FIC: Catching Bullets with the Best (NC17)
TITLE: Catching Bullets with the Best
AUTHOR: eudaimon
WORDCOUNT: 4833
PAIRING: Kyle/Marcus/Blair
RATING: NC17
SUMMARY: His heart aches because it's promised in too many places at once, and there are so many ways to say goodbye.
SPOILERS: Through the end of Terminator Salvation.
DISCLAIMER: While I would like to borrow all three of them for half an hour, none of this is mine and no profit is being made.
A/N: Today, I finished reading The Road by Cormac McCarthy, so I expect there'll be epic roadtrip fic in my future, but, for now, here's my first offering in the fandom. For bzzinglikeneon and melloniel. Title from Bullets by Tunng. I hope that the threesome element of this is okay!
We're catching bullets with our heads and hearts and all the darkest parts of us
It's strange to find such lights in such endless night.
There's this trembling in Kyle's shoulders when Marcus settles John's coat around him and steps back. Kyle's brave enough, tough enough, old enough in the eyes that it's easy to forget that he's ten years younger than Marcus was sixteen years ago, although Marcus can't imagine that aging matters at all any more. He, at least, has gone beyond that. Everything's changed and nothing now can matter the way that it did. Some things, rare things, matter more.
He's still working out what those things are, but most of them seem to be embodied by this skinny kid with eyes that go green-silver like the patina on copper when he's trying not to cry.
After Marcus gives his heart to Kate, as honestly as he can, more honesty than he's ever given it to any other woman before her, his fingers itch to tighten on Kyle's shoulders and pull him back against him, just for a moment with Kyle's back against his chest and, in that moment, Marcus imagines feeling skinny strength in the muscle over Kyle's bones and the thud-thud-thudding of his own heart.
Promised, now. Given not once, but three times over.
And he'd thought that it was already long gone, buried in the earth with his kid brother, split in two and burned to ash with the bodies of two cops he'd never even had the time to look in the eyes. He did his best. It wasn't enough. He fucked up.
People fuck up all the time.
Most of the time, they don't ever come to know the real cost of their mistakes.
So that's what death tastes like. He regrets that, now. It's just another thing he's paying for.
Wrapped in John Connor's jacket, which smells of blood and ash and smoke, Kyle Reese leans against himself and the wind and he looks at Marcus for a long moment and then closes eyes gone the colour of hundred-year old church spires.
Marcus looks at Kate over Kyle's shoulder. She looks back. Only a woman with blue eyes that calm could love a man like John Connor. Kate looks at him and she can see that he has the patience of saints. Marcus knows a little bit, just a little, about caring for somebody with a destiny on their back. He's never been good at patience, but maybe he's coming into a little grace. Everybody deserves a second chance, he told Blair, beautiful with her red-warpaint faded across her eyes, and then she bent in, simple as song and kissed him, and there was Kyle's face, trying not to cry, and all Marcus can think is you've done good, kid. You'll do okay.
And then Star takes his hand.
"When?" he asks her, asks Kate, and there are stories in her blue eyes, stories that woman have always known, and told. Stories about love, and loss of love, and love asked for, begged for, but rarely given. Marcus is a little in love with Kate Connor, right then, with Kyle at one shoulder and Blair at the other.
.
"When you're ready. Not before," she says, but he catches the way she looks at John on the table. What Marcus Wright has learned is this: that it's the things that you categorically know about yourself that matter, in the end, and that, in the end, it doesn't matter if they're true or not, just as long you're the one who knows.
What he knows is that there's one thing left that he has to do before the end of this.
"Won't take too long," he promises her, and he won't. There's just one thing here that he's going to take the time to do.
*
Listen. Here it is:
In a dark room with clean worn sheets on a narrow bed, Marcus eases the coat down off Kyle's shoulders. The red armband is something to be worn with pride; earned. Freely given. Marcus guesses that he's earned his too by now. Slowly, he bends his head and kisses the side of Kyle's neck, which is made achingly vulnerable by the tilt of his head, which is all the permission that Marcus needs to continue. Kyle is nineteen years old; things change once a minute when you're that age. Marcus remembers feeling like he might live forever when he was that age, and maybe he wasn't as fucking wrong as he thought.
Maybe he's got nine lives like a cat. Maybe a hundred. Maybe he's as infinite as God, or, maybe he's got until his warrantee runs out.
He sort of likes the not knowing.
Kyle groans softly and pushes his ass back against Marcus. It's one of those little gestures, unconscious but utterly telling. Marcus remembers things like that, softer girls and boys tugged gently back against him so he could be good to them for a few hours or a few days, or weeks or months. He'd been two men, then, but that one, he'd had gentle hands.
He keeps the hand that's melted down to metal bones behind his back when he touches Kyle, flesh fingers flipping and finding their way through layers of worn clothing to find surprisingly soft skin underneath. Kyle's face is dirty and worn, but his belly, that's pale and soft, waiting for the warmth of Marcus' whole hand pressed against the tense, trembling muscles there. Marcus turns his face and just the very tip of his nose brushes against the sweaty hair at Kyle's temple. It's the smallest gesture in the world, but there are things in it which threaten to undo him.
Take a breath, shithead. Carry on.
This is for both of them.
Layer after layer follow the coat, heaping up on the bed, so many layers, and when he wraps his arms around Kyle's naked waist to draw him in snuggly, Marcus remembers the first thing he ever really heard Kyle Reese say.
Come with me if you want to live, he said.
Maybe now, right now, Marcus is starting to understand what he meant.
There are bruises on Kyle's ribs and he sucks air through his teeth when Marcus presses his hand over one, rubbing gently with his thumb. Slowly, so slowly, he presses three metal fingers against Kyle's rib-cage, curling around so that they almost brush a nipple, brown against Kyle's pale skin. He feels the way Kyle's breath catches when he's touched like that, a little sigh.
