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Chuck paces back and forth in the Central Sector Cadet’s Barracks Receiving Hall, increasingly pissed off. One more time, he swears, he’s gonna let this slide one more time and then it’s over, he’s never coming back, Mike can take like ten years of best friendship and cram it up his obnoxiously hot ass for all Chuck cares, he’s gone forever, no more friendship, no more Chuck, no more jittering around waiting to get shoved in a corner and mauled by some passing Security douche.
“Hey,” says a passing security douche, and Chuck startles so badly his feet actually leave the ground as he spins to face them.
“What!” Chuck snaps. His fists are kind of balled up despite how dumb that is, but he’s in that really idiotic state past terror where he’s been waiting to get fucked up for way too long and just wants to get it over with now.
“I… uh,” the security douche says, obviously startled. He kind of looks like a cat who poked a rat and got bit on the paw for it. Chuck can feel himself trembling. “You— I know you?”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m Chilton’s friend,” Chuck says. “I come meet him here sometimes.”
“No, I mean— you know Commander Chilton? Cool. I mean, you’re, uh, you’re Chuck X, aren’t you?” the security douche takes a cautious step forward, one of his hands coming up— Chuck flinches back, and he freezes in place. “Sorry, is that weird?”
“Yeah,” Chuck says flatly. “Who are you? How do you know my name?”
“How— haha, wow, okay, you only wrote like the most brilliant proposal ever on using fusion bottles to power biosynthesis, it was insane you never got to go to testing with it, like— the applications for force-directed plasma constructions, even inborn weaponry, would have been incredible! You’re a genius!” The security douche takes another step forward and now Chuck can recognize what he’s doing with his hand: he’s holding it out like he wants to shake hands with Chuck, not punch him.
Chuck tentatively holds his hand out. The security douche grabs it, looking delighted, and shakes enthusiastically.
“I’m Harley,” he says. “Um, Alex! Alex, Commander Alex Harley.”
“Well, uh. Pleased to meet you,” Chuck says, totally stunned. “...This is a lot nicer than meeting new cadets usually goes.”
Alex blurts out a high, awkward laugh, and belatedly lets go of Chuck’s hand. “Yeah, I’ll bet! The guys around here just don’t give a crap about science. Have they been—”
“Heyyyy, it’s Chuckles,” a new security douche says. “Harley, you didn’t tell us you knew Mike’s pet tech.”
Chuck’s heart rams itself up into his throat and dies. He turns, very slowly and carefully, to face the new threat.
“Hi, Mason,” he says, and he knows he sounds like an idiot, too squeaky and terrified, and he knows how much Mason likes it by the broad, sleazy grin that spreads over the asshole’s face.
“You know Chilton’s busy,” Mason purrs. “But you just keep coming back’n hanging around here anyway. You just that lonely, huh? You want some company?”
“He has some,” Harley cuts in. “And it’s Commander Harley to you, Cadet Jones. If you can’t remember basic courtesy I’m sure you won’t mind me recommending you for a couple extra educational courses. It’s Friday, right? You don’t have anything better to do tonight, do you?”
“No, hey— Commander Harley, sir, it’s fine! I’m good! Sorry!” Mason draws himself up to attention and salutes. “We’re good!”
“Are we?” the Commander asks, dangerously mild.
“Sir! Yessir!”
“Alright then. Guess we are. Bye, Cadet Jones.”
Mason drops his salute and turns to go. “ Douche,” he mutters, very quietly.
“I heard that,” Harley says, and brings up some kind of directory screen with a snap of his fingers. He does something with names and categories, then smiles wolfishly at an increasingly pale and dismayed Mason. “Enjoy your weekend of remedial discipline, Cadet Jones. Let’s hope you’re more pleasant to be around on Monday.”
Chuck stares at Alex— Commander Harley — with absolutely stunned awe. After a minute, he remembers to breathe, and kind of doubles over, wheezing with delayed panic.
“Whoa, hey,” Commander Harley says from a distance, and a warm hand touches his shoulder. He jerks away, squeaking, but after a second the hand comes back. He’s pushed gently over to the nearest stand of float chairs and collapses gratefully into one, once he gets the concept, still struggling to breathe.
“Hey, hey, it’s cool, you’re fine,” Commander Harley is saying.
“I’m fine,” Chuck repeats, strangled. “I, hhh, sir, sorry, hhaahah, ok, I’m fine, sir, C— Commander sir I’m fine, it’s cool. Hhha. I can— I can— I’m fine.”
“...Actually, uh. You don’t sound fine. Do you need a medic?”
“No! I’m fine! Sir. This just, aaahh, this just. Happens. Gimme. Haaah. A sec. I’m fine.” Chuck forces himself to lean back in the chair, open his airways. A panic attack always makes him want to ball up like some idiot worm thing but that just makes it last longer. He’s gotta fucking unclench already. He takes an awful, burning, noisy breath, and after that something unknots in his chest and he can feel his heart start to settle back into place. The next breath is easier, then the next.
Commander Harley is... is holding one of his hands. Looking pale and kind of terrified. Huh.
“I’m fine,” Chuck repeats. His voice comes out lower, steadier. He’s fine. Phew. Commander Harley lets go of him, sits back in his own seat, nodding slowly.
“That looked, uh. Rough,” he volunteers.
Chuck shakes his head slowly, rubs at his chest. “I’m used to it,” he says. “It’s all good. Just happens after a shock.” He swallows against the roughness in his throat, lets his head rest against the back of his seat. Forces himself to relax, to stop shivering.
“Can I— can I do— can I get you a drink?” Commander Harley asks. Chuck waves a kind of numb hand in assent, feeling the adrenaline crash really hard, and the guy goes bustling off.
God. A Commander. Who likes him. Chuck would not have bet a single credit on there being two of those in all of Deluxe. He had better not blow it, holy shit.
Commander Harley comes back with a bottle of something pale blue, which doesn’t mean much, since just about every standard drink in Deluxe is pale blue. Chuck levers himself up from his completely ungraceful sprawl to take it.
“Thanks,” he remembers to say. “Uh. Commander.”
“You can call me Alex,” Alex says. He sits down right next to Chuck and leans eagerly forward. “It’s cool. You’re not in Security, it’s cool.”
“...Sure. Alex.” Chuck nods warily, and cracks open the top of the bottle. The drink’s weird but not awful— a really mild sweetness, and just a little bit of salt as an aftertaste. Chuck frowns at it, triggers the pop-up content info from the cap.
“Huh,” he says, looking at the mineral balance. “What is this?”
“Punch?” Alex says, looking surprised. “Do they not have this flavor in R&D?”
“They don’t have this refreshment composition,” Chuck says, lingering thoughtfully over some of the weirder compounds. “Guess we have pretty different nutrition requirements. But this’d be great for hangovers, I bet.”
“It is,” Alex says. “I mean, so I’ve heard! Other guys say. I, uh, I wouldn’t. Gotta stay sharp.”
“You do seem pretty sharp,” Chuck agrees, and doesn’t miss how Alex brightens all over at it. The conversation limps along for a couple minutes on the topic of nutrition, and then they get into calorie outlays and it turns out Alex, for all that he’s in Security, really likes energy science, and they come back around to Chuck’s long-since scrapped theories on how you could probably hook a fusion bottle up to a standard set of comm lines and get the power to basically shoot white-hot plasma bolts out of your arms like a superhero, which would have been completely sick if he’d ever gotten funding to try any of it.
