the first Terminator fic
This movie was like fic-inspiration paradise for me and I am so obsessed. ;____;
Title: No Fate
Fandom: Terminator Salvation
Pairing: Marcus Wright/Kyle Reese
Rating: NC-17
Summary: The machines were far more brilliant in their engineering of Marcus Wright than they realized. Kyle Reese falls in love with the wrong person.
Notes: Thank you to chlorate for the beta read and the encouragement. <3
Kyle is eleven when his father dies. They're scavenging for food, the hunting party down to the two of them since Vick, a stubborn old man who had been with them since his wife was killed back in '16, was killed by the machines several months earlier. Kyle still isn't over it, watching the T-600 gun down their friend, and it doesn't even occur to him that the same thing could happen to his father until it does, Kyle running like mad and only half-realizing that he won't meet up with his dad later, back at the base.
He spends a day ducked inside an old sewer, crying into his hands and waiting for the news that he is now completely alone to start feeling like something he could ever believe. He doesn't remember his mother, and his father is all he's ever had, the thing worth living for, the person who showed him how to shoot, and skin and cook meat, and rig up traps that crush the machines. His father was the person who told him about what the world was like before it ended around Kyle's second birthday, about his mother, and the sister Kyle doesn't remember either, and the way there used to be birds everywhere, hopping around in parking lots, crowded in the trees, singing in the morning. He explained to Kyle why humanity was worth fighting for.
"Because I love you," he'd said, tucking Kyle into his makeshift bed and touching a new cut on Kyle's cheek regretfully. "And the machines will never learn how to do that."
Kyle climbs out of the dried-up sewer when he's too thirsty to wait any longer, trying to remember what his father told him, trying to convince himself that there is something here on earth that is still worth fighting for, something else that could make him remember why it's good to be alive, something he could love.
*
He wanders alone for awhile, not sure how much time passes. Most days he stays in the base, a sort of fort that he and his father built together. His father had tried to make everything a game, to keep Kyle's spirits up; Kyle understands that now. It's so much harder to shoot and kill food without his father beside him to whoop and clap him on the shoulder proudly when Kyle actually shoots something, and cleaning the kill is horrible without his father there to make funny faces when the guts get a little too gross.
Kyle tries to keep up with his lessons, even without his father around to teach them. His father taught him how to read from a small library of books they found through scavenging, and Kyle rereads his favorites, noting some scenes that his father must have skipped over when they read the books together: particularly scary things and sex scenes, mostly. Suddenly a book by James Patterson that always bored him becomes his favorite, because of the scene where one of the bad guys has sex with his girlfriend. All he knows about sex is from a magazine he found in an old gas station convenience store, and he only got to glance through it before his father saw and confiscated it. He figures his father must have it stashed around somewhere, but he must have hid it pretty well.
Days pass slowly and without much intrusion from the machines; Kyle is quiet and small, good at hiding. He has pretend conversations with his dad when he gets bored, and sometimes with his mom, too, asking her questions and inventing her answers in his head. Do you miss me? he asks her, and she says she does, every day, even though he doesn't remember her, which makes him feel bad. Are you in heaven like Dad said? he asks, and she says, Yes, but I still miss you, even in heaven. Is Dad with you? he asks, and she doesn't answer that question, because, for some reason, it's easier for Kyle to imagine his mother and sister in the dreamland of heaven than his father, who was here once with Kyle in the real world, and who still should be.
Sometimes he even talks out loud to his sister, though he can't imagine her at all, because the youngest woman he's ever seen was his father's age, and she was dead.
He tries to keep himself clean, because his father always said that was important, for his health. It's easy enough to find soap in abandoned stores, but dangerous to venture to them, because the machines know where the humans like to scavenge. One day, he nearly gets caught by a T-800, but a hand that comes out of nowhere yanks at his collar and pulls him into an old supply room in what used to be a mega grocery store, and someone puts a hand over his mouth to keep him from screaming.
"Quiet, kid," someone whispers, a man, and Kyle's heart rate skyrockets just like it did when he spotted the T-600, because his father told him early on that humans can hurt you, too.
"It's okay," the person who's holding onto him says when he feels Kyle shaking. "Just keep quiet."
When the coast is clear, Kyle learns that he's stumbled upon a group of people who've been living in the old supermarket, four men who are all roughly his father's age. They make him nervous but they seem nice enough, giving him Oreos and diet soda.
"Ran out of the good stuff awhile back," a man who introduced himself as Jake says. "Down to the diet drinks now."
The supermarket men are not as streamlined as his father was, and Kyle has never seen fat people before, only read about them in books. They're impressed that Kyle has survived alone, and he likes telling them his stories, talking to real people, but at the end of the night they get into what they refer to as the Supply, which consists of a stockpile of dark bottles of alcohol, and they get weepy, talking about the past. Kyle feels nervous again, wishing for his father, almost getting weepy himself.
In the middle of the night, lying on the sleeping bag they've offered him, not sleeping but just thinking, Kyle hears someone crawling over to him in the darkness, and when his eyes adjust he sees that it's one of the men, the guy called Peter, who was quietest during the drinking hour.
"What-" Kyle starts to say, but then there's a hand over his mouth, and Peter pushes Kyle's shoulder down with his other hand.
"Sorry," Peter whispers, his voice shaking. Kyle can hear the other men snoring from their corners of the supply room, and they seem so far away, but maybe they won't help him anyway.
"You're just so smooth," Peter says, nearly crying as he sneaks a hand under Kyle's shirt. "Almost like a girl."
Kyle bites Peter's hand as hard as he can, and Peter screams loud enough to wake the others, who sit up and ask what's wrong, cocking their guns. Kyle scrambles up and runs through the darkness, slams into the door then throws it open, ignoring the shouts from the men who don't know what's going on, his heart pounding as he runs out through the supermarket and into the hot quiet of the night, not looking back.
From then on, he treats other humans like the machines, hiding whenever they come near.
*
He finds Star when he's fourteen. She's maybe eight or nine years old, in the corner of a warehouse where Kyle found an impressive collection of guns, and she's clinging to the corpse of a woman who was probably her mother. It takes Kyle a lot of coaxing to even get Star to drink water from his canteen, and when she finally leaves her dead family, teary-eyed, she still won't speak or let Kyle anywhere near her. She follows him back to the base, walking ten feet behind him. Eventually, she lets him pull her out of the way when she's in imminent danger, but she never gives in to Kyle's attempts to get her to speak. He calls her Star because of her pendant, and she answers to the name, helps him with the cooking and his traps. He teaches her how to play tic-tac-toe.
Only once does he hear her speak, and she's not really using words. She has a nightmare, and Kyle wakes up with a start, hearing her howling on the other side of the base and thinking she's in trouble. He runs to her, and her eyes are so wide when he gets there.
"What's wrong?" he asks. He's got his gun in his hand, the lightweight one he sleeps with. His father used to have names for the guns - Berreta, Colt, Glock - and numbers, too, but to Kyle they're all more or less the same, only some are bigger than others.
Star's breathing begins to go regular again, and she shakes her head. Kyle understands that it was just a nightmare and pats her shoulder. She flinches. They're the closest thing either has to family, but they still keep a certain distance. Kyle doesn't tell her about his dreams, either. He finally found that magazine his father once hid from him, and most of his dreams are confusing flashes of sweat-coated skin and hot breath that leave his pants sticky when he wakes. He wishes he could turn it all off, because he knows it will never mean anything to him except frustration and shame, but he still prefers these dreams to the nightmares, which are mostly about his father's death, that last scream that is still echoing around Kyle's head and probably always will be.
*
When Marcus shows up, Kyle thinks he's a hopeless idiot who has managed to survive only by some dumb luck, but he's quickly proven wrong. Marcus takes Kyle's gun so easily, and Kyle feels like such a failure, as if it's all been for nothing, but Marcus doesn't seem to want to kill him, and in fact saves Kyle and Star when a disabled machine smashes into a building close to the roof they're standing on, debris crashing down around them. Marcus pushes Kyle and Star to the ground and covers their bodies with his. Except for Star and her band-aids, Kyle hasn't been cared for in so long, and he forgot what it felt like. He lies under Marcus as the dust settles, staring up with open awe as Marcus pants onto his forehead, cursing and asking, What the fuck was that, and when Marcus looks down and asks Kyle if he's alright, Kyle isn't afraid of him anymore, though he knows he probably should be.
Marcus is the first person Kyle has brought back to the base since Star, and he actually feels proud to show it off, glad to offer Marcus some of their food, and a little insulted when he doesn't take any. Marcus shows Kyle how to hang on to his gun, and fixes the radio. Kyle hears Connor speaking to the members of the resistance, and he looks up at Marcus again with awe, feels his life beginning to change now that Marcus has arrived.
"Where are you from?" Kyle asks later that night, sitting by his bed, which Marcus has fallen into without asking, though he's not sleeping, just staring into space and looking vaguely irritated. Star is across the room in her little nook of scavenged blankets, fast asleep. She seems calmer with Marcus around, though she's usually even more wary of other people than Kyle is.
"Los Angeles," Marcus says, scoffing. "Originally."
"Me too," Kyle says. "I don't remember it, though, the way it was. Do you?"