"Cold?" asks Marcus quietly, his mouth close to Kyle's ear.
Kyle shakes his head.
"Don't stop," he says, which isn't an answer to the question at all.
Marcus doesn't stop. He couldn't. He moves to stand in front of Kyle, brushing dark hair back from his forehead with metal fingers, the other sliding to cup Kyle's face. He draws him into a kiss so soft, so gentle that Marcus can't quite believe it of either of them. Marcus remembers softer times, once upon a time, before everything went so definitely, categorically to shit. He wonders if, in eighteen or nineteen years on the planet, Kyle's ever had a moment to be soft. His lips yield in the most pleasing way. He doesn't flinch when Marcus touches him with either hand, and that's something to be fucking grateful for.
"You're a brave kid," he murmurs, sucking lightly on Kyle's bottom lip. He tastes of a dying world but, underneath, something fundamental hot and alive. No death to taste here. What Kyle Reese tastes of is the life that comes after death, green things growing up through ashy soil, defying hope and expectation. New life. More life.
He tastes of resurrection, or the possibility of it, at least.
With his eyes still closed, Kyle frowns, just a little, and licks his bottom lip. In the back of his head, Marcus suddenly remembers the temperature that blood keeps.
"I'm not a kid," he says, as Marcus leans in and presses his lips against the crease between his brows.
"I know you're not."
Once upon a time, one of Marcus' favourite things in the world was standing in the shower with his hands against the walls and the water running as hot as he could stand it for as long as he could stand it. No shower here. The water in the bowl is cool and clean, the cloth worn soft with age. It's enough. Marcus squeezes the excess water out of it before he presses it against the side of Kyle's neck. He has sharp angles, like he grew up in small, tight spaces and changed to fit them. A rivulet of water runs down, following the sharp line of Kyle's collarbone. It takes grime with it. Carefully, Marcus wipes every trace of that place off of Kyle's skin. By the end, the water in the basin is greasy and dark and Kyle's skin is slick and bright and catches what light there is in the narrow room. Kyle raises damp hands, pushing them under the collar of Marcus' coat and shoving it down off his shoulders. Marcus remembers being touched like this. He thinks that maybe it was Blair lying there with her head against his chest that first reminded him. He spent a long time in small, dark rooms, and forgot what it felt like to be touched kindly.
"We don't have a lot of time," he reminds Kyle, already tugging his shirt up over his head.
"We’ve got enough," says Kyle, bending his head to press three kisses against Marcus' chest. Maybe this close to the end of the world, it's easier to make the most of a little. Or maybe Kyle's still young enough that he thinks that he might just live forever.
And maybe a kid like Kyle Reese can speak nothing but the truth...
And maybe miracles fucking happen.
Marcus doesn’t know what he believes anymore.
Eager, Kyle leans in, naked chest against Marcus' bare skin, but he has to stretch up to kiss. He's got to wonder how many times in eighteen or nineteen years Kyle has had the chance to do this. He's got to wonder how expensive the simplest fucking things in the world became in terms of time free and space given, after the end of the world. He smoothes his whole whole hand down the smooth curve of Kyle's back, all the way down to his ass, tugging their hips flush together.
"You don't have to do this," he says, softly, grateful, yeah, for the yearning twitch of Kyle's lips when he scrapes his mouth against his jaw...so grateful, but he needs no reward here.
I'm not a good guy, he told Blair, and she told him that he was, and he didn't know it yet.
Everyone comes to the end that they deserve.
"Yeah, but I want to," says Kyle, and what he means is Let me. Love me. You might not wake up a third time.
Marcus hears it clear as day.
Consciously, he slows everything down after that, kisses Kyle carefully, gently. Almost reverent. He remembers feeling this way about sex when he was very young, probably not much younger than Kyle is now, but it feels like something a million years ago. He moves back enough to get both hands between them, changing the angle of Kyle's hips with ten fingers on his waistband. The fabric of Kyle's pants is worn soft and thin with age and it's easy enough to thumb buttons undone one-handed. He brushes the backs of his fingers against the quivering muscles of Kyle's belly. Deceptively skinny in his clothes, Marcus can see the quiet strength in him now.
Like he could have doubted it from the first time he saw the fearless way that Kyle hefted Star when they had to run.
Every time he starts to think that everything beautiful has already been bled out of the world, something goes and reminds him that, once upon a very long fucking time ago, life was good. Maybe. For a while.
Not sure that he could stop now if he wanted to, Marcus shoves a hand into Kyle's pants, curls his fingers around his dick. He forces himself to go slow. With one arm curled around him, the kid feels almost fragile, like he might break in two, but then Marcus remembers the lines of Kyle's muscles, and everything he must have taken, and everything he must have survived. Marcus strokes him gently, knuckles grazing against Kyle's belly, and he pulls back enough that he can look into the kid's face. Kyle's got his eyes closed, biting into his bottom lip so hard that it's showing white. Marcus' hand stops moving and Kyle makes a soft sound, a yearning sound, his hips hitching, lifting, so, for a beat, he's fucking himself in the circle of Marcus' fingers.
"Can I..?" He opens his eyes and they're huge and green in his flushed face. "I just..." He whimpers and shifts his hips again.
"What?" says Marcus, a smile touching the corner of his mouth like he isn't already a creature nearly dying. Ridiculous, that he'd finally remember how.
The smile that Kyle gives Marcus is heart-breaking in its sweetness. It might be the first actual proof of God that Marcus has ever seen, a smile like that. Or, at least, proof that good things might still happen, and a clue to why end of the world myths are so often about beginning worlds, too.
"More," he says.
How's Marcus supposed to say 'no' to that?
Which is sort of the point.