“No that’s what I’m saying!” Alex is exclaiming, waving his arms in broad sweeps, “This kind of conservative, results-oriented method of project funding is keeping Kane Co in the dark ages, practically, we need way more of the science budget for experimental work, just to— just to see! You know! Just to see what we can do!”
“And what we can do, probably, is shoot lasers out of our arms, like badasses,” Chuck agrees, and finishes off the bottle. He holds it like a gun and goes “Pyew!” and Alex laughs really satisfyingly.
“Well, hey, guys,” Mike says, finally showing up from wherever the fuck. “Commander Harley. You’ve met?”
“Oh, hey— Commander Chilton!” Harley draws himself up in his chair and gives a polite nod. “Yeah, just now— was keeping him company until you arrived. Some of the guys around here forget their manners around civilians, you know?”
“Oh. Huh.” Mike blinks, looks at Chuck. “What, really? You never said.”
“It’s not a big deal,” Chuck says. He can feel Alex frown at the side of his face and ignores him. “You ready to go, man? We got—” he checks his chronometer, squawks with dismay. “—The show started already! Damn!”
Mike rubs the back of his neck. “Uh I can’t actually come, anyway. I came by to say.”
“WHAT!?” Chuck demands. “Mike, it’s Friday, I specifically got tickets for Friday because you said you’d get some time off!”
“I thought I was gonna!” Mike protests. “But then something came up, and—”
“And you agreed to take it on anyway even though you already had plans,” Chuck snaps. “Again! For like the sixth freakin’ month in a row! You’re already a Commander, they’re not gonna demote you for taking like one fourth of a weekend! Fuck!”
“Hey, dude, language,” Mike says.
“Fuck you!” Chuck snaps. “Alex, you wanna go catch the next showing of this thing I was gonna take my asshole best friend to because for some crazy reason I used to like hanging out with him?”
“Yes,” Alex says.
“Oh,” Chuck says. “Okay, cool. The next performance is in two hours, though.”
“I’ll take you to dinner?” Alex says. “My night’s free.”
Mike is making a really weird face right now: not the usual defensive annoyance with Chuck trying to take him away from work, but a startled, unsettled look, like he just missed something important and can’t figure out how.
“Yeah,” Chuck says, narrowing his eyes at Mike. “Yeah, that sounds great, let’s go. Have a nice fucking weekend, Mike.”
“It’s Commander,” Mike says, actually looking mad now. “And watch your language! ”
“Blow me, Commander,” Chuck says, and storms past him. “C’mon, Alex, I’m hungry.”
*
Dinner is surprisingly great: Alex takes him out to some kind of place people with disposable incomes like to go, where the food actually comes in bowls and has textures and more sodium than is strictly necessary or advisable. He’s cool about Chuck fumbling with chopsticks, too, and fills up the space Chuck could be embarrassed in with chatter about calories. He really likes energy science. It’s kind of cute, actually, how he gets carried away on tangents and then abruptly comes back to himself and gets shy about his own enthusiasm. Like, Chuck knows plenty of guys with way less practical special interests.
“Energy science is a really broad field,” Chuck says, elbowing him reassuringly the fifth or sixth time he says something kind of tragically self-deprecating. “There’s tons of applications, you know? You’re not weird for getting excited about it.”
“I’m not?” Alex blinks at him. He’s got really bright blue eyes, kind of electric-looking. Which is kind of funny, actually.
“No, it’s cool,” Chuck says firmly. “I know a guy who’s obsessed with owls. Y’know, the bird?”
Alex nods hesitantly. “Are there… like, real owls?”
“Like in Motorcity, maybe,” Chuck snorts. “Not so much in the real world where people actually have to get stuff done.”
Alex laughs. He does a lot of laughing at stuff Chuck says: not in a mean way, but in this kind of totally transparent eager-to-please way that Chuck recognizes from his own more awkward, desperate-to-make-friends moments. Alex really wants Chuck to like him, which keeps being unnerving and flattering in turns. It makes Chuck feel shy and weird and probably fuss with his hair too much and definitely drop his chopsticks too much. But also, Alex pays for all of dinner himself, and gets them ice cream afterwards, so it’s definitely worth it.
The show is this thing Chuck’s been really into lately, and thought Mike would like, if he could ever actually tear himself away from work long enough to have some fun. It involves a scratch team of actors all running a networked assemblage of script generators, that procedurally generate a play for them line by line as they perform. Amateur teams go through the dialogue and blocking clumsily, lurching around and really obviously reading their scripts off their HUDs in a distracted, fumbling sort of way. Really good teams, like Chuck’s favorite, Markov Unchained, blitz their way through the absurd situations and insane dialogue and make it fun, like they actually do mean to accuse the lamp of eating their turtle and then do a backflip. They manage to pull an actual sense of drama out of the mess, steering their deranged AIs into knitting together an actual functional plot with coherent characters and an ending and everything.
Alex loves it, and asks a million questions, and applauds enthusiastically after every round.
“This is so cool,” he says fervently into Chuck’s ear, leaning close, breath warm. Chuck jumps a little, but Alex doesn’t pull back, just stays close, half-leaning on him, and then demands Chuck explain a coding pun to him.
Afterwards Alex gets them more ice cream, and insists on seeing Chuck all the way back to the entrance of R&D, and there’s a moment where he sticks his hands in his pockets and goes, “I had a really great time tonight,” and Chuck thinks, well, what the hell, and takes his sharp jaw in one hand. Presses a kiss on his mouth.
Alex actually shivers, and when Chuck pulls back Alex is staring at him like he invented the moon and every star and all of Deluxe as well.
“Oh,” he says, all hushed and stunned and frankly really cute.
“Yeah,” Chuck says, like an idiot. “Uh, goodnight!” And bails on him really fast.
*
Mike is finishing up a workout routine when Alex catches up with him.
“Hey,” he grunts, and hits the holotarget a little harder with his stun club than he’d meant to. It glitches out and Mike grunts again, frustrated, and steps back to let it reset.
“Hey,” Alex says, leaning against the ropes of the sparring ring. “So, I had a really great time with Chuck—”
Mike hits the holotarget again. Way too hard. A buzzer sounds. Breathing harshly through his teeth, actually mad at himself now, Mike tucks the club under his arm and paces over to Alex.
“Yeah?” he asks. He’s aware he sounds unfriendly. It’s just— Chuck is his friend, and this has been a really crappy weekend, and it’s not fair to blame Alex like at all for taking advantage of Mike really messing everything up super hard, but also, Alex is maybe not Mike’s favorite person right now.
Alex does not seem to actually care, though. Alex seems kind of… dreamy. He’s got his chin on his palm and is smiling into space.
“Yeah,” he says. Kind of sighs. “We got dinner and went to this awesome show with robots and improv and it was really funny and he kissed me! I didn’t even— I didn’t even ask or anything, he just, did, it was awesome. He’s awesome.”
Holy crap. Mike stands there, feeling like someone just pulled the world out from under him. And then maybe kicked him right in the groin as an encore.
“Congratulations,” he says finally. “Why… are you telling me?”
