Fic: Gren: Side A\\Side B (Cowboy Bebop)
Fic post! Enjoy! Two versions of a backstory for one of the most interesting secondary characters in Cowboy Bebop.(Note: Side B is not safe for work)
Gren: Side A
"The gloom of the world is but a shadow. Behind it, yet within our reach, is joy. There is radiance and glory in the darkness, could we but see, and to see, we have only to look."
-Fra. Giovanni
After
‘So, that’s it, then?’ the clerk asked, looking bored.
‘Yes,’ Gren said. ‘You encoded it, right?’
‘Yeah. See for yourself.’
Gren stared at the computer screen. Green symbols blinked at him, the characters strung together in a line of gibberish.
‘Send it,’ he said.
And, with a click, it was gone.
Come to me, Vicious.
>
Before
He didn’t feel. He didn’t feel, because he wasn’t meant to.
He began life in a red globe containing a viscous liquid, stacked beside other spheres of the same type. There were scores of lizard shapes curled up on themselves and rotating slowly, in rhythm with the simulated heartbeat that vibrated through the chamber. Sometimes, recordings of music were played, or snatches of conversation. Even, once a day, the soft sound of a female voice humming lullabies.
In some months, he was extracted from his womb. He squalled lustily when they severed the artificial umbilical cord linking him to the sphere. In a better-funded facility, there might have been a mother-simulator with an artificial breast and fleshy plastalloy arms to pacify him, but he had to make do with the duty nurse’s hasty feedings.
He performed satisfactorily on their aptitude tests, less so on the emotional ones. He was a solemn child who seldom smiled. Once a week, he was taken out with the rest of his batch, in a transport with smoked windows, to watch people on the streets and learn a little of what it was to be normal.
Of course, he himself was not anything close to normal. Firstly, he belonged to the state and, as his birth and upbringing had cost a great deal, he had a debt to repay. Even then he had a sense of what, in a real human, might be called duty.
>
After
Gren removed his laundry from the machine and placed it on the counter. He began to fold each piece of clothing quickly, efficiently, getting more pleasure out of the simple repetitive motions than anyone watching him would guess.
He put the folded clothes into the plastic bag he had brought with him and hefted it over his shoulder. On the way home, he stopped at the local 24-7 mart, stocking up on bread, milk, and a few bags of fruits and vegetables. He hefted a melon in his hand, judging its ripeness, again pleased with his facility with these everyday chores. He supposed the feeling should have worn off so many months after his escape, but for now he was content to enjoy it.
At home, he paused in front of his special wall, covered with pictures of his fictitious past life. The orchestra he had never been in, lined up and smiling. Himself leaning against a palm tree, with a child who had never been his nephew in his arms. Sitting on a sofa with his not-sister and his not-mother. Imaginary friends, unknown acquaintances and untouched lovers. Strangers whose faces and stories were familiar to him, giving him an odd comfort now, even though he had never and would never meet them. And there, in the middle of the wall, evidence of his one real relationship, which had proved more illusory than all the rest: he and Vicious, enveloped in the desert uniform of the Titan War, half-smiling at each other in a photograph faded to shades of brown.
As always, the picture aroused in him that particular medley of feelings that he now simply labelled ‘Vicious.’ Once, he would have rushed to dissect and pick apart and record each and every one of its components. But that had been a long time ago.
He coughed suddenly, in long spasms, and grimaced when the hand covering his mouth came away bloody. His plans had been in place for a while. He supposed he had been delaying putting them in motion, enjoying his small daily rituals too much, but there was no more time.
He wiped his mouth and washed his hands. Then he began making dinner. Pasta, he thought, with a nice salad to go with it.
>
Before
Gren was put in the unit as an experiment - how would a lab-bred react to the stresses of military life? All through basic training, he was perfect: laughed at the right times; swore at the right times; groaned and complained of fatigue on cue with the others.
When he saw Vicious, he thought another lab-bred had been put in the program with him. Vicious didn’t even look as human as Gren; he was too pale - pale hair, pale skin, pale eyes - and he wasn’t even making an effort to act suitably normal. Gren complained to his handler that Vicious wasn’t following protocol and watched impassively as the man laughed uproariously.
‘That’s a real human, Gren,’ he had said.
Gren had felt what he thought was resentment. How was he supposed to act human if normal humans themselves didn’t act correctly? Was it too much to ask that they all talked and felt and thought in a reasonably consistent manner?
He began to watch Vicious covertly. Here, obviously, was an aberration, an outlier in the sample space of humans. Watching him would add to his knowledge of how real humans behaved.
Vicious didn’t seem to care what the others in the unit thought of him. He ate alone, walked alone, slept alone. He didn’t laugh when the others made off-colour jokes. He didn’t have pinups of the latest ether-trendy model on the wall next to his bunk. He had no friends, so, logically, he should have been prey (unprotected, no allies), but the others left him severely alone.
Over time, Gren began to feel reassured by him. Earlier, he had been hypersensitive to his unit’s reactions to him (Did I smile at him correctly? Should I have agreed so readily when he asked me to help?). Looking at Vicious, he began to realise fully how tolerant human beings could be of difference if it allowed them to avoid a truth they didn’t want to face. After all, who would believe the government had the nerve to put a lab-bred in amongst god-fearing soldiers?
>
After
He moonlighted as a saxophone player on Callisto, in between drug deals. It took time to build trust, even among scum like this, and he needed a way to pay his bills. Besides, he liked it more than his ‘real’ job.
He learned how to pay rent and utility bills, how to go grocery shopping, how to cook and clean. One day, on a whim, he bought anthuriums and arranged them in a jug on the windowsill.
He met Julia in the bar where he worked and took her home for a drink. They dissected the music box over glasses of whiskey, neat, and Gren was amazed that he hadn’t figured it out on his own.
“You couldn’t have known,” Julia said. “Red Dragon technology is more advanced than most things cooked up in government labs these days. No one else would be able to fit a transmitter into something that size.”
Julia came over every night of the week that she stayed on Callisto and they listened to old records. They smoked late into the night on the balcony of Gren’s apartment, wrapped in their coats against the permanent cold, watching curls of smoke rise up into the frigid air.
>
Before
It came to him in a burst of colour inside his head one day. Someone shoved him in the showers and he felt his face flush and his hands move almost of their own volition to push the other man back. ‘Watch it!’ he snarled, and was shocked. It was exactly the right response, yes, but it had not been at all studied. It had come to him naturally, which disturbed him more than he could admit.
It began happening more and more and he started to take short notes [2068.4.30. Emotion: Irritation. Probable cause: Lost at cards.] He knew at the back of his mind that he was trying to impress some sort of order on a phenomenon beyond his control. If he stopped to think about it for too long, he grew…afraid? Back at the training base, he would have discussed it with his handler, but here, he was completely isolated.
