Fanfic: Sands of Time [ 1 / ? ] Reaper!McCoy / Reese!Chekov
Title: The Sands of Time
Rating: M
Fandom(s): Star Trek XI, DOOM, Terminator Salvation
Disclaimer: Okay, if I owned ANY of these (other than on DVD) would I be writing this? I think not.
Warnings: MASSIVE CROSSOVERNESS, AU, OOCness, m/m relations, language, violence
Summary: Kyle Reese, as a Resistance fighter, was practically made sterile due to nuclear radiation so had to become the test subject for a drug that would regenerate radiation damaged tissue… and as such became essentially immortalized. In the year 2046, he met a former Marine codenamed Reaper, recently fired from the RRTS after the massacre of the UAC base on Mars and they formed an unbreakable bond. Centuries pass and face a new future, a new set of lives, in Space as Starfleet officers. Will their bond survive the test of space travel and exploration with Starfleet?
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PART I - THE BEGINNING
YEAR: Early 2018
The original test in and of itself hadn’t been very pleasant but the results of it were even more so considering the fact that it was a woman who had just had a baby who told him so. He was sterile. Damn radiation from all the nuclear bombs that were dropped, radiation that still existed today though he had practically been raised in the diminished rads when his parents were still around, had fucked with his genetics. Even if he wanted to he couldn’t have kids. Shit.
“We a treatment for this, though, that’s pretty experimental,” John’s wife had said, her pretty red hair pulled away from her face into a bun so that she looked more professional, “we know, theoretically, that it should work though exactly how your system will react to it is unknown. We haven’t needed to test it out yet but…” She sighed and crossed her arms over her chest, “John says it’s important that you get it.”
Now that made Kyle’s big smoky blue eyes blink. Wait, what? What kind of difference did it make that he could have kids for this mission? He was going to be sent back in time to protect the mother of the savior. That was all. Seriously.
“Look with the job I’m doin’ while I’m there I doubt I’ll need it.” While Sarah was beautiful, if the pictures were anything to go by, he would most certainly try to restrain himself. Having the future on his shoulders and their lives on the line usually did the trick for calming the libido. Right?
“Well, I’m sorry Kyle, but you really don’t have much of a say in the matter.”
“What do you- ACK! DAMN IT!” He hadn’t seen Mrs. Connor prepare the needle while she had been talking with him until it was already embedded in his shoulder and the plunger was pushed down. Whatever stuff had been in it had hurt. He felt a burning sensation coursing through him from that point as she pulled the syringe out of his skin and covered it up with a small bandage. “Warn a guy first would ya?” He didn’t have time to say much else. The drug began it’s work.
His entire body stiffened and fell back onto the bed as his muscles contracted one by one into downright painful levels. He cried out in pain and his entire body began to convulse, his body going into overdrive. The drug spread further, his internal organs now being touched, as they contracted and relaxed he could feel the pain of his entire system being shredded and remade. He wasn’t sure if anything could be heard above his own screams but he didn’t care. They echoed in his ears as they too, eventually were reshaped. His brain was the last of his body systems to be touched and by the time it reached there, he had simply blacked out.
By the time he woke up, he had found several days had passed though the sight he had opened his eyes to was far from a comforting one. John Connor’s face was practically in his and the man looked as stern as always. In a way Kyle was a bit worried he would be in immense trouble for this but then remembered he didn’t consent to the damn treatment to begin with. When John leaned back, he frowned and waited for the older man to say something. He tried to move his arms but found them bound. Damn it.
“Run the test again now that he’s awake.” The order sounds colder than usual though Kyle has always thought the Resistance leader sounded colder after he had taken Marcus’ heart. Probably had something to do with that heart having once belonged to a half machine. Even now his mind hadn’t wrapped itself fully around it. “We need a positive result before he can be sent back.” How much longer they had he didn’t know but…
HOLYFUCKINGSHIT! “LADY! WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOIN’?! YOU TRYIN’A KILL ME?” He really hadn’t expected that needle in such a sensitive place! And it hurt like hell! Not nearly as much as the convulsions had before he had blacked out but it was a really close call. He bit his lip to fight back a whimper while she took her shot of his spunk and went to go test it. Gods that woman was a sadistic bitch. Why was she the doctor again?