“Oh! Uh. We didn’t trade contact info. I thought, uh, like if he hadn’t kissed me I would have just thought he didn’t actually have a good night or want to see me again but like why would you kiss someone you didn’t want to see or, uh, hear, from again, right?” Alex gives Mike a belatedly worried look. “So maybe he just forgot to ask like I did and he’s wondering now like how— how it all went, if I was into it, which I am! I so am, like, wow. He’s incredible. I wanna take him out again like the absolute second it wouldn’t be creepy. Anyway can you gimme his contact info?”
Mike processes this. Finally he says, “I think if Chuck wants another date with you, he’ll find you.”
“Really?” Alex says hopefully. “Cuz it’s Sunday and like, I know you’re not supposed to get right on someone the day after a date, but, it’s Sunday, so. Like.” He gives Mike an intensely anxious, pleading stare. “I just don’t want him to think I don’t wanna see him again.”
“Chuck likes to arrange things for himself,” Mike says. “Like, set up the— the— dates,” god that’s not what Mike and Chuck ever went on but whatever, “and decide where to go and what to do and when, you know?”
“I don’t know,” Alex admits. “I’ve never done any of this before, or met a guy like that. Man, he’s amazing, have you heard some of his theories on calorie conversion?”
Mike nods, because he probably has, even though he mostly just tunes Chuck out when he gets going on stuff like that, and now he feels like a total idiot about it.
“He’s a smart dude,” Mike says, because it’s true. But Alex gives a distinctly dreamy little sigh, like it’s some glorious gift from the universe specifically addressed to one Commander Harley.
Mike decides he doesn’t like this guy.
“Wait,” Alex says, finally apparently reading Mike’s tense hostility. “Uh, are you— when Chuck was mad at you, like. He said ‘best friends’. You’re not, uh, you’re not— exes?”
“What? No!” Mike says. He pauses. He doesn’t think he’s an ex, or like, an ex-friend. “No,” he says, less certainly. “He gets… he just says stuff like that sometimes when he’s mad. We’re still friends.”
“Okay, friends, cool,” Alex says, transparently relieved. “Awesome, phew. Friendship, yay. How’s that work, the two of you being in such different departments?”
Not very well, Mike doesn’t want to say, so he just shrugs. “I guess we make it work,” he says. “We grew up together, so. A bond like that doesn’t just go away cuz you don’t see each other much.”
“Maybe we could all go out together sometime,” Alex says. “You could, like— tell me the stuff he likes! You know him, you’d know what he likes doing, I’d wanna do that. Whatever makes him happy.”
Mike shrugs again, uncomfortable. “Yeah, maybe,” he says. “Look, I’m kind of in the middle of something, dude. You got anything else…?”
“Are you sure you can’t give me his contact info?” Alex presses. “I won’t tell him it’s from you, if you think he’d be mad. I just— man, I don’t want to blow this. He’s so cool, you know?”
“I’m starting to get an idea,” Mike says tightly. Already regretting it, he raises his hands, taps his palm to bring up the contact info. “Okay, here,” he says. “Maybe ask him to play laser tag. He used to like that.” Before he stopped asking Mike to play with him. Because... probably because Mike never had time, not because he actually stopped enjoying it. This conversation is getting more personally excruciating by the second.
But Alex lights up, holding his hands out to cup the data like it’s some precious, fragile gift. “Thanks, bro,” he says with open gratitude. “You’re the best, I owe you.”
“Sure, fine,” Mike says ungraciously. “Anything else?”
Alex is already absorbed by the contact info, slotting it very carefully into his logbook app and— yeah, flagging it. With like half a dozen different kinds of indexable markers. Wow.
“Bye,” Mike says.
“Yeah, bye, thanks,” Alex murmurs, and wanders off, eyes still fixed on Chuck’s name.
Mike hits the holotarget so hard it shuts down.
*
Chuck is surprised at the contact request that pops up Monday, but not unhappy about it. He’d wondered, over the weekend, if he should’ve made firmer plans with Alex, or just not kissed him, or what, and gone back and forth on regretting not doing more, or less, like fifty zillion times. But this simplifies things: Commander Harley likes him enough to reach out, and is smart enough, apparently, to figure out how.
Chuck accepts the contact. Alex’s profile pic involves a very tight, very skimpy little tank top and a whole lot of smooth, pale skin. Great arms, nice shoulders, and a hilariously douchey come-hither selfie smile. Chuck takes a moment to appreciate how completely absurd his life is right now: Alex is definitely a virgin, and definitely wants to rectify that situation, and he’s hitting up Chuck.
> Hey, Chuck texts.
> Hi! Alex texts back immediately. I had a great time on Friday! Just wanted to let you know.
Well, that’s not subtle. Chuck leans back in his chair, spins it around a few times.
> Me too, he sends back.
There’s a much longer pause. Chuck watches the typing glyph flash on and off under Alex’s icon. It feels really good to be the guy who’s making someone else sweat over this kind of thing, for once.
> Do you like laser tag? Alex finally sends.
Well, that explains how Alex got Chuck’s info— Mike must have given it to him.
> Yeah, me and Mike used to play all the time, Chuck sends back, like Alex probably doesn’t already know exactly this, and isn’t suggesting the activity for exactly that reason. Mike was always a lousy shot though, I’d smoke him every time. You think you can do better?
> If you wanna go out again this Friday, I’ll have all week to practice.
Chuck finds himself grinning at his screen, and gives himself a little victory spin in his chair.
> Better get practising, then.
They talk trash for the rest of the week, on and off, in between a couple video calls where they complain about their work loads and a lot of longer-form messaging, where Chuck forwards him research papers and project overviews he thinks Alex might be interested in. His knowledge base is fascinatingly spotty: he’s obviously bright, but his intellectual potential has been almost totally squandered in the Cadets. They stop getting formal education as soon as they graduate out of the Junior Cadets at sixteen, and what education they did get was all standardized to the most average level, with no options for advanced courses or extracurriculars. No wonder Alex is so meticulously, neurotically fit: if Chuck had nothing to do but read basic science modules over and over or do push-ups, he’d probably be the size of a tank.
Alex seems to blossom under the most mild encouragement, though, or maybe just explode: he tears through every educational module and preparation course Chuck sends his way in a matter of hours, to the point where Chuck thinks to ask if he’s sleeping and gets told that no, not so much.
> How did R&D miss out on a guy like you? Chuck asks him, one night after Alex has made a really clever intuitive leap about the physics involved in thinning a fusion bottle’s walls.
> I never tested well as a kid, Alex sends back. But I was always big for my age, so I took early placement in Security.
> That’s rough. Chuck’s always blown standardized tests clean out of the water. It’s one of the few things in life he’s always been absolutely confident about. Mike never tests as smart as he is, either.
> You guys talk about cold fusion much?
Chuck laughs a little. Wow, jealous, Harley?
> Not so much.
He hesitates, then adds, We don’t talk about anything much, lately.
There’s a long minute, then Alex sends,
>That sucks.
Chuck sighs. It does suck. He hasn’t bothered trying to get back to Mike on anything since this weekend. He promised himself, one more time, and Mike blew it, and it hurts, but Chuck can’t be the guy always running after someone who doesn’t give a crap about him, keeping a dead relationship on life support. It sucks. It’s not fair. And it isn’t like Mike’s said a thing to him, since then.
>It is what it is, Chuck sends back. Or isn’t, I guess.
