Illustration of Alex and Reeve [https://64.media.tumblr.com/eb6618262479f854563bb2cc0b22ce04/f87fb21957904203-01/s640x960/5b287efeb9b32be6536efb79094f30e6b6133807.pnj]
Sanctuary. Berlin, Germany.
They waited up for Misha, Hannah, and Shvedov to return. It was a quiet, tense night. Gareth helped Alex fold laundry while Reeve did dishes. The two Children stayed in with them. It seemed like after their dinner together, they were invested enough in everyone coming back alright to postpone patrol.
It was long after midnight when there was a knock at the door. Reeve and Gareth stood up from the couch, but let one of the locals answer it. He let them in without a word.
“We’re all fine,” Misha announced loudly, and as they entered, Reeve understood why, as they rounded the corner of the hall. They were bloody. There were streaks of it that Shvedov had missed when wiping his face, and Hannah, in Shvedov’s coat, had patches in her hair that shone black in the dim, red light.
“What the fuck happened?” Alex all but yelled.
“No one’s hurt,” Hannah said, forehead tense and eyes narrow. “Just a little messy.”
Ignoring the ache in his stomach, Reeve asked, “Go okay?”
Misha nodded. “You’ll get your information tomorrow morning. We need sleep. And showers.”
There were more bedrooms than they were used to, enough that if they shared, no one had to sleep on a couch or the floor. It felt like true luxury.
Reeve, sitting up in bed, carefully applied ointment to the fresh tattoo on the inside of his left upper arm. He let his awareness bleed out a little. Hannah was tired, but alright—annoyed and had a headache that could kill a man. Her stomach was maybe the strongest of the lot of them. Alyosha was wound in tightly but would be okay come morning. Reeve could feel Alex’s mind twisting in conflict, standing in the hall with his bag, between moving himself into Hannah’s room or giving her space. Gareth made the decision for him when he held his bedroom door open for her. It felt like no one had spoken a word in an hour. They were all dead tired, crashing after the adrenaline and worry.
Alex came into his room and smiled in spite of himself and his tired, bloodshot eyes.
“What?” Reeve asked.
He shrugged. “Just not something I ever thought I’d see.”
Reeve scowled and handed him the tube of balm. “I can’t believe you want to do this on purpose. It’s dripping.”
“Gross.” Alex casually smoothed some of the lotion over his tattoo like he’d been doing this his whole life. He put his hand on the lightswitch, waited a moment for Reeve to object, then switched it off and climbed into bed without a word. Reeve moved over for him, rolling onto his side to face the wall, though he regretted it immediately, when his tattooed arm complained.
“Are they okay?” Alex asked quietly.
“I’m not supposed to be looking.”
“Reeve,” was all he said, voice flat.
“They’re okay.”
“Thank you. Jesus.” He rolled over and threw his arm over Reeve’s side, nearly overlapping Reeve’s arm, but on top of the blankets. Alex’s hand felt light, as though he was being particularly careful. The feeling made Reeve freeze up, almost holding his breath, unsure of what to do. He pulled his telepathy back in, walling himself off as though that could keep him out of some sort of unnamed trouble. A moment later, Alex rolled on his back and roughly flopped over onto his other side, his back to Reeve, mashing at the pillow.
Alex was extremely talented at making Reeve’s mind race a million miles a second with absolutely no ability to identify what it was he was even thinking about. Like a warp-speed panic over non-specifically existing. For this, Alex was both a common cause and cure, which Reeve felt was unfair to the both of them.
Paralyzed, he listened to the sound of his own breathing, drowning out the shadow of Alex’s thoughts. He turned over to face Alex anyway. Almost before he knew he’d done it, he’d shifted closer and stretched out his arm, and Alex leaned back into him. He rested his hand on Alex’s forearm and his elbow on Alex’s hip. The racing in his mind didn’t slow, but it stopped having such an unpleasant, icy grip.
“Reeve?”
He grunted a tired response.
The silence made Reeve wonder if Alex had fallen asleep. Then finally, “I don’t know.”