The test was run while Kyle recovered from both rather traumatic experiences and by the time it was finished he had recovered enough to the point where the throb in his groin was tolerable. The doctor came back and untied the restraints, letting him get up if he wanted to. Very carefully he moved to sit up and took a deep breath. Ow ow ow. Fuckin’… gah. Stupid woman. “Your test was positive. The treatment took. Keep an eye on yourself while you’re out there though. Like I said, we don’t know the side effects.”
He nodded while he gritted his teeth and made to stand up. The pain was tolerable now so long as he didn’t move suddenly. “Right. Thanks.” He made a mental note not to piss her off.
“Good now, away you go then.”
Standing up, Kyle found he was able to make it was out to where the time traveling machine was and where John and a few others were waiting. In John’s hand, there was a bag of weapons and ammunition. The very fact that he’d need it was not a good sign. “Go then, Kyle,” John had said, though his expression was softer than earlier, “make sure Sarah makes it through this. Remember, if you fail, it’s all over.”
The young man, though he was almost thirty, nodded and slung the bag over his right shoulder. At least he was dressed in decent clothes. He’d hate for a first impression with the mother of the prophesized savior to mistaken him for a raving homeless person the first time they met. “I got it. Don’t worry. To get to her, it’ll have to get through me first.” Not that it would be all that hard.
He took a deep breath and had been about to jump through when a hand on his shoulder stopped him and turned him around so the older man could hug him tightly. He didn’t understand the need for this but he knew there was one. He hugged John back for a second or two. In a manly way of course. Yes. Because hugging between two guys was perfectly normal.
When Connor let go, he said “Good luck” and stood back, watching with slightly wet eyes. Okay. That was odd. Still, there was no reason to pay the odd behavior any heed. His friend, his comrade, needed him to do this. He was being entrusted with the safety of the man’s mother. He braced himself again as he looked at the portal once more. Time travel had never been attempted by humans before. He just hoped he made it through.
“Here we go.” He ran forward, arms braced up in front of his face in an unconscious effort to protect it as he walked through the barrier. The sensation he got from traveling through the wormhole through time and space was certainly dizzying though not painful. While traveling he thought to himself that this was it. This was his chance to prove he was the most loyal of all the Resistance fighters that still remained in the future time. If he was able to keep Sarah Connor safe and sound and destroy this T-1000 then maybe, just maybe, he’d be able to find himself a nice little niche with his buddy amongst the most elite fighters in Resistance history and gain the man’s respect.
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YEAR: 1984
When Kyle Reese woke up again he was hurting. Holy shit was he hurtin’. He was going to scream, really he was, until he noticed that the room was really damn cold and the lights bright enough to burn holes in his retinas now that he regained enough consciousness to register this in the back of his mind. He was wearing a paper gown and there was no one around for now. All around him, on all the metal tables were bodies and as he shifted slightly, moving his toes and fingers to test if they were still there, he felt something tied to his toe. A post mortem tag? What the fuck? Why was he in a morgue?
A faint memory came back into his conscious mind and he remembered the explosion that had taken him and the bottom half of the terminator out. He remembered being impaled by metal while his chest cavity was crushed from the force of the explosion itself. Yet he could breath fine. His heart was beating, he could feel it. He sat up and looked down at himself where he had seen the metal impale him with his own two eyes. In their place there were stitches. On his perfectly healed skin. Either the people of this time were more gifted medically than the future or this had been done by his own body.
Unthinkingly, he looked around and saw a tool kit sitting on the table next to him. He took the scissors and cut the end of the each of the stitches, pulling carefully on the small black thread to pull it out of his body and watched in shock and horror as these small wounds healed themselves. What the fuck. Seriously, what the fuck! How had this happened? What had the done that…
… the shot. That shot the doctor had given him before this whole thing started. The shot that was supposed to make him fertile. She said they had no idea what the side effects were. This had to be one of them. Healing or regeneration or something along those lines. He ran a hand through his washed hair, annoyed when he felt the curls that he had thought he had gotten rid of when he had grown out of in the war. He ran a hand along his face and almost reeled when he felt how his face was leaner. What had happened?
He reached down and plucked the toe tag off his toe, leaving it on the table, as he walked over to the nearest mirror and stared at himself. No fucking way. The face that stared back at him was not the almost thirty year old resistance fighter he knew he was. It was the damn kid, twenty years old, that he had been shortly before he had been rescued from San Francisco. It had been a long time since he had seen himself that gangly and just young looking. Shit. What the hell had that injection done to him?
