Lincoln says automatically. “Why?”
The car fishtails. The driver pulls on the steering wheel as if driving a tank. He turns the nose southwest. “Wait! The highway’s in the opposite direction." If he’s not a local, then the driver’s probably lost. “Wait!” Lincoln says frantically. “Follow Derek!”
“The amber will come from that direction.” He sounds grim, eyes tracking the potholes in the unmade road. “Fringe division will use any natural advantages for widest dispersal.”
“How do you know?” Lincoln grabs the handhold, almost concusses himself on the roof when they hit a pothole hard enough to ricochet.
The kid grins without humour. “Let’s say I have an inside know, and having amber blow in the wrong direction because of the wind, isn’t a good factor.”
Lincoln considers that, then says crossly. “I don’t even know where this road goes.”
“Away,” the driver says pointedly. “And that was an entire sentence you finished without gasping.” He says it with a whole truckload of sarcasm, as if Lincoln were an idiot for not noticing the air quality was going bad mid-fight.
He'd seen a firestorm roll in once, where the smoke had ghosted forward in streaks of orange and red, nature’s first warning, hours before the flames rushed by. It looks like smoke, or eddies of soft cloud. He could make out dragons in the configuration, in the roiling mass of amber that rises behind them in a gaseous wall. Lincoln has one second to think of Derek, of the kids piled into his car. “It’s coming. Fast.”
Instinctively, the driver looks over his shoulder. His foot flattens against the pedal.
Lincoln braces his hand against the window-screen and warns. “Dead end!” There’s a line of trees up ahead, bush scrub and low hanging ferns where the road widens into a U-turn.
The driver doesn’t ease up on the pedal until the last moment. The Buick nose comes to a stop within kissing distance of a California red-wood, the width of the trunk three bodies wide. The driver has the door open and is out of his seat before Lincoln has a chance to unbuckle.
There’s no sound of wildlife. No birdcalls. Even the warning siren has fallen silent. Branches snap in their passing, their feet skidding against rotten leaves, the distant sound of flowing water urges them on. On foot, it’s useless. On foot, the amber will overtake them; will seal them mid-flight. Their bodies straining: leaping over fallen logs, frozen like a painting or a sculpture, a tribute. Youth in flight, Lincoln thinks, drunkenly.
Ahead, the driver is a flash of movement, long legs eating up the ground. Like his nameless rescuer, Lincoln refuses to stop, or face death with any kind of dignity.
He’s seventeen, if Lincoln gets out of this alive, he won’t lower his gaze for anyone.
He chances one look over his shoulder, sees the amber snake between the trees, caress over green moss, lick forward.
He almost runs straight into the driver’s back. There’s a roar of running water, a two-metre drop into a churning river. The driver turns, chest to chest, and looks over Lincoln’s shoulder. “Peter,” he introduces belatedly, and hooks his hand into Lincoln’s belt. His breath is hot. He smiles once, lopsided, and loops his other arm around Lee’s shoulder, pulling him close, intimate as a lover.
He’s three or four years older, both heavier and taller, when Peter steps back, topples over the embankment, he takes Lincoln with him.
***
They wash up six miles downstream. Lincoln can’t breathe, although this time it’s the river-water rushing from his mouth and nose rather than the poor air quality. He hacks, everything shuddering with cold, shock, with the knowledge he’s still alive.
There’s a dome of malicious yellow behind him.
He hacks until he throws up, belly down in the slimy dirt, with Peter’s hand on his forehead. The older boy is staring back the way they came. He remembers movement, rocks, pain, he remembers Peter screaming to take a deep breath, before he pulled them both under the water. He remembers being turned around, and turned around again, how when he looked up, it was like a layer of ice had formed over the river, as if someone had peed on it, a sickly yellow.
He remembers his lungs straining to burst - until they broke the surface of their underground river. It wasn’t yellow ice above but blue skies and buttery soft clouds.
He shudders, miserable, as the last of river-water empties from his lungs.
Peter looks like a drowned rat. There are abrasions on his forearms, contact from rocks and scrapes from dragging Lincoln out of the water. Droplets hang from his eyelashes, the point of his chin; there are goose bumps on every surface of exposed skin. “Okay?” he asks.
He sounds nonchalant, as if okay is the only acceptable answer in the current circumstances. If Lincoln detects a waver in his voice, sees the way his hand has sunken into the mud, fingers kneading, he ignores it. “Okay,” Lincoln agrees.
Peter stands up. The wife-beater is like a second skin, showing the slope of shoulder, the trapezius flowing into latissimus dorsi, the tapered V of body structure from shoulder to waist. His cargo’s, water-logged, hang low on his hips, showing skin, the first hint of swell leading from the small of the back to his buttocks.
Like the earlier oxygen deprivation, Lincoln’s feeling a little drunk.
“Fringe will have agents scouting the perimeter of the amber blockade,” Peter says authoritatively. “First concern will be the heavily populated areas, bushland and scrub will come last. Might be a day or two. Feel like walking?”
“You sure?”
He shrugs. “Pretty sure. It was Secretary Bishop’s mandate.”
“Ex,” Lincoln corrects automatically. He’d done his school assignment on the White House disaster, had listened to the first, final, broadcast, where Secretary Bishop had given the order to amber. Ninety-six people sealed inside, including the President, his family, key members of the White House council, and the scientist and his wife who created the substance to begin with. “Secretary Myers seems a little looser with the protocols.”
Peter looks at him, expressionless. “Myers is a dick.”
“Right,” Lincoln says and pushes to his feet. “Let’s walk.”