Kyle groans softly and Marcus cradles his head against his shoulder, fingers sinking into Kyle's scruffy hair. He rubs his thumb over the head of Kyle's dick, fingers stroking, and he can't remember the name of the last kid he did this to, the last time somebody trusted him to do something like this. That was another world, and it came down, so they built another one, and then ruined that one too. Still, it feels like that might almost be okay, with this boy in his arms, with his choice made, his permission given. It's liberating to know that everything's out of his hands now except Kyle. And this one thing, he can do.
Gently, as gently as he can manage, he lifts his other hand, metal fingers cupping Kyle's chin and turning his face up so that he can lean down and kiss him, stroking his dick between them. His own dick's hard, so hard, echoing the throb in his temple and his chest. You've got a strong heart, Blair had told him. Right now, Marcus feels like it's about to split out of his chest.
Wrapped up in Kyle's mouth, Kyle's dick, the heat pouring off his skin, Marcus almost doesn't hear the door open and close behind him. Still, there's a part of him that cried his first night in a prison cell and then quickly got used to listening to everything that was happening around and sleeping with one eye open. Maybe he even forgot how to sleep. Kyle, though, he grew up wary, grew up scared. His dad died and left him alone, and he'd been born in the dark, which meant that he was hungrier and cleverer than Marcus knew how to be.
His head lifted to look over Marcus shoulder, Kyle freezes, eyes wide, mouth open. For a moment, Marcus is distracted by the slightly swollen look of his lips.
For a moment, nobody in the room moves and all Marcus can think about is the throb of Kyle's dick pressed into his hand.
"I have to say goodbye to him, too," says a voice, and Marcus isn't surprised that it's Blair standing in the doorway behind him, and only just now closing the door. He's the one who thought about her pressing her cheek against his chest to listen to his heartbeat, right? He's the one who conjured her up.
There's not a bit of this that isn't his fault.
Keeping Kyle cradled against him, pants sagging down around his skinny hips, Marcus half turns towards the door. Blair's standing there, dressed in soft leather and worn cotton, her hair pulled back from her face which is bare of any scrap of makeup. A sense memory slams into Marcus, of a girlfriend, once, who rode a bike, leather and sweat and the peculiar scent of the road which was dust and smoke and sun, and he can't quite separate out what's coming from Kyle and what's coming from Blair. There's a part of him that can't separate the ways in which he's experiencing both of them.
Kyle whines in the back of his throat and jerks his hips, pushing up into Marcus' curled fingers. Marcus looks at Blair and then back into Kyle's open face, a hint of a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.
"You really want to do this, kid?" he asks.
"I want you," mumbles Kyle, but his eyes flick to Blair, and slip into a darker shade of green.
It's enough.
Between them, they can figure it out.
Blair comes closer, loose-hipped and lovely with her hair down on her shoulders. This close, Marcus can see that she's not wearing anything under the thin, almost sheer cotton of her tank top. Dimly, he wonders when he learned that word, 'tank-top'. It sounds like something his brother would have known. He can't do anything but stare at her as she drags it over her head, nothing underneath it but smooth, tanned skin, a scar on her shoulder. Beautiful because it tells a story of where he's been. Kyle's the only one who's naked but Marcus and Blair are naked enough to match each other and none of it seems to matter. Nothing to be self conscious about, not for any of them. It's like this, this thing which Marcus could never have begun to imagine a few days ago, it's like it's the most natural thing in the world.
It's fucking glorious.
Marcus finds himself cradled between the two of them, Kyle in front of him, Blair behind with her tits pressed up against his back as she reaches around him to unfasten his pants. There are things that he wants to do here that he has no words for. What he can do is stroke Kyle in short, neat strokes, cradle him closer with one arm curled around his skinny shoulders as Blair's hand presses inside his pants and does the same thing for him.
"I want..." he mumbles, and that's all that he can get out but what he means is I want you and him and I want the three of us and I want to keep finding different ways to do this forever.
His heart aches because it's promised in so many places at once.
"I know," says Blair, and he should have known she'd be good at this from her quick, clever eyes and the easy way that she'd shared body-heat on that first night. His hips rock forward, pressing against Kyle's thigh and Blair's hair brushes against his shoulder as she presses her mouth to the soft, unguarded juncture of neck and shoulder. Maybe Marcus could find it in himself to believe in a Heaven like this; Blair's mouth, Kyle's skin, warmth flooding into him and reminding him of the way metal heats when rests against skin for a long time. His brother used to wear a St Christopher pendant that their mother gave him. Marcus never believed in God, but maybe he can believe in this. And, somewhere, he can maybe believe that it's possible for a man to become good again, if he wants to, if he gives and gives and gives.
"Close your eyes," says Blair, and, just before he does, Marcus watches Kyle close his like he's about to be kissed. They shift in the dark like dancers, until Kyle's back is against Marcus' bare chest, his tousled head leaned forward to rest against the slope of Blair's chest as Marcus strokes him...as, with her arm curled around Kyle's skinny waist, Blair's hand is moving quick and steady. He should have known that she wouldn't be anything else.
"Now imagine that we can be like this for the rest of our lives."
It's impossible, for a lot of reasons other than the obvious ones, but Marcus isn't sure if he's ever wanted anything to be true so desperately. He just wants it to be a little bit possible. He watches the way that Blair's face changes when Kyle shifts enough press one tit with his fingers, long and beautiful fingers which Marcus noticed the first time he saw him holding a gun. He hears the little sound that she makes when Kyle trails his tongue against her nipple.
"Okay," he says.
He cranes his neck to watch as Kyle squirms his hand down between his body and Blair's. He's known that the kid's a quick learner since the first day he met him. Desperately, like he's never been desperate for a woman before, Marcus wants to be the one pressing his hand between the layers of Blair's clothes, curving his fingers to fit against her cunt. Instead, he thumbs the head of Kyle's dick, making the kid's hips twist as he crushes a moan against Blair's skin. Marcus reaches out for Blair with his skeletal hand and, before he can cup her face, she turns her head and presses a kiss against mysterious and lovely bones. He brushes the corner of her mouth with his thumb and then draws her in to him, her mouth against his. With Kyle between them, they arch and make do.