"Yeah," Marcus says. "It was a different kind of hellhole."
"Were there birds?" Kyle asks, hoping he doesn't sound childish or stupid. He just misses it so much, hearing stories about the past. Marcus looks at him and frowns.
"Yeah," he says, disbelief and pity in his voice, and Kyle is embarrassed. "There were birds."
"You must have been in some kind of accident," Kyle says. "The way you don't, like, remember anything."
Marcus looks at Kyle the way he has since he arrived, like everything Kyle says is slightly ridiculous. He's the only other light-eyed person Kyle has ever met, though Marcus' are different from his, more blue, less green.
"Yeah," Marcus says, narrowing his eyes. "Some kind of accident. Do you need something, or are you just going to sit there and stare at me all night?"
"Don't you want to - talk to someone?" Kyle asks, his face heating up the way it does when he looks at that magazine. "I mean - where you came from - were there lots of people to talk to?"
Marcus scoffs. "Yeah, prison was a really great place to meet interesting people."
"Prison? Were you at the headquarters, at Skynet? Did you escape?"
"I don't know where I was, kid," Marcus says, holding up his hands as if he surrenders, or as if he wants to shove Kyle away. "I don't know what the fuck's going on."
Kyle looks down at his hands, his face burning hotter. He lies down on the floor, stretching out alongside his bed, folds his hands on his stomach and stares up into the darkness.
"You sleep on the floor?" Marcus says.
"No," Kyle says bitterly. "You're in my bed."
"Sorry," Marcus says, and he gets up. Kyle climbs into the bed, which is just an old mattress pad, folded blankets and towels, and a very flat pillow with a ripped cover. He rolls onto his side and watches Marcus, who stands at the window with his hands on his hips, looking up at the sky. The bed is warm from Marcus' body, and it smells like him. Marcus turns and sees Kyle staring. He sighs and walks over the bed, sitting down beside it.
"You're really alone here," he says, as if he finally believes this.
"Yes," Kyle says, trying not to sound as if he feels sorry for himself. His father always told him they were lucky to be alive. Kyle always tried hard to feel that way. "For a long time."
"You said your dad tried to fix that radio."
"Yeah, well. He did try." Kyle doesn't want to talk about it. Marcus seems to get the picture and drops the subject, looking down to pick the dirt from his fingernails.
"You still want to go to San Francisco?" Kyle asks. Marcus sniffs a little, grins.
"Nah," he says. "Now that I've seen this place, I'm looking to stay."
Kyle actually thinks he's serious for a minute; it's been so long since anyone joked with him. Five years. Marcus turns to grin at Kyle, and suddenly he's not laughing at Kyle but with him, sort of. Kyle smiles.
"You can sleep up here if you want to," Kyle says, scooting over.
"No thanks," Marcus says. "I won't be able to sleep. Feels like I've been asleep for fucking eighty years."
"So you'll stay up and keep watch?" Kyle asks, liking the idea. It's been a long day, and his eyelids are so heavy. He thinks about what happened with the supermarket people, and wonders why he isn't afraid the same thing will happen with Marcus. It's something to do with what happened earlier, lying beneath Marcus while he used his body like a shield. There was nothing wicked in it, and Marcus' eyes are different from any Kyle has ever seen, not only because of their color.
"Sure," Marcus says. "Just go to sleep, okay?" Kyle consents, still turned toward Marcus, curling up a little tighter and tucking his hand under his cheek. He shuts his eyes, but for a long time he can't get to sleep, though he's so tired. He listens to Marcus' breathing, and thrills a little whenever Marcus sighs or shifts against the bed. When Kyle finally gets to sleep he dreams of the magazine people, hot skin under his hands, rough, hungry lips on his neck, his chest, his cock. The dream changes, and suddenly he's lying under Marcus, not on the rooftop like before but in his bed, undressed, still hard.
Kyle opens his eyes with a gasp and sees that dawn is breaking, and Marcus is standing across the room, fooling with the radio again. Kyle is still fully clothed, but the hardon is real. He rolls over, turning his back on the room, and tries to think it away, but his head is still full of that dream, and the way Marcus' body had felt, hovering over him, the way it felt yesterday on the roof, warm and protective and so heavy. Kyle has no reason to trust anybody, but he felt something in Marcus when they were lying together on the roof, coughing dust onto each other's faces. Kyle's world has always been fairly simple, everything classed into good or bad. His father was good, the machines are bad. Eating is good, going hungry is bad. That man in the abandoned supermarket was bad. Marcus, Kyle thinks, is good.
He reaches down into his pants, moving stealthily. Star is rousing on the other side of the base, and Marcus is speaking to her, maybe expecting an answer. Kyle knows he won't get rid of his hardon without doing something about it, and hopefully a few strokes will nip the whole thing in the bud; they usually do. He tries to be quick and still at the same time, rubbing mostly with his fingers so his elbow won't move, using his thumb around the head, smearing precome. He's too nervous to finish, so he shuts his eyes and tries to concentrate on a dream, on the one he had last night about Marcus, Marcus lying on top of him, Kyle naked beneath him, exposed, vulnerable, and proven right about Marcus, who is good, so good, who strokes Kyle's face and licks through his lips and grinds their bodies together. Kyle takes away Marcus' clothes in his fantasy, imagining that his body looks like those of the men who have women bouncing on them in the magazine, only better, and he's so close to coming that he doesn't even hear Marcus walking up behind him until it's much too late.
"Hey," Marcus says, grabbing Kyle's shoulder and rolling him over, and that's all it takes, really, the sound of Marcus' voice, the pressure of his grip on Kyle's shoulder, and Kyle is on his back, exposed, coming into his hand, gasping out apologies as Marcus stares down at him in shock.
"Fuck," Marcus says, releasing Kyle and hurrying away. Kyle rolls toward the wall again, tears pooling in his eyes as he pants through the last throbs of his cock, wiping the mess on the sheets. He's so humiliated his whole body burns, pulsing with shame like hot flashes. Then, quickly, he's angry, buttoning up his pants. Why should he be expected to know how to behave around other people? Star leaves him to his own devices, doesn't sneak up on him, never grabs him. If Marcus wants to leave in a huff because Kyle had the nerve to jerk off in his presence, fine. It's not like Kyle needs anybody, not like he can't just keep living on his own, Star silent on the periphery, enough human contact to keep him from going insane.
He gets out of bed when he's steadied himself, his face still red. Star is obliviously finishing the last of the coyote. Marcus is at the door, impatient.
"You gonna show me where these cars are or what?" Marcus says, and Kyle glowers at him.
"Fine," he says, grabbing his pack and stuffing it with ammunition and a canteen filled with water. He picks up his gun and heads for the door, his cheeks on fire under Marcus' stare. "C'mon, Star," he says, and she follows. Kyle walks past Marcus without looking at him, and Marcus follows, too.
They walk. Star is in her own world as usual, staring dreamily up at the cloudless sky. Marcus keeps glancing at Kyle as if he's about to say something, and Kyle pretends not to notice.
"Must be hard," Marcus finally says. "Teenager in a world without girls."
"I don't want to talk about it!" Kyle snaps, and Marcus holds up his hands, grinning a little. Kyle hates him for being amused by what happened. Smug fucker.
They get to the lot with the cars Marcus was looking for and he immediately begins picking through them. Kyle follows him, alternately scowling at the ground and keeping an eye on Star, who really does seem different since Marcus arrived, less guarded, more dreamy and childlike. When Marcus gets one of the cars running, Star hops into the passenger seat as if she's ready for a drive, but Marcus tells her to get out.
"You're just gonna leave us?" Kyle shouts in disbelief, as if Marcus owes them anything. He won't meet Kyle's eyes as he climbs into the Jeep. Kyle feels as if he's been promised something only to have it taken away, but he should know better than to expect anything else from the world by now, and he shouldn't feel so surprised when a scout for the machines is suddenly upon them, tipped off by the music that blasted from the Jeep when Marcus first got it running.
"Get in!" Marcus screams, pulling Kyle into the Jeep as Star clambers back into the passenger seat. They go screaming out of the lot, the scout in pursuit, and Marcus tells Kyle to drive, which is terrifying and exhilarating, even in the midst of running for their lives. Kyle never, never thought he'd drive a car. Marcus destroys the scout by throwing a wrench at it while Kyle swerves along the road, feeling invincible in the company of Marcus and his 'wrench strategy,' the highway stretching endlessly ahead of them.
"Fuck!" Marcus says from the backseat, hovering near Kyle's shoulder. "Pull over, I'm driving."
Kyle does as he asked, wondering if Marcus will throw him and Star out of the car, but he doesn't even ask Kyle to climb into the back, lets him scoot over to sit between Marcus and Star as Marcus peels off down the highway. Kyle isn't even sure where they're going, but it doesn't really matter. Marcus tried to leave them and he couldn't. Not even after what he saw Kyle do at the base. Kyle turns red all over again, thinking of it.
"We'll need gas," Kyle calls over the wind after they've put a good amount of distance between them and the wrecked scout, their heart rates beginning to return to normal.
"No shit," Marcus says. "Got any idea where we can get some?"
"Just check the dead filling stations," Kyle says with a shrug. "You'll start seeing them pretty soon."
