I'll Get You There, Part 1

[not_a_good_man]

Title: I'll Get You There, part 1
Author: falco_conlon and worlddescending
Character/Pairing: John Connor/Marcus Wright. Includes most characters from TV and movie verse as well as some OCs as well.
Rating: NC-17 eventually
Warnings: Seeing as this is the Terminator 'verse, there is death, bad language and general unpleasantness. And m/m slash.
Summary: Welcome to the jungle / We take it day by day / If you want it you're gonna bleed / But it's the price you pay
Disclaimer: These characters belong to James Cameron, Josh Friedman and people who are not us. We are also poor. Please don't sue.
Author Notes: This started out as a discussion of PORN. Then came the plot. 30K words later, and we're both awed by the epic. We cherry-picked what we wanted from all over the place here, bringing in movie and TV verse as well as hearts_andminds 'verse.



The others had been dismissed. The room was hollow and quiet around them but for the clank of the chains and the rush of air against metal of the tunnels. A man who was part machine. Who didn't know it. There was something that nagged at the back of his head and he stared at Marcus's face, his own drawn tight. What are you.

Who are you.

You like it. The memory hit him between the eyes and John staggered back a step. "Who are you?!"

"My name," was the reply, "my name is Marcus Wright." He'd done this. He'd told him this. Dull eyes dragged up to meet John's.

"Marcus Wright." John's jaw went slack before he grit his teeth together. He stepped closer. "Do you know me?"

"John Connor," he said, "I heard your voice, on the radio." He paused, head dropping. "Very inspiring."

"No. No." Taking his chin, John pulled it up, dipping his own to meet his gaze. "Do you know me."

It would be easier to answer these questions if he wasn't hanging from the ceiling, he thought, but didn't say it. "I've never met you," he said, confused by the touch at the chin. It was familiar and unsettling.

"You have met me." John's grip tightened before he let him go. "You have." Goddamnit. No one ever remembered. Not Kate, no one. And Derek was gone, a dream. "You've met me." He stalked away, back to Marcus. "What about Haurvatat? Does that sound familiar?" His voice echoed off the walls.

"You have me chained to the ceiling, asshole," he said, voice gruff and unamused, "and I don't know what the fuck you're talking about."

"You're a threat." John turned around slowly. "You're a threat and can't be trusted."

Do you want to kill me, Marcus?

He walked closer again. "Do you want to kill me?"

"I don't want to kill you," he said, lip curled in disgust, "but I wouldn't mind beating the shit out of you." He needed to get out of here. He needed to find Kyle. Kyle was the only reason he'd come looking for Connor in the first place.

"Fuck you." John rolled his eyes. What was new? He looked at the door, they were still alone. Then he looked back at Marcus and studied him for a long moment. "You don't know me. At all."

"No!" he said, "but if you know me, would you cut the bullshit and tell me what the hell is going on?"

Walking over, boot heels loud on the floor, John yanked on one of the chains that pulled Marcus's wrists down and angled him over solid flooring. Then he unlocked the chain and set him free but for one ankle. "You know me," he hissed. "We met. You and I met and we-- we met. When I was seventeen. Almost eighteen. In Haurvatat."

Marcus looked down at the bound ankle and tugged on it a bit. "I don't know you," he said, not looking up, "I don't know what Haurvatat is. I woke up in LA two days ago."

"Nobody remembers." John scrubbed over his hair, over his face. Why did he bother? "We met. Just ... never mind. You woke up in LA, two days ago. You donated your body to science after being executed and woke up two days ago. You're trying to find K--"

Holy fuck.

"You're trying to find Kyle." Kyle.

They had to find Kyle. "Where is he?!"

"Skynet," Marcus said gruffly, still tugging on the chain, "San Fransisco. You know I could snap this, right?"

"Whatever. Skynet. San Francisco?" With the Resistance plan, that didn't give them much time.

You loved her.

He could really live without the memories now. Really. John looked over at Marcus. "You can get in?"

Marcus looked up at him in surprise. "Yeah." And he knew it was true. "Look at me." Marcus gestured to his chest, blown half to hell with the Coltan exposed. "I can get in."

John nodded. "Should I trust you?"

"To get Kyle out?" he asked, tipping his chin up, "yes. You should."

Kate, the others, they would have John's head. They didn't understand. They didn't understand that his life had made him different, had made him this person who trusted machines. Perhaps more than he should. He tossed Marcus a communicator. "You can reach me that way. Don't be a hero. Just get in."

Marcus caught it, slipped it in his pocket and, taking a hold of the axle his ankle was still bound to, snapped the chain with a quick jerk of muscle and metal. "Never said I'd try and be a hero," he said, straightening again, "I'm not anything."