Alex pauses for awhile, then changes the subject to the latest paper on solar glass that Chuck sent him. Chuck’s more than happy to forget about Mike for awhile in favor of walking someone who’s actually interested in him through stuff that’s actually interesting.
*
Laser tag is a hilarious disaster. It turns out that Alex actually had spent the week practicing, and fifteen hours in the cadet’s targeting range, on top of his already pretty fucking stellar physical fitness, means he completely demolishes Chuck right out of the starting gate, every single round.
“Maybe we should blindfold you,” Chuck suggests, rubbing at the latest scorch mark right over his heart.
“I, uh, yeah,” Alex says, staring at him in total bafflement. “Sure?”
Blindfolded, Chuck actually manages to win a round against the guy, if only by a pathetically narrow margin, and he gives it up after that.
“Let’s quit while I’m ahead,” he suggests, and Alex eagerly agrees.
“Were you... going easy on me...?” he finally asks, after they’ve settled up credit accounts and wandered out of the arcade. Chuck bursts out laughing.
“God, no!” he exclaims. “I was giving it all I got in there not to like literally die, dude.”
“Oh. But you said...” Alex hesitates, makes a lame little hand gesture. “Y’know, that you always beat Chilton... and he’s really good at field operations...”
“Do cadets not have a concept of shit-talking?” Chuck asks. “I was lying. Like, really, really lying. How am I supposed to beat an actual freakin’ Commander at laser tag? The most exercise I usually get is walking from my cubicle to the nearest caffeine dispenser.”
“Oh.” Alex processes this for a minute. “You’re not mad?”
“No, dude. Unclench.”
Alex does actually visibly relax, and loses that frantically guilty edge to his stare. Chuck smiles at him encouragingly, and enjoys the way it makes the guy soften up, smile goofily back. They’re walking pretty close, and Chuck thinks— yeah if he just reaches over and— he takes Alex’s hand. Alex startles, then pretty much starts to glow. So that’s worth it.
“You can get me more ice cream, though,” Chuck says. “I could be consoled about my like, totally unexpected and crushing defeat with ice cream.”
Alex buys him so much ice cream, and stares at him adoringly while he scarfs it down. Chuck doesn’t at all mind having a guy on tap who can afford as much recreational consumables as Chuck wants. And the laser tag was fun, honestly. He could stand to run around more often.
“You wanna rematch next week?” Chuck asks.
“Oh, uh! If you do!” Alex says, which isn’t a yes. Chuck pops the last nub of cone into his mouth, then, increasingly aware of how intently Alex is watching him, he licks a few of his fingers. Alex swallows audibly and then hastily refocuses on his own, much smaller, portion.
“We should probably find something I can actually match you at,” Chuck says. “So you don’t get bored.”
“It was kind of fun with the blindfold,” Alex says.
“ Was it,” Chuck says, meaningfully, and to his delight Alex starts to flush a bright pink.
“Um!” he says. “Like it was an interesting tactical challenge and I think it could have, uh, it could offer— practical training for— real world combat situations—”
“You looked good in it, too,” Chuck says, and Alex actually literally trips over his feet.
“Yeah?” he squeaks.
“Uh-huh.” Chuck looks around thoughtfully. They’re in the mall outside the laser arcade, and the floorplan is pretty open and exposed. Still— there’s a colonnade not too far away. Chuck pushes Alex over to it and doesn’t miss how easily Alex lets him, or his stunned little gasp when his shoulders hit the wall of the alcove and Chuck crowds in after him.
“Keep quiet,” Chuck murmurs, and raises an interference hologram. It won’t stand up to any particular scrutiny, but no one cares if some random archway looks quite right or not, and anyway it completely fools security cameras.
Alex goes not just silent but totally still, watching Chuck with wide-eyed, desperate hope. God, that’s a good look on him. Chuck leans in and kisses him: not the dry, impulsive goodbye kiss he gave him last week, but a kiss that really settles in and gets to business. Alex’s lips are thin but soft, and he smells clean underneath the sweat they’ve both worked up, and he opens his mouth pretty much immediately when Chuck pushes for it. He has no idea what to do with his tongue, poking it forward like he’s basically just guessing, and he shudders all over and whines out loud when Chuck sucks on it.
Yeah, this is going to take all of a minute or two. Chuck can’t help but laugh into Alex’s mouth, but makes up for it by biting his lower lip and then nudging his sharp jaw up, laying wet, openmouth kisses down the taut line of his throat. Alex also doesn’t know what to do with his hands, and they hover sort of frantically around Chuck as he works.
“Grab my hair,” Chuck murmurs.
“Wh—?” Alex manages, and then gets the picture real fast when Chuck drops to his knees. “ Oh— oh wow, okay! You, uh!”
“I know what I’m doing,” Chuck says, and works open the catch of Alex’s belt. “This time. I promise.”
“Okay,” Alex says faintly. “Okay okay I aaahhh okay WOW.”
“Shh,” Chuck says, pulling back from the extremely promising tent in the guy’s regulation boxers. “We’re not screened for sound, dude, keep it quiet.”
Alex stuffs one of his hands over his mouth and nods fast.
“Good boy,” Chuck murmurs, which is an objectively ridiculous thing to say, but the dude’s a virgin, he doesn’t know that. He gives a breathless little whimper and shiver combo, and his dick twitches. Chuck frames it with both hands, leans back in, mouths him through his underwear until he’s a twitching, quietly-whining mess, then takes pity on the poor guy and hooks his boxers over and down, grabs his balls, swallows his dick as smoothly and quickly as he can. He’s barely got the head in his throat before Alex makes an urgent, strangled moan and comes apart on him, shuddering and yanking sharply at Chuck’s hair. For all of, yeah, a minute.
Chuck swallows a few times, runs his tongue back and forth along Alex’s softening shaft, making sure he’s good. Pulls off slowly, with a showy pop of suction, makes a production of licking his lips. Alex is staring down at him like Chuck just sucked out his soul, and it’s really nice.
“Think I practiced enough for this?” Chuck grins, and rubs at Alex’s warm balls with his thumb. Alex squeaks and shivers again, still stunned, then nods hastily.
“That was— wow,” he says, hoarse and overwhelmed. “You’re amazing. ”
Chuck could stand to hear that more. “Yeah?” he prompts, and Alex tugs at his hair, obviously urging him back to his feet. Chuck tucks Alex back into his boxers and rises, doing his belt up as he goes— a little tricky, but it definitely impresses the shit out of him, so that’s great too.
Alex kisses him as soon as he’s in range, and he’s still all shivery and squeaky and overwhelmed, and Chuck feels amazing, actually. This had to have been the easiest blowjob he’s given in his life and he’s being treated like some kind of sex god and honestly, that suits him just fine. He kisses back, keeping it kind of gentle this time, running his hands along the soft fuzz of Alex’s short hair, until the dude breaks it off himself.
“You— do you want— I could try—” he slides a hand down Chuck’s neck, plucks shyly at the collar of his shirt. “That?”
“Sucking dick?” Chuck asks, just to feel the reflexive, mortified flinch. He laughs again and lets Alex off the hook with, “Nah, I just wanted to do that for you. It’s good.”
“Oh. It is? I mean, it was, it was so good, but I mean, are you, I’d want to— do—” Alex takes a shaky breath, “—things, to, your dick. I would like to suck your dick.”