Reeve rubbed at his arm with his thumb and Alex shifted backward to lean against his chest. He lifted his arm, reflexively protecting the sore tattoo, and when he set it down again, his hand came to rest low on Alex’s stomach. A heat rose in his body like standing next to a bonfire. Eyes closed, his hand moved, shifting idly instead of staying still, and with just a little too much pressure, until he noticed that Alex was holding his breath. Reeve snatched his hand back and scratched at his face. He sniffed, hoping it seemed natural.
Alex snuggled back into him, and suddenly, if he didn’t put his hand back down somewhere, it was going to become very obvious that he was avoiding it. Which raised about ten thousand questions in Reeve’s mind, and he fought hard not to ask them of himself. Damned if you do and damned if you don’t, he let his hand fall down, aiming for his side, but it landed on the bony notch of Alex’s hip.
He lay still, his entire focus on his hand keeping a natural pressure, unmoving, but not so still it was obviously intentional. He hoped. Despite his better judgment, he let one finger lightly trace the curve of his hip until he felt Alex’s sharp intake of breath. A shock went through him, and again, he dropped his hand around Alex’s waist and tucked it underneath him so it was too pinned to move. That solved one problem, temporarily, until he realized how much closer it pressed them together.
Reeve opened his eyes into the dark and tried to focus on slowing the warm rush of Alex’s thoughts. He should have seen it coming, but it still surprised him when Alex squirmed in his grip, hips shifting and back arching in a way that more than bordered on unsubtle. Reeve bent his knees, shifting back slightly to close his arm tighter, gripping Alex in a fierce hug that hurt Reeve’s ribs, and for a moment, it was like he was back in Beatty and things were quiet and safe.
His forehead crushed into Alex’s shoulder blades and as he relaxed, he tilted his head upwards, brushing Alex’s back with his lips, feeling the way the fabric of Alex’s shirt dragged over his skin. He couldn’t deny anymore that this was intentional. He’d made the choice to see what it would feel like and it made his heart race. Alex’s hand brushed his arm, lightly tugging at it. Reeve reluctantly loosened his grip, letting his palm linger on Alex’s belly. Alex’s breath was coming quick and silent. Reeve dropped his barrier. He had to check. The familiar fluttering of Alex’s thoughts flooded back in.
Light and achingly slow, Reeve’s fingers drifted across the surface of Alex’s stomach. A slight curl of his fingers and he’d be able to lift Alex’s shirt, but he couldn’t coax his hand to move.
When his littlest finger grazed bare skin, something akin to lightning lit up every nerve ending in his body. Alex’s hand came over his, the pressure of his fingers firm and sure (more sure than Reeve felt), and moved Reeve’s hand under the hem of his shirt.
It’s not like Reeve had never touched Alex’s skin before. He’d grappled, trained, corrected his stance, and lived in close quarters for years. He’d rubbed strained muscles, taken care of him when a flu left him sweating and weak, and wrapped him up in his mind, arms, and memories when his Reading spun out of control. Reeve already knew his body—where the small scars on his shins were, the tiny raised birthmark on his lower back, and the fresh scrapes up and down his arms.
This was different. This was something else entirely. The second his palm made contact with skin, he no longer needed coaxing. He ran his hand up, slow but firm, skimming Alex’s ribs and pressing the flat of his palm against his chest, reaching higher to grasp at his shoulder. Alex reached back and gripped Reeve’s thigh, fingers almost clawing, pulling Reeve closer while shifting his hips back.
Reeve made a quiet, breathy sound into Alex’s back before catching himself. When Alex twisted, rolling in his grasp, Reeve lifted his hand as though he’d touched fire and rocked backward, nearly onto his back, sure that Alex was putting a stop to the silent moment he’d broken with that muffled sound. He shifted his legs, trying to give him as much space as the small bed allowed, but when Alex came to rest on his other side, he slipped one arm under Reeve’s neck and with the other, tugged at Reeve’s shirt.
Reeve leaned forward again, wary, and tentatively ran his hands up Alex’s back. Alex nuzzled into the crook of Reeve’s neck with shaky, uneven breaths against his skin. They shifted like that together until Reeve’s hands were tangled in Alex’s hair, before trailing back down beneath the covers, where he found Alex’s shirt had ridden up. His skin was hot and Reeve experimented with increasing pressure. When he heard Alex gasp, it seemed that time suddenly sped up, lurching them forward and into each other. He slowed his breath to steady himself and found his fingers tracing the band of Alex’s boxers, low on the small of his back. He willed his fingers to slow, even as he tried to suppress his gasping voice, mindful of the crowded Sanctuary.