It was on the tip of John's tongue to say something to that. To answer or address.

He didn't.

He needed to figure out what to tell the others; there would be questions. "Wait." He walked up to Marcus. "Hit me." A hand up. "Don't kill me, just make it look good."

That he could do. Marcus drew back and slugged Connor across the jaw. Not hard enough to snap his neck, mind you, but certainly hard enough to knock him out. That done, Marcus took the man's jacket, shrugged it on and zipped it up to hide the damage, and jumped down into the pit he'd been hanging over. Easiest way out would be through the sewer he'd seen down there, and with any luck he'd be halfway to Skynet by the time they noticed he was gone.

+++++++++++++++

When he woke up, everything hurt. It was just that simple. John opened his eyes, first and looked around. Medical. Kate wouldn't be far away. There were tubes, there were fluids.

There was someone else in the room. He turned his head and even that hurt.

Marcus. Why wasn't he surprised? "Hey," he tried to call and it sounded all craggy and dry. "Wright. Wake up."

"I am awake," he said, his voice clear and even. He turned his head to look over at Connor, his eyes dark. "Been awake for a while." Through surgery. It had been an experience.

"What happened?" It pained him to admit that he wasn't sure. John watched Marcus's face.

"We blew up Skynet," he said, looking back at the ceiling, "and I remember Haurvatat." The moment he'd died, that's when he'd gone. And then when John had brought him back, he was looking up into the face of a man he'd known as a seventeen year old boy with eyes too old for the rest of him.

"You -- remember?" Really? John kind of stared at him from the bed. "Did we save Kyle?" Then they'd get back to the village. Someone else remembered the village. God.

"Kyle is fine," he said, looking hard at the ceiling and pointedly not at John. It had been a shock to come back. Leaving that place, the only real home he'd ever known, leaving Allison..."We saved him."

"You remember." It made it hard for John to breathe - not that whatever had happened to him made it any easier. "Everything?" Kyle was safe. Star, too, then. If only he could find Derek.

"Yeah, Connor, I remember." Marcus sat up, despite the various wires on his chest and the IV (did he need an IV?), and proceeded to detach himself. "I remember everything. You, your mom, Derek and Kyle."

John wanted to sit up, but it was pretty clear after a minute that that wasn't going to happen, so he just looked. "I can't find Derek," he admitted. "And my mom is dead." Marcus looked exactly the same as when John was seventeen. "I cut you open."

"You did," he said with a nod, "and now you've blown me up. Got to see all the parts." He slid off the bed and grabbed a shirt that was folded near by. Marcus tugged it over himself, the metal of his exposed hand glinting in the dim light of the bunker. "And look at you now. All important."

As if that mattered. It didn't. It never had. John had to force himself to look away. "So important I can't sit up. A little hand here?"

Marcus rounded his bed and eased John up, a hand on his arm and one in the small of his back. "You know, you don't even look that different..."

"Yeah?" Grunting at the effort, John smirked a little. "Is that good or bad?" He slowly, with help, slid his legs over the side and was already winded. The hell.

"It's just strange," he said. "You sure you wanna get up?" He was different in some ways. Bigger, obviously, no longer gawky and teenaged, but hard. Scarred. Bitten. But the eyes were the same, and Marcus caught himself looking just a little too long.

"Yeah, I'm sure. People are waiting." When he caught Marcus's eye, though, John stopped. "Do I have boogers?" The half-grin he offered, was reminiscent, perhaps.

"No, it's just I saw you yesterday and you were seventeen." Marcus jerked his head at him. "Are you getting up or what?"

"Yeah." John leaned heavily on Marcus and stood up. The gown nearly hit his knees and it took a minute for him to not feel like he was going to fall down. "Okay." After that moment. "I need to see what's going on." Which meant he needed to get dressed.

"Clothes are over there." He gestured, holding John's weight without trouble. He hadn't been wearing a gown. Just his pants, and now the shirt he'd pulled on. "And I'm thinking, if you can barely get up, your wife won't be interested in seeing you walking."

His wife. Kate. In some bizarre way, John had somehow in talking about the village, forgotten about Kate. He felt guilty about it, feeling the ring on his finger, too, and Marcus's arms around him. "Just help me get dressed, okay?"

Marcus didn't say anything, but propped John up against the bed before retrieving the clothes. He started with the pants, the usual black cargos common with the organized resistance, then reached back to untie the gown.

Suddenly they were close and for some reason, John's breath caught. It was exertion, of course. John let the gown shrug down his shoulders and with a hiss, he pulled out the tubes from his arms. "Fuck," he hissed out. Okay, so that hurt.

Marcus smirked a little. "You should get yourself some machinery. Wouldn't hurt so bad." What a joke. John Connor, a man-machine, like him. He'd gathered the shirt up so it was easy to get on the man's arms, stepping even closer to pull it up, then over his head.