His attention snapped from the mirror towards the direction of the doors as he heard a couple of people talking and somehow he knew that sticking around, still standing, was a bad idea. Yet he got the impression playing dead (because they still believed his was) would only end in his own dissection and he didn’t want to test to see if he would be able to recover from that. He needed a method of escape that would go relatively undetected. He needed clothes.
And he found a set. Some kid, apparently, had wrecked his car and ended up here after he died. While Kyle did feel kinda sorry for the boy, he needed the clothes. So he grabbed them and disappeared out of sight, knowing he had to dress quickly. He had no weapon to take these people out with. At least his appearance was different enough that he didn’t need to really spook the techs out. The doors opened just as he got the pants on and was wrestling with the socks and shoes. He braced himself to screams of horror. All he got was the lights being switched off. Wow. Either these guys really didn’t pay attention or they were way too confident in their own facilities. Well, there was that and the only people in this room were dead. No real need for security.
He scrambled to get dressed the rest of the way, trying not to feel stupid in the leather jacket, boots, jeans and bloody t-shirt. The clothes themselves didn’t matter. He had to get out of here. He had to check to make sure Sarah was safe before he could worry about trying to get himself back home. The had heard the doors lock while he had finished getting dressed. He supposed he could open a window and hop out. What would they do if he was caught? He was already registered as dead.
He did just that, jumping out into the bushes just beyond the morgue and doing his best to blend into the crowd on the street as he cut through a nearby alleyway to join them. He had a real bone to pick with that Kate Connor. Side effects his ass. How was he supposed to be able to accomplish his mission if he had no idea what the fuck was going on with his own anatomy?
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YEAR: 2004
Twenty years had passed since that blasted day when he had woken up in that morgue and even now as Kyle looked himself in the mirror he didn’t look a day older than he had that day. He grew no beard nor did his hair get any longer. If he tried to trim it, it would just go back to this length and stay there. From what he could figure, the drug Kate had given him had essentially reincarnated his mangled body into the most fit form he had had and at twenty years old he was certainly the fittest he had ever been. He never could run as fast as he had at this age or be more flexible. In a way, he supposed, it was an advantage.
But as he had watched the times come by, as he was sat back and listened to the news while Sarah Connor did her best to try and prevent the future from happening, he couldn’t help but prepare himself for the judgment day he knew was coming anyway. He had moved from the town he had been “killed” in to the same one where Sarah and her family had stayed, even going to far as to get a job at her work place just so he could keep an eye on her and her son whenever she indirectly asked for it. He built himself a decent shelter against the bombs he knew that would fall and started gathering as much preserved food as he could. He had known that the first hundred or so days would be the roughest. With his knowledge of the future, he built a filtration system for the water within his little hide out. It would have to last that way until his external readers, which he had buried enough under the surface to be able to withstand the place, would tell him it was safe to come out. He planned on taking Sarah and her son with him.
Just like it had been in the history books, the day came with just enough warning for people to start panicking and Kyle had been wise enough to convince Sarah, now his friend, and her son to stay with him. They hid in the bunker as the end for the majority of humanity came and with the supplies he had, the resistance fighter took care of them as best he could. The three of them managed to make it long enough to the radiation to die down and allow some semblance of life to take over again, though it was less organic and more metallic. At least these first terminators had been easy to take out. Kyle know it would get harder as they years went by.
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YEAR: Mid-2018
More years passed and soon enough Sarah Connor passed away due to old age while Kyle had watched from a distance, having gone and faked his own death when his body no longer matched the age Sarah would have thought him to be. There was no point in revealing that his body was reincarnated essentially. There was no point in revealing just how he healed from the most deadly of wounds though a bullet through the head or heart was not something he was going to test any time soon. He fought the machines on his own, even went so far as to go into San Francisco where he had remembered finding Marcus that first time but making sure to stay clear of his younger self. He would let the events unfold as he knew they would. There would be no point in trying to fight it. He joined a Resistance group other than John Connor’s under a false name though he did keep an eye on the guy. Despite being bigger, stronger and definitely much more dangerous looking, John was his son.