They check two stations and find nothing, then begin down a long stretch of desert highway that seems as if it was empty even before the apocalypse. Star falls asleep, leaning against the passenger door, and Kyle tips his head back to look at the sky, which is packed with thick white clouds. He's only seen the sky this way a few times before, as if someone forgot that the world had ended down below. His eyelids start to droop, and he glances over at Marcus, who has his eyes narrowed at the road.
"Why do you want to go to San Francisco?" Kyle asks.
"Don't know," Marcus says, which is almost definitely a lie. "Why do you want to meet up with this Connor guy so badly? You really think any man can do something about this nightmare?"
"Someone who can organize the rest of us," Kyle says. "Yeah. And you should come with us. You were - pretty good, back there."
Marcus glances at Kyle, and Kyle holds his gaze for the first time since the incident that morning.
"I don't want to be organized," Marcus says, looking back to the road. "And you. You just want company."
"Company?" Kyle scoffs. "I've got that already."
"What, the kid who doesn't speak?"
"Yeah, and you."
Marcus sneaks a look at him, and Kyle grins sleepily, already beginning to doze off, his eyelids sinking. He's never fallen asleep during the day before; there's usually so much to do before nightfall. It feels good, letting his eyes slip shut with the sun on his face, Star asleep beside him and Marcus driving them along toward whatever. He lets his head loll forward a few times, the jerk of his neck waking him up, then settles his cheek onto Marcus' shoulder, trying to make it seem accidental. He waits for Marcus to shrug him off, but Marcus just sighs a little, under his breath, and the soft sound of it pulls down through Kyle like an anchor.
Kyle sleeps more deeply than he expected, dreaming about nothing, conscious of the sun on his skin and Marcus' steady breath. When he wakes up, the light is going orange with the start of the sunset, and he's slumped fully against Marcus, his left hand on Marcus' leg, fingers spread out possessively. Kyle sits up with a groan, embarrassed by the way he was clutching, and by how good it felt to be pressed against someone else, against Marcus.
"You alright?" Marcus asks, still looking ahead through the windshield, and Kyle laughs. Star is awake now, and she smiles over at Kyle sympathetically, as if even she knows how much he needed that.
"Yeah," Kyle says, his voice deep with sleep. "I'm okay."
"Sunburned, though," Marcus says. "Look." He nods up at the cracked rearview mirror, and Kyle sits up to look into it, leaning onto Marcus again as he does, because it's tilted toward him. He so rarely sees his reflection, and it always startles him a little, never seems to match the image of himself that he keeps in his head. Marcus is right, his cheeks have gone red from the sun. He sits back, leaving his hand on the seat, his pinkie finger just barely touching Marcus' stolen resistance coat. He feels good the way he did when he was a kid, when he and his dad would play checkers with stones and his dad would tell funny stories about his brothers, who used to fight him over games of checkers when they lost. More than good, he feels safe, which makes him nervous, but it's a bubbling kind of anxiety that sits in his chest not like a warning but like a reminder that he's alive, and that it's a good thing.
"We should find a place to sleep before it gets dark," Kyle says. "You haven't found gas yet?" he asks Marcus, though he knows that Marcus hasn't pulled over since Kyle fell asleep on his shoulder.
"Nope." Marcus points down the road, at the shape of a distant building. "How 'bout there?" he says. "For the night?"
"Looks good to me," Kyle says, though there's no telling what the place might hold until they get there. It turns out to be a strip of outlet stores, signs about sales still curling in some of its windows. They walk past the shops cautiously as the sun sinks deeper behind the mountain, Kyle and Marcus with their weapons raised, Star walking between them. A jackrabbit startles them at one point, and Marcus shoots it as it's bounding away.
"Dinner," he says to Kyle, who grins.
They break into what used to be a men's clothing store, and Kyle sits on the sidewalk outside to clean the rabbit so that they won't have to sleep with the smell of its guts. Star entertains herself with a collection of cuff links at the counter inside, handling them like precious jewels, and Marcus comes to lean in the store's open doorway, watching Kyle work. It's kind of cozy, despite the rabbit guts, the three of them quiet and tired as the sun goes down.
"Think I might find a new belt in there," Kyle says as he works, wiping his knife on his pants. "Maybe a new shirt. Those shoes looked pretty worthless, though. It's funny, the stuff people used to wear."
"How long have you been doing this?" Marcus asks as Kyle slices up the meat. There's not much, but it's fresh, and they're lucky to have it. He looks up at Marcus with a frown.
"Skinning rabbits?"
"Fending for yourself," Marcus says.
"Five years," Kyle says, looking back to his work. "Since my dad."
"Right." Marcus starts breaking up a wooden chair he found in the store's dressing room, for firewood.
"How 'bout you?" Kyle asks when Marcus stacks the wood. He crumbles old advertisements for the store's sales and shoves them underneath it.
"How about me what?" Marcus says.
"You were by yourself when we found you."
Marcus sniffs a little, as if this is funny. He holds his hand out and Kyle reaches into his pocket for the block of flint he uses for cooking, handing it to him.
"Yeah, always," Marcus says, striking the flint with his knife. "I always fended for myself. Well, me and my brother."
"You had a brother?" Kyle says, impressed by this. Marcus says nothing, just flicks the knife hard against the flint, sparks shooting off and roaring to life against the brittle paper. "I had a sister," Kyle says. Marcus looks up at him, and some silent understanding passes between them. The dead are all around them, a parking lot full of ghosts. Kyle shudders and hurries to cook the rabbit, ready to get inside the safety of the store as the last of the sun disappears.
After they eat, they close themselves inside the store, Star moving from the cuff links to the ties, which she engineers into knots and braids before dropping to sleep beside the display. Kyle puts two folded dress shirts under her head for a pillow and a suit jacket over her for a blanket. He sits beside her for awhile, watching Marcus out of the corner of his eye. He's at the large front window, his gun resting on the sill, elbow propped beside it as he stares out at the night. The moon is bright, and Marcus' silhouette pulls Kyle right across the room. He's good at moving around quietly, and Marcus looks surprised when Kyle is suddenly standing beside him. Saying nothing, Kyle sinks slowly to his knees. Marcus doesn't break eye contact, just watches Kyle like he's another thing about the world that he can't understand. Kyle has never met someone who is able to just reject the things about the world that are horrible, and he wonders if that's why Marcus seems so strong, almost invincible.
"What?" Marcus says, his voice deep and a little rough, but Kyle doesn't startle away. He scoots closer, his knees almost touching Marcus' thigh and his heart pounding so hard that he's afraid Marcus will hear it in the quiet of the room.
"I just -" Kyle says, whispering, not for Star's sake but because he couldn't possibly get his voice out any louder, he's stretched so thin by how much he wants what he doesn't know how to ask for. "I just slept so good before," he says, dropping his eyes away from Marcus' with embarrassment. When he looks up again Marcus is still staring at him, his eyes a little softer at the corners, or maybe Kyle is imagining things. But he feels something pass between them, that human thing, that thing that the machines could never teach themselves to reproduce.
"C'mere," Marcus says, sitting back against the wall and spreading himself open a little wider, his knees sliding apart. Kyle lets out the choppy breath that he'd been holding in and moves forward cautiously, falling into Marcus' arms when they slide around him. He sinks against Marcus' chest, his breath still coming out in sharp shudders as he closes his eyes and disappears into the heat of Marcus' body, clinging as hard as he can. Tears sting at his eyes, and he has to chew his lip to keep it from shaking into a sob. Marcus rubs his hand up the back of Kyle's neck, then into his hair, and one tear does escape down Kyle's cheek when the pads of Marcus' fingers scratch at his scalp, making him shiver, barely able to hold down a moan.
"Poor guy," Marcus says, like Kyle is a dog with three legs. "All by yourself."
Kyle nods and pinches his eyes up tighter, more tears streaking down his dirty cheeks. He curls up against Marcus, his knees pressed to Marcus' chest, his hand fisted in Marcus' shirt. Never never never let me go: he wants to cry it out all night long, but he doesn't dare say anything, because he knows his voice would shake with his tears. He lifts his wet face to Marcus' neck and pushes it against his skin, feeling the hard pump of Marcus' pulse against his cheeks and across the bridge of his nose. Marcus is so warm, and so much bigger than Kyle, and so, so good: Kyle can feel it pouring out of him, and in the moment Marcus feels like the only good thing in the world, which is almost unbearable, like being inches from the sun, needing the heat and burning up against it.
"Okay," Marcus says, maybe a little bothered by Kyle's crying, and Kyle wishes he could stop. Marcus strokes Kyle's hair, and again Kyle feels like a hopeless animal, a stray. "You're okay," Marcus says.
Kyle wants to say, No I'm not, this is gonna blow me apart, because he feels like he's in pieces and only Marcus' arms are holding him together, but his voice still isn't working, so he only whimpers wordlessly, nuzzling his face against Marcus' neck until he works up the nerve to lick him, just a little. Marcus goes stiff, and his hand stops moving in Kyle's hair.
"Careful," Marcus says, and Kyle has no idea what he means, so he just opens his mouth against Marcus' neck, licks and sucks at his skin, kisses his neck wildly, his cock already so hard in his pants. Marcus holds him still, closing his fingers into Kyle's hair and tipping his head back so that Kyle is forced to look up at his face. Marcus looks vaguely concerned, maybe a little disturbed, and the softness is draining from his eyes, being replaced with something else.