Marcus can feel himself losing it, the increasingly erratic movements of his hips grinding Blair's fingers into the bare curve of Kyle's backside, and he's mumbling, trying to find the words to tell them both that he loves them both and he'll miss them when he's gone. If anything's left to miss them. Marcus was always the one who was good with machines, intuitively understood wires, but his brother was the one who knew how to leave notes on bathroom mirrors written in binary code. Strings of ones and zeroes. I love you forever.
He comes first, spurting hot against Blair's fingers, against Kyle's bare skin, and it ought to be dirty, coming on him like that, like something from a porn film but Marcus isn't thinking like that, not right now. Boneless, he keeps his hand moving, stroking, squeezing, urging Kyle on. His fingers twist in Blair's hair, pulling her in for a harder kiss like he's guilty for rushing on ahead of them. He moans and means, come back, come on, come closer.
"I can't..." mumbles Kyle, his head back now, against Marcus' shoulder, his throat stretched and trembling. Marcus can feel his pulse against his palm, right there, mirroring the one that's pulsing against Blair's fingers when she presses her hand against Kyle's chest. With the other, she cradles the side of his face, leaning in and up, onto her tiptoes to press a kiss to his forehead. His hand free, now, Marcus curls his fingers over and between Kyle's, so it's; both of them touching Blair, and it's both of them that she's rising to like the sun.
Kyle's eyes are wide and green and he shakes his head.
"I can't," he says again, softly, losing the end of the world in a moan, the movements of his hips turned spasmodic and trembling. As Marcus watches, Blair presses the sweetest, softest kiss imaginable to Kyle's slightly parted lips.
"Then don't," she tells him, softly. "Go on."
When Marcus was Kyle's age, he didn't need much, either. After the couple of days they've had, the life that Kyle's led, it must feel like the simplest thing in the world to give himself over to the two of them. It must be terrifying. His shoulders are trembling again and Marcus soothes him with one hand, Blair's lips against Kyle's forehead as her hips hitch and a perfect line of tension starts between her straight dark brows. Not long now. Too close to see it clearly. Kyle's fingers have stilled, lost their rhythm, but Marcus carries on fucking Blair smoothly with his fingers, while Kyle slips both arms around her and holds on tight. She bends her elbows and pushes the fingers of both hands into his tousled, curling hair, her hips moving smoothly now. Dimly, watching her face, listening to Kyle sigh and whimper, Marcus remembers a story that somebody told him once about a woman who holds up the sky with both hands, with a foot for each bank of a great river.
He bends his head, stretches, and presses his lips to the very faint red stripe still painted across her eyes.
When she comes, Blair tips her head back and tightens around his fingers, leans back into the circle of Kyle's arms, and she says something in a language that Marcus isn't sure that he's ever heard before.
He's got more proof of God here than he knows what to do with. It's all that he can do to hold on and try to hold his head.
They stand together for a few moments, the three of them, holding tight, holding fast, catching their breath. Between them, they strip off what's left of their clothes and then the three of them lie down together in the one bed, Marcus' head against Blair's shoulder, Kyle's cheek against Marcus' chest. It's amazing how easily they all fit into place.
"Now what?" says Kyle, finally, because there are things that he learned to be afraid of and things that he didn't, and he's got no sphere of experience for this.
"Now I stay still you're sleeping," says Marcus, quietly, and, in the end, it doesn't take long. Kyle drifts off into the bone-deep sleep of a hero but, more than that; he falls asleep with the real weariness of a kid who hasn't had a good night's sleep in his life. He lies there snoring softly with his cheek on Blair's chest, and she's lying there bare-breasted in the light of one lamp and she smiles as she watches Marcus stand on one leg to pull on his pants.
"What am I supposed to do now?" she asks him.
He shrugs and pulls his shirt over his head and then he walks slowly to the bend and bends over it, lifting her face with his hand against her cheek until he can kiss her, soft and sweet. He smoothes the hair back from Kyle's forehead with metal fingers warm from resting against skin.
"Look after him," he says, quietly. "Keep on holding up the sky."
That makes her smile, and Marcus pictures her up in her bird, pulsing between the earth and sky, and up there, no ruination, everything clean and cold.
He leaves them like that, Kyle and Blair together in the one bed with his memory somewhere in between them and walks down the long corridor and into Kate's operating theatre. She's already in a gown, and, on the table, John Connor drowses. Marcus can't help but smile.
How fucking easy it is to make God.
They settle him on the table, and it's all eerily familiar, except nobody's strapping him down and, this time, he signed his body away to two people, instead of just one. This time, right on the edge of everything again, nothing tastes of death.
"Do you have anything you need to say before we put you under?" says Kate. She's wearing a mask when she leans over him, but Marcus would know her anywhere by the tone of her voice and her Saint blue eyes. She's got this theory that he might come back a third time, back-up system, something like that, but she can't be sure.
The drugs start to take effect and, in the spinning that follows, Marcus sees Kyle's face. Blair curls her fingers gently around the back of the kid's neck and makes him look away.
What Marcus thinks is this: it's amazing how hard even a dying creature will fight if it means a moment more life. And he learned that from Kyle Reese.
He closes his eyes, shuts out Kate and her blue eyes, tightens his arms around Kyle and turns his face into Blair's forever-dark hair, bound with earth beads and feathers. He thinks about how machines are dangerous and cruel, but men are fucking crazy and, if they could imagine that, one day, less than ten years before he was born, that they would walk on the moon, then there's no limit on what they can do next.
It's just another journey and there's nothing to say, this time, not out of spite or sorrow or guilt. Nothing left to be said. Nothing left but the achingly human wide open opportunity of the empty sky overhead.