Alex’s hand slid off Reeve’s shoulder to grab at his lower back and pulled, closing that small, critical distance that was still between them. For a short moment, feeling Alex’s hardness pressed against his own, Reeve’s mind was blank for the first time since he could remember, focused solely on that sensation. They rocked like that for a long while. Reeve lightly kissed Alex’s neck, lips against hot skin, before moving up his jaw, and settling just at the corner of his mouth. He let himself press his lips against Alex’s cheek, just short of fully kissing him, barely feeling Alex’s gently parted lips beneath his own. But something about taking that final step felt as though, somehow, there was no coming back from it—despite the feeling of their cocks pressed against each other through their clothes, grinding in a steady rhythm.
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Reeve opened his eyes and pulled back from his face without losing that contact. It was dark, but not so much that after adjusting, Reeve couldn’t make out Alex’s face, his hair already clinging to his forehead from sweat, his mouth left partly open while he breathed, and his eyes steady as anything.
Something in Reeve overran itself. The pressure of Alex’s head was blaring. Without prying, Reeve let it float through him and it resounded in a singular thought. He couldn’t use that though, couldn’t rely on it; he needed to ask. But their silence seemed sacrosanct, as if speaking would break some spell and bring them back to the real world, where they had set relationship parameters years ago and this couldn’t happen.
He gulped in a breath, tried to speak, and nearly choked on his fear, letting it out in a chuff of air. He tried again, but only managed to get his name, before hesitating again. “Alex.”
“Yes.” It sounded like a statement, not a question.
Reeve forced his mouth closed and evened out his breathing to steady his voice, canting his head to see Alex’s eyes and pulling his body back a fraction. Alex gave a small whimper at that, raising gooseflesh on Reeve’s arms as he felt the shock of heat run through him, despite his rising anxiety. “Is this—are you okay?”
“Yes,” Alex said again, louder, in a tone normally reserved for calling Reeve a nerd.
Whatever was left of Reeve’s reservations crumbled in that moment and he allowed himself a second to lean in and hide a smile into Alex’s neck, thinking of that. Nothing about this night was normal, but in that moment, that tone of voice, it just felt like home.
Kissing whatever he could reach of Reeve’s face, Alex ran his palm lightly down Reeve’s body, until he reached Reeve’s waistband and slipped his hand beneath it. Reeve exhaled more sound than intended and muffled it into Alex’s shoulder as he closed his fingers around him. After that, it was all he could do to close his eyes and keep the hum of his breath quiet. Alex ran the tip of his tongue over Reeve’s bottom lip and they crashed into each other, and before he knew it, he was fumbling with Alex’s waistband too, gasping at the sensation. Alex kissed him deeply, their kiss keeping them quiet as they moved.
They parted only long enough to shuffle out of their clothing. When his shirt came up over his head, Alex had a bit of a grin tugging at one corner of his mouth. Reeve froze there, sitting up and staring, as something inside his chest fit into place.
Alex noticed and froze too, a pang of self-consciousness rippling through his mind.
“What?”
Reeve smiled, shook his head, and rolled over partway on top of him. He felt Alex melt into Reeve’s fist, relaxing again. He snaked his hand down Reeve’s arm, resting on his forearm just above the wrist, feeling it move. It sent a shiver through Reeve to feel that, and when it finally boiled over and Alex came, he arched his back and shoved his face into the pillow to muffle a moan.
Without missing a beat, Alex uncurled and moved his hand down to stroke Reeve’s cock again, and Reeve had to drop back onto his side to keep from falling. Alex was sure and steady, but he was still shivering a little in the aftermath. Reeve let himself run his hand over Alex’s body before going rigid, and Alex gasped when Reeve gripped his shoulder and sealed his mouth against Alex’s collarbone as he climaxed. It wasn’t until it was over that sounds began to escape him, warm and muted against his chest.
Reeve leaned back. He needed to look at him. Alex had brought the back of his hand to his face, and when he moved it, his hand and nose were bloody.