“I’m glad to hear it, bro, but this isn’t a great location for that,” Chuck says. “We’ll try it some other time, okay?”
“We will?” Alex laughs delightedly. “Oh wow okay yeah, I’m gonna— look forward to that, okay, you just tell me when. I’ll be there. Anytime. Just tell me.”
“I’ll tell you.” Chuck steps back, looks Alex up and down. He doesn’t have hair long enough to muss up, but his collar’s kind of askew— Chuck folds it back crisply, and Alex seems to remember himself all at once: he hastily tucks his shirt back in, adjusts the way his pants sit over his crotch. Then he gets distracted palming at himself, a sweetly wondering look on his face, and when he looks back up at Chuck he gives him a giddy, disbelieving grin, and goes in for another enthusiastically clueless kiss.
God, this is unfairly cute. Chuck lets him, gentling it even further— even if it would take him way too long to get off with a totally inexperienced partner, in the middle of a fucking mall, he’s still kind of got a halfie going on and needs to be focused more on chilling that out than working himself up. Finally Chuck pushes Alex off and takes a deep breath, sighs it out. Adjusts his jeans a little.
“You wanna catch a movie?” Chuck asks.
Alex pretty clearly wants to figure out how to have more sex. But he very valiantly nods anyway, and lets Chuck lead him out of the alcove and off to the nearest movie theater.
It’s nice. Alex is... nice. Everything’s easy and the guy looks at him like he’s incredible and pays for everything and Chuck doesn’t have to be scared of anything, with a Commander on his arm.
He enjoys the movie a whole lot and doesn’t spend hardly any time wondering if Mike would have liked it, too.
*
Mike’s up to his ears with personnel reports when Commander Hastings slams into his office.
“You know Harley, right?” he demands. “The guy that’s been all over your pet techie.”
“Yeah, kinda,” Mike says, surprised.
“Well he went and polished Harley’s equipment for him and now the pretentious douchebag’s going berserk about it. Thinks he owns him now or something, and he’s beating the crap out of everyone who so much as said hello in the last couple years. Rein it in, would you?”
“What!? How is this my fault?” Mike demands.
“He’s your nerd,” Hastings says. “So this is your relationship drama. Get to it!”
“You’re not my superior officer,” Mike says, but he’s already getting to his feet, dawningly worried.
“I’m plenty superior,” Hastings growls, and boots Mike out the door.
Harley is in an unusually deserted gym space when Mike finally tracks him down, and is rewrapping his knuckles. He looks exactly like a guy who’s been picking fights all day: beat to hell and still belligerent enough that he half-rises out of his seat at the edge of a blood-spattered combat ring, winding the last of the compression tape around his palm really fast.
“Did you know?” he demands of Mike, neatly and unpleasantly cutting off whatever Mike was gonna say.
“What,” Mike says instead.
Harley sniffs, hard, dabs gingerly at his flushed nose. He’s got a split lip and one eye’s pretty much gone with swelling, all of it shiny under a layer of corrective paste. He looks gross. He looks kind of deranged.
“Did you know,” Alex says.
“About what, dude—”
“What they do to him,” Alex says. He gives a sharp laugh. “He still thinks you were his friend, you know? All these years, he thought you were his friend. All these years he’s been coming over to the barracks whenever you asked him to, just because, you were so busy, too busy to meet him anywhere else, you were so important, huh?”
Mike feels lost. He also feels really, really mad. “Okay, buddy, you got five seconds to start making sense—”
“Chuck trades sex for protection,” Alex says. “Chuck X, one of the brightest fucking minds of our generation, one of the most valuable assets this company employs, put out for me pretty much exclusively because I’m a Commander.”
“...Language,” Mike says. His mind’s gone blank with shock.
“Oh?” Alex barks a painful laugh, bounces on his heels a little. Mike doesn’t miss that he’s got his fists up. “What part of explaining that you’re scum did you not like?”
“Wh—”
“Do you watch the security footage?” Alex asks him. “It’s so easy to pull, y’know. There’s highlight reels. Mason sent me some.” His single working eye gleams furiously. Mike turns carefully as Alex starts pacing around him. “Is that how you like to play it? All those times you showed up late, stood him up, forgot the date, cancelled on him, were you getting off on watching?”
“What—” Mike manages, but he thinks he knows what.
“Which one’s your favorite?” Alex demands. “How fucking— how sick are you, which bit do you like best, the ones where he begs them not to tell you what a slut he is or—”
Mike isn’t consciously aware of launching himself at Alex. Everything hurts, and his brain is a blaze of white-hot pain and horror and revulsion and Alex wouldn’t shut up and Mike can’t stand it anymore. They roll across the floor, punching and grappling, and Mike lands a good solid hit to the purple mess of Alex’s eye, pins him flat to his back. Alex has been fighting all day, it doesn’t matter how much pain management he’s got in his system, he’s exhausted, his body’s a hot trembling mess under Mike’s.
“Do you like the parts where he cleans up for you afterwards,” Alex rasps. “Gets everything back in order and goes back to waiting. Only you never show up. Chasing that promotion, huh? Like you and all your rapist buddies aren’t a fucking disgrace to the uniform—”
Mike hits him again, then shoves off him, almost scrambling to get away. It can’t be true, it can’t, none of that can be true. But Alex doesn’t take any of it back. He just lies on the floor and breathes raggedly, curling up around his face in uncoordinated little fits and starts.
“He still misses you,” Alex says. “Is that. Hhh. Is that your favorite. Part.”
Mike runs.
*
Chuck doesn’t know what’s up with Alex on this date, but he really doesn’t like it. Chuck thought Alex would be really into checking out the history museum’s new exhibition of premodern war technology— it’s even got a whole angle on how the military developments were repurposed for industrial and commercial uses, that’s cool, that’s pretty much exactly what Chuck would have expected Alex to get all hot and bothered over. But no. Alex is stiff and edgy and won’t kiss him, doesn’t even want Chuck to hold his hand, and he stares at the infoscreens like he isn’t even reading them. Also, he’s got a hell of a black eye going on.
“So okay, what’s your problem?” Chuck finally bursts out with, thirty six increasingly stressful minutes into trying to figure out what the fuck. Alex jumps a little, then glares at him.
“Nothing!” Alex says.
“Yeah, try again,” Chuck snaps. “Why are you being so weird? Are you mad at me? What did I do?”
“Nothing,” Alex snaps back, and wraps his arms around himself. Chuck doesn’t miss how stiffly he’s moving, or the way he’s favoring his ribs.
“Did you get beat up because of me?” Chuck asks. “Did— are you in trouble?”
Alex doesn’t respond for a long time, just glares at a clunky old drone bomber.
“If you don’t wanna do stuff with me anymore...” Chuck starts, and is surprised to find that the concept actually kind of bothers him. It sucks? He likes Alex, he likes doing stuff with Alex. But Alex is getting beat up. That’s not right. And anyway it’s not like Chuck can’t handle himself on his own, he always has before, so it’s cool. He can deal.
Alex holds himself still for another long minute, throat working, arms shaking a little.
“If,” he starts, swallows again. “If you were. If you didn’t. Have to. If I… When. Fuck, I’m sorry, I can’t— can’t— hh.”
Holy crap. Chuck is extremely alarmed to observe that he looks pretty much about to cry.
