2121 - Infirmary - Labels - The greenhouse - Dissonance - B&E - Booze - A request - Method and madness - Drawling calm - Moonlit offering - Squalid consciousness - Sinking - Pop quiz - Heathen worship - The right place.

It had been three days.

The damage incurred by Charlie team was significant (and unique) enough to warrant a trip to the nearest main operating base for an extended stay in its infirmary. In that time, doctors prodded and examined—and extracted where necessary—equal parts fascinated and disgusted by the spiny bite of twisted calcifications left behind from the group's harrowing encounter in Biko township. The days were long and boring, but to Eoran, the rest was a welcome reprieve: to be awash in the cool air of that established hospital felt much better than suffering through the sun or heat choked field tents set up within barbed wire outlines of smaller bases. Meals were delivered with regularity, hot, on an actual plate rather than bagged slop haphazardly suspended over a sack of boiling water always balanced on a rock or something.

Perhaps most importantly, Eoran's time in the infirmary allowed him space to think. He needed the break, the quiet timelessness of seclusion where demands and disappointments couldn’t find his overactive mind. He proved himself a well-behaved patient, acquiescent to every question and doled out medications, even when his primary nurse brought him his laundered uniform, told him to get dressed and get out (though in much nicer terms).

In the afternoon looming heavy above a clay-stained horizon, Eoran leaned against the exterior wall of the hospital, waiting for Kasse to emerge. He’d spent a fair amount of time contemplating what he wanted to say to his friend when they finally got around to their talk promised upon fraught breaths in the sweltering air of that Biko stairwell, but Eoran had no idea if his trepidatious heart would allow him to express himself with any amount of concision when they were face to face. He didn’t know if it was fate or fortune that put him at his friend’s side, but maybe the two went hand in hand. Or maybe it didn’t really matter and he’d do better not looking that gift horse in the mouth.

The boy Eoran waited for had his nose in a pack of cigarettes when he emerged from the infirmary's automatic doors.

Kasse proved a more troublesome patient than his best friend but not because he was unaccommodating. Far from it: he'd been docile under testing, charmed the shit out of the nurses, even managed to secure extra snacks from the third shift staff. Kasse simply felt uncomfortable staying in one place for too long. He was restless for his entire stay, finding his way into Eoran's room once or twice for a quick visit before orderlies had chased him out. He'd even managed to visit Brint between his many surgeries. The staff seemed to allow him a little more time there.

It would be a little while before the boys were reunited with their CO, after all. The nurses weren’t heartless.

After he freed a cigarette from his pack he looked up, face alight at the sight of his best friend without an entourage of medical machines riding his ass. Before either could make a sound, the feral boy collided with his better bred friend, arms flung around his neck in a hug so fierce one of them had to have just come back from the dead.

Eoran caught Kasse by his waist, holding him tight against his body. He hadn’t felt dead—even if he feared he was headed that way—but he certainly felt alive now, flush to the other boy. A wide smile creased his cheeks; his eyes narrowed until they closed, elated and relieved.

“I’m so happy to see you,” Eo said as he slowly pulled away, cognizant of outer appearances when they were standing in the open air of that bustling base. “How are you feeling?”

"Like I need a nic fix," the older boy replied, sparking his cigarette to life in the brief distance between them. He drug the smoke deep into his lungs with an elated groan, leaning back onto the concrete facade of that hospital none the wiser of either boy's status as a wright. "Clean bill of health, too. I guess that's what you were asking."

Without Eoran at his side, Kasse could argue that he'd been interred against his will, isolated when he only wanted to be at Eo's side. Reunited, the past three days were of little consequence to the ghost, a glimmer of life rattling back into motion behind that rebellious boy's grey eyes.

"I missed you so much," he added quietly, head bowed so he didn't have to meet the Toriet boy's gaze.

“I missed you too.” Eoran's observation of his friend was, perhaps, better conducted without eye contact. His head tilted to the side as he slowly traced over the features he’d missed the most—those eyes and their leaden dissent, those lips attentive to the end of his cigarette. “Pretty boring in there, but I slept so good.” He grinned. “Hey, you wanna walk with me?”