AUTHOR: eudaimon
WORDCOUNT: 4833
PAIRING: Kyle/Marcus/Blair
RATING: NC17
SUMMARY: His heart aches because it's promised in too many places at once, and there are so many ways to say goodbye.
SPOILERS: Through the end of Terminator Salvation.
DISCLAIMER: While I would like to borrow all three of them for half an hour, none of this is mine and no profit is being made.
A/N: Today, I finished reading The Road by Cormac McCarthy, so I expect there'll be epic roadtrip fic in my future, but, for now, here's my first offering in the fandom. For bzzinglikeneon and melloniel. Title from Bullets by Tunng. I hope that the threesome element of this is okay!
We're catching bullets with our heads and hearts and all the darkest parts of us
It's strange to find such lights in such endless night.
There's this trembling in Kyle's shoulders when Marcus settles John's coat around him and steps back. Kyle's brave enough, tough enough, old enough in the eyes that it's easy to forget that he's ten years younger than Marcus was sixteen years ago, although Marcus can't imagine that aging matters at all any more. He, at least, has gone beyond that. Everything's changed and nothing now can matter the way that it did. Some things, rare things, matter more.
He's still working out what those things are, but most of them seem to be embodied by this skinny kid with eyes that go green-silver like the patina on copper when he's trying not to cry.
After Marcus gives his heart to Kate, as honestly as he can, more honesty than he's ever given it to any other woman before her, his fingers itch to tighten on Kyle's shoulders and pull him back against him, just for a moment with Kyle's back against his chest and, in that moment, Marcus imagines feeling skinny strength in the muscle over Kyle's bones and the thud-thud-thudding of his own heart.
Promised, now. Given not once, but three times over.
And he'd thought that it was already long gone, buried in the earth with his kid brother, split in two and burned to ash with the bodies of two cops he'd never even had the time to look in the eyes. He did his best. It wasn't enough. He fucked up.
People fuck up all the time.
Most of the time, they don't ever come to know the real cost of their mistakes.
So that's what death tastes like. He regrets that, now. It's just another thing he's paying for.
Wrapped in John Connor's jacket, which smells of blood and ash and smoke, Kyle Reese leans against himself and the wind and he looks at Marcus for a long moment and then closes eyes gone the colour of hundred-year old church spires.
Marcus looks at Kate over Kyle's shoulder. She looks back. Only a woman with blue eyes that calm could love a man like John Connor. Kate looks at him and she can see that he has the patience of saints. Marcus knows a little bit, just a little, about caring for somebody with a destiny on their back. He's never been good at patience, but maybe he's coming into a little grace. Everybody deserves a second chance, he told Blair, beautiful with her red-warpaint faded across her eyes, and then she bent in, simple as song and kissed him, and there was Kyle's face, trying not to cry, and all Marcus can think is you've done good, kid. You'll do okay.
And then Star takes his hand.
"When?" he asks her, asks Kate, and there are stories in her blue eyes, stories that woman have always known, and told. Stories about love, and loss of love, and love asked for, begged for, but rarely given. Marcus is a little in love with Kate Connor, right then, with Kyle at one shoulder and Blair at the other.
.
"When you're ready. Not before," she says, but he catches the way she looks at John on the table. What Marcus Wright has learned is this: that it's the things that you categorically know about yourself that matter, in the end, and that, in the end, it doesn't matter if they're true or not, just as long you're the one who knows.
What he knows is that there's one thing left that he has to do before the end of this.
"Won't take too long," he promises her, and he won't. There's just one thing here that he's going to take the time to do.
*
Listen. Here it is:
In a dark room with clean worn sheets on a narrow bed, Marcus eases the coat down off Kyle's shoulders. The red armband is something to be worn with pride; earned. Freely given. Marcus guesses that he's earned his too by now. Slowly, he bends his head and kisses the side of Kyle's neck, which is made achingly vulnerable by the tilt of his head, which is all the permission that Marcus needs to continue. Kyle is nineteen years old; things change once a minute when you're that age. Marcus remembers feeling like he might live forever when he was that age, and maybe he wasn't as fucking wrong as he thought.
Maybe he's got nine lives like a cat. Maybe a hundred. Maybe he's as infinite as God, or, maybe he's got until his warrantee runs out.
He sort of likes the not knowing.
Kyle groans softly and pushes his ass back against Marcus. It's one of those little gestures, unconscious but utterly telling. Marcus remembers things like that, softer girls and boys tugged gently back against him so he could be good to them for a few hours or a few days, or weeks or months. He'd been two men, then, but that one, he'd had gentle hands.
He keeps the hand that's melted down to metal bones behind his back when he touches Kyle, flesh fingers flipping and finding their way through layers of worn clothing to find surprisingly soft skin underneath. Kyle's face is dirty and worn, but his belly, that's pale and soft, waiting for the warmth of Marcus' whole hand pressed against the tense, trembling muscles there. Marcus turns his face and just the very tip of his nose brushes against the sweaty hair at Kyle's temple. It's the smallest gesture in the world, but there are things in it which threaten to undo him.
Take a breath, shithead. Carry on.
This is for both of them.
Layer after layer follow the coat, heaping up on the bed, so many layers, and when he wraps his arms around Kyle's naked waist to draw him in snuggly, Marcus remembers the first thing he ever really heard Kyle Reese say.
Come with me if you want to live, he said.
Maybe now, right now, Marcus is starting to understand what he meant.
There are bruises on Kyle's ribs and he sucks air through his teeth when Marcus presses his hand over one, rubbing gently with his thumb. Slowly, so slowly, he presses three metal fingers against Kyle's rib-cage, curling around so that they almost brush a nipple, brown against Kyle's pale skin. He feels the way Kyle's breath catches when he's touched like that, a little sigh.