"What are you doing?" Marcus asks, whispering. He glances across the shop at Star, who is still sound asleep.
"I don't know," Kyle cries honestly, clinging to Marcus again. Marcus sighs, and it's so huge under Kyle's body, lifting him up and setting him back down. Kyle sobs against his chest, humiliated and dizzy with arousal, his cock throbbing with every breath he takes, because the air in the shop is full of the scent of Marcus' body. Kyle is so beside himself that it takes him awhile to realize that Marcus is hard, too, his cock a massive presence under Kyle's trembling thighs. Kyle sucks in his breath with surprise and shifts downward, hears the barely-swallowed groan Marcus just manages to contain. He looks up at Marcus with his wet face open, not embarrassed anymore. Marcus is breathing faster now, looking at Kyle like he wants to spare him whatever's about to happen. Kyle shakes his head.
"You can have whatever you want," Kyle whispers, sniffling. He thinks of that man in the supermarket so long ago, how he would have died before he gave up anything to him. Why is it different now, because Marcus is fucking beautiful? Because he smells so good, and feels like solid, real salvation under Kyle's shaking hands? Because Kyle is old enough now to know what it feels like to ache for someone's skin against his, all the time, to dream about nothing else?
"You should never say that," Marcus whispers gruffly, as if he's angry about the offer. He takes Kyle's face in both hands, tips his head back further. "Not you, not ever."
He crushes his mouth over Kyle's, teaching him how to kiss in hungry gulps and harsh pulls of his tongue across Kyle's lips. Kyle shifts himself around, straddling Marcus' lap, his knees pressed to Marcus' sides and his cock so hard against the warm flat of Marcus' stomach. He's begging with his body, legs open, but unable to stop kissing Marcus, swallowing up his breath like water, drowning under it. Marcus reaches down to close one big hand over Kyle's crotch, massaging it roughly and biting at Kyle's neck when he throws his head back to breathe out his moans as quietly as he can. The pressure in Kyle's cock builds to a sharpness he's never felt before, and he yelps when he comes, pushing the sound into Marcus' mouth as he fills his pants with come, shaking with the full-body pulse of his orgasm. Marcus drags his teeth carefully over Kyle's earlobe as Kyle shudders out the last drops, his arms around Marcus' shoulders. He's already thinking about what he needs to do to Marcus to repay him for that, and Marcus is rock hard under Kyle's ass, but Kyle needs a minute, feels boneless and exhausted, his head dropping to Marcus' chest. Marcus seems to understand this, and he breathes hard into Kyle's hair, snaking a hand up under Kyle's shirt to rub his hot palm across Kyle's back.
"Anything you want," Kyle says, practically drooling, already half asleep. "Anything." Then he remembers the magazine, what the men in the pictures seem to enjoy having done to them by the women, and Kyle might not be a woman but he does have a mouth. He scrambles down Marcus' body, swallowing his anxiety with a sleep-tempered moan, and starts working on Marcus' jeans. He looks up to see Marcus watching him, his mouth just slightly open, eyes glazed.
"You want my mouth on you?" Kyle whispers, just to make sure, and Marcus shuts his eyes, then reopens them slowly.
"Fuck," he breathes out, his cock jerking under Kyle's hand, and Kyle takes that as a yes. He gets Marcus' jeans open and pulls out his cock, which is so big and thick that it's sort of mesmerizing, and Kyle wants his mouth on it as soon as he sees it, he wants it so bad. He licks up the length and Marcus groans, then stuffs his hand in his mouth to keep himself quiet. Kyle licks him again, appreciating the sweat-stained taste of him, and the secret, mushroomy smell between his legs as they open wider for Kyle's mouth. He licks across Marcus' balls, pulling his jeans down further to draw his tongue underneath them before coming back up to swallow as much of him as he can. Marcus is struggling not to scream; Kyle can feel it in the tremble that moves through his whole body as he bites down on his palm and jerks his hips up in measured little thrusts, fucking his cock deeper into Kyle's mouth, until Kyle chokes a little and has to sit back, panting onto Marcus' slick cockhead.
"Okay," Marcus says, grabbing Kyle's arms and pulling him up, into his lap again. "Okay."
Kyle has no idea what's going to happen next, but he's surrendered to it, fully awake now, his cock hard again. Marcus kisses him, biting at his lips, then slips a finger into Kyle's mouth, letting Kyle suck it like he tried to suck Marcus' cock, which was really too big to fit in there. When he takes his finger away Kyle is sorry to lose it, wants something of Marcus' in his mouth all the time, and when Marcus rips Kyle's pants down he has no idea that Marcus' slicked finger is going to end up between his ass cheeks. Kyle gasps when Marcus rubs down through his cleft until he finds what he was looking for, that puckered skin, something Kyle never thought might make him feel good, but it does, and he opens his legs wider for Marcus' finger, moaning when he pushes it inside. Kyle nods drowsily, twisting himself down harder onto Marcus' finger, delirious and disoriented by the feeling of being opened up, something he never knew he needed this badly.
He sobs when Marcus turns him around and replaces his finger with that thick cock, which is still wet from Kyle's mouth but not enough, and it burns all the way in, slow and sharp, he and Marcus both breathing so hard that the glass on the shop window begins to fog. When Kyle is completely seated in Marcus' lap he slumps backward, shaking hard, Marcus' arms locked around his chest. He pushes his face back against Marcus' neck and winces until the feeling of Marcus being lodged fully inside him begins to feel okay, maybe even good, the burn fading to a sting that makes Kyle hiss when Marcus shifts, moving inside him.
"You," Marcus breathes in his ear, squeezing him tighter. "Kyle." He reaches down and takes hold of Kyle's cock, which had softened a bit with the shock of Marcus pushing into him. He's quickly hard again in Marcus' hand, and when Marcus sneaks his thumb down to rub over Kyle's balls Kyle loses it, coming with a low moan that he pushes against Marcus' neck, which is sweaty now, so hot. Marcus thrusts up into Kyle as he's still pulsing with his orgasm, and Kyle is dead weight in Marcus' arms, so broken open, given over completely. When he relaxes those thrusts feel so good, Marcus working himself up into him harder and harder, until he grunts against the side of Kyle's head and fills him up so completely that his come is already leaking from Kyle when he pulls out.
Kyle is nearly comatose with stunned satisfaction, sore and exhausted, and he slumps onto the floor between Marcus and the wall, trying to keep his eyes open so that he can see Marcus leaning beside him, looking down at him and touching his face, moving his thumb over a cut on Kyle's lip.
"Oh, God," Marcus says, and he sounds kind of sad. Kyle shuts his eyes, then opens them when Marcus moves away. He returns with a fancy pair of flannel pajamas, rolls the pants up to rest his head on them and tears open the buttons on the shirt to spread it over Kyle like a blanket. Marcus lies beside him, and Kyle watches Marcus' eyes for as long as he can, sleep yanking him under before too long.
He doesn't dream about anything, but he wakes several times, the unfamiliar surface of the floor making him wonder where he is. When he wakes up Marcus is there, not sleeping but on his back and staring at the ceiling, his eyes gone soft again. He doesn't notice Kyle watching him, and Kyle can't stay awake for long, feeling far more tired than he ever has, which is something, really, because his life has been pretty exhausting so far. He wants to sleep for days, stay inside the shop for weeks, or the rest of his life, doing what he and Marcus did every night, and dropping to sleep with determination, the world erased around him, but he wakes up after dawn with Marcus still leaning beside him, shaking his shoulder.
"Hey," Marcus says. "We should get going." He looks a little guilty, and Kyle wants to tell him that he has nothing to be ashamed of, that he saved Kyle's life last night, turned the world onto its side forever.
"Why?" Kyle asks hoarsely, and Marcus grins, just barely, then lets it fade.
"I don't know," he says. "We can't stay here."
And that's true of everywhere in the world now, so they get up, Kyle hazy and slow; Marcus helps him stand. Kyle gets a new belt from a neat rack of them in the middle of the store, and Star pockets all the cuff links she can carry. They linger a little bit longer than they should, the sun rising too fast. Kyle knows already, when he changes into a pair of clean boxer shorts in the store's dressing room, that their brief reprieve is over.
The rest is irrelevant history. They come to a gas station that actually has fuel, but they meet with a gang that doesn't want to share it, until an old woman among them sees Star and takes pity. It feels like the sort of break they've earned, and Kyle shoves stale Ho-Hos and rock hard beef jerky into his mouth while Marcus stands over them like a shepherd, but then the roof disappears, and the machines are back, like always, the reprieve over, the real world returned.
They're going to get away, because Marcus is going to save them, but the machines are so relentless, and Kyle expects something to happen as he's being yanked into the shuttle with the others, expects Marcus to blank the whole thing away with a flick of his hand. It's not that easy, but Marcus jumps on the transport and splits it open with an ax, and all the time Kyle is smiling, waiting for Marcus to save him, Marcus who has come out of nowhere to change Kyle's life, but then Marcus slips, and he falls, and he's gone, and Kyle is still waiting, all the way to Skynet, to find out how Marcus is going to reclaim him.