He grew tenser and tenser, but no one noticed, because everyone was in the same state. They were all sick of being cooped up in the station above Titan, sick of waiting in reserve, sick of thinking of the dust and heat and death that awaited them below.
>
After
It was in prison that Gren learned Vicious’ real name. Vicious. How very appropriate. He still didn’t understand why the other man had betrayed him.
He gleaned bits and pieces about Vicious from the other inmates. High-ranking member of the Chinese mafia. Handled their drug businesses. No lovers, no friends.
Methodically, he checked items off on the list in his mind. And one day, when everything was ready, he left the prison. He allowed others to go with him, so his own escape was not as noticeable.
The others asked him what he wanted to do once they were out. He had smiled vaguely and said something about setting himself up in the pharmaceuticals business. They had laughed then, and told him that Callisto was the place to go. Here were some names to get him started. ‘Red eye’ was where the best money was these days. Did he need references? They were all very grateful, very helpful, very useful.
None of them could have known of the statistic running through his mind. He had already begun coughing up blood, which meant he had less than a year. Less than a year left to find Vicious and ask him why he had set him up.
>
Before
They exchanged shots first from behind the safety of sand dunes. Then, when the signal was given, they ran out towards enemy lines, sand flying against their masks. Gren felt choked, suffocated, blinded.
He struck out and hit someone with his rifle purely by chance. Shot him, without knowing whether he was friend or foe. He ran forward again, hearing shots around him. A bullet grazed his shoulder and he panicked, frozen and not knowing which way to go. The next one would surely kill him.
A hand gripped his wrist and jerked him into the shelter of a jagged rock formation. It was Vicious.
Thank you, Gren tried to say, but his throat was too dry.
Vicious nodded.
>
After
His shadowy handlers melted into the background once the military focused their attacks on him. He was never told on what proof he was tried and convicted, but he learned that Vicious had testified against him.
There was only one interview with a government official.
“We disclaim all responsibility for your actions,” the man had said.
Gren said nothing.
“I hope you know enough not to make any wild claims about your past,” the man had continued. “You will only harm yourself.”
“How long have I got before I start degenerating?”
“Not long. Two, maybe three years at most. Your model was not built for long-term endurance.”
“What were we built for? I sometimes wondered.”
“I am not authorised to tell you.”
Gren had smiled at that, a true smile of amusement, which had shaken the man more than he cared to admit. Lab-bred weren’t supposed to have a sense of humour.
>
Before
After that first battle, Gren began to feel something drawing him to Vicious. He would sit beside the other man quietly as they read or cleaned their weapons. Later, he would learn to classify the emotion as affection.
He understood other things as well. That he enjoyed being on Titan, in the army. That it couldn’t last once the war was over, because the government would have other tests and other uses for him then. That he didn’t much care to spend his life shuttling from one experiment to another. That he was never again going to go back to the lab, because he didn’t owe anyone besides Vicious anything.
>
After
They lost the war and Titan became a colony of the Democratic Republic of Jupiter. It was rumoured that tempers were running high at headquarters, but all the men really cared for was to go home. Gren had hardly paid attention when he heard that a search was on for a spy who had been transmitting troop positions and strategies from the surface.
Even as the search went on, the men were herded above a massive transport headed for home. Gren spent his time thinking of how he would elude his handlers when they came for him and what he would do once he had managed to escape. Maybe Vicious could help?
When they came for Gren, he first mistook them for handlers from his project. The bell rang and he looked through the keyhole of his transport room at distorted men in black suits. His heart sank. He hadn’t thought the government would go so far as to send someone all the way to Titan to round him up.
Then he opened the door and learned that he was being arrested for treason.
>
Before
Gren wound up the music box again. The light tinkling notes spilled out once more, soft and beautiful against the backdrop of the howling wind. “Julia,” Vicious had said this tune was called. Gren thought it must be the name of his girlfriend or wife. Would he get to meet her if he got out of this war alive?
Somehow, he had trouble imagining Vicious as one half of a doting couple, but then again, why not? He did, after all, have a protective streak. Hadn’t he proved that by saving Gren’s life twice?
Footsteps approached, barely audible over the wind.
“You’re listening to it again?” Vicious said.
“I really like it.”
“Why?”
“Because… because you gave it to me.”
Vicious laughed then. “You’re too good to be true, Gren.”
Gren laughed too, happy to be sharing a joke with Vicious, even if he wasn’t quite sure what it was.
>
After
It was very quick on the rooftop. An exchange of words followed by an exchange of gunfire. Gren had told Vicious what he had wanted to say.
“I looked up to you…I believed in you…yet you sold me out.” Why?
“You’re in the way,” Vicious had said, as he shot Gren down.
Later, he was thankful when that green-haired man, Julia’s Spike, had lowered his body into the pod of his fighter and launched him on his last journey to Titan. As he lay in the pod, Gren whispered Vicious’ answer back to himself: “There was nothing to believe in…nor a need to believe.”
Humanly, irrationally, he could summon up pity for the man who had said that. It pleased him at the end to feel that he, a product of the most rational planning and the most pragmatic training, had ended his life in such a flagrantly emotional way. For revenge, for answers, for love. Just because he wanted to.
He floated in the dark vacuum above Callisto, hearing the thrum of the engines pushing him closer and closer to Titan. Behind his eyelids, memories burst into full flower. He smiled, feeling them envelop him in a halo of vibrant colours, lighting up the sky as he swam towards his past.
>>>
Gren: Side B
After
‘So, that’s it, then?’ the clerk asked, looking bored.
‘Yes,’ Gren said. ‘You encoded it, right?’
‘Yeah. See for yourself.’
Gren stared at the computer screen. Green symbols blinked at him, the characters strung together in a line of gibberish.
‘Send it,’ he said.
And, with a click, it was gone.
Come to me, Vicious.
>
Before
They met in basic training. Another man had introduced them casually in a laughing group of new recruits, most of whom Gren forgot as soon as he said their names. He had nodded politely at Vicious, thinking: what a peculiar-looking man, and then promptly forgotten about him.
Training camp suited Gren very well. He thought of the coming war more as a possibility than an impending certainty and treated it correspondingly lightly. Two years of mandatory military service didn’t seem all that bad to him. Everyone he knew had gone through it and it wasn’t as though he had any plans that couldn’t stand the wait. In the meantime, there was a whole camp full of attractive, lonely young men with whom to become better acquainted.
The next time he met Vicious was when the other man walked in on Gren having sex with Vicious’ roommate. Peter couldn’t see him, lying on the bed and tossing his head restlessly on the pillow. Gren looked up, though, and saw him standing there, his eyes intent. He didn’t look embarrassed, as any normal person would have done. Instead, he was leaning against the doorframe with his arms crossed, his face faintly bored. As if he were watching a mediocre porn movie, Gren noted with annoyance. Well, fine.
Gren slowed down, moving into Peter as deeply as he could, taking his time, refusing to be embarrassed by the man standing in the doorway.