"Cold?" asks Marcus quietly, his mouth close to Kyle's ear.
Kyle shakes his head.
"Don't stop," he says, which isn't an answer to the question at all.
Marcus doesn't stop. He couldn't. He moves to stand in front of Kyle, brushing dark hair back from his forehead with metal fingers, the other sliding to cup Kyle's face. He draws him into a kiss so soft, so gentle that Marcus can't quite believe it of either of them. Marcus remembers softer times, once upon a time, before everything went so definitely, categorically to shit. He wonders if, in eighteen or nineteen years on the planet, Kyle's ever had a moment to be soft. His lips yield in the most pleasing way. He doesn't flinch when Marcus touches him with either hand, and that's something to be fucking grateful for.
"You're a brave kid," he murmurs, sucking lightly on Kyle's bottom lip. He tastes of a dying world but, underneath, something fundamental hot and alive. No death to taste here. What Kyle Reese tastes of is the life that comes after death, green things growing up through ashy soil, defying hope and expectation. New life. More life.
He tastes of resurrection, or the possibility of it, at least.
With his eyes still closed, Kyle frowns, just a little, and licks his bottom lip. In the back of his head, Marcus suddenly remembers the temperature that blood keeps.
"I'm not a kid," he says, as Marcus leans in and presses his lips against the crease between his brows.
"I know you're not."
Once upon a time, one of Marcus' favourite things in the world was standing in the shower with his hands against the walls and the water running as hot as he could stand it for as long as he could stand it. No shower here. The water in the bowl is cool and clean, the cloth worn soft with age. It's enough. Marcus squeezes the excess water out of it before he presses it against the side of Kyle's neck. He has sharp angles, like he grew up in small, tight spaces and changed to fit them. A rivulet of water runs down, following the sharp line of Kyle's collarbone. It takes grime with it. Carefully, Marcus wipes every trace of that place off of Kyle's skin. By the end, the water in the basin is greasy and dark and Kyle's skin is slick and bright and catches what light there is in the narrow room. Kyle raises damp hands, pushing them under the collar of Marcus' coat and shoving it down off his shoulders. Marcus remembers being touched like this. He thinks that maybe it was Blair lying there with her head against his chest that first reminded him. He spent a long time in small, dark rooms, and forgot what it felt like to be touched kindly.
"We don't have a lot of time," he reminds Kyle, already tugging his shirt up over his head.
"We’ve got enough," says Kyle, bending his head to press three kisses against Marcus' chest. Maybe this close to the end of the world, it's easier to make the most of a little. Or maybe Kyle's still young enough that he thinks that he might just live forever.
And maybe a kid like Kyle Reese can speak nothing but the truth...
And maybe miracles fucking happen.
Marcus doesn’t know what he believes anymore.
Eager, Kyle leans in, naked chest against Marcus' bare skin, but he has to stretch up to kiss. He's got to wonder how many times in eighteen or nineteen years Kyle has had the chance to do this. He's got to wonder how expensive the simplest fucking things in the world became in terms of time free and space given, after the end of the world. He smoothes his whole whole hand down the smooth curve of Kyle's back, all the way down to his ass, tugging their hips flush together.
"You don't have to do this," he says, softly, grateful, yeah, for the yearning twitch of Kyle's lips when he scrapes his mouth against his jaw...so grateful, but he needs no reward here.
I'm not a good guy, he told Blair, and she told him that he was, and he didn't know it yet.
Everyone comes to the end that they deserve.
"Yeah, but I want to," says Kyle, and what he means is Let me. Love me. You might not wake up a third time.
Marcus hears it clear as day.
Consciously, he slows everything down after that, kisses Kyle carefully, gently. Almost reverent. He remembers feeling this way about sex when he was very young, probably not much younger than Kyle is now, but it feels like something a million years ago. He moves back enough to get both hands between them, changing the angle of Kyle's hips with ten fingers on his waistband. The fabric of Kyle's pants is worn soft and thin with age and it's easy enough to thumb buttons undone one-handed. He brushes the backs of his fingers against the quivering muscles of Kyle's belly. Deceptively skinny in his clothes, Marcus can see the quiet strength in him now.
Like he could have doubted it from the first time he saw the fearless way that Kyle hefted Star when they had to run.
Every time he starts to think that everything beautiful has already been bled out of the world, something goes and reminds him that, once upon a very long fucking time ago, life was good. Maybe. For a while.
Not sure that he could stop now if he wanted to, Marcus shoves a hand into Kyle's pants, curls his fingers around his dick. He forces himself to go slow. With one arm curled around him, the kid feels almost fragile, like he might break in two, but then Marcus remembers the lines of Kyle's muscles, and everything he must have taken, and everything he must have survived. Marcus strokes him gently, knuckles grazing against Kyle's belly, and he pulls back enough that he can look into the kid's face. Kyle's got his eyes closed, biting into his bottom lip so hard that it's showing white. Marcus' hand stops moving and Kyle makes a soft sound, a yearning sound, his hips hitching, lifting, so, for a beat, he's fucking himself in the circle of Marcus' fingers.
"Can I..?" He opens his eyes and they're huge and green in his flushed face. "I just..." He whimpers and shifts his hips again.
"What?" says Marcus, a smile touching the corner of his mouth like he isn't already a creature nearly dying. Ridiculous, that he'd finally remember how.
The smile that Kyle gives Marcus is heart-breaking in its sweetness. It might be the first actual proof of God that Marcus has ever seen, a smile like that. Or, at least, proof that good things might still happen, and a clue to why end of the world myths are so often about beginning worlds, too.
"More," he says.
How's Marcus supposed to say 'no' to that?
Which is sort of the point.