*
Part II
Title: No Fate
Fandom: Terminator Salvation
Pairing: Marcus Wright/Kyle Reese
Rating: NC-17
Summary: The machines were far more brilliant in their engineering of Marcus Wright than they realized. Kyle Reese falls in love with the wrong person.
Notes: Thank you to chlorate for the beta read and the encouragement. <3
Kyle is eleven when his father dies. They're scavenging for food, the hunting party down to the two of them since Vick, a stubborn old man who had been with them since his wife was killed back in '16, was killed by the machines several months earlier. Kyle still isn't over it, watching the T-600 gun down their friend, and it doesn't even occur to him that the same thing could happen to his father until it does, Kyle running like mad and only half-realizing that he won't meet up with his dad later, back at the base.
He spends a day ducked inside an old sewer, crying into his hands and waiting for the news that he is now completely alone to start feeling like something he could ever believe. He doesn't remember his mother, and his father is all he's ever had, the thing worth living for, the person who showed him how to shoot, and skin and cook meat, and rig up traps that crush the machines. His father was the person who told him about what the world was like before it ended around Kyle's second birthday, about his mother, and the sister Kyle doesn't remember either, and the way there used to be birds everywhere, hopping around in parking lots, crowded in the trees, singing in the morning. He explained to Kyle why humanity was worth fighting for.
"Because I love you," he'd said, tucking Kyle into his makeshift bed and touching a new cut on Kyle's cheek regretfully. "And the machines will never learn how to do that."
Kyle climbs out of the dried-up sewer when he's too thirsty to wait any longer, trying to remember what his father told him, trying to convince himself that there is something here on earth that is still worth fighting for, something else that could make him remember why it's good to be alive, something he could love.
*
He wanders alone for awhile, not sure how much time passes. Most days he stays in the base, a sort of fort that he and his father built together. His father had tried to make everything a game, to keep Kyle's spirits up; Kyle understands that now. It's so much harder to shoot and kill food without his father beside him to whoop and clap him on the shoulder proudly when Kyle actually shoots something, and cleaning the kill is horrible without his father there to make funny faces when the guts get a little too gross.
Kyle tries to keep up with his lessons, even without his father around to teach them. His father taught him how to read from a small library of books they found through scavenging, and Kyle rereads his favorites, noting some scenes that his father must have skipped over when they read the books together: particularly scary things and sex scenes, mostly. Suddenly a book by James Patterson that always bored him becomes his favorite, because of the scene where one of the bad guys has sex with his girlfriend. All he knows about sex is from a magazine he found in an old gas station convenience store, and he only got to glance through it before his father saw and confiscated it. He figures his father must have it stashed around somewhere, but he must have hid it pretty well.
Days pass slowly and without much intrusion from the machines; Kyle is quiet and small, good at hiding. He has pretend conversations with his dad when he gets bored, and sometimes with his mom, too, asking her questions and inventing her answers in his head. Do you miss me? he asks her, and she says she does, every day, even though he doesn't remember her, which makes him feel bad. Are you in heaven like Dad said? he asks, and she says, Yes, but I still miss you, even in heaven. Is Dad with you? he asks, and she doesn't answer that question, because, for some reason, it's easier for Kyle to imagine his mother and sister in the dreamland of heaven than his father, who was here once with Kyle in the real world, and who still should be.
Sometimes he even talks out loud to his sister, though he can't imagine her at all, because the youngest woman he's ever seen was his father's age, and she was dead.
He tries to keep himself clean, because his father always said that was important, for his health. It's easy enough to find soap in abandoned stores, but dangerous to venture to them, because the machines know where the humans like to scavenge. One day, he nearly gets caught by a T-800, but a hand that comes out of nowhere yanks at his collar and pulls him into an old supply room in what used to be a mega grocery store, and someone puts a hand over his mouth to keep him from screaming.
"Quiet, kid," someone whispers, a man, and Kyle's heart rate skyrockets just like it did when he spotted the T-600, because his father told him early on that humans can hurt you, too.
"It's okay," the person who's holding onto him says when he feels Kyle shaking. "Just keep quiet."
When the coast is clear, Kyle learns that he's stumbled upon a group of people who've been living in the old supermarket, four men who are all roughly his father's age. They make him nervous but they seem nice enough, giving him Oreos and diet soda.
"Ran out of the good stuff awhile back," a man who introduced himself as Jake says. "Down to the diet drinks now."
The supermarket men are not as streamlined as his father was, and Kyle has never seen fat people before, only read about them in books. They're impressed that Kyle has survived alone, and he likes telling them his stories, talking to real people, but at the end of the night they get into what they refer to as the Supply, which consists of a stockpile of dark bottles of alcohol, and they get weepy, talking about the past. Kyle feels nervous again, wishing for his father, almost getting weepy himself.
In the middle of the night, lying on the sleeping bag they've offered him, not sleeping but just thinking, Kyle hears someone crawling over to him in the darkness, and when his eyes adjust he sees that it's one of the men, the guy called Peter, who was quietest during the drinking hour.
"What-" Kyle starts to say, but then there's a hand over his mouth, and Peter pushes Kyle's shoulder down with his other hand.
"Sorry," Peter whispers, his voice shaking. Kyle can hear the other men snoring from their corners of the supply room, and they seem so far away, but maybe they won't help him anyway.
"You're just so smooth," Peter says, nearly crying as he sneaks a hand under Kyle's shirt. "Almost like a girl."
Kyle bites Peter's hand as hard as he can, and Peter screams loud enough to wake the others, who sit up and ask what's wrong, cocking their guns. Kyle scrambles up and runs through the darkness, slams into the door then throws it open, ignoring the shouts from the men who don't know what's going on, his heart pounding as he runs out through the supermarket and into the hot quiet of the night, not looking back.
From then on, he treats other humans like the machines, hiding whenever they come near.
*
He finds Star when he's fourteen. She's maybe eight or nine years old, in the corner of a warehouse where Kyle found an impressive collection of guns, and she's clinging to the corpse of a woman who was probably her mother. It takes Kyle a lot of coaxing to even get Star to drink water from his canteen, and when she finally leaves her dead family, teary-eyed, she still won't speak or let Kyle anywhere near her. She follows him back to the base, walking ten feet behind him. Eventually, she lets him pull her out of the way when she's in imminent danger, but she never gives in to Kyle's attempts to get her to speak. He calls her Star because of her pendant, and she answers to the name, helps him with the cooking and his traps. He teaches her how to play tic-tac-toe.
Only once does he hear her speak, and she's not really using words. She has a nightmare, and Kyle wakes up with a start, hearing her howling on the other side of the base and thinking she's in trouble. He runs to her, and her eyes are so wide when he gets there.
"What's wrong?" he asks. He's got his gun in his hand, the lightweight one he sleeps with. His father used to have names for the guns - Berreta, Colt, Glock - and numbers, too, but to Kyle they're all more or less the same, only some are bigger than others.
Star's breathing begins to go regular again, and she shakes her head. Kyle understands that it was just a nightmare and pats her shoulder. She flinches. They're the closest thing either has to family, but they still keep a certain distance. Kyle doesn't tell her about his dreams, either. He finally found that magazine his father once hid from him, and most of his dreams are confusing flashes of sweat-coated skin and hot breath that leave his pants sticky when he wakes. He wishes he could turn it all off, because he knows it will never mean anything to him except frustration and shame, but he still prefers these dreams to the nightmares, which are mostly about his father's death, that last scream that is still echoing around Kyle's head and probably always will be.
*
When Marcus shows up, Kyle thinks he's a hopeless idiot who has managed to survive only by some dumb luck, but he's quickly proven wrong. Marcus takes Kyle's gun so easily, and Kyle feels like such a failure, as if it's all been for nothing, but Marcus doesn't seem to want to kill him, and in fact saves Kyle and Star when a disabled machine smashes into a building close to the roof they're standing on, debris crashing down around them. Marcus pushes Kyle and Star to the ground and covers their bodies with his. Except for Star and her band-aids, Kyle hasn't been cared for in so long, and he forgot what it felt like. He lies under Marcus as the dust settles, staring up with open awe as Marcus pants onto his forehead, cursing and asking, What the fuck was that, and when Marcus looks down and asks Kyle if he's alright, Kyle isn't afraid of him anymore, though he knows he probably should be.
Marcus is the first person Kyle has brought back to the base since Star, and he actually feels proud to show it off, glad to offer Marcus some of their food, and a little insulted when he doesn't take any. Marcus shows Kyle how to hang on to his gun, and fixes the radio. Kyle hears Connor speaking to the members of the resistance, and he looks up at Marcus again with awe, feels his life beginning to change now that Marcus has arrived.
"Where are you from?" Kyle asks later that night, sitting by his bed, which Marcus has fallen into without asking, though he's not sleeping, just staring into space and looking vaguely irritated. Star is across the room in her little nook of scavenged blankets, fast asleep. She seems calmer with Marcus around, though she's usually even more wary of other people than Kyle is.
"Los Angeles," Marcus says, scoffing. "Originally."
"Me too," Kyle says. "I don't remember it, though, the way it was. Do you?"
"Yeah," Marcus says. "It was a different kind of hellhole."