“Shit.” Reeve said it a little too loudly as he sat up and brought himself down to a whisper with effort. “I’m sorry.” He grabbed his shirt where it had landed on the bed and pressed it to Alex’s face. Alex sat up straighter and all Reeve wanted was to grab a flashlight and check his pupils, but he waited, one fist gripping the sheets and swearing up and down. “I should have warned you. Are you okay?”
“I’m okay,” Alex said tentatively, taking the shirt from Reeve and dabbing at his face. The blood was stopping already.
“I’m so sorry,” his voice broke a little, in spite of himself.
“I’m really okay. You’ve given me way worse in training. What was that?”
“I wasn’t thinking. It’s like an overflow. I lose track of my boundaries after a certain point. What’s me and what’s not. The pressure can leave some nasty headaches or dizziness. It’s not just me—it happens to most telepaths.”
“It was intense.”
“I should have warned you. I can pull it back when I’m paying attention—it’s just, well, it’s been a while and you’re...” Distracting.
Alex gave his face one last wipe and when it came away clean, he tossed the shirt onto the floor. “It was like I could feel everything you were feeling.” He was a little breathy. When he saw Reeve holding his breath, half into a panic, unsure how to react, he laughed and said, “Don’t worry so much—it was actually really hot, you numbskull.”
Reeve let out a breath, and let himself slide back down. Alex curled up next to him, his arms hooked around his chest and his head on his shoulder, heavy and relaxed.
“You sure you’re okay?”
Alex nuzzled into his neck. “Mmhm.”
He ran his hands up and down Alex’s back and arms, feeling every muscle gone slack, and pulled the blanket up to cover them. Alex’s breathing was already growing slow with sleep. Reeve kissed his forehead. “I don’t think I could survive hurting you.” He didn’t think Alex was awake to hear him.
---
SolCorp’s Kyiv Office.
Anise couldn’t sleep. Her Post Breathe was mere days away and it was all she could think about. She tossed and turned for an hour before giving up and throwing on a Saturn logo tank top and a pair of joggers and going for a walk.
It was the middle of the night, but there was still a decent amount of activity in the halls. Someone was always up, always working on something, chatting in hushed tones where hallways intersected.
She was wandering through the lower levels of Venus and lost in thought when she felt something strange that made her stop.
Her telepathy wasn’t great, but it wasn’t terrible. She could sense minds and the vague feelings that hovered around a person, even though she struggled to control them or block them out. The minds of humans hummed in her head like floating white noise machines as they moved around the building.
But there was someone in the hall with her who was completely silent. Her eyes showed her a man, on the shorter side, in street clothes, and bald—but that didn’t match up with what her knack was telling her. The man walking toward her was a complete void. He didn’t show up on her internal map. Invisible. A ghost. She stopped and watched him come toward her and focused her telepathy. Maybe she was just missing him. Maybe he was in Neptune and had been trained unbelievably well to resist detection. Nothing. It couldn’t be her defective knack. Even people with poor vision can tell their blurry world apart from a black rip in reality.
He didn’t seem to care that she was staring at him. He looked straight ahead and didn’t even glance at her as he passed by. Anise shook off a shiver of goosebumps and turned to follow him.
“Hey,” she called, honestly not sure what she was going to say next. He didn’t respond and she picked up the pace to try to catch up. “Hey,” she repeated, raising her voice.
The man stopped when he got to the end of the hallway where it turned left, and she instinctively stopped too. He turned and looked at her. Something in his stare turned her blood to ice. He was unreadable and that was something she wasn’t used to. He regarded her with his blank expression for a long moment, then turned and unlocked the door in front of him with a key from his pocket and went inside.
While there was nothing he had done that was technically against the rules, she couldn’t tune out the alarm bells screaming in her mind. He felt wrong. Swallowing the feeling that even she knew was illogical, she went forward and tried the doorknob. Locked.
With a sigh of relief, she headed back toward the housing wing, even though she didn’t know who she could wake up at this hour. She wanted to knock on Mark’s door, but as much as he seemed to be warm to her, he was a rank that you didn’t wake up in the middle of the night because you had a bad feeling. She wanted him to continue to think she was worth his time and his help—and there was no way she wasn’t going to come off sounding absurd right now. She bit her lip, agonizing, and decided to forfeit her chances of sounding sane and just wake up Nina. She had said Anise could always come to her, so now she was going to have to eat her words.