It had gone on for endless minutes, until Peter shuddered and gasped, clenching around Gren and taking him over the edge as well. Gren’s eyelids flickered shut then and when he opened them again, Peter was kissing him lazily and Vicious was gone.
>
After
The trials made headlines on Cirrus. “Traitor Caught Red-handed.” “Mole in Jovian Army Exposed.” And my personal favourite: “Grencia Eckener, Judas of Jupiter.” It was quite a phenomenon - rarely had the public been so united on any issue. Even my parents…but then there are things that no family should have to deal with. Can I really blame them? They tried to help in the beginning. My silence must have convinced them of my guilt and they got tired of cleaning the angry graffiti off the flat door every day. It made no difference to me. Vicious’ betrayal had wounded me so deeply that the multitude of lesser hurts I suffered made no impact.
I look like hell in the courtroom holos. There are a lot of them. The military police were not gentle with me; I landed up in court with half my hair shaved off and bruises all over my face. Other places, too, but those weren’t visible. The army’s top brass was relieved to have a scapegoat to blame the Titan debacle on and my treachery was lovingly recounted and vociferously denounced by several different spokesmen and generals.
My memory of that time is odd, disjointed. There are long periods of time that I can’t recollect at all. And then there are people and places of which I have retained an almost photographic impression. The floor of my cell, for example. I remember sitting stock still for hours with my hands clasped in front of me and my eyes fixed on the floor. So my memory of the floor is in perfect focus: scuffed metal tiles polished to a dull glow by my pacing. Twenty-three long scratches (I counted), five parallel to each other. And a blurred image of my joined hands, the knuckles white. I remember thinking that the floor was vibrating slightly, moving from side to side, which worried me. But then I realised that it was actually my hands that were shaking.
I don’t remember the faces of the soldiers who kicked me around. Which isn’t that strange, because when I was with them, I was generally trying to protect my face from their blows. I don’t remember what they said either: insults have a tendency to get monotonous fast. But there was a savagery, a sort of growling metallic undertone to all the voices, which I will never forget. And one of them had long blond hair. I can’t remember his face, just a halo of gold hair surrounding a blank oval. I remember because my face flinched whenever I saw him. A tic used to start up under my left eye and wouldn’t stop for hours.
All things end eventually. The trial took a week and the verdict surprised no one. I was moved into a prison on a high security station low in Jupiter’s atmosphere. Only special government spacecraft had the ability to reach escape velocities sufficient to escape from there.
People sometimes say that excessive pain cauterises the soul and makes it impervious to further damage. I found out that there is always a lower level that you can fall to. And another. And another. And so on, till you spiral slowly and endlessly downward forever. Or maybe I just have a higher capacity for pain that I have yet managed to exceed.
>
Before
Gren wasn’t at all pleased when he and Vicious were paired together for the first sortie. He supposed he could request a swap from his sergeant, but it would look petty. Besides, it would be all over camp within the day and he didn’t dislike Vicious enough to inflict the humiliation of that on him.
He spent the whole day and night seething, which was as good a coping mechanism as any, except that it stopped working about an hour before dawn. By the time that the attack began, Gren’s teeth were chattering audibly and his hands shook on the butt of his rifle. He would have been unbearably humiliated if he hadn’t seen a puddle form under a solider further down the trench.
He kept his eyes rigidly forward, till they began to water, even under the protection of his desert mask. Suddenly, it wasn’t two years of military service. It was one day, one endless enormous day during which he stood a very good chance of dying. His breath came faster, in shallow gasps.
A hand shook his shoulder roughly.
“Don’t fall apart till after we finish this,’ Vicious said, his voice contemptuous.
“Shut up!”
Vicious’ hand closed around the back of his neck and squeezed.
“You stupid little shit. Of all the incompetent fuckers in this place, they had to stick me with the camp slut. Listen very carefully: I don’t intend to die today. If I decide you’re holding me back, I’ll shoot you before any enemy soldier does. Compris?”
>
After
It was the music box that really hurt. Which was stupid, because betrayal was betrayal, no matter how it was carried out. It shouldn’t have mattered to Gren that Vicious had done it with the tawdry little toy that he’d tossed to Gren one day. A toy that was the only thing he’d ever given Gren.
Gren had known what he was getting into with Vicious. You didn’t have to shed any tears for him. It was a standard wartime issue fuck-buddy relationship, an easy option after sorties, when they could fall on each other clawing and biting and fucking hard enough to exorcise their fears. Vicious had never been anything but honest about that.
So when he’d given Gren the little box, Gren hadn’t even thanked him. As though by thanking him he’d be acknowledging that it was real, that he’d maybe thought Vicious had meant something by it, just as he’d thought Vicious killing that scorpion had meant something.
Gren hadn’t thanked him, in the same way that he hadn’t thought that after the war, maybe they’d meet up, when Vicious wasn’t so angry with (hurt by) whoever it was that had turned his habitual expression into a frown.
Stupid, yes, but when had Gren ever claimed to be smart? He had listened to the music box every day on the transport out, winding it up several times a day, pressing his ear close to the box so that he felt its tiny vibrations as he heard the tinkling notes.
And then the arrest. The search. The triumph on strangers’ faces on the other side of a table with the remains of the music box scattered on it. The long hours in a cell when Gren didn’t think of anything, because when he thought at all, everything that was him seemed to be crushing itself down to nothing, grinding itself into powder with the force of his self-loathing and anger.
It was funny in a way. He’d wanted Vicious to change to suit him. Smile sometimes. Kiss him first, for a change. Instead, Gren came closer and closer to what Vicious was, understanding exactly what it was to be obsessed with someone when you hated them and loved them at the same time.
Maybe they would meet up again, Gren thought, if he ever got out of his jail cell, and he could spit in his eye. And then cut him up with knives till he was nothing but flayed muscle over bone, because there was nothing Gren could do to cut up what remained of Vicious’ heart - whoever had come before him had done a more than good enough job of that - so he’d just have to settle for hurting the body and then tossing him out into space.
He had a vision of himself in the future, gaunt, thin-lipped, dry as a husk, as the moon they’d first met on. Really, that was all Gren would be, a shell of rock and ice circling Vicious, the idea of Vicious, spiralling in towards it until he collided with it and disintegrated in a shower of atoms.
>
Before
Later, when the attack was over, he remembered screaming wordlessly as he had run into the desert. He had kept up with Vicious, directing all his pent-up rage and frustration into shooting and stabbing with berserker fury.
After they returned to the base, he began to shake again. He had killed three men, shot them and seen them crumple to the ground. It had only seemed appropriate when Vicious grabbed him and pushed him onto his army cot, stripping his clothes away with painful hands.
Gren kissed him feverishly, biting at his mouth and urging him on with his nails on Vicious’ shoulders. Vicious didn’t bother to use lubricant and the pain centred Gren, wrenched a moan out of him as he dropped back to earth.