Out of the shadows he kept his gun trained on those pesky machines that would dare try to take out his boy while at the same time watching his own back as much as he could so he didn’t have to reveal his abilities to his comrades. There was only so many times he could pass off a rather serious looking wound as a scrape when there were plenty of battle hardened eye witnesses around to prove that you should have died, corpses too. It was unsettling seeing so many people die over the years but his heart was starting to harden against it. Machine death was one thing. Human death took a bit more getting used to.
He had gone with the teams to scout out that facility when the new flesh and steel terminator had first been found by John. He had been with them as they all fell to machine fire, one by one, while John scurried out of that hole towards the chopper. Kyle had used that particular battle as an opportunity to disappear from the unit he was with. They were starting to get suspicious now that his twenty year old face was trying to pull off almost thirty. He had lain in the dust, behind on of the satellites, knowing better than to move from this spot until the machines cleared it. He stayed perfectly still as they passed by, hovering for a second over where he was before moving on. He had known something was going to go terribly wrong then. He had to get John out.
Getting up, he ran onto the helicopter just as John took off, finding shelter in the back as the man went to pursue the enemy aircraft. He had felt sick when he saw the bomb falling into the hole. Whoever was down there, whoever remained other than themselves, was going to be dead shortly. He hung on and turned his eyes away just as the blast went off and flung them around in the air like some kind of sick toy. The Resistance leader had done his best to try and fly it properly but ended up crashing the thing rather painfully. At least he had been strapped down. Poor Kyle had been thrown around violently, one blow too many to the head making him lose consciousness. He was really beginning to hate the darkness.
This time when he opened his eyes, he was alone in the remains of the helicopter, the rain pitter-pattering on the metal around him and waking him up slowly but sure with it’s rhythm. He supposed John must have gotten out of there and judging from the pain in his head, it had been a while since the rescuer had come by. Oh well. That just meant he would have to find another unit on his own. His face was pretty easy to miss unless one knew what the “Kyle Reese” the machines had been hunting looked like. Even then, he supposed there would be enough of a difference to cause people to look away. After all, Kyle was supposed to be a teenager with little experience in this time period. He was far from inexperienced and he had the red arm band around his right arm to prove it. That and the curly hair.
With a growl of irritation, Kyle forced himself to stand up and shrug his shoulders, working out the remaining kinks in his system before he went to go find a gun and some ammunition that would have to make due for the long trek out of this machine conquered place back into human lands. It was only while he was bending forward to get a few kinks out of his back that he heard a yell coming from the chasm that had supposedly been cleaned off all life. He straightened and stayed where he was, just listening. The source of the sound didn’t say anything more. Somehow he doubted the machines would have left one of their own behind and that was a human sound, despite the likelihood of surviving that blast being almost nil. That left only one person who that could be.
“Marcus,” he called and stepped around the helicopter just as the other finished dressing, using his soaked appearance and the shadows of the night to hide his features. It would do no good for the man to meet two of the same person. It could fuck up the continuum up even more. The man-machine turned towards him, his face clean of the mud. He knew this one couldn’t see any better in the dark than a normal person because he had not been implanted with computer enhancers. They had known this while taking him apart after the man had died in Kyle’s past. “You alright?”
“How do you know who I am?”
Shit. That was a good question. “Let’s just say,” Kyle answered, stepping forward and showing empty hands, “I’m someone who knows the future ain’t gonna be pretty.” It was close enough to the truth.
Marcus had smirked. Well… somewhat. “Good one. Where I come from that means that someone’s got something they’re gonna do to make it turn out that way.” He looked ready to fight. Damn it, why did things always go the opposite way they were supposed to?
“Look I can’t hurt you, not with my bare hands, and I don’ wanna. I’m just here to tell you that if you wanna find some place to hide out for a while, the best way to go is Northwest.” He pointed with one hand in the direction of what had been Los Angeles. In a way he felt sad that the magnificent city had to fall but there had been no other choice in the matter. He brought his hand back to it’s original place beside his head, palm open to show it was empty. “I gotta go hide out somewhere else. I got some people lookin’ for me that are not exactly pleased with the fact I’m still around.” Marcus seemed to accept this answer and nodded, indicating Kyle could put his hands down. Good. His arms had been starting to hurt.
He waited until the half man, half machine had walked out of sight before grabbing his weapons and ammunition and heading off in a different direction, away from it all, to the spot where he knew another Resistance troop to be. The machines wouldn’t bother looking for him or trying to follow him. They thought this place destroyed and everyone with it. He had a while before he would have anyone, or anything else to worry about. He just hoped this new troop would be much less hostile to outsiders than the last one was.