“Hey,” he says, trying to be gentle. “Hey, stop freaking out, dude, breathe. What’s going on?”
“I punished— everyone who—” Alex makes a tight, aimless gesture with one hand. “—Hurt you. They won’t anymore. So you can— stop. You’ll be safe, anyway. You don’t have to,” he takes a shaky little breath, “pretend. That there’s an, an us. You’re safe, you can, you can leave.”
Chuck stares at him. “Wait, what?” he asks. “You beat up— holy shit, everyone? Like, the cadets who— that’s— that’s a lot. How did you know?”
“There was security footage,” Alex says, which, shit. Shit. He swallows, sniffs hard. “Mason showed me some. He was. Proud.”
“Mason is such a fuckhead,” Chuck says fervently. “And you kicked his ass?”
Alex nods, not looking nearly as proud of this accomplishment as Chuck feels he should.
“Can I kiss you?” Chuck asks. “Because wow.”
But instead of flushing or smiling or anything, Alex huddles even further away from Chuck, who has to pull up short all over again.
“You don’t— you shouldn’t,” he says lowly.
“Okay, why?” Chuck demands. “I don’t have any diseases or anything, even— god, how many— okay, how many dudes have you seen me blow? I get tested regularly, we all do, I’m clean, I promise. You’re not gonna catch dickrot off me from fucking Mason, though let me tell you, he’s sure got some and I hope it itches.”
Alex still doesn’t laugh. He just looks up at Chuck all miserable and… pitying. Which… okay, Chuck really doesn’t like that. Should Chuck not have admitted to blowing other dudes? Except Alex knows already.
“What those guys did to you was wrong, ” Alex says, slowly and clearly. He looks like he can’t figure out how Chuck doesn’t know this.
“I mean, yeah?” Chuck says, totally puzzled now. “It sucked and I hated it. So like, thanks for beating everyone up for me, that’s awesome of you and also really hot, and I wanna kiss you. What’s the issue?”
“You don’t have to— to pretend to like me anymore!” Alex bursts out. “You don’t have to kiss me! Or, or anything else, you’re— you’re free, okay? You can stop!”
“Ohhhh,” Chuck says, finally getting it. “Okay, you’re an idiot. Cool. C’mere.” Ignoring the way Alex flinches back from him, he cups the guy’s pale, pointy face in his hands and kisses him right on his unhappy mouth. Alex holds himself stiffly, not at all reciprocating, until Chuck, totally exasperated, blows a raspberry against his throat and he shrieks.
“Get it together, dude,” Chuck tells him, annoyed. “Did I kiss anyone in whatever vids you saw? Did I take ‘em on dates? Am I voluntarily spending my weekends on Mason? No. You’re cool. We’re cool. Okay?”
Alex stares at him, all wide watery blue eyes and raw hope.
“Okay,” he says, kind of choked up. “Really?”
“Yeah, really,” Chuck says, and this time when he kisses Alex, the guy unfolds and clutches on to Chuck’s shirt, kissing him back like they’re in some soppy movie and Chuck almost died or something. It’s… actually really nice.
“Can we go back to my pod?” Chuck finally asks, kind of breathless. “I got. Um.” Alex is kissing his neck now. “A bed.”
Alex pauses for a long moment, his breath warm over Chuck’s throat. “You don’t have to do this,” he says a final time.
“Yeah, but I wanna,” Chuck says. “You’re— good. This is good. Come back to my pod.”
*
“Explain to me again why I’m here,” Mike says.
“Guilty conscience, probably,” Alex says, leaning over the washroom sink. “And you were right about like, everything else Chuck likes so far. So: which shirt?”
Mike stares at the pale arch of Alex’s back, the shadows of bruises laid over the muscles of his ribs. He’s putting on eyeliner in the mirror, clumsily following the instructional cartoon playing from the makeup-case he got from god knows where. Mike thinks about Alex determinedly going to a mall or something and buying makeup. Or maybe he just stole it? No. He probably bought it. He’s better at following the rules than Mike is. But god, that seems so embarrassing, Mike can’t imagine doing that just for like, a thing, a game night with Chuck and his techie friends.
Which is probably why Alex is Chuck’s boyfriend and Mike hasn’t talked to the guy in… Jeez, a month, now. Because Mike sucks.
“I think the button-up would look nice, on you,” Mike forces himself to say. “But the, uh, the t-shirt is… casual?”
“Is casual good?” Alex asks. He glares at his reflection and then starts wiping the black paint off, even though Mike couldn’t begin to say what was wrong with it.
“Yeah,” Mike says. “I mean. I don’t know.”
“Thanks,” Alex says, really sarcastically, and starts trying to paint his face again. “Fuck! Ow.”
“Language,” Mike says.
“Blow me,” Alex says, and for a second he sounds just like Chuck. It’s weird. He scrubs at one of his eyes, then pats it gently with a damp tissue. “Shit, can you do this? I can’t get the angle right.”
“I’ve never done this before,” Mike says.
“Yeah me either, so c’mon,” Alex says, and waves a tiny little brush at Mike. “You’re good at stuff. See if you’re good at this. There’s a tutorial.”
He hops up to sit on the counter, and Mike takes the brush. The instructional cartoon starts over, and Mike leans over Alex’s face to study it.
“Your eye’s looking better,” he notes.
“Thanks,” Alex says, not so sarcastically. “I already did the foundation, so. Just get the eyeliner on, okay?”
“Okay.” Mike awkwardly tries to hold Alex’s face in one of his hands. The tutorial doesn’t cover where you’re supposed to touch someone when you’re painting them. So that sucks. Mike bites his lip kind of hard and just goes for it. Skin is squishy and stretchy and kind of drags against the makeup brush unexpectedly, and Mike has to take a tissue and wipe off his first attempt.
“I told you I wasn’t good at this,” he warns Alex.
“Uh huh,” Alex says. And stays put.
Mike tries again. This time he gets it right: it looks just like the tutorial says it should, and he grins proudly down at his work.
“Good?” Alex asks, blinking at him, looking kind of startled and suspicious. Mike gestures for him to twist around and check it out in the mirror, and Alex brightens up, looking really pleased. “Hey! Wow, okay! I look hot! ”
He does look hot: Mike was only looking at the makeup itself, but actually in the context of how it works with his face, it… works. His eyes are even brighter now, his lashes dark and dramatic. His eyebrows look… better somehow. Mike realizes his hand has come to rest on Alex’s bare shoulder and takes it back really fast.
“I think you should go with the t-shirt,” he says, pretty much at random.
“You got it,” Alex says, like Mike being unexpectedly competent at eyeliner also means he’s a fashion expert too.
The t-shirt doesn’t look casual, though. It’s... very tight. It looks… Sleek. Like, it definitely… it’s on, it covers his skin, it’s technically an article of clothing? But… dang.
“Yeah, this is great,” Alex says, smoothing it down over his abs.
“Do you have a size up?” Mike asks.
“Nah, this is fine,” Alex says, and beams proudly at his abs. He definitely has abs. There is no question whatsoever about that, considering the t-shirt situation. Mike has serious regrets about suggesting the t-shirt now.