It was fast and dirty and completely necessary. When it was over, Vicious lay on top of him, breathing harshly. Sweat trickled down their faces and pooled between their chests.
At first, they only fucked after sorties. Then, eventually, before them as well. Gren still disliked him, but he had to admit that the man was good in bed.
>
After
Gren looked in the mirror of the communal shower. Remembered hands sliding over his flat chest before he had breasts, tracing his pectorals and flicking the nipples with casual thumbs. Gren was used to his breasts by then and, most of the time, walked as naturally as he did before. When he’d first started getting them, god, he’d been so embarrassed, walking around with his shoulders hunched forward as though that could hide them.
He’d known what was doing it to him: the “sleeping” pills that he’d been stupid enough to start taking and then couldn’t stop taking. So he kept taking them and the bumps on his chest grew into globes, large and ridiculously round, a direct challenge to his cock when he looked in the mirror. When he was drugged out of his mind, sometimes he just cried, shaking silently, for the loss of his body of one colour.
It got worse when he had to whore himself out to get more of the pills and the men who used him played with his breasts. He would lie on his back with some indistinct figure crouched over him. Thick fingers would roll one nipple painfully, pausing to grab and squeeze the mound while the man bent down and mouthed the other breast, making little grunting sounds as he struggled to contain the entire round in his mouth. Gren would see the spittle trailing down the sides of his breast, feeling strangely distant; removed from this strange beast slobbering over two alien lumps on his chest.
There had been a whole group of men hooked to the pills. The prison wardens had doled them out like candy (It’ll make you sleep like a baby and dream the best dreams) and Gren had been too sleep-deprived to refuse anything that would cure his condition, that would mean his mind would stop looping back continuously to memories of Vicious.
(He realised later that the prison doctors had been conducting tests with some extracurricular projects, but that was much later.)
So, there had been a whole group of them; they were called halfies. They wore little synthsilk halter-tops to show off their assets, breasts straining under the material and incongruous below male features daubed with cheap makeup.
He hadn’t joined them at first, hunching his shoulders to keep his embarrassments hidden. Later, that had been impossible and he’d taken his place with them, too desperate for the drugs to care what he looked like. He was better at it than the others - the makeup looked almost natural on him - and he made a fair bit once he loosened up enough to give his clients what they wanted.
>
Before
Over the course of weeks, Gren became capable of hiding his dislike for the other man, even of making civil conversation with Vicious, of asking him inane questions with genuine interest. Would you mind if I played that tune on my sax when I go home after all this?
Things only changed on the day that he saved Gren’s life. They had been sitting opposite each other, against the rocks forming two sides of the trench they were sitting the midday heat out in. Vicious had moved so fast, lunging for Gren with such seemingly clear intent, that Gren was certain he was going to kill him. I’m going to die, he thought, and I don’t even know why.
Then Vicious sheathed his knife and walked away and Gren was left staring at the corpse of a Titan scorpion that would have killed him in ten seconds flat.
That night, Gren tried to thank Vicious.
“If you’re feeling grateful, get your head back down where it was.”
>
After
Eventually, it was the breasts that helped him get out of prison. They confused a prison guard into thinking he was in love with Gren. Lying in bed with Gren, the guard told him that he could get them both out of there, to a place called Callisto.
“That place is amazing! Worst shithole in the universe, but the best place to go when you want to hide. We’ll do ok there, sweetie.”
Gren had cooed and curled up closer, suffering a clumsy hand on his right breast.
True to his word, the guard had managed to smuggle him out of the prison station and into a ship without anyone noticing. In three Earth days, they slipped into the uncharted sector of space around Callisto.
Callisto, Gren reflected, was only beautiful when you were preparing to land on it, skimming over the pretty, poisonous green oceans and uninhabitable marshes. He was glad that the guard had gotten to see the view before he had killed him and thrown his body out of the airlock.
>
Before
He started going to Vicious in the middle of the night, when the wind howled even louder through the foxholes. Crawled the short distance between their sleeping pouches, unzipping the other man’s pouch with fingers made clumsy by the cold. Pushed in feet first, closing the pouch up again to lie still, crushed against Vicious’ back. Heard the low thrum of the unit’s ventilation and heating system kicking in to compensate for the rush of cold wind that came with his entry.
Slowly, his hands stopped shaking with the cold and his heart slowed. He smelt Vicious all around him, sweat and the scent of hair and skin. The smell marked the pouch indelibly, comfortingly, as his lover’s. He breathed in deeply.
Gren moved back as Vicious turned to face him. It was pitch black inside the pouch, but he could see Vicious’ face clearly in his mind’s eye, could imagine the cold eyes looking into his face. He moved forward to bury his face in Vicious’ chest.
>
After
“So you’re that Julia,” he said, looking at the blonde woman on the barstool.
She nodded.
“Well, well,” he said, giving her his most charming smile. “You must come home and have a drink with me.”
She smiled back, her face open and guileless.
When they walked into his apartment, he walked into the kitchen and put two tumblers on a tray, along with the ice bucket and a bottle of cheap whiskey. His hands flexed as he wondered whether to strangle her or shoot her. Strangulation, he decided, would be quieter and more satisfying.
She had her back to him as he walked into the living room, making it that much easier for him. She was looking at his wall of pictures - no, at the picture of him and Vicious that someone in his unit had taken.
He put the tray on the coffee table, quietly, and moved to stand behind her. As his hands rose to encircle her neck, she turned around and pressed the muzzle of her gun into his stomach. He grew very still.
“So you think you hate him?” she said.
“More than anything.”
Her lips curved. “Ah…but surely not more than I do.”
He recognised the expression in her eyes and relaxed slightly. “Then perhaps we can help each other.”
>
Now
Gren kissed Vicious gently, touching his mouth to the other man’s chin and cheeks, getting closer to his mouth, till at last he pressed his mouth precisely over Vicious’ thin lips. Vicious didn’t react. Experimentally, Gren put his tongue out and licked at his lover’s lower lip. Nothing. His hand darted suddenly to Vicious’ armpit, tickling him and Vicious twitched irritably. Gotcha, Gren thought.
‘Think we’re going home anytime soon?’ he said, more to get a reaction than in any real hope of an answer.
Vicious shrugged. Turned to Gren a little impatiently, undoing his buttons and sliding down his zips with practiced ease.
Gren smiled ruefully. Always straight to the point, was Vicious. Sometimes, he really felt a fool for letting this go on. And yet, and yet - he couldn’t bring himself to believe he was nothing but idle time-pass for Vicious. So he kept waiting, for a word, a sign, a meaningful look.
Gren knew the war had to end soon, one way or another. And when it ended…well, it wasn’t like there was anyplace he had to be.
He put his hands under Vicious’ shirt and stroked the pale chest caressingly.