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YEAR: Late 2019
The war was over! At long last the war was over! Kyle was one of the first ones jumping for joy when all the terminators they had spent three weeks fighting in this small village while John and his team took out the mainframe in Colorado stopped moving and their metallic bodies almost visibly collapsed. The mainframe was deactivated. Skynet was gone. The nightmare of the last fifteen years was finally over, hopefully to only be replaced by some much better times ahead. Finally, they could venture out without fear of being captured, killed or mangled in some cruel way. They were free!
Once the fighters shot the last of the machines, just to make sure this wasn’t some cruel joke, the entirety of them gathered together into an essentially massive group hug that even the most hardened of commanders couldn’t resist. It wasn’t every day this kind of thing happened. Some men are already talking about what they are going to do when they get back to the base with their families, how their going to learn some new skill that is better needed than soldier to be able to start life anew. Everyone’s hearts are filled with hope. There is far too much happiness in the world right now not be.
That night, when Kyle’s troop arrived at the headquarters, they joined the rest of the people their in an immense party made of the finest foods they could make on such short notice. Tomorrow, they said, they would find start searching for soil that could be used to grow more crops and begin melting the terminator bodies into tools and equipment. They would begin to rebuild the cities from the hollowed out husks that had been left behind while their scientists used information that remained on the computers Skynet had once controlled to neutralize the radiation in their skin and the ground. The world, with the technology of today, would be rebuilt slowly, but surely, one year at a time. Kyle promised himself he would do what he could, while hiding his ability, to make this dream happen.
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YEAR: 2026
The Ark had been a discovery that the once Resistance fighter had not anticipated them finding. While the rest of humanity, in the seven years since the war ended, had slowly but surely rebuilt the bigger cities and got the power plants running again, some scientists, looking for minerals and uncontaminated water had found this floating orb buried deep within in earth, in this cavern. They tried to capture it and take it away with them but found they couldn’t. A few even disappeared through it, never to be seen or heard from again. Some feared the silver orb and wouldn’t dare go near it. The reflective surfaced reminded them far too much of…
So Kyle, having established a new identity as a prodigy scientist from the New York area, had been called to come down and investigate this strange phenomenon. He found a way to get the Ark to take a wireless camera to the opposite destination and had looked upon the results on his small, primitive screen with some amazement and shock. It was… a gateway. Onto Mars! Space travel! It was indeed possible!
When he had relayed the news to the other scientists via a professionally done essay that took his years to write, he understood their ecstatic feelings on this new discovery and let them at it, allowing someone else to take the credit for his find. He didn’t want his name or face to go down in history. He didn’t want to be remembered . It would make hiding himself amongst the people of the future that much more difficult. He had other things to focus his mind on. Like getting humanity up and running again.
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YEAR: 2046
UAC was a company run by utter dumb asses and the saddest part to it was that he couldn’t remember who the fuck-tards were that came up with it. He should know! He had been alive back then too. When he had heard about the facility on Mars, named Olduvai, being shut down permanently due to a quarantine that had gone wrong, where an entire squad of Marines had gone in but only one and a scientist, had come out, he couldn’t honestly say he was all that surprised. Since the end of the war he had made sure to keep track of all the big research projects, hacked his way into the most top secret files to read what it was everyone was developing. The shit they had been doing on Mars was downright repulsive… including the genetic experiments.
It was unfortunate for Kyle, then, that the small bar he ran and owned under an alias that had yet to be discovered as false had been in the closest town to the UAC facility all of this bullshit took place in. The people of the town who were more paranoid than the others had got up and left, vowing only to come back once they were reassured that everything tested out fine and that whatever had been within the UAC facility that had killed so many didn’t find it’s way here. According to the cover up story, it was an infection that only the Grimms had an immunity two and they had been put into quarantine observation for a while just to make sure that they indeed were not contagious. The eternal young man had snorted at that bit in the reporter’s forecast. Of course the “disease” wasn’t contagious. It was a goddamn genetic malfunction.