"Tell my mother that," John laughed out. "She shocked herself once, with a defibrillator." If she could do that, he could get dressed, right? Marcus still smelled like a man, slightly tangy with dried sweat. John was flushed red when they finally got the shirt on.

It was strange seeing a man like John Connor blush, which Marcus could see easily, despite the dim light. "What do you expect to see by jumping out of bed after you've just had the shit kicked out of you by a T-800?"

"Uncle Bob." Insult to physical injury. "I have to get to work. The war didn't end, right?" He was dressed and it was time to move. Well, to get his boots and move. "Thanks." Marcus could back away now.

He did so, taking one long step back, his boots heavy on the ground. "Help me out first," he said evenly, "what's going to happen to me?" He was still a machine, at the end of the day.

If he remembered the village he could relax. John looked at the door and back at Marcus. "You'll be with me." Until he found Cameron. And even after that, perhaps. "You'll keep fighting. With me."

"What?" he asked, brow furrowed. "Stay with you? As what, like...your bodyguard?" He wasn't sure he was fond of that idea. "Like Cameron?"

"No." It was more than that. Of course. "You fight. With me." Bodyguard. Please. John even rolled his eyes. "If you don't want to? Fine. Go fight with the grunts. I'm keeping Kyle close, you can stay close, or go out on your own, I guess. Not my decision."

Even as he said that, he found himself, his chest tight, waiting for the answer.

"I stay with Kyle," he said, "and if he's with you, then so am I." He'd been tempted to add "I don't give a shit where you go" but that would have been a lie. Maybe Marcus hadn't done any of this for John, but he sure as hell wasn't an idiot, and he could see how important Connor was, even as a figurehead.

And the figurehead had some decisions to make.

With what they learned, they shifted the fight. Out of the open, into the tunnels, to hide better, to make strategic moves, to take over Serrano, to move forward in small increments.

The fights were fast and vicious. Bloody. Bedell was an asset as was Marcus, of course. John missed Derek every day.

He didn't even know what day it was when they went out and found HKs no matter where they turned. When he lost track of Kyle and Marcus and Bedell and was fighting on one side and couldn't stop to look around or they'd lose more than they already did. The smoke was so thick in the air that it was hard to breathe.

They didn't win. It showed on John's face and he stormed back into the power plant. "Where are they?!" He shouted. "Where are my men?!"

No, they didn't win. Marcus had split off with three other men, but he'd come back alone. He didn't know where Kyle was, and when he didn't know where Kyle was, he got cranky. In the end, it had meant hand to hand with an older model, which meant he would ache come morning, but he'd also the satisfaction of twisting the thing's head off. Sometimes having a Coltan endoskeleton had its upsides.

He ducked back into the plant, eyes watering from smoke and convinced he was the only one to make it out of the shit. They'd hit hard, and he could still hear the HKs overhead, looking.

But then Connor's voice cut through the sound of dying men and machines.

"Where are--" John turned when he saw Marcus, striding up. "Where's Kyle?!" They were nose to nose and everyone else was backing off; Connor pissed off was ... unpleasant. "Tell me you know where he is."

"I don't," he said coolly, even though the fact that Kyle wasn't with Connor was enough to make him want to snap necks, "I got pulled off. They split us all up."

"Goddamnit." John turned away, stalking back toward the door. He was going back out.

That was when Bedell and Kyle appeared, dirty, but unharmed. Jesus. When they were checked with, John turned, pointing at Marcus. "You. Come with me. Now." And he was heading for his bunker in the back.

Tension bled visibly from Marcus' shoulders when the young man appeared, but he didn't give him more than a nod before following Connor. "Blaming this one on me, huh?" he asked as they walked. The two men had a contentious relationship. Marcus wasn't good at taking orders. John was good at giving them. It didn't mesh well.

"You keep him safe!" How many times did they have to go over this?! It was basic. Basic. "You keep him safe. Is that hard for you to understand?! I can try to explain it again, if it is." They were nose to nose again, John unafraid.

"We got separated," Marcus replied through gritted teeth, kicking the door shut behind him. The slam echoed through the plant. "I didn't let him wander off. We were forced apart."

"Then you force your way back." It's what John would do. It's basic. "There is one imperative for you. Keep Kyle alive. Everything hinges on that, but you know that. You fucking know that!" It'd be so easy to punch him in the face.

And break his fist.

"Right," he said with a sneer, "keep Kyle alive so that you won't blip out of existence because Christ knows we'd all be lost if John Connor disappeared." He hated that this man would imply he wouldn't throw himself on a mine for Kyle, wouldn't twist his own head off. "Everything I've done since I woke up here, was for him." Marcus leaned in, "Not for you. For him. So fuck you, Connor."