"Were there birds?" Kyle asks, hoping he doesn't sound childish or stupid. He just misses it so much, hearing stories about the past. Marcus looks at him and frowns.
"Yeah," he says, disbelief and pity in his voice, and Kyle is embarrassed. "There were birds."
"You must have been in some kind of accident," Kyle says. "The way you don't, like, remember anything."
Marcus looks at Kyle the way he has since he arrived, like everything Kyle says is slightly ridiculous. He's the only other light-eyed person Kyle has ever met, though Marcus' are different from his, more blue, less green.
"Yeah," Marcus says, narrowing his eyes. "Some kind of accident. Do you need something, or are you just going to sit there and stare at me all night?"
"Don't you want to - talk to someone?" Kyle asks, his face heating up the way it does when he looks at that magazine. "I mean - where you came from - were there lots of people to talk to?"
Marcus scoffs. "Yeah, prison was a really great place to meet interesting people."
"Prison? Were you at the headquarters, at Skynet? Did you escape?"
"I don't know where I was, kid," Marcus says, holding up his hands as if he surrenders, or as if he wants to shove Kyle away. "I don't know what the fuck's going on."
Kyle looks down at his hands, his face burning hotter. He lies down on the floor, stretching out alongside his bed, folds his hands on his stomach and stares up into the darkness.
"You sleep on the floor?" Marcus says.
"No," Kyle says bitterly. "You're in my bed."
"Sorry," Marcus says, and he gets up. Kyle climbs into the bed, which is just an old mattress pad, folded blankets and towels, and a very flat pillow with a ripped cover. He rolls onto his side and watches Marcus, who stands at the window with his hands on his hips, looking up at the sky. The bed is warm from Marcus' body, and it smells like him. Marcus turns and sees Kyle staring. He sighs and walks over the bed, sitting down beside it.
"You're really alone here," he says, as if he finally believes this.
"Yes," Kyle says, trying not to sound as if he feels sorry for himself. His father always told him they were lucky to be alive. Kyle always tried hard to feel that way. "For a long time."
"You said your dad tried to fix that radio."
"Yeah, well. He did try." Kyle doesn't want to talk about it. Marcus seems to get the picture and drops the subject, looking down to pick the dirt from his fingernails.
"You still want to go to San Francisco?" Kyle asks. Marcus sniffs a little, grins.
"Nah," he says. "Now that I've seen this place, I'm looking to stay."
Kyle actually thinks he's serious for a minute; it's been so long since anyone joked with him. Five years. Marcus turns to grin at Kyle, and suddenly he's not laughing at Kyle but with him, sort of. Kyle smiles.
"You can sleep up here if you want to," Kyle says, scooting over.
"No thanks," Marcus says. "I won't be able to sleep. Feels like I've been asleep for fucking eighty years."
"So you'll stay up and keep watch?" Kyle asks, liking the idea. It's been a long day, and his eyelids are so heavy. He thinks about what happened with the supermarket people, and wonders why he isn't afraid the same thing will happen with Marcus. It's something to do with what happened earlier, lying beneath Marcus while he used his body like a shield. There was nothing wicked in it, and Marcus' eyes are different from any Kyle has ever seen, not only because of their color.
"Sure," Marcus says. "Just go to sleep, okay?" Kyle consents, still turned toward Marcus, curling up a little tighter and tucking his hand under his cheek. He shuts his eyes, but for a long time he can't get to sleep, though he's so tired. He listens to Marcus' breathing, and thrills a little whenever Marcus sighs or shifts against the bed. When Kyle finally gets to sleep he dreams of the magazine people, hot skin under his hands, rough, hungry lips on his neck, his chest, his cock. The dream changes, and suddenly he's lying under Marcus, not on the rooftop like before but in his bed, undressed, still hard.
Kyle opens his eyes with a gasp and sees that dawn is breaking, and Marcus is standing across the room, fooling with the radio again. Kyle is still fully clothed, but the hardon is real. He rolls over, turning his back on the room, and tries to think it away, but his head is still full of that dream, and the way Marcus' body had felt, hovering over him, the way it felt yesterday on the roof, warm and protective and so heavy. Kyle has no reason to trust anybody, but he felt something in Marcus when they were lying together on the roof, coughing dust onto each other's faces. Kyle's world has always been fairly simple, everything classed into good or bad. His father was good, the machines are bad. Eating is good, going hungry is bad. That man in the abandoned supermarket was bad. Marcus, Kyle thinks, is good.
He reaches down into his pants, moving stealthily. Star is rousing on the other side of the base, and Marcus is speaking to her, maybe expecting an answer. Kyle knows he won't get rid of his hardon without doing something about it, and hopefully a few strokes will nip the whole thing in the bud; they usually do. He tries to be quick and still at the same time, rubbing mostly with his fingers so his elbow won't move, using his thumb around the head, smearing precome. He's too nervous to finish, so he shuts his eyes and tries to concentrate on a dream, on the one he had last night about Marcus, Marcus lying on top of him, Kyle naked beneath him, exposed, vulnerable, and proven right about Marcus, who is good, so good, who strokes Kyle's face and licks through his lips and grinds their bodies together. Kyle takes away Marcus' clothes in his fantasy, imagining that his body looks like those of the men who have women bouncing on them in the magazine, only better, and he's so close to coming that he doesn't even hear Marcus walking up behind him until it's much too late.
"Hey," Marcus says, grabbing Kyle's shoulder and rolling him over, and that's all it takes, really, the sound of Marcus' voice, the pressure of his grip on Kyle's shoulder, and Kyle is on his back, exposed, coming into his hand, gasping out apologies as Marcus stares down at him in shock.
"Fuck," Marcus says, releasing Kyle and hurrying away. Kyle rolls toward the wall again, tears pooling in his eyes as he pants through the last throbs of his cock, wiping the mess on the sheets. He's so humiliated his whole body burns, pulsing with shame like hot flashes. Then, quickly, he's angry, buttoning up his pants. Why should he be expected to know how to behave around other people? Star leaves him to his own devices, doesn't sneak up on him, never grabs him. If Marcus wants to leave in a huff because Kyle had the nerve to jerk off in his presence, fine. It's not like Kyle needs anybody, not like he can't just keep living on his own, Star silent on the periphery, enough human contact to keep him from going insane.
He gets out of bed when he's steadied himself, his face still red. Star is obliviously finishing the last of the coyote. Marcus is at the door, impatient.
"You gonna show me where these cars are or what?" Marcus says, and Kyle glowers at him.
"Fine," he says, grabbing his pack and stuffing it with ammunition and a canteen filled with water. He picks up his gun and heads for the door, his cheeks on fire under Marcus' stare. "C'mon, Star," he says, and she follows. Kyle walks past Marcus without looking at him, and Marcus follows, too.
They walk. Star is in her own world as usual, staring dreamily up at the cloudless sky. Marcus keeps glancing at Kyle as if he's about to say something, and Kyle pretends not to notice.
"Must be hard," Marcus finally says. "Teenager in a world without girls."
"I don't want to talk about it!" Kyle snaps, and Marcus holds up his hands, grinning a little. Kyle hates him for being amused by what happened. Smug fucker.
They get to the lot with the cars Marcus was looking for and he immediately begins picking through them. Kyle follows him, alternately scowling at the ground and keeping an eye on Star, who really does seem different since Marcus arrived, less guarded, more dreamy and childlike. When Marcus gets one of the cars running, Star hops into the passenger seat as if she's ready for a drive, but Marcus tells her to get out.
"You're just gonna leave us?" Kyle shouts in disbelief, as if Marcus owes them anything. He won't meet Kyle's eyes as he climbs into the Jeep. Kyle feels as if he's been promised something only to have it taken away, but he should know better than to expect anything else from the world by now, and he shouldn't feel so surprised when a scout for the machines is suddenly upon them, tipped off by the music that blasted from the Jeep when Marcus first got it running.
"Get in!" Marcus screams, pulling Kyle into the Jeep as Star clambers back into the passenger seat. They go screaming out of the lot, the scout in pursuit, and Marcus tells Kyle to drive, which is terrifying and exhilarating, even in the midst of running for their lives. Kyle never, never thought he'd drive a car. Marcus destroys the scout by throwing a wrench at it while Kyle swerves along the road, feeling invincible in the company of Marcus and his 'wrench strategy,' the highway stretching endlessly ahead of them.
"Fuck!" Marcus says from the backseat, hovering near Kyle's shoulder. "Pull over, I'm driving."
Kyle does as he asked, wondering if Marcus will throw him and Star out of the car, but he doesn't even ask Kyle to climb into the back, lets him scoot over to sit between Marcus and Star as Marcus peels off down the highway. Kyle isn't even sure where they're going, but it doesn't really matter. Marcus tried to leave them and he couldn't. Not even after what he saw Kyle do at the base. Kyle turns red all over again, thinking of it.
"We'll need gas," Kyle calls over the wind after they've put a good amount of distance between them and the wrecked scout, their heart rates beginning to return to normal.
"No shit," Marcus says. "Got any idea where we can get some?"
"Just check the dead filling stations," Kyle says with a shrug. "You'll start seeing them pretty soon."