“You look like an escort, dude,” Mike says. It only makes Alex’s smile brighter and prouder, though, and the dude gives a slow, obnoxious roll of his shoulders, flexing his arms and everything. Mike scowls, feeling his face heat up at the ridiculous display. Like, so Alex has muscles, they’re cadets, they should. So what!
It’s just that like, normal cadets, who are just regular guys, and not Alex, don’t put on makeup and really tight little shirts and then preen at Mike. They just kind of… have muscles. Alex has muscles and also makeup and sex with Chuck and he’s gonna go over to Chuck’s place, with his friends, looking like that, making everyone all jealous, probably. And then have sex with Chuck. Chuck is going to be peeling that t-shirt off. And Alex is just standing there, admiring himself in the mirror, lit up with anticipation, and Mike sucks, and kind of hates everything about his life right now, but especially the way Alex looks in the t-shirt Mike picked out for him and the makeup Mike put on him and the boyfriend Mike—
Mike—
Well, anyway. “Bye, dude,” Mike says, and turns to go.
“I’ll tell you how it went,” Alex says.
“Don’t,” Mike says. Even though Alex probably will anyway. And Mike will listen, and help him troubleshoot, and suggest how Alex can do even more cool and thoughtful and enjoyable boyfriend things for Chuck next time, and Mike sucks.
He goes to the nearest gym and cues up the hardest combat simulator he’s authorized for. He’s not gonna be spending tonight getting any sleep, anyway.
*
Chuck has already played a round of Enchantment and gotten down a good couple of penalty shots of James’ new experimental recreational beverage when Alex shows up, and Chuck would like to blame the penalty shots for why he basically trips over his own feet and makes a noise like a drone malfunction.
“So… hi?” Alex says, smiling like he knows exactly how he looks and is doing it on purpose.
“Hi,” Chuck says breathlessly. “I— wow, dude. Okay. Hi. Holy shit.”
Alex beams at him, running a hand over the short fuzz of his hair, which is like virtually the only non-sexy part of him at the moment. Chuck watches the way his muscles shift and tries not to actually drool on himself.
It’s just, the thing is like, Chuck is normally kind of omnivorous when it comes to getting his dick touched? But also the thing is that Chuck still has a type and that type is Fancy Hotties, and unfortunately for Chuck and his dick it turns out that Alex can swing Fancy Hottie REALLY WELL.
“So I look alright?” Alex presses.
“They’re gonna eat you alive,” Chuck says, still kind of dazed. “Damn, dude. Okay. Hhhf. C’mere.”
Alex crowds up against Chuck eagerly, and consents to be smooched really hard and thoroughly. Chuck is just starting to seriously consider bailing on everyone to go have like two or three times more sex than he’d initially planned on when James himself wanders up.
“Hey, Chuckles, it’s your turn,” he says. “Who’s this? Is this Alex?”
“Uhuh,” Chuck says, unpeeling himself very regretfully. “Yeah, this is him.”
“Huh,” James says. “Damn. Good job, dude.” He holds up his hand and Chuck, kind of mortified to be doing this right in front of Alex, high fives him. “Anyway it’s your turn.”
“Cool. Can we deal Alex in?”
James gives Alex another, somewhat more skeptical once-over. “He can play?”
“Yeah, I told you, he knows how, we’ve done some online duels, he’s fine.”
“How fine?”
“I mean he’s not gonna win, but he’s fine.”
“Hey,” Alex finally cuts in. “What do you mean, I’m not gonna win? I could win. You don’t know.”
“Shut up, Harley, I do too know,” Chuck says. “Ben is going to win. Ben always wins. But you’ll spice things up, c’mon.”
“They’re gonna get spicy, alright,” James says. He’s short, mediocre-looking, and a complete twerp, but he has good taste in men. This new round of looking Alex over definitely includes looking at his ass, and Chuck tucks his arm firmly around Alex’s fantastic fucking shoulders, pulling him possessively close. Alex gives him a startled, completely thrilled grin and lets himself get pulled, then puts his arm around Chuck’s lower back with the air of a guy getting away with something awesome. It’s unfairly sweet and touching and Chuck still can’t exactly buy that this is his real, actual life.
There’s a really annoyingly extended round of everyone making a big fucking deal about how hot Alex is when Chuck walks into the game room with him. Chuck has to flip everyone off before the laughter and heckling die down and everyone concedes that whether or not Chuck bought an escort just to play Enchantment: The Convocation with a bunch of nerds, the escort had better be able to actually play.
“I can play,” Alex says, face all flushed and expression pretty adorably resolute. He pulls out a shiny, scratchless deck projector and lays it on the table, tapping it to sync like he’s never done it before, and watching intently as it shimmers and starts loading his deck into the mix.
“Cool. Did I miss my turn?” Chuck asks, before anyone can give him a hard time for being a realspace virgin.
“Yes,” Nate says immediately.
“Get fucked, no I didn’t,” Chuck says, because Nate always fucking cuts the clock on people, and if he’s trying to do that now it means Chuck’s got at least a minute left before he’s passed on. “I take my allotted runtime and append it to Alex’s second turn.”
“He putting out for that?” James asks.
“Give him your runtime and find out, asshole,” Chuck retorts.
“I take my allotted runtime and append it to Alex’s third turn,” James says immediately.
“Um,” Alex says. “I’m not, um. I’m not putting out for— is that a game term?”
“No,” Chuck says immediately.
“We’re really not hot enough for that to be a game term around here,” Anton says, who also has good taste in men. “God, can you fucking imagine.”
“I can’t, no,” Ben says blandly. He’s asexual, and perpetually tired of having to deal with an entire department of horny nerds. “For my turn I use Poseidon's Kiss to sink all of Chuck’s islands. Discard any blue wellsprings and any ground-locked allies.”
“I hate you so much,” Chuck says fervently.
Alex has been studying the table intently, bright eyes flicking from screen to screen, and now he takes a deep breath and orders his hand with the attitude of a guy about to tell Abraham Kane to go fuck himself.
“Okay,” he says, kind of unsteadily. “Uh. I activate three green wellsprings, which lets me play Taproot, which lets me select one card from anyone’s hand, and I take Wild Growth from, um, from you—” he points at Ben, “—and in conjunction with Taproot that multiplies my wellsprings by three so I have nine, or six unused ones—”
“You’ve already used the wellsprings for Taproot, you can’t use them again,” Nate protests.
“You can use excess magic from a wellspring to power further enchantments if you multiply it after the first draw,” Alex says. “Um. That’s called refreshing. Right? You can do that.”
“You can in fact do that,” James smirks.
“So I take my six refreshed wellsprings and invoke Cattails, which converts any given black wellspring back to green, so I take, um— your—” he points at James, who abruptly stops smirking, “—you’ve only got five black wellsprings but they’re mine now. And I use my last green wellspring to summon Very Large Frog into play, and he’s got hotfoot, so I can attack immediately, and I attack his—” he indicates Anton, “—goblin wench. For two damage. So she can’t keep buffering his goblin troops. And he’s overdrawn. So he takes, um, however much damage the total of his goblin cards amounts to, divided by three, I think. End turn.”
There’s a pause.
“You’re going to die,” Chuck says. “But that was really cool.”
The game goes pretty fast for the next couple turns, Chuck’s coworkers all ganging up to try and turf Alex right back out of the fight and Alex holding on with impressive determination. Ben looks like he’s having a lot of fun; Anton looks like he got a shock bot shoved up his ass. Nate is having a total blast playing his usual run of dirty tricks on a new victim. James gets way too pleased with himself when he maneuvers Alex into a penalty shot.