He had all the time in the world to wait.
>>>
Um, it would make me very happy if you commented. That is, if you happen to like the story.
Gren: Side A
"The gloom of the world is but a shadow. Behind it, yet within our reach, is joy. There is radiance and glory in the darkness, could we but see, and to see, we have only to look."
-Fra. Giovanni
After
‘So, that’s it, then?’ the clerk asked, looking bored.
‘Yes,’ Gren said. ‘You encoded it, right?’
‘Yeah. See for yourself.’
Gren stared at the computer screen. Green symbols blinked at him, the characters strung together in a line of gibberish.
‘Send it,’ he said.
And, with a click, it was gone.
Come to me, Vicious.
>
Before
He didn’t feel. He didn’t feel, because he wasn’t meant to.
He began life in a red globe containing a viscous liquid, stacked beside other spheres of the same type. There were scores of lizard shapes curled up on themselves and rotating slowly, in rhythm with the simulated heartbeat that vibrated through the chamber. Sometimes, recordings of music were played, or snatches of conversation. Even, once a day, the soft sound of a female voice humming lullabies.
In some months, he was extracted from his womb. He squalled lustily when they severed the artificial umbilical cord linking him to the sphere. In a better-funded facility, there might have been a mother-simulator with an artificial breast and fleshy plastalloy arms to pacify him, but he had to make do with the duty nurse’s hasty feedings.
He performed satisfactorily on their aptitude tests, less so on the emotional ones. He was a solemn child who seldom smiled. Once a week, he was taken out with the rest of his batch, in a transport with smoked windows, to watch people on the streets and learn a little of what it was to be normal.
Of course, he himself was not anything close to normal. Firstly, he belonged to the state and, as his birth and upbringing had cost a great deal, he had a debt to repay. Even then he had a sense of what, in a real human, might be called duty.
>
After
Gren removed his laundry from the machine and placed it on the counter. He began to fold each piece of clothing quickly, efficiently, getting more pleasure out of the simple repetitive motions than anyone watching him would guess.
He put the folded clothes into the plastic bag he had brought with him and hefted it over his shoulder. On the way home, he stopped at the local 24-7 mart, stocking up on bread, milk, and a few bags of fruits and vegetables. He hefted a melon in his hand, judging its ripeness, again pleased with his facility with these everyday chores. He supposed the feeling should have worn off so many months after his escape, but for now he was content to enjoy it.
At home, he paused in front of his special wall, covered with pictures of his fictitious past life. The orchestra he had never been in, lined up and smiling. Himself leaning against a palm tree, with a child who had never been his nephew in his arms. Sitting on a sofa with his not-sister and his not-mother. Imaginary friends, unknown acquaintances and untouched lovers. Strangers whose faces and stories were familiar to him, giving him an odd comfort now, even though he had never and would never meet them. And there, in the middle of the wall, evidence of his one real relationship, which had proved more illusory than all the rest: he and Vicious, enveloped in the desert uniform of the Titan War, half-smiling at each other in a photograph faded to shades of brown.
As always, the picture aroused in him that particular medley of feelings that he now simply labelled ‘Vicious.’ Once, he would have rushed to dissect and pick apart and record each and every one of its components. But that had been a long time ago.
He coughed suddenly, in long spasms, and grimaced when the hand covering his mouth came away bloody. His plans had been in place for a while. He supposed he had been delaying putting them in motion, enjoying his small daily rituals too much, but there was no more time.
He wiped his mouth and washed his hands. Then he began making dinner. Pasta, he thought, with a nice salad to go with it.
>
Before
Gren was put in the unit as an experiment - how would a lab-bred react to the stresses of military life? All through basic training, he was perfect: laughed at the right times; swore at the right times; groaned and complained of fatigue on cue with the others.
When he saw Vicious, he thought another lab-bred had been put in the program with him. Vicious didn’t even look as human as Gren; he was too pale - pale hair, pale skin, pale eyes - and he wasn’t even making an effort to act suitably normal. Gren complained to his handler that Vicious wasn’t following protocol and watched impassively as the man laughed uproariously.
‘That’s a real human, Gren,’ he had said.
Gren had felt what he thought was resentment. How was he supposed to act human if normal humans themselves didn’t act correctly? Was it too much to ask that they all talked and felt and thought in a reasonably consistent manner?
He began to watch Vicious covertly. Here, obviously, was an aberration, an outlier in the sample space of humans. Watching him would add to his knowledge of how real humans behaved.
Vicious didn’t seem to care what the others in the unit thought of him. He ate alone, walked alone, slept alone. He didn’t laugh when the others made off-colour jokes. He didn’t have pinups of the latest ether-trendy model on the wall next to his bunk. He had no friends, so, logically, he should have been prey (unprotected, no allies), but the others left him severely alone.
Over time, Gren began to feel reassured by him. Earlier, he had been hypersensitive to his unit’s reactions to him (Did I smile at him correctly? Should I have agreed so readily when he asked me to help?). Looking at Vicious, he began to realise fully how tolerant human beings could be of difference if it allowed them to avoid a truth they didn’t want to face. After all, who would believe the government had the nerve to put a lab-bred in amongst god-fearing soldiers?
>
After
He moonlighted as a saxophone player on Callisto, in between drug deals. It took time to build trust, even among scum like this, and he needed a way to pay his bills. Besides, he liked it more than his ‘real’ job.
He learned how to pay rent and utility bills, how to go grocery shopping, how to cook and clean. One day, on a whim, he bought anthuriums and arranged them in a jug on the windowsill.
He met Julia in the bar where he worked and took her home for a drink. They dissected the music box over glasses of whiskey, neat, and Gren was amazed that he hadn’t figured it out on his own.
“You couldn’t have known,” Julia said. “Red Dragon technology is more advanced than most things cooked up in government labs these days. No one else would be able to fit a transmitter into something that size.”
Julia came over every night of the week that she stayed on Callisto and they listened to old records. They smoked late into the night on the balcony of Gren’s apartment, wrapped in their coats against the permanent cold, watching curls of smoke rise up into the frigid air.
>
Before
It came to him in a burst of colour inside his head one day. Someone shoved him in the showers and he felt his face flush and his hands move almost of their own volition to push the other man back. ‘Watch it!’ he snarled, and was shocked. It was exactly the right response, yes, but it had not been at all studied. It had come to him naturally, which disturbed him more than he could admit.
It began happening more and more and he started to take short notes [2068.4.30. Emotion: Irritation. Probable cause: Lost at cards.] He knew at the back of his mind that he was trying to impress some sort of order on a phenomenon beyond his control. If he stopped to think about it for too long, he grew…afraid? Back at the training base, he would have discussed it with his handler, but here, he was completely isolated.
He grew tenser and tenser, but no one noticed, because everyone was in the same state. They were all sick of being cooped up in the station above Titan, sick of waiting in reserve, sick of thinking of the dust and heat and death that awaited them below.