Not waiting for the answer, Eoran turned and began to step away from the building. Groups of soldiers shuffled a stretch ahead, moving from barracks to their various assignments. The soundfield around them always seemed over congested with the constant noise of chugging engines, the high-pitched whir of helicopter propellers looping endless in the distance, berating the air in broken-tape hiccupped beats.

The Toriet boy looked back. “I was thinking maybe we could talk now.”

"Yeah," Kasse agreed, bottom lip caught demure between his teeth. "But keep going. Around back."

There was something somber about the way that ghost of a boy lead Eoran astray, the way he caught his hand. With his head canted away, cigarette burning between his fingers, it almost seemed like Kasse was avoiding the navigator's eyes altogether—but it was probably just nerves, the sorry sick of fear and longing clawing its way back into his gut.

When they passed the corner, there was a mottled old greenhouse coated in a pollen-tinged dusting of rust and neglect, some sort of fruiting tree broken out the side. Nestled in the shade of the hospital amongst a dense cluster of weeds and vegetation, thriving from leaky hospital pipes, it seemed secluded enough to allow the boys the privacy necessary to speak freely.

"The nurses told me about it," the suddenly meek boy said in the pause of their rustling footsteps, boots crunching both grass and debris. "They said it's been untended for years now. Locked up. They keep meaning to fix it up but they never manage to get out here to do it—so I think we'll be alone."

Despite his statement, Kasse tugged Eoran back into motion, up to and then straight through the padlocked door.

Surprise passed, exhilarating and momentous, across the younger boy’s delicate features.

It seemed silly that Eoran hadn’t put something like that together: that if Kasse had the ability to pass through his flesh, then slipping through weather-worn metal and glass would be no issue. In his life, most of the wrights Eo knew were like him: bloodwrights. Extremely few adjuncts and no expressionists, just monsters whose abilities were visceral and raw. The boy smirked on the other side of the locked door as the puzzle of Kasse assembled itself before him. Eoran’s eyes were electric.

“It’s kinda nice,” the Ossan boy said of the neglected space, pulling his friend a few steps deeper, a few steps toward him—unwilling to let him go. In a moment, he spun around and stared Kasse down. The confession that poured out was unguarded, bare, honest; his heart spilled from lips suddenly unexpurgated, parted, mouth too full to stop their leaking.

“Kasse, I—I hope I didn’t fuck up anything between us in Biko. You’re the most beautiful person I’ve ever known, and I think about you all the time, and I want you more than anything in this world. You’re so important to me and kissing you was like a dream from which I never wanted to wake. If I died back there, with your hands on my skin—in my skin—then my life would have been worth living because I knew you. I had you for a brief instance of time where our paths were fortuitous enough to converge.” Eoran looked down, around, then back to the soldier plucked from the streets of Amstead. “I’m sorry I worried you. I didn’t know if you liked boys but you seemed to like Brint and I felt a little jealous and sometimes when I get stressed, I don’t handle myself well.”

“I guess that’s sort of the thing, Eo, I don’t… I’m not really sure what I like.” Kasse eased himself back. Turning with his cigarette between his lips, he cleared off a rickety metal work table, obviously appropriated from the hospital, with a single swipe across its surface. He hopped up on it to sit, hands between his knees, one foot nervously tapping at the metal support beams keeping the bench’s legs from failing. “I’ve always just been told what I like. What I want. Usually because I needed something. I was just some street kid, easy to take advantage of, you know? And in the moment it all made sense. I paid how I could.”

Rubbing at his mouth, Kasse shook his head. This didn’t sound how he wanted. What did he want?

What the fuck was this?

“I—I really, really like you, Eoran. Like a lot. Like I don’t think I’ve ever liked anyone like this and it’s terrifying. I just… I don’t know if I’m ready for you.”

Mute and consumed by his rapt attention, Eoran slowly nodded as Kasse's words sunk in.

"Okay," he began.

"Okay." Again, like the repetition offered any sort of reinforcement.

"Okay, well, I don't want to pressure you into anything, and I don't know what I'm asking for or if I’m even asking... I just want to make sure things between us are still… I dunno, functional, I guess. I would feel really terrible if my imprudence were to push you away because I don’t want to hurt you. You're the only friend I have out here. I can’t lose that in the one place where I have everything to lose, all the time."