They check two stations and find nothing, then begin down a long stretch of desert highway that seems as if it was empty even before the apocalypse. Star falls asleep, leaning against the passenger door, and Kyle tips his head back to look at the sky, which is packed with thick white clouds. He's only seen the sky this way a few times before, as if someone forgot that the world had ended down below. His eyelids start to droop, and he glances over at Marcus, who has his eyes narrowed at the road.
"Why do you want to go to San Francisco?" Kyle asks.
"Don't know," Marcus says, which is almost definitely a lie. "Why do you want to meet up with this Connor guy so badly? You really think any man can do something about this nightmare?"
"Someone who can organize the rest of us," Kyle says. "Yeah. And you should come with us. You were - pretty good, back there."
Marcus glances at Kyle, and Kyle holds his gaze for the first time since the incident that morning.
"I don't want to be organized," Marcus says, looking back to the road. "And you. You just want company."
"Company?" Kyle scoffs. "I've got that already."
"What, the kid who doesn't speak?"
"Yeah, and you."
Marcus sneaks a look at him, and Kyle grins sleepily, already beginning to doze off, his eyelids sinking. He's never fallen asleep during the day before; there's usually so much to do before nightfall. It feels good, letting his eyes slip shut with the sun on his face, Star asleep beside him and Marcus driving them along toward whatever. He lets his head loll forward a few times, the jerk of his neck waking him up, then settles his cheek onto Marcus' shoulder, trying to make it seem accidental. He waits for Marcus to shrug him off, but Marcus just sighs a little, under his breath, and the soft sound of it pulls down through Kyle like an anchor.
Kyle sleeps more deeply than he expected, dreaming about nothing, conscious of the sun on his skin and Marcus' steady breath. When he wakes up, the light is going orange with the start of the sunset, and he's slumped fully against Marcus, his left hand on Marcus' leg, fingers spread out possessively. Kyle sits up with a groan, embarrassed by the way he was clutching, and by how good it felt to be pressed against someone else, against Marcus.
"You alright?" Marcus asks, still looking ahead through the windshield, and Kyle laughs. Star is awake now, and she smiles over at Kyle sympathetically, as if even she knows how much he needed that.
"Yeah," Kyle says, his voice deep with sleep. "I'm okay."
"Sunburned, though," Marcus says. "Look." He nods up at the cracked rearview mirror, and Kyle sits up to look into it, leaning onto Marcus again as he does, because it's tilted toward him. He so rarely sees his reflection, and it always startles him a little, never seems to match the image of himself that he keeps in his head. Marcus is right, his cheeks have gone red from the sun. He sits back, leaving his hand on the seat, his pinkie finger just barely touching Marcus' stolen resistance coat. He feels good the way he did when he was a kid, when he and his dad would play checkers with stones and his dad would tell funny stories about his brothers, who used to fight him over games of checkers when they lost. More than good, he feels safe, which makes him nervous, but it's a bubbling kind of anxiety that sits in his chest not like a warning but like a reminder that he's alive, and that it's a good thing.
"We should find a place to sleep before it gets dark," Kyle says. "You haven't found gas yet?" he asks Marcus, though he knows that Marcus hasn't pulled over since Kyle fell asleep on his shoulder.
"Nope." Marcus points down the road, at the shape of a distant building. "How 'bout there?" he says. "For the night?"
"Looks good to me," Kyle says, though there's no telling what the place might hold until they get there. It turns out to be a strip of outlet stores, signs about sales still curling in some of its windows. They walk past the shops cautiously as the sun sinks deeper behind the mountain, Kyle and Marcus with their weapons raised, Star walking between them. A jackrabbit startles them at one point, and Marcus shoots it as it's bounding away.
"Dinner," he says to Kyle, who grins.
They break into what used to be a men's clothing store, and Kyle sits on the sidewalk outside to clean the rabbit so that they won't have to sleep with the smell of its guts. Star entertains herself with a collection of cuff links at the counter inside, handling them like precious jewels, and Marcus comes to lean in the store's open doorway, watching Kyle work. It's kind of cozy, despite the rabbit guts, the three of them quiet and tired as the sun goes down.
"Think I might find a new belt in there," Kyle says as he works, wiping his knife on his pants. "Maybe a new shirt. Those shoes looked pretty worthless, though. It's funny, the stuff people used to wear."
"How long have you been doing this?" Marcus asks as Kyle slices up the meat. There's not much, but it's fresh, and they're lucky to have it. He looks up at Marcus with a frown.
"Skinning rabbits?"
"Fending for yourself," Marcus says.
"Five years," Kyle says, looking back to his work. "Since my dad."
"Right." Marcus starts breaking up a wooden chair he found in the store's dressing room, for firewood.
"How 'bout you?" Kyle asks when Marcus stacks the wood. He crumbles old advertisements for the store's sales and shoves them underneath it.
"How about me what?" Marcus says.
"You were by yourself when we found you."
Marcus sniffs a little, as if this is funny. He holds his hand out and Kyle reaches into his pocket for the block of flint he uses for cooking, handing it to him.
"Yeah, always," Marcus says, striking the flint with his knife. "I always fended for myself. Well, me and my brother."
"You had a brother?" Kyle says, impressed by this. Marcus says nothing, just flicks the knife hard against the flint, sparks shooting off and roaring to life against the brittle paper. "I had a sister," Kyle says. Marcus looks up at him, and some silent understanding passes between them. The dead are all around them, a parking lot full of ghosts. Kyle shudders and hurries to cook the rabbit, ready to get inside the safety of the store as the last of the sun disappears.
After they eat, they close themselves inside the store, Star moving from the cuff links to the ties, which she engineers into knots and braids before dropping to sleep beside the display. Kyle puts two folded dress shirts under her head for a pillow and a suit jacket over her for a blanket. He sits beside her for awhile, watching Marcus out of the corner of his eye. He's at the large front window, his gun resting on the sill, elbow propped beside it as he stares out at the night. The moon is bright, and Marcus' silhouette pulls Kyle right across the room. He's good at moving around quietly, and Marcus looks surprised when Kyle is suddenly standing beside him. Saying nothing, Kyle sinks slowly to his knees. Marcus doesn't break eye contact, just watches Kyle like he's another thing about the world that he can't understand. Kyle has never met someone who is able to just reject the things about the world that are horrible, and he wonders if that's why Marcus seems so strong, almost invincible.
"What?" Marcus says, his voice deep and a little rough, but Kyle doesn't startle away. He scoots closer, his knees almost touching Marcus' thigh and his heart pounding so hard that he's afraid Marcus will hear it in the quiet of the room.
"I just -" Kyle says, whispering, not for Star's sake but because he couldn't possibly get his voice out any louder, he's stretched so thin by how much he wants what he doesn't know how to ask for. "I just slept so good before," he says, dropping his eyes away from Marcus' with embarrassment. When he looks up again Marcus is still staring at him, his eyes a little softer at the corners, or maybe Kyle is imagining things. But he feels something pass between them, that human thing, that thing that the machines could never teach themselves to reproduce.
"C'mere," Marcus says, sitting back against the wall and spreading himself open a little wider, his knees sliding apart. Kyle lets out the choppy breath that he'd been holding in and moves forward cautiously, falling into Marcus' arms when they slide around him. He sinks against Marcus' chest, his breath still coming out in sharp shudders as he closes his eyes and disappears into the heat of Marcus' body, clinging as hard as he can. Tears sting at his eyes, and he has to chew his lip to keep it from shaking into a sob. Marcus rubs his hand up the back of Kyle's neck, then into his hair, and one tear does escape down Kyle's cheek when the pads of Marcus' fingers scratch at his scalp, making him shiver, barely able to hold down a moan.
"Poor guy," Marcus says, like Kyle is a dog with three legs. "All by yourself."
Kyle nods and pinches his eyes up tighter, more tears streaking down his dirty cheeks. He curls up against Marcus, his knees pressed to Marcus' chest, his hand fisted in Marcus' shirt. Never never never let me go: he wants to cry it out all night long, but he doesn't dare say anything, because he knows his voice would shake with his tears. He lifts his wet face to Marcus' neck and pushes it against his skin, feeling the hard pump of Marcus' pulse against his cheeks and across the bridge of his nose. Marcus is so warm, and so much bigger than Kyle, and so, so good: Kyle can feel it pouring out of him, and in the moment Marcus feels like the only good thing in the world, which is almost unbearable, like being inches from the sun, needing the heat and burning up against it.
"Okay," Marcus says, maybe a little bothered by Kyle's crying, and Kyle wishes he could stop. Marcus strokes Kyle's hair, and again Kyle feels like a hopeless animal, a stray. "You're okay," Marcus says.
Kyle wants to say, No I'm not, this is gonna blow me apart, because he feels like he's in pieces and only Marcus' arms are holding him together, but his voice still isn't working, so he only whimpers wordlessly, nuzzling his face against Marcus' neck until he works up the nerve to lick him, just a little. Marcus goes stiff, and his hand stops moving in Kyle's hair.
"Careful," Marcus says, and Kyle has no idea what he means, so he just opens his mouth against Marcus' neck, licks and sucks at his skin, kisses his neck wildly, his cock already so hard in his pants. Marcus holds him still, closing his fingers into Kyle's hair and tipping his head back so that Kyle is forced to look up at his face. Marcus looks vaguely concerned, maybe a little disturbed, and the softness is draining from his eyes, being replaced with something else.