>
After
It was in prison that Gren learned Vicious’ real name. Vicious. How very appropriate. He still didn’t understand why the other man had betrayed him.
He gleaned bits and pieces about Vicious from the other inmates. High-ranking member of the Chinese mafia. Handled their drug businesses. No lovers, no friends.
Methodically, he checked items off on the list in his mind. And one day, when everything was ready, he left the prison. He allowed others to go with him, so his own escape was not as noticeable.
The others asked him what he wanted to do once they were out. He had smiled vaguely and said something about setting himself up in the pharmaceuticals business. They had laughed then, and told him that Callisto was the place to go. Here were some names to get him started. ‘Red eye’ was where the best money was these days. Did he need references? They were all very grateful, very helpful, very useful.
None of them could have known of the statistic running through his mind. He had already begun coughing up blood, which meant he had less than a year. Less than a year left to find Vicious and ask him why he had set him up.
>
Before
They exchanged shots first from behind the safety of sand dunes. Then, when the signal was given, they ran out towards enemy lines, sand flying against their masks. Gren felt choked, suffocated, blinded.
He struck out and hit someone with his rifle purely by chance. Shot him, without knowing whether he was friend or foe. He ran forward again, hearing shots around him. A bullet grazed his shoulder and he panicked, frozen and not knowing which way to go. The next one would surely kill him.
A hand gripped his wrist and jerked him into the shelter of a jagged rock formation. It was Vicious.
Thank you, Gren tried to say, but his throat was too dry.
Vicious nodded.
>
After
His shadowy handlers melted into the background once the military focused their attacks on him. He was never told on what proof he was tried and convicted, but he learned that Vicious had testified against him.
There was only one interview with a government official.
“We disclaim all responsibility for your actions,” the man had said.
Gren said nothing.
“I hope you know enough not to make any wild claims about your past,” the man had continued. “You will only harm yourself.”
“How long have I got before I start degenerating?”
“Not long. Two, maybe three years at most. Your model was not built for long-term endurance.”
“What were we built for? I sometimes wondered.”
“I am not authorised to tell you.”
Gren had smiled at that, a true smile of amusement, which had shaken the man more than he cared to admit. Lab-bred weren’t supposed to have a sense of humour.
>
Before
After that first battle, Gren began to feel something drawing him to Vicious. He would sit beside the other man quietly as they read or cleaned their weapons. Later, he would learn to classify the emotion as affection.
He understood other things as well. That he enjoyed being on Titan, in the army. That it couldn’t last once the war was over, because the government would have other tests and other uses for him then. That he didn’t much care to spend his life shuttling from one experiment to another. That he was never again going to go back to the lab, because he didn’t owe anyone besides Vicious anything.
>
After
They lost the war and Titan became a colony of the Democratic Republic of Jupiter. It was rumoured that tempers were running high at headquarters, but all the men really cared for was to go home. Gren had hardly paid attention when he heard that a search was on for a spy who had been transmitting troop positions and strategies from the surface.
Even as the search went on, the men were herded above a massive transport headed for home. Gren spent his time thinking of how he would elude his handlers when they came for him and what he would do once he had managed to escape. Maybe Vicious could help?
When they came for Gren, he first mistook them for handlers from his project. The bell rang and he looked through the keyhole of his transport room at distorted men in black suits. His heart sank. He hadn’t thought the government would go so far as to send someone all the way to Titan to round him up.
Then he opened the door and learned that he was being arrested for treason.
>
Before
Gren wound up the music box again. The light tinkling notes spilled out once more, soft and beautiful against the backdrop of the howling wind. “Julia,” Vicious had said this tune was called. Gren thought it must be the name of his girlfriend or wife. Would he get to meet her if he got out of this war alive?
Somehow, he had trouble imagining Vicious as one half of a doting couple, but then again, why not? He did, after all, have a protective streak. Hadn’t he proved that by saving Gren’s life twice?
Footsteps approached, barely audible over the wind.
“You’re listening to it again?” Vicious said.
“I really like it.”
“Why?”
“Because… because you gave it to me.”
Vicious laughed then. “You’re too good to be true, Gren.”
Gren laughed too, happy to be sharing a joke with Vicious, even if he wasn’t quite sure what it was.
>
After
It was very quick on the rooftop. An exchange of words followed by an exchange of gunfire. Gren had told Vicious what he had wanted to say.
“I looked up to you…I believed in you…yet you sold me out.” Why?
“You’re in the way,” Vicious had said, as he shot Gren down.
Later, he was thankful when that green-haired man, Julia’s Spike, had lowered his body into the pod of his fighter and launched him on his last journey to Titan. As he lay in the pod, Gren whispered Vicious’ answer back to himself: “There was nothing to believe in…nor a need to believe.”
Humanly, irrationally, he could summon up pity for the man who had said that. It pleased him at the end to feel that he, a product of the most rational planning and the most pragmatic training, had ended his life in such a flagrantly emotional way. For revenge, for answers, for love. Just because he wanted to.
He floated in the dark vacuum above Callisto, hearing the thrum of the engines pushing him closer and closer to Titan. Behind his eyelids, memories burst into full flower. He smiled, feeling them envelop him in a halo of vibrant colours, lighting up the sky as he swam towards his past.
>>>
Gren: Side B
After
‘So, that’s it, then?’ the clerk asked, looking bored.
‘Yes,’ Gren said. ‘You encoded it, right?’
‘Yeah. See for yourself.’
Gren stared at the computer screen. Green symbols blinked at him, the characters strung together in a line of gibberish.
‘Send it,’ he said.
And, with a click, it was gone.
Come to me, Vicious.
>
Before
They met in basic training. Another man had introduced them casually in a laughing group of new recruits, most of whom Gren forgot as soon as he said their names. He had nodded politely at Vicious, thinking: what a peculiar-looking man, and then promptly forgotten about him.
Training camp suited Gren very well. He thought of the coming war more as a possibility than an impending certainty and treated it correspondingly lightly. Two years of mandatory military service didn’t seem all that bad to him. Everyone he knew had gone through it and it wasn’t as though he had any plans that couldn’t stand the wait. In the meantime, there was a whole camp full of attractive, lonely young men with whom to become better acquainted.
The next time he met Vicious was when the other man walked in on Gren having sex with Vicious’ roommate. Peter couldn’t see him, lying on the bed and tossing his head restlessly on the pillow. Gren looked up, though, and saw him standing there, his eyes intent. He didn’t look embarrassed, as any normal person would have done. Instead, he was leaning against the doorframe with his arms crossed, his face faintly bored. As if he were watching a mediocre porn movie, Gren noted with annoyance. Well, fine.
Gren slowed down, moving into Peter as deeply as he could, taking his time, refusing to be embarrassed by the man standing in the doorway.