Kyle groans softly and Marcus cradles his head against his shoulder, fingers sinking into Kyle's scruffy hair. He rubs his thumb over the head of Kyle's dick, fingers stroking, and he can't remember the name of the last kid he did this to, the last time somebody trusted him to do something like this. That was another world, and it came down, so they built another one, and then ruined that one too. Still, it feels like that might almost be okay, with this boy in his arms, with his choice made, his permission given. It's liberating to know that everything's out of his hands now except Kyle. And this one thing, he can do.
Gently, as gently as he can manage, he lifts his other hand, metal fingers cupping Kyle's chin and turning his face up so that he can lean down and kiss him, stroking his dick between them. His own dick's hard, so hard, echoing the throb in his temple and his chest. You've got a strong heart, Blair had told him. Right now, Marcus feels like it's about to split out of his chest.
Wrapped up in Kyle's mouth, Kyle's dick, the heat pouring off his skin, Marcus almost doesn't hear the door open and close behind him. Still, there's a part of him that cried his first night in a prison cell and then quickly got used to listening to everything that was happening around and sleeping with one eye open. Maybe he even forgot how to sleep. Kyle, though, he grew up wary, grew up scared. His dad died and left him alone, and he'd been born in the dark, which meant that he was hungrier and cleverer than Marcus knew how to be.
His head lifted to look over Marcus shoulder, Kyle freezes, eyes wide, mouth open. For a moment, Marcus is distracted by the slightly swollen look of his lips.
For a moment, nobody in the room moves and all Marcus can think about is the throb of Kyle's dick pressed into his hand.
"I have to say goodbye to him, too," says a voice, and Marcus isn't surprised that it's Blair standing in the doorway behind him, and only just now closing the door. He's the one who thought about her pressing her cheek against his chest to listen to his heartbeat, right? He's the one who conjured her up.
There's not a bit of this that isn't his fault.
Keeping Kyle cradled against him, pants sagging down around his skinny hips, Marcus half turns towards the door. Blair's standing there, dressed in soft leather and worn cotton, her hair pulled back from her face which is bare of any scrap of makeup. A sense memory slams into Marcus, of a girlfriend, once, who rode a bike, leather and sweat and the peculiar scent of the road which was dust and smoke and sun, and he can't quite separate out what's coming from Kyle and what's coming from Blair. There's a part of him that can't separate the ways in which he's experiencing both of them.
Kyle whines in the back of his throat and jerks his hips, pushing up into Marcus' curled fingers. Marcus looks at Blair and then back into Kyle's open face, a hint of a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.
"You really want to do this, kid?" he asks.
"I want you," mumbles Kyle, but his eyes flick to Blair, and slip into a darker shade of green.
It's enough.
Between them, they can figure it out.
Blair comes closer, loose-hipped and lovely with her hair down on her shoulders. This close, Marcus can see that she's not wearing anything under the thin, almost sheer cotton of her tank top. Dimly, he wonders when he learned that word, 'tank-top'. It sounds like something his brother would have known. He can't do anything but stare at her as she drags it over her head, nothing underneath it but smooth, tanned skin, a scar on her shoulder. Beautiful because it tells a story of where he's been. Kyle's the only one who's naked but Marcus and Blair are naked enough to match each other and none of it seems to matter. Nothing to be self conscious about, not for any of them. It's like this, this thing which Marcus could never have begun to imagine a few days ago, it's like it's the most natural thing in the world.
It's fucking glorious.
Marcus finds himself cradled between the two of them, Kyle in front of him, Blair behind with her tits pressed up against his back as she reaches around him to unfasten his pants. There are things that he wants to do here that he has no words for. What he can do is stroke Kyle in short, neat strokes, cradle him closer with one arm curled around his skinny shoulders as Blair's hand presses inside his pants and does the same thing for him.
"I want..." he mumbles, and that's all that he can get out but what he means is I want you and him and I want the three of us and I want to keep finding different ways to do this forever.
His heart aches because it's promised in so many places at once.
"I know," says Blair, and he should have known she'd be good at this from her quick, clever eyes and the easy way that she'd shared body-heat on that first night. His hips rock forward, pressing against Kyle's thigh and Blair's hair brushes against his shoulder as she presses her mouth to the soft, unguarded juncture of neck and shoulder. Maybe Marcus could find it in himself to believe in a Heaven like this; Blair's mouth, Kyle's skin, warmth flooding into him and reminding him of the way metal heats when rests against skin for a long time. His brother used to wear a St Christopher pendant that their mother gave him. Marcus never believed in God, but maybe he can believe in this. And, somewhere, he can maybe believe that it's possible for a man to become good again, if he wants to, if he gives and gives and gives.
"Close your eyes," says Blair, and, just before he does, Marcus watches Kyle close his like he's about to be kissed. They shift in the dark like dancers, until Kyle's back is against Marcus' bare chest, his tousled head leaned forward to rest against the slope of Blair's chest as Marcus strokes him...as, with her arm curled around Kyle's skinny waist, Blair's hand is moving quick and steady. He should have known that she wouldn't be anything else.
"Now imagine that we can be like this for the rest of our lives."
It's impossible, for a lot of reasons other than the obvious ones, but Marcus isn't sure if he's ever wanted anything to be true so desperately. He just wants it to be a little bit possible. He watches the way that Blair's face changes when Kyle shifts enough press one tit with his fingers, long and beautiful fingers which Marcus noticed the first time he saw him holding a gun. He hears the little sound that she makes when Kyle trails his tongue against her nipple.
"Okay," he says.
He cranes his neck to watch as Kyle squirms his hand down between his body and Blair's. He's known that the kid's a quick learner since the first day he met him. Desperately, like he's never been desperate for a woman before, Marcus wants to be the one pressing his hand between the layers of Blair's clothes, curving his fingers to fit against her cunt. Instead, he thumbs the head of Kyle's dick, making the kid's hips twist as he crushes a moan against Blair's skin. Marcus reaches out for Blair with his skeletal hand and, before he can cup her face, she turns her head and presses a kiss against mysterious and lovely bones. He brushes the corner of her mouth with his thumb and then draws her in to him, her mouth against his. With Kyle between them, they arch and make do.