"What are you doing?" Marcus asks, whispering. He glances across the shop at Star, who is still sound asleep.
"I don't know," Kyle cries honestly, clinging to Marcus again. Marcus sighs, and it's so huge under Kyle's body, lifting him up and setting him back down. Kyle sobs against his chest, humiliated and dizzy with arousal, his cock throbbing with every breath he takes, because the air in the shop is full of the scent of Marcus' body. Kyle is so beside himself that it takes him awhile to realize that Marcus is hard, too, his cock a massive presence under Kyle's trembling thighs. Kyle sucks in his breath with surprise and shifts downward, hears the barely-swallowed groan Marcus just manages to contain. He looks up at Marcus with his wet face open, not embarrassed anymore. Marcus is breathing faster now, looking at Kyle like he wants to spare him whatever's about to happen. Kyle shakes his head.
"You can have whatever you want," Kyle whispers, sniffling. He thinks of that man in the supermarket so long ago, how he would have died before he gave up anything to him. Why is it different now, because Marcus is fucking beautiful? Because he smells so good, and feels like solid, real salvation under Kyle's shaking hands? Because Kyle is old enough now to know what it feels like to ache for someone's skin against his, all the time, to dream about nothing else?
"You should never say that," Marcus whispers gruffly, as if he's angry about the offer. He takes Kyle's face in both hands, tips his head back further. "Not you, not ever."
He crushes his mouth over Kyle's, teaching him how to kiss in hungry gulps and harsh pulls of his tongue across Kyle's lips. Kyle shifts himself around, straddling Marcus' lap, his knees pressed to Marcus' sides and his cock so hard against the warm flat of Marcus' stomach. He's begging with his body, legs open, but unable to stop kissing Marcus, swallowing up his breath like water, drowning under it. Marcus reaches down to close one big hand over Kyle's crotch, massaging it roughly and biting at Kyle's neck when he throws his head back to breathe out his moans as quietly as he can. The pressure in Kyle's cock builds to a sharpness he's never felt before, and he yelps when he comes, pushing the sound into Marcus' mouth as he fills his pants with come, shaking with the full-body pulse of his orgasm. Marcus drags his teeth carefully over Kyle's earlobe as Kyle shudders out the last drops, his arms around Marcus' shoulders. He's already thinking about what he needs to do to Marcus to repay him for that, and Marcus is rock hard under Kyle's ass, but Kyle needs a minute, feels boneless and exhausted, his head dropping to Marcus' chest. Marcus seems to understand this, and he breathes hard into Kyle's hair, snaking a hand up under Kyle's shirt to rub his hot palm across Kyle's back.
"Anything you want," Kyle says, practically drooling, already half asleep. "Anything." Then he remembers the magazine, what the men in the pictures seem to enjoy having done to them by the women, and Kyle might not be a woman but he does have a mouth. He scrambles down Marcus' body, swallowing his anxiety with a sleep-tempered moan, and starts working on Marcus' jeans. He looks up to see Marcus watching him, his mouth just slightly open, eyes glazed.
"You want my mouth on you?" Kyle whispers, just to make sure, and Marcus shuts his eyes, then reopens them slowly.
"Fuck," he breathes out, his cock jerking under Kyle's hand, and Kyle takes that as a yes. He gets Marcus' jeans open and pulls out his cock, which is so big and thick that it's sort of mesmerizing, and Kyle wants his mouth on it as soon as he sees it, he wants it so bad. He licks up the length and Marcus groans, then stuffs his hand in his mouth to keep himself quiet. Kyle licks him again, appreciating the sweat-stained taste of him, and the secret, mushroomy smell between his legs as they open wider for Kyle's mouth. He licks across Marcus' balls, pulling his jeans down further to draw his tongue underneath them before coming back up to swallow as much of him as he can. Marcus is struggling not to scream; Kyle can feel it in the tremble that moves through his whole body as he bites down on his palm and jerks his hips up in measured little thrusts, fucking his cock deeper into Kyle's mouth, until Kyle chokes a little and has to sit back, panting onto Marcus' slick cockhead.
"Okay," Marcus says, grabbing Kyle's arms and pulling him up, into his lap again. "Okay."
Kyle has no idea what's going to happen next, but he's surrendered to it, fully awake now, his cock hard again. Marcus kisses him, biting at his lips, then slips a finger into Kyle's mouth, letting Kyle suck it like he tried to suck Marcus' cock, which was really too big to fit in there. When he takes his finger away Kyle is sorry to lose it, wants something of Marcus' in his mouth all the time, and when Marcus rips Kyle's pants down he has no idea that Marcus' slicked finger is going to end up between his ass cheeks. Kyle gasps when Marcus rubs down through his cleft until he finds what he was looking for, that puckered skin, something Kyle never thought might make him feel good, but it does, and he opens his legs wider for Marcus' finger, moaning when he pushes it inside. Kyle nods drowsily, twisting himself down harder onto Marcus' finger, delirious and disoriented by the feeling of being opened up, something he never knew he needed this badly.
He sobs when Marcus turns him around and replaces his finger with that thick cock, which is still wet from Kyle's mouth but not enough, and it burns all the way in, slow and sharp, he and Marcus both breathing so hard that the glass on the shop window begins to fog. When Kyle is completely seated in Marcus' lap he slumps backward, shaking hard, Marcus' arms locked around his chest. He pushes his face back against Marcus' neck and winces until the feeling of Marcus being lodged fully inside him begins to feel okay, maybe even good, the burn fading to a sting that makes Kyle hiss when Marcus shifts, moving inside him.
"You," Marcus breathes in his ear, squeezing him tighter. "Kyle." He reaches down and takes hold of Kyle's cock, which had softened a bit with the shock of Marcus pushing into him. He's quickly hard again in Marcus' hand, and when Marcus sneaks his thumb down to rub over Kyle's balls Kyle loses it, coming with a low moan that he pushes against Marcus' neck, which is sweaty now, so hot. Marcus thrusts up into Kyle as he's still pulsing with his orgasm, and Kyle is dead weight in Marcus' arms, so broken open, given over completely. When he relaxes those thrusts feel so good, Marcus working himself up into him harder and harder, until he grunts against the side of Kyle's head and fills him up so completely that his come is already leaking from Kyle when he pulls out.
Kyle is nearly comatose with stunned satisfaction, sore and exhausted, and he slumps onto the floor between Marcus and the wall, trying to keep his eyes open so that he can see Marcus leaning beside him, looking down at him and touching his face, moving his thumb over a cut on Kyle's lip.
"Oh, God," Marcus says, and he sounds kind of sad. Kyle shuts his eyes, then opens them when Marcus moves away. He returns with a fancy pair of flannel pajamas, rolls the pants up to rest his head on them and tears open the buttons on the shirt to spread it over Kyle like a blanket. Marcus lies beside him, and Kyle watches Marcus' eyes for as long as he can, sleep yanking him under before too long.
He doesn't dream about anything, but he wakes several times, the unfamiliar surface of the floor making him wonder where he is. When he wakes up Marcus is there, not sleeping but on his back and staring at the ceiling, his eyes gone soft again. He doesn't notice Kyle watching him, and Kyle can't stay awake for long, feeling far more tired than he ever has, which is something, really, because his life has been pretty exhausting so far. He wants to sleep for days, stay inside the shop for weeks, or the rest of his life, doing what he and Marcus did every night, and dropping to sleep with determination, the world erased around him, but he wakes up after dawn with Marcus still leaning beside him, shaking his shoulder.
"Hey," Marcus says. "We should get going." He looks a little guilty, and Kyle wants to tell him that he has nothing to be ashamed of, that he saved Kyle's life last night, turned the world onto its side forever.
"Why?" Kyle asks hoarsely, and Marcus grins, just barely, then lets it fade.
"I don't know," he says. "We can't stay here."
And that's true of everywhere in the world now, so they get up, Kyle hazy and slow; Marcus helps him stand. Kyle gets a new belt from a neat rack of them in the middle of the store, and Star pockets all the cuff links she can carry. They linger a little bit longer than they should, the sun rising too fast. Kyle knows already, when he changes into a pair of clean boxer shorts in the store's dressing room, that their brief reprieve is over.
The rest is irrelevant history. They come to a gas station that actually has fuel, but they meet with a gang that doesn't want to share it, until an old woman among them sees Star and takes pity. It feels like the sort of break they've earned, and Kyle shoves stale Ho-Hos and rock hard beef jerky into his mouth while Marcus stands over them like a shepherd, but then the roof disappears, and the machines are back, like always, the reprieve over, the real world returned.
They're going to get away, because Marcus is going to save them, but the machines are so relentless, and Kyle expects something to happen as he's being yanked into the shuttle with the others, expects Marcus to blank the whole thing away with a flick of his hand. It's not that easy, but Marcus jumps on the transport and splits it open with an ax, and all the time Kyle is smiling, waiting for Marcus to save him, Marcus who has come out of nowhere to change Kyle's life, but then Marcus slips, and he falls, and he's gone, and Kyle is still waiting, all the way to Skynet, to find out how Marcus is going to reclaim him.
*
Part II