It had gone on for endless minutes, until Peter shuddered and gasped, clenching around Gren and taking him over the edge as well. Gren’s eyelids flickered shut then and when he opened them again, Peter was kissing him lazily and Vicious was gone.
>
After
The trials made headlines on Cirrus. “Traitor Caught Red-handed.” “Mole in Jovian Army Exposed.” And my personal favourite: “Grencia Eckener, Judas of Jupiter.” It was quite a phenomenon - rarely had the public been so united on any issue. Even my parents…but then there are things that no family should have to deal with. Can I really blame them? They tried to help in the beginning. My silence must have convinced them of my guilt and they got tired of cleaning the angry graffiti off the flat door every day. It made no difference to me. Vicious’ betrayal had wounded me so deeply that the multitude of lesser hurts I suffered made no impact.
I look like hell in the courtroom holos. There are a lot of them. The military police were not gentle with me; I landed up in court with half my hair shaved off and bruises all over my face. Other places, too, but those weren’t visible. The army’s top brass was relieved to have a scapegoat to blame the Titan debacle on and my treachery was lovingly recounted and vociferously denounced by several different spokesmen and generals.
My memory of that time is odd, disjointed. There are long periods of time that I can’t recollect at all. And then there are people and places of which I have retained an almost photographic impression. The floor of my cell, for example. I remember sitting stock still for hours with my hands clasped in front of me and my eyes fixed on the floor. So my memory of the floor is in perfect focus: scuffed metal tiles polished to a dull glow by my pacing. Twenty-three long scratches (I counted), five parallel to each other. And a blurred image of my joined hands, the knuckles white. I remember thinking that the floor was vibrating slightly, moving from side to side, which worried me. But then I realised that it was actually my hands that were shaking.
I don’t remember the faces of the soldiers who kicked me around. Which isn’t that strange, because when I was with them, I was generally trying to protect my face from their blows. I don’t remember what they said either: insults have a tendency to get monotonous fast. But there was a savagery, a sort of growling metallic undertone to all the voices, which I will never forget. And one of them had long blond hair. I can’t remember his face, just a halo of gold hair surrounding a blank oval. I remember because my face flinched whenever I saw him. A tic used to start up under my left eye and wouldn’t stop for hours.
All things end eventually. The trial took a week and the verdict surprised no one. I was moved into a prison on a high security station low in Jupiter’s atmosphere. Only special government spacecraft had the ability to reach escape velocities sufficient to escape from there.
People sometimes say that excessive pain cauterises the soul and makes it impervious to further damage. I found out that there is always a lower level that you can fall to. And another. And another. And so on, till you spiral slowly and endlessly downward forever. Or maybe I just have a higher capacity for pain that I have yet managed to exceed.
>
Before
Gren wasn’t at all pleased when he and Vicious were paired together for the first sortie. He supposed he could request a swap from his sergeant, but it would look petty. Besides, it would be all over camp within the day and he didn’t dislike Vicious enough to inflict the humiliation of that on him.
He spent the whole day and night seething, which was as good a coping mechanism as any, except that it stopped working about an hour before dawn. By the time that the attack began, Gren’s teeth were chattering audibly and his hands shook on the butt of his rifle. He would have been unbearably humiliated if he hadn’t seen a puddle form under a solider further down the trench.
He kept his eyes rigidly forward, till they began to water, even under the protection of his desert mask. Suddenly, it wasn’t two years of military service. It was one day, one endless enormous day during which he stood a very good chance of dying. His breath came faster, in shallow gasps.
A hand shook his shoulder roughly.
“Don’t fall apart till after we finish this,’ Vicious said, his voice contemptuous.
“Shut up!”
Vicious’ hand closed around the back of his neck and squeezed.
“You stupid little shit. Of all the incompetent fuckers in this place, they had to stick me with the camp slut. Listen very carefully: I don’t intend to die today. If I decide you’re holding me back, I’ll shoot you before any enemy soldier does. Compris?”
>
After
It was the music box that really hurt. Which was stupid, because betrayal was betrayal, no matter how it was carried out. It shouldn’t have mattered to Gren that Vicious had done it with the tawdry little toy that he’d tossed to Gren one day. A toy that was the only thing he’d ever given Gren.
Gren had known what he was getting into with Vicious. You didn’t have to shed any tears for him. It was a standard wartime issue fuck-buddy relationship, an easy option after sorties, when they could fall on each other clawing and biting and fucking hard enough to exorcise their fears. Vicious had never been anything but honest about that.
So when he’d given Gren the little box, Gren hadn’t even thanked him. As though by thanking him he’d be acknowledging that it was real, that he’d maybe thought Vicious had meant something by it, just as he’d thought Vicious killing that scorpion had meant something.
Gren hadn’t thanked him, in the same way that he hadn’t thought that after the war, maybe they’d meet up, when Vicious wasn’t so angry with (hurt by) whoever it was that had turned his habitual expression into a frown.
Stupid, yes, but when had Gren ever claimed to be smart? He had listened to the music box every day on the transport out, winding it up several times a day, pressing his ear close to the box so that he felt its tiny vibrations as he heard the tinkling notes.
And then the arrest. The search. The triumph on strangers’ faces on the other side of a table with the remains of the music box scattered on it. The long hours in a cell when Gren didn’t think of anything, because when he thought at all, everything that was him seemed to be crushing itself down to nothing, grinding itself into powder with the force of his self-loathing and anger.
It was funny in a way. He’d wanted Vicious to change to suit him. Smile sometimes. Kiss him first, for a change. Instead, Gren came closer and closer to what Vicious was, understanding exactly what it was to be obsessed with someone when you hated them and loved them at the same time.
Maybe they would meet up again, Gren thought, if he ever got out of his jail cell, and he could spit in his eye. And then cut him up with knives till he was nothing but flayed muscle over bone, because there was nothing Gren could do to cut up what remained of Vicious’ heart - whoever had come before him had done a more than good enough job of that - so he’d just have to settle for hurting the body and then tossing him out into space.
He had a vision of himself in the future, gaunt, thin-lipped, dry as a husk, as the moon they’d first met on. Really, that was all Gren would be, a shell of rock and ice circling Vicious, the idea of Vicious, spiralling in towards it until he collided with it and disintegrated in a shower of atoms.
>
Before
Later, when the attack was over, he remembered screaming wordlessly as he had run into the desert. He had kept up with Vicious, directing all his pent-up rage and frustration into shooting and stabbing with berserker fury.
After they returned to the base, he began to shake again. He had killed three men, shot them and seen them crumple to the ground. It had only seemed appropriate when Vicious grabbed him and pushed him onto his army cot, stripping his clothes away with painful hands.
Gren kissed him feverishly, biting at his mouth and urging him on with his nails on Vicious’ shoulders. Vicious didn’t bother to use lubricant and the pain centred Gren, wrenched a moan out of him as he dropped back to earth.