Nina answered the door in a t-shirt and socks, her hair a right mess sticking off to one side. “What is it?” she asked, squinting.
Anise pushed inside. “I need you to wake up first.”
“You think I’m asleep right now?” she quipped.
Anise walked into her small galley kitchen uninvited. “A little bit, yeah.” She poured a glass of water, dropped a couple of ice cubes into it, and handed it to Nina.
Nina deflated, but she sipped the water and gestured to Anise to go sit down.
They sat on either side of the couch and Anise waited for her to stop rubbing her face.
“I’m really sorry to wake you up,” Anise said softly. She was calming down, beginning to feel foolish about her reaction. She should have tried to go to sleep.
“It’s okay. What is it?”
Nina’s voice was less murky and her eyes were still heavy-lidded, but that was probably the best she could hope for right now. “Listen, it’s going to sound silly and you’re going to think I’m making a big deal out of nothing or imagining it, but just hear me out.” She took a breath. “I saw someone in the building that my telepathy couldn’t detect. Not at all. Complete blackout.”
Anise shut her mouth and held her breath, waiting for the outburst over waking her up at three in the morning for this.
Instead, Nina nodded once, her eyes drifting up as she thought. “Where?”
She hadn’t been expecting that. “Venus lower levels. I couldn’t sleep, so I was just walking the halls. He went into a locked door.” Nina didn’t say anything, so she continued. “So I didn’t read it wrong?”
“No, you read it right.” She sat up, looking more awake. “It’s nothing you need to worry about if you want to wait until morning to get into this.”
“Do I look like I can sleep?”
“Okay.” Nina drank her water. “Let me make sure you have clearance.”
“You know my clearance level.”
“Not for this, I don’t. Why don’t you get yourself some water, too. You’re pale.”
Anise nodded. She was a little dizzy. Nina messaged someone on her phone while Anise poured a second glass of water. Anise hadn’t spent much time in Nina’s quarters, so she took a moment to glance around. There were pictures on the fridge of Nina when she was younger (and with longer hair) with another young woman Anise didn’t know.
With a pang of guilt, Anise began rooting around her cabinets.
“What are you doing?” Nina called.
“I’m making you coffee.”
“Oh. Thanks.”
“Least I can do. Who’s this woman you’re with? She’s pretty.”
“She was my girlfriend.” Her tone was strained, but Anise wasn’t at the top of her game to notice.
“Isn’t that a lot of pictures to keep up of your ex?”
“She died.”
Anise froze, the scoop stuck halfway into the can of grounds. “Oh, god. I’m sorry. What happened?”
“She was in Mars.”
“That’s awful.” What else was there to say? “How long were you together?”
“Five years, but I was either on assignment or she was deployed for most of it.”
Anise restarted the coffee routine. “So this whole pilot thing where people can choose career paths is pretty personal for you.”
“It should be personal for all of us.” Nina attempted to smooth her hair. “So what do you know about the Phagi?”
She hit the brew button and started looking for mugs. “The what?”
“Jesus, fuck the coffee. I have a healing knack, so it’s not like the caffeine’s going to help me anyway. Come sit down.”
“Sorry.” She shut the cabinet and went back to the couch. “Sorry.”
“What do you know about the Phagi?”
“Just what's in the textbooks.” Which were painfully vague on matters of otherly-powered people or even knacked people in other organizations. This was ostensibly because they were too disorganized to worry about, but that never made a lot of sense when set alongside the fairly useless history of the founding of Corp they had to memorize. The context struck her and her heart went still. “Wait. That was an Anthropaphage?”
“Yes. You—”
“What the fuck is it doing in a Sol office?” she hissed.
“I’m trying to tell you. The pilot program isn't just the Academy system. Each department is doing something to support what the changes in education will mean over time."
"But what does that mean?"
"It means that if we want to put more knacked people out in the world, living normal lives, we need to do things to reduce exposure risks. Like using Post Breathes to control volatile knacks.”
“Okay, but there’s a cannibal monster in the basement right now.”
There was a knock and Anise heard the door open. She shut her mouth tight, assuming they were being too loud, but it was Mark who walked in.
“Sorry, sir,” Nina said, pulling over a blanket to cover her bare thighs. “I don’t think I’m explaining it well.”
“Anise,” he said, “Let’s take a walk.”
***