Eoran took his bottom lip between his teeth, gaze searching the glass-pane ceiling where sun-dried lichens spread in scummy blooms of greens and browns. His arms folded across his chest.

"Kasse, I feel like a lot has changed between us in the past week. Are you comfortable with me as your friend still? Are we going to be okay?" There was a sorrow in his eyes as their lightless depths turned back down. Eoran was an open and genuine person—it was clear he felt this to his core.

“C’mere.” Leaning forward, Kasse grabbed at Eoran’s wrist, pulled him from his tight, protective fold across his chest, pulled him closer. Kasse always smelled like the atmosphere, like ozone and rain singed on the edges by smoke, a reminder of his nervous vice. Looping his arms loose around that sorrow-shaken boy’s waist, Kasse buried his face in Eoran’s chest, accepted him between his knees because it was what he wanted despite his need for something that felt like distance.

“I don’t think we’re friends anymore, but I also don’t think that we’re not friends. Do we have to label it? Can we just like… I don’t know, can we just see what happens?” Kasse looked up, brows knit in concern. “You’re all I have. If I lose you, I’m done.”

"Yeah. It can be what it is," the Toriet boy answered, easily taken. He softened in their closeness, so willing and malleable between the bend of sharp elbows and arms. "As long as it's something more than nothing. I’m here, I don’t want to go anywhere without you."

Tilting his head to look at his friend, Eoran lifted a finger to smooth along the furrows of that boy's worry in an attempt to see it away. He smiled, reassuring and sweet, defenseless but reserved—miles removed from that alluvion of death-spurred desire tempting catastrophe in his white-knuckle duress, his bed of spilled blood.

"Thanks for saving me, by the way. I get the feeling that it probably wasn't the first time. I hope I don't exhaust your diligence."

“Bullets seem to like you, yeah,” the ghost admitted, sheepish, swinging leg betraying the nervous tremble he masked with teasing, misdirected with that callous charm. He melted beneath the warmth of that touch, the tenderness behind it,

how it took nothing from him—
simply gave him peace of mind.

“If we ever do end up messing around or doing anything, just… I guess just promise you’ll be there to help me unpack.” Vulnerable thing caught by the mouth, he was a far cry from the rakish confidence he wore so well. “I’ve had a lot of bad, Eo. A lot. But maybe you’re my first shot at good—a-and I’m really sorry if that’s a lot to deal with. You probably aren’t looking to deal with someone’s bullshit out here…”

"I promise," Eo said, fingers sweeping into Kasse's hair to pull him to his body again. The bloodwright briefly rested against him, cheek to cheek, palm flat atop the sharp edge of the other boy’s shoulder blade. "But be real with me, okay? I don't know what it's like to grow up like you did, and I'm not really sure I can fully understand something like that if I tried. It would kill me if we ever devolved into something purely transactional, so I don't want you to feel like you need to be anything that you're not for my sake." He pulled away, looking at his friend again.

"I'm fine with bullshit, Kasse, we all have bullshit," he continued, "But I only ever want you to be who you are. I like you when you're silly and serious and devious and hard headed—I like you for you. Whether we mess around or not, don't ever give me anything but you."

“Then I want... I want…” Jaw tilted up, Kasse pulled his friend closer by his belt loops, leg coiling around his friend-but-not’s, his friend-but-more’s. He swallowed hard, tentative in the way he studied the other PFC for any signs of deception, any sign of someone other than the bright eyed boy he was starting to realize he loved more than anything. “I really want you to kiss me now that you’re not afraid you’re dying.”

Eoran held Kasse's eyes in the jutting of his hips, his legs ensnared. Without a word, he leaned in liquid slow, sight blurring on approach until the other boy's immaculate features were simplified into shapeless splashes of his own colors; skin and shadow marred by their collision, the sweet reward of lips taken and breath stolen.

Eoran wasn't frantic but there was a need there,
suffocating,
sweltering,
slithering,
like the skin of his hands shifting to slip along the forced incline of Kasse's jaw.

He was concentrated,
a zealous adorer so
hungry for life.