He’s alive, Lincoln thinks giddily, he’s still alive. It takes them an hour to reach a main road, another hour until they flag someone down, ironically, a Fringe agent. “Need help?”
“Hospital,” Peter informs her easily, leaning his forearms against the window. “The kids a minor, swallowed half a river, wanna make sure he doesn’t drown unexpectedly in the middle of the night.”
The agent looks at Lincoln sharply. “Not a kid.” It seems ludicrous, coming from someone barely out of their teens themselves. Lincoln feels himself bristle.
Peter grins at him, eyes tracking down Lee’s body lazily, coming to rest on his mouth. “You haven’t finished growing yet. In my books, makes you a kid.”
“He’s right,” the agent says calmly, and smiles when Lincoln scowls at her. “Juvenile’s are given free access to medical assistance. It’s best if someone takes a look at you. Do you have someone you need to contact?”
Lincoln lurches, hit suddenly with urgency. “My dad. He owns Hardwick Hardware. Can you tell him? Tell him I’m okay? He needs to know.”
“Will do. And you?”
Peter’s watching him, he startles when the agent redirects her question. “No. I’m good.”
“He was in the same river,” Lincoln corrects. “And I’m pretty sure he swallowed the same amount of water.”
“I’m not a juvie.”
He was living in the back of his car, his now ambered car. Lincoln blinks rapidly and says without thinking. “My dad can spot you.”
Peter’s face goes hard, closed off, for a second, he looks like Derek, ready to bust a fist on Lincoln’s nose. “I don’t need anyone to spot me…kid.”
“Climb in,” the agent says briskly. “You two princesses can argue about it at the hospital, I have an actual job to do.”
The hospital is a madhouse, over-run with the type of accidents that occur when mass panic hits. There’s a spree of car accidents. Lincoln sits in his sodden clothing, one knee jiggling until Peter frowns at him and wanders off. He comes back with a tea in a plastic cup, a blanket in one hand. He keeps the hot beverage for himself but he gives Lincoln the blanket, and takes the seat beside him, pressed close, his hand a loose bracelet around Lincoln’s wrist, thumb pressed against the delicate veins. “He’ll be here soon.”
“Thank you, for stopping the fight. For…well, stopping.”
“No worries. I wanted an up close, and personal, view of the idiot who would take on a giant.”
“Derek,” Lincoln says softly. “His name was Derek.” He had the fastest car in town. There are razors in the back of his throat; his voice feels shredded, head pounding. There’s nothing left in his stomach to throw up.
Peter sips his tea, says nothing.
The doctor arrives before Lincoln’s dad does, checks him over quickly, efficiently. He gives Lincoln the tick of approval and sends him on his way in the span of eight minutes, tells them both politely to wait outside and quit clustering their hallways. “Bedside manner goes to shit when the world’s ending,” Peter mutters sourly. He turns a slow circle outside, head craned toward the sun.
Lincoln’s quiet. He keeps his head down. He’s never done an outrageous thing in his life. He appreciates the girls as much as he appreciates the boys, and Peter’s got a cute derriere, especially in wet cargos. In the plus column, he probably saved Lincoln life today.
The kiss is awkward, mostly because Lincoln didn’t telegraph his intention so much as launch at the other boy. Because he made a promise, a choice, to never sit in a corner again.
Peter turns his head at the last second, and the kiss lands on his chin, below the corner of his mouth. Frustrated, Lincoln fixes both hands behind the other’s boy’s head, grabs him by the ears, and tugs him into position. Muffled, he thinks Peter yelps. Lincoln takes the opportunity to push his tongue inside, let’s their teeth clash. He tastes blood, river-water, his heart thundering like the fight, the wild dash through the trees and the current that swept them down, down, and away. It’s quite possibly the worst kiss in his very short lifespan. Peter’s hands settle on his butt, slide into his jean pockets, squeeze, and Lincoln corrects himself. It’s the best kiss ever, right up until he’s shoved away.
“Minor!”
“You’re only three years older!”
“Outside a hospital! With police!”
“It’s been a stressful day!”
“Son?” Lincoln’s dad says.
“A very stressful day!”
Whatever else he would have said is cut off, squeezed into oblivion when his father drags him into a bear hug. Hands clutching, voice a rumble like an underground river Thank god, oh Christ, thank god you’re okay and refuses to let go. When he’s finally released, Peter’s gone.
Lincoln doesn’t realise his wallet is missing from his back pocket until sometime after the witching hours, when the police knock on his father’s doorstep and inform them the Hardware shop’s been robbed.
“Looters, probably. This kind of thing happens in a high panic.”
Except both doors are locked, the place hasn’t been overturned, the cash register untouched. Their supply of copper, rare in their world and becoming increasingly rarer, has been cleaned out. Its price would raise a small fortune on the black market. Everything else remains perfectly intact.
“Security cameras were taken out. We found a generic tread-mark in the loading bay and your forklift was hot-wired, the copper was loaded and by now, probably long gone. Chances are he already has a seller on the market. We’re flagging down transport trucks but with today’s disaster going on, resources are stretched thin. Might be best if you leave this one to insurance.”
Lincoln’s wallet, with its twenty-one dollars and sixty-eight cents in change, is left on the countertop, along with his key to the shop. He stares at it blankly, remembers coldness, the way Peter had kissed him, pressing into it, licking across Lincoln's bottom lip, and for the first time that day, feels like a kid.
MEETING TWO:
AND THAT ONE TIME, AT BAND CAMP:
WHERE THE FLUTE PLAYER MET THE OBOE PLAYER AND THEY DECIDED TO KICK THE PIANIST TO THE CURB…
NO. WAIT. SORRY WRONG UNIVERSE