"Fuck you, Marcus. You know what? Fuck you." John shoved him back, following, a step behind. "Get the fuck. Out. Of. My. Face." A push punctuating each word. "You. Insubordinate. Asshole."

At a certain point, once Marcus squared himself, he just couldn't be shoved. He caught John's hands, pushed them down to his sides. "Stop pushing me, Connor," he said, head cocked to the side, eyes gleaming once in a way that wasn't quite human. "I'm not Cameron. You can rile me. I will fight back."

"Now you fight back." John didn't need to roll his eyes, it was evident in his tone, his own eyes narrowed to slits, jaw hard. "Great timing. You're the perfect fighting machine, aren't you, Wright? An hour too late."

"Fuck you, Connor!" He did shove him, hard. "I'd die for that kid and you fucking know it! But you don't like it." He paused, eyes going wide. "You're jealous."

"What?" Seriously, what? John couldn't have been caught more off-guard if Marcus had ripped his skin off and stood there just as an endoskeleton. He staggered back a few steps and then righted himself. "... what?"

"You're jealous!" he barked, "that I would do anything for him, maybe everything, but not for you. You're so used to being Jesus Fucking Christ, the reason everyone keeps fighting, but you aren't why I'm fighting, Connor. Kyle is."

For a second, John's face was blank. And then - then - he just started to laugh. Seriously laugh.

It was so fucking absurd. "Yeah. Okay, Wright. Whatever."

"Then what is it, John?" he asked, still leaning in, "why is it I get the shit every time the kid is out of your sight for two seconds? Why is it? Unless it's me you're jealous of." He sneered sharply. "Can't stand that your own father is closer to a machine than he is to you, huh?"

"He's -- you're --" John was speechless. What the fuck? It's basic. Keep Kyle safe. That was all. That was everything. He stepped back into Marcus's space and shook his head very slowly. "I'm going to say this to you one more time. Maybe then it'll sink in. I didn't expect you to be so slow, Wright. Keep. Kyle. Safe. Get it?"

"I do!" he shouted, furious, "I do you arrogant asshole! I do, but it isn't good enough for you!"

"BECAUSE YOU FAILED!" John had a fistful of Marcus's uniform in his hand and for some reason, he wasn't pulling or pushing, just holding on so tightly his knuckles were white.

"I. Didn't." The words were hissed. "It happens, Connor. We're at war and we get separated. You can't blame me for that." His hands curled in John's jacket, giving him a solid shake. "What is this about!?"

Was John speaking fucking French?! Did Marcus have a sudden problem understanding English? "I do blame you for that!"

Oh, Christ.

When John's mouth crashed against Marcus's, nearly hard enough to draw blood, he was just as surprised as the other man might've been.

But Marcus was more surprised that he wasn't surprised. His arm went around John's shoulders, hand pressed hard to the back of his head as he returned the kiss. It was an angry embrace, but it was still a kiss, hot and needy and he was clutching at the man.

They were both dirty. Filthy. Marcus tasted of smoke and dirt and for some reason, it made John hold tighter to him, one hand still in his jacket, the other cupping his head and he was hard. So hard it made his knees weak.

Marcus broke the kiss with a rough gasp, and in a moment, he'd swung at John, catching him across the jaw. Not because he didn't want it, or wasn't just as aroused. It wasn't that he didn't want to push John into the room he shared with Kate and fuck his brains out. But he was still pissed.

"You're such an asshole. Fuck." John held his jaw, moving it, making sure the fucking thing wasn't broken, and he stared back at Marcus, eyes a cloudy green. "Get out of my bunker."

Marcus just shook his head once and had John in another fierce kiss. The anger was bleeding out of him, leaving him tight with desire. His tongue pushed into the other man's mouth, tasting the burn of gun powder and whatever it was John had eaten for breakfast that morning.

Oh, Christ. This was how it was going to be? Somehow John Connor was ... okay with that. More than okay. But they didn't have much time. He reached down between them, reaching for him, wanting to feel.

What about other stuff?

I can ... still have sex.

Oh.

Even back in that village, John had been curious.

Marcus gave a soft grunt, breaking the kiss to press his forehead to John's temple, eyes squeezed shut and hands working in the cloth of his shirt. "Fuck."

"Not now." John didn't need to say her name. They both knew. Kate could appear anytime. Kate, who was pregnant, due any day. He didn't try to shove Marcus away, stepping back instead. And he said it again, though there was no anger behind his words. "Get out of my bunker."

Marcus watched him for a long minute, those blue eyes doing the tracking that Kyle had told him to knock off more than once because it's creepy, man. But he turned on his heel and strode out of the bunker without a word, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

Continued here