So imagine his surprise when just as he was about to close up for the night, in walked the Marine -well ex-Marine now since he had been asked to retire in order to help keep the secret of what happened under wraps- that had been all over the news. In person, he was more handsome than he had been on that damn television. A lean face and sun kissed features while cheeks had just enough scruff on them to be tasteful and short but nicely kept black hair and eyebrows brought out the hazel color of his somewhat haunted eyes. The broad shoulders couldn’t be hidden under the jacket he wore against the faint chill that was starting to settle on the town and the t-shirt he had on beneath it showed that his body had at least benefited from his time in the military. The jeans sat low enough on his waist to be alluring without the obnoxious tendencies that came with fashionably ill-fitted clothes and the boots he wore were certainly no workman’s… the shine on them was too nice.
When “Sergeant Handsome” walked up to the bar it had taken a moment for Kyle to snap out of his thoughts and focus on his request. Bourbon on the rocks. That was easy. Just as the sound of the man’s gruff voice easily sent a shiver up his spine. It was a good thing the once fighter had admitted to himself not long after Sarah’s death that he could care less about the gender of the human who shared his bed so long as the person was beautiful on the outside at least.
Setting the drink carefully in front of the weary man, Kyle smirked at the other, leaning against the bar. “You got a name, sergeant?” He wasn’t going to insult this guy and call him sir. While in the military this guy actually worked for a living. It was better to address him with all due respect, a respect even now the physically younger looking man doubted he could ever forget. “Or am I gonna have to call you ‘sergeant’ all night?”
The man downed his bourbon in one gulp and motioned for another, which the bartender was ready for. He filled the glass the same height again, almost subconsciously keeping track of the money this guy would owe him when it was over. “The name’s Grimm. John Grimm.” He kept his eyes down and his attention focused on the bar table. Ah so that was what this was about. The poor thing needed to get wasted to forget the nightmares. He was hardly the first one to come here looking for just that. Some of those who could still remember the war would come in and do the same thing with that exact expression on their face. In a way, Reese hated this man for being able to hold his liquor. His own body couldn’t tolerate very much as of yet. He had to drink a lot more to force the change in his system.
“Well John Grimm,” he said, reaching behind him where he stood at the bar and pulled up a stool. He kept one back here for times like these, though usually he had it tucked out of the way under one of his cabinets. “You gonna tell me about those nightmares that keep you up? Or are you going to become a regular of mine without meaning to?” Not that he’d mind. He’d love to talk to Johnny every night. There was the small matter of the man having the money to come to a bar every night though.
John chuckled bitterly and this time sipped at his bourbon, enjoying the taste as he swallowed it. “Kid the nightmares that haunt my dream make the shit you see in horror films look down right funny.” The hazel gaze and glanced up at the fighter and a depreciating smile had taken over before everything fell back to the glass he held. “Ten years I managed to avoid that place. Never imagined I would have to head back there to go get my sister from that place. What the hell was she thinking going back up there to reopen the dig?”
He took a big gulp of his bourbon and set the glass down, motioning that he was fine with just the two drinks for now. Kyle leaned forward, chin resting on his interlaced fingers, blond eyebrows up near his equally golden blond curls to show his interest. The soldier stared at him for a minute, frowning before giving this resigned sigh and running both hands through his hair, as if to calm himself. The resulting tousling was more of a turn on than even the man’s voice. This one was going to be hard to let go of.
“Every night it’s the same,” he said, focusing his eyes again on the table top, “I’m on Olduvai, alone, surrounded by these demon things. Sam is in the middle with me and they’re trying kill us both. I‘ll killin’ as many as I can but I run out of ammo and the grenades don’t work. One of them snags me somehow, snags me badly, and Sam decides to give me the damn drug that started the whole thing. ” The smile was empty of anything resembling joy. “I turn into one of them and kill her with my own hands.” He finishes the last dregs of his drink and leans forward so he can rest his head on his arms, his elbows brushing the bartender’s. “Every time I see myself in these dreams, I can only sit back and watch myself do these things. I can’t stop them.”
Even for a nightmare, especially a reoccurring one, Kyle felt badly for this man. He let his hands unfold and ran his fingers gently through soft black hair. What this poor thing needed was a decent night’s sleep. And probably someone to talk to who understood. “I got some pretty bad nightmares myself some nights.” Mostly nights when he couldn’t find someone to share his bed. “I dream about stuff but it’s not nearly as scary as yours.” Or as heart wrenching.
The human beneath his hand sighed at the gentle touch to his hair. “You’re an odd one,” John said quietly, “I come in here to get drunk and complain… I don’t get drunk but I do complain and my reward is to be petted like some kind of cat.” The bartender laughed and kept running his fingers through the soft hair. “You got a name kid?”