It was fast and dirty and completely necessary. When it was over, Vicious lay on top of him, breathing harshly. Sweat trickled down their faces and pooled between their chests.
At first, they only fucked after sorties. Then, eventually, before them as well. Gren still disliked him, but he had to admit that the man was good in bed.
>
After
Gren looked in the mirror of the communal shower. Remembered hands sliding over his flat chest before he had breasts, tracing his pectorals and flicking the nipples with casual thumbs. Gren was used to his breasts by then and, most of the time, walked as naturally as he did before. When he’d first started getting them, god, he’d been so embarrassed, walking around with his shoulders hunched forward as though that could hide them.
He’d known what was doing it to him: the “sleeping” pills that he’d been stupid enough to start taking and then couldn’t stop taking. So he kept taking them and the bumps on his chest grew into globes, large and ridiculously round, a direct challenge to his cock when he looked in the mirror. When he was drugged out of his mind, sometimes he just cried, shaking silently, for the loss of his body of one colour.
It got worse when he had to whore himself out to get more of the pills and the men who used him played with his breasts. He would lie on his back with some indistinct figure crouched over him. Thick fingers would roll one nipple painfully, pausing to grab and squeeze the mound while the man bent down and mouthed the other breast, making little grunting sounds as he struggled to contain the entire round in his mouth. Gren would see the spittle trailing down the sides of his breast, feeling strangely distant; removed from this strange beast slobbering over two alien lumps on his chest.
There had been a whole group of men hooked to the pills. The prison wardens had doled them out like candy (It’ll make you sleep like a baby and dream the best dreams) and Gren had been too sleep-deprived to refuse anything that would cure his condition, that would mean his mind would stop looping back continuously to memories of Vicious.
(He realised later that the prison doctors had been conducting tests with some extracurricular projects, but that was much later.)
So, there had been a whole group of them; they were called halfies. They wore little synthsilk halter-tops to show off their assets, breasts straining under the material and incongruous below male features daubed with cheap makeup.
He hadn’t joined them at first, hunching his shoulders to keep his embarrassments hidden. Later, that had been impossible and he’d taken his place with them, too desperate for the drugs to care what he looked like. He was better at it than the others - the makeup looked almost natural on him - and he made a fair bit once he loosened up enough to give his clients what they wanted.
>
Before
Over the course of weeks, Gren became capable of hiding his dislike for the other man, even of making civil conversation with Vicious, of asking him inane questions with genuine interest. Would you mind if I played that tune on my sax when I go home after all this?
Things only changed on the day that he saved Gren’s life. They had been sitting opposite each other, against the rocks forming two sides of the trench they were sitting the midday heat out in. Vicious had moved so fast, lunging for Gren with such seemingly clear intent, that Gren was certain he was going to kill him. I’m going to die, he thought, and I don’t even know why.
Then Vicious sheathed his knife and walked away and Gren was left staring at the corpse of a Titan scorpion that would have killed him in ten seconds flat.
That night, Gren tried to thank Vicious.
“If you’re feeling grateful, get your head back down where it was.”
>
After
Eventually, it was the breasts that helped him get out of prison. They confused a prison guard into thinking he was in love with Gren. Lying in bed with Gren, the guard told him that he could get them both out of there, to a place called Callisto.
“That place is amazing! Worst shithole in the universe, but the best place to go when you want to hide. We’ll do ok there, sweetie.”
Gren had cooed and curled up closer, suffering a clumsy hand on his right breast.
True to his word, the guard had managed to smuggle him out of the prison station and into a ship without anyone noticing. In three Earth days, they slipped into the uncharted sector of space around Callisto.
Callisto, Gren reflected, was only beautiful when you were preparing to land on it, skimming over the pretty, poisonous green oceans and uninhabitable marshes. He was glad that the guard had gotten to see the view before he had killed him and thrown his body out of the airlock.
>
Before
He started going to Vicious in the middle of the night, when the wind howled even louder through the foxholes. Crawled the short distance between their sleeping pouches, unzipping the other man’s pouch with fingers made clumsy by the cold. Pushed in feet first, closing the pouch up again to lie still, crushed against Vicious’ back. Heard the low thrum of the unit’s ventilation and heating system kicking in to compensate for the rush of cold wind that came with his entry.
Slowly, his hands stopped shaking with the cold and his heart slowed. He smelt Vicious all around him, sweat and the scent of hair and skin. The smell marked the pouch indelibly, comfortingly, as his lover’s. He breathed in deeply.
Gren moved back as Vicious turned to face him. It was pitch black inside the pouch, but he could see Vicious’ face clearly in his mind’s eye, could imagine the cold eyes looking into his face. He moved forward to bury his face in Vicious’ chest.
>
After
“So you’re that Julia,” he said, looking at the blonde woman on the barstool.
She nodded.
“Well, well,” he said, giving her his most charming smile. “You must come home and have a drink with me.”
She smiled back, her face open and guileless.
When they walked into his apartment, he walked into the kitchen and put two tumblers on a tray, along with the ice bucket and a bottle of cheap whiskey. His hands flexed as he wondered whether to strangle her or shoot her. Strangulation, he decided, would be quieter and more satisfying.
She had her back to him as he walked into the living room, making it that much easier for him. She was looking at his wall of pictures - no, at the picture of him and Vicious that someone in his unit had taken.
He put the tray on the coffee table, quietly, and moved to stand behind her. As his hands rose to encircle her neck, she turned around and pressed the muzzle of her gun into his stomach. He grew very still.
“So you think you hate him?” she said.
“More than anything.”
Her lips curved. “Ah…but surely not more than I do.”
He recognised the expression in her eyes and relaxed slightly. “Then perhaps we can help each other.”
>
Now
Gren kissed Vicious gently, touching his mouth to the other man’s chin and cheeks, getting closer to his mouth, till at last he pressed his mouth precisely over Vicious’ thin lips. Vicious didn’t react. Experimentally, Gren put his tongue out and licked at his lover’s lower lip. Nothing. His hand darted suddenly to Vicious’ armpit, tickling him and Vicious twitched irritably. Gotcha, Gren thought.
‘Think we’re going home anytime soon?’ he said, more to get a reaction than in any real hope of an answer.
Vicious shrugged. Turned to Gren a little impatiently, undoing his buttons and sliding down his zips with practiced ease.
Gren smiled ruefully. Always straight to the point, was Vicious. Sometimes, he really felt a fool for letting this go on. And yet, and yet - he couldn’t bring himself to believe he was nothing but idle time-pass for Vicious. So he kept waiting, for a word, a sign, a meaningful look.
Gren knew the war had to end soon, one way or another. And when it ended…well, it wasn’t like there was anyplace he had to be.
He put his hands under Vicious’ shirt and stroked the pale chest caressingly.
He had all the time in the world to wait.
>>>
Um, it would make me very happy if you commented. That is, if you happen to like the story.