Marcus can feel himself losing it, the increasingly erratic movements of his hips grinding Blair's fingers into the bare curve of Kyle's backside, and he's mumbling, trying to find the words to tell them both that he loves them both and he'll miss them when he's gone. If anything's left to miss them. Marcus was always the one who was good with machines, intuitively understood wires, but his brother was the one who knew how to leave notes on bathroom mirrors written in binary code. Strings of ones and zeroes. I love you forever.
He comes first, spurting hot against Blair's fingers, against Kyle's bare skin, and it ought to be dirty, coming on him like that, like something from a porn film but Marcus isn't thinking like that, not right now. Boneless, he keeps his hand moving, stroking, squeezing, urging Kyle on. His fingers twist in Blair's hair, pulling her in for a harder kiss like he's guilty for rushing on ahead of them. He moans and means, come back, come on, come closer.
"I can't..." mumbles Kyle, his head back now, against Marcus' shoulder, his throat stretched and trembling. Marcus can feel his pulse against his palm, right there, mirroring the one that's pulsing against Blair's fingers when she presses her hand against Kyle's chest. With the other, she cradles the side of his face, leaning in and up, onto her tiptoes to press a kiss to his forehead. His hand free, now, Marcus curls his fingers over and between Kyle's, so it's; both of them touching Blair, and it's both of them that she's rising to like the sun.
Kyle's eyes are wide and green and he shakes his head.
"I can't," he says again, softly, losing the end of the world in a moan, the movements of his hips turned spasmodic and trembling. As Marcus watches, Blair presses the sweetest, softest kiss imaginable to Kyle's slightly parted lips.
"Then don't," she tells him, softly. "Go on."
When Marcus was Kyle's age, he didn't need much, either. After the couple of days they've had, the life that Kyle's led, it must feel like the simplest thing in the world to give himself over to the two of them. It must be terrifying. His shoulders are trembling again and Marcus soothes him with one hand, Blair's lips against Kyle's forehead as her hips hitch and a perfect line of tension starts between her straight dark brows. Not long now. Too close to see it clearly. Kyle's fingers have stilled, lost their rhythm, but Marcus carries on fucking Blair smoothly with his fingers, while Kyle slips both arms around her and holds on tight. She bends her elbows and pushes the fingers of both hands into his tousled, curling hair, her hips moving smoothly now. Dimly, watching her face, listening to Kyle sigh and whimper, Marcus remembers a story that somebody told him once about a woman who holds up the sky with both hands, with a foot for each bank of a great river.
He bends his head, stretches, and presses his lips to the very faint red stripe still painted across her eyes.
When she comes, Blair tips her head back and tightens around his fingers, leans back into the circle of Kyle's arms, and she says something in a language that Marcus isn't sure that he's ever heard before.
He's got more proof of God here than he knows what to do with. It's all that he can do to hold on and try to hold his head.
They stand together for a few moments, the three of them, holding tight, holding fast, catching their breath. Between them, they strip off what's left of their clothes and then the three of them lie down together in the one bed, Marcus' head against Blair's shoulder, Kyle's cheek against Marcus' chest. It's amazing how easily they all fit into place.
"Now what?" says Kyle, finally, because there are things that he learned to be afraid of and things that he didn't, and he's got no sphere of experience for this.
"Now I stay still you're sleeping," says Marcus, quietly, and, in the end, it doesn't take long. Kyle drifts off into the bone-deep sleep of a hero but, more than that; he falls asleep with the real weariness of a kid who hasn't had a good night's sleep in his life. He lies there snoring softly with his cheek on Blair's chest, and she's lying there bare-breasted in the light of one lamp and she smiles as she watches Marcus stand on one leg to pull on his pants.
"What am I supposed to do now?" she asks him.
He shrugs and pulls his shirt over his head and then he walks slowly to the bend and bends over it, lifting her face with his hand against her cheek until he can kiss her, soft and sweet. He smoothes the hair back from Kyle's forehead with metal fingers warm from resting against skin.
"Look after him," he says, quietly. "Keep on holding up the sky."
That makes her smile, and Marcus pictures her up in her bird, pulsing between the earth and sky, and up there, no ruination, everything clean and cold.
He leaves them like that, Kyle and Blair together in the one bed with his memory somewhere in between them and walks down the long corridor and into Kate's operating theatre. She's already in a gown, and, on the table, John Connor drowses. Marcus can't help but smile.
How fucking easy it is to make God.
They settle him on the table, and it's all eerily familiar, except nobody's strapping him down and, this time, he signed his body away to two people, instead of just one. This time, right on the edge of everything again, nothing tastes of death.
"Do you have anything you need to say before we put you under?" says Kate. She's wearing a mask when she leans over him, but Marcus would know her anywhere by the tone of her voice and her Saint blue eyes. She's got this theory that he might come back a third time, back-up system, something like that, but she can't be sure.
The drugs start to take effect and, in the spinning that follows, Marcus sees Kyle's face. Blair curls her fingers gently around the back of the kid's neck and makes him look away.
What Marcus thinks is this: it's amazing how hard even a dying creature will fight if it means a moment more life. And he learned that from Kyle Reese.
He closes his eyes, shuts out Kate and her blue eyes, tightens his arms around Kyle and turns his face into Blair's forever-dark hair, bound with earth beads and feathers. He thinks about how machines are dangerous and cruel, but men are fucking crazy and, if they could imagine that, one day, less than ten years before he was born, that they would walk on the moon, then there's no limit on what they can do next.
It's just another journey and there's nothing to say, this time, not out of spite or sorrow or guilt. Nothing left to be said. Nothing left but the achingly human wide open opportunity of the empty sky overhead.