“It’s Kyle,” he says, deciding to use his real name for this man since he isn’t entirely sure he will see him again, “Kyle Reese. Pleasure to meet you too John.” He smiled instead of trying to shake the sleepy man’s hand. “Though I wonder what exactly I should do with you tonight.”
The man sat up at that, though it was clear these last few days, maybe weeks, of sleeplessness had caught up with him. He looked almost ready to collapse. Kyle decided it was worth the shot. Who knew if Johnny would remember this in the morning? “How about you crash at my place tonight? It’s not far, just up the stairs here, and you don’t have to worry about almost killing yourself trying to get home to your woman.”
John chuckled darkly. “When normal people go to bars, they pick up women and take them home to fuck. I go to a bar and I am the one picked up by a barely legal bartender.”
Centuries of practice keeping his patience at such comments went out the window with this man. Why he felt he could trust him more than the other lovers he had had over the years he didn’t know but something… compelled him. “I’ll have you know I am pretty sure I’m at least twice your age so technically it’s like I’m a picking up a kid by comparison.” He said this with a straight face, waiting to see this guy’s reaction. The man snorted. It wasn’t entirely unexpected.
“Whatever it is you drink, kid, it’s gotta be good for you to come up with something like that.”
“How about I prove it to you then?”
“How?”
Plucking a small knife from where he had kept it to cut up lemons and limes for some of the ladies’ mixed drinks, he demonstrated how sharp it was by cutting a napkin with it before pressing it to his own palm. Stabbing through his hand would have been more dramatic but would have also taken a bit longer to heal. Over the years he had learned that there was a limit as to how quickly he could fix himself. It was far from instantaneous but a lot faster than a normal person. Something that would take a week to heal only took a matter of hours, if that, depending what it was. The knife cut his skin open like butter and he made sure to wedge the folds apart so that the other man could see just how the wound was clearly visible. He flinched as he did this, cursing himself and his choice of demonstration.
The man in his bar stared in fascination as even while the blood spilled the wound slowly began to knit itself closed again and before long all that remained was simply the blood stain. When the telltale pain was gone, Kyle used the cut napkin to clean the blood from his hand to show how it had healed perfectly before cleaning the blood off the counter. He hadn’t expected the man to grab his wrist as he cleaned with surprising strength. It was almost painfully tight. “How is it- How are you-”
Using his youth to his advantage, the almost sixty year old soul smiled playfully. “Just like you, John. And I wasn’t kidding about that age bit.”
The hazel eyes narrowed, lips pinched into a tight expression. Even pissed off the man looked good. “You weren’t there. How would you know what you are talking about?” He grip on Kyle’s arm tightened and he could feel his skin bruising.
“How about the fact that UAC ain’t exactly the most secure network in the world compared so some of the systems I’ve hacked in the war.” He wrenched his arm out of the other’s grasp and took the glass he had been drinking from. Might as well clean it now so they could take care of some other business later. “You owe me six bucks. If you stay, I’ll tell you more about what I’ve been through and understand and we’ll see what the differences are.” After all, he didn’t know what the original injection had been. For all he knew Kate Connor could have invented the same shit and never known it.
He was waiting for a prompt “Go to Hell” after he was given the cash but instead was rewarded with a quiet, “Fine but can we at least do this somewhere else?” He had to turn away to put the cash in the register and hide the smirk from his face. Maybe this was going to be a most interesting little talk between them. Maybe something more.
The cash put away and register hidden, the glass cleaned and replaced where it belonged amongst the others, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a ring of keys with several smaller ones attached to it and unhooked on of the smallest key rings with only one key on it. “Go on ahead and get into my apartment. I got to lock this place up before I can turn in.” He then walked around his bar counter to lock the front doors, turning the sign around from “open” to “closed”, letting the physically older man decide for himself what he wanted to do.
“Wait so you’re…”
“The owner.”
“And the bartender.”
“Of course. Can’t let these kids make or break my own business.”
There was a snort from the stool the man stood at as Kyle went around, checking each window to ensure it was locked before turning to lock the liquor cabinets. He didn’t need to meet his fellow altered human’s eyes to know he was amused. This, he could tell, was the start of a most beautiful friendship.
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PART II - The Academy