“What is this?” Alex asks suspiciously, sniffing at the thermos.
“Experimental recreational beverage,” James purrs. “Almost definitely harmless. Probably.”
“It’s just some alcohol,” Chuck says. “James thinks he can kick your ass better if he kills off some of your brain cells first.”
“Oh. Uh.” Alex hesitates. “They grow back, right?”
“On some people,” Ben drawls.
“You’ll be fine, just don’t chug it,” Chuck says. Alex grimaces, sets his shoulders, and takes a big gulp. His pale throat works, and Chuck can see the shiver of pain that works its way down from his jaw to his chest, the little spasming, involuntary gasp he gives as he pulls the thermos away from his lips. He sets it very carefully back down on the table and Chuck is pretty sure he’s not the only guy here whose heart rate just went nuts.
“Not bad,” Alex says, with transparently forced casualness. He’s breathing pretty hard, and there’s just enough of a hint of tears in his eyes to make them extra bright. Shit, he’s good looking.
“Glad you like it,” James says. “You’re gonna be having a lot of that tonight.”
Alex’s eyes flash at the challenge. “Yeah, right, ” he says. And proceeds to turn the few black wellsprings James has managed to scrimp up into radioactive frog dumps.
Rich and Basil come back after Alex’s third penalty shot, with a semi-legal amount of popcorn and a definitely-illegal amount of butter and garlic salt.
“Whoa, who’s this?” Rich asks, folding his massive body-builder’s frame down carefully into the flimsy breakroom chairs, and briskly dealing himself back in. Basil, slim and dark and suspiciously rumpled for anyone who wasn’t up to some heavy petting with Rich in the nearest supply closet, leans on one of Rich’s enormous shoulders and scans Alex over like he’s contemplating dessert.
“Alex,” Alex says, sticking his arm out with more enthusiasm than accuracy. Chuck grabs his shoulder to keep him from tipping out of his chair, and Rich takes his hand with his own huge paw and shakes it with an expression of dawning delight.
“ You’re Alex,” he says significantly.
“Oh, that’s Alex,” Basil says.
“Shut the entire fuck up,” Chuck says, preemptively.
“I am in fact Alex,” Alex says with careful enunciation, then giggles.
“James is being a dick,” Chuck explains.
“Water is wet,” Basil says.
“The sky’s blue,” Rich says.
“Sugar is sweet,” Basil says.
“I’m a dick too,” Rich says.
“That is so much less cute than you two idiots probably thought it was,” Nate says, while Anton gags performatively. James just salutes Rich with the remains of the thermos.
Rich salutes him back with a middle finger, then studies the game conditions for a minute, then throws his weight in behind the goblin revolution Alex has been meticulously engineering to fuck up Anton’s entire playstyle. Alex gives him a wide, bright, fairly heart-stopping grin, and Chuck can pretty much see the stack overflow crash Rich’s entire cognitive process. As a bonus, Basil sees it too, and he un-lounges from Rich’s shoulder, deals himself in, and backs Anton.
Chuck has had enough penalty shots of his own that he doesn’t feel the slightest flicker of shame over putting his arm back around Alex’s shoulders and pulling him in close. Alex is his absurd stroke of good fortune. Everyone else can get their own. Or ask really nicely to borrow Chuck’s. And use him nicely. While Chuck supervises.
Hmm.
Alex is eventually run out of the game, even with Chuck and Rich trying to run interference on the other players—it’s hard to keep someone going when they’re getting targeted, and Ben and Anton and Basil have taken Alex’s competence as a personal challenge, while James just wants to get the poor asshole wasted, and Nate’s main goal is to annoy everyone as much as possible. Without Alex, Chuck gets crushed in short order, though he takes James and Basil down with him, Basil takes Nate down with him, and Rich turns and slaughters Anton while Ben is taking him out.
“Oh look, I win,” Ben comments, tapping his deck to reboot. “What a totally unforeseen outcome.”
Rich throws some popcorn at him. Alex giggles again, his cheek resting heavily against Chuck’s shoulder, then turns his face and clumsily kisses Chuck’s neck. It’s— cute. It’s really fucking cute. Chuck’s very aware of Rich eying him thoughtfully, and gives him the smuggest, meanest grin he can manage, which is pretty smug and mean.
“Another round?” James asks, and brings out a second fucking thermos from somewhere.
“Ehh,” Chuck says, not really sure. Alex is already— well, he’s cute, and he’s hot, and he’s really nice like this, all cuddly and relaxed and shit, but— it’s not like Chuck wants to wrap tonight up helping him barf his guts out somewhere.
“Bring it,” Alex says, though, leaning forward. He catches himself on the edge of the table, leaning forward on his elbows in a way that does absolutely fantastic stuff for his biceps, and Chuck’s brain kind of gives up on itself for the night.
“Yeah, sure,” Chuck says. “Bring it.”
Two hours later Ben has won again, Chuck has gotten popcorn stuffed down his shirt, and James has been forced to fall on his own stupid fucking sword and drain off like half the thermos by himself. Rich has produced his own flask of significantly better alcohol, and shared enough around to get Basil extremely relaxed, sitting in his lap and licking popcorn butter off his long, talented fingers, dark eyes fixed intently on Chuck and Chuck’s date. Alex is pink and giggly and not exactly sloppy drunk but he’s definitely bright-eyed and bouncy and really fucking handsy and obviously inspired by how demonstratively a couple Basil and Rich are, so he wants a lot of holding on to and Chuck is—Chuck is great, actually. This has been a damn good game night.
“So how nicely do we have to ask?” Rich murmurs, leaning in close on Chuck’s other side from where Alex is working a really distracting hickey into his throat.
“Uh— hhn—” Chuck groans and drags his hands through his hair, trying to concentrate. “I, hah, I don’t— what?”
“I think we’re prepared to ask really nicely,” Rich goes on, and, hands. On Chuck’s thighs. Rich’s big strong hands on his thighs and Basil leaning forward, brushing Chuck’s hair out of his eyes, smiling hopefully. James is looking at them intently from across the table, licking his lips, and Ben is rolling his eyes, packing the decks up.
“I don’t want to hear a damn thing about anything that happens next,” he tells them.
“Hard same,” Nate says, and clears the door well ahead of Ben. Anton packs his deck up slowly, obviously thinking it over, but he doesn’t much like James and James shows no sign of leaving, and this is apparently a dealbreaker. He heads off, shaking his head.
Basil doesn’t like James either, but he doesn’t leave with Anton. Well, he wouldn’t, what with being attached at the dick to Rich. Instead he leans in and presses a thumb against Chuck’s throat, where Alex has left a tingling, throbbing bite.
“Nnnhah, okay, nno. Wait. No.” Chuck takes a deep breath, pushes Alex off him for a second, then Rich and Basil. “Wait, we gotta, uh. Talk about this.”
“What?” Alex asks, seeming to focus for the first time in kind of awhile. He blinks at Chuck, then peers confusedly around at everyone. “Oh. Wait. What?”
“Alex, how do you feel about—” Chuck waves his hand at the other techies. “Like, all of us. And you. Is that a, a, rape thing, or, are you good.”
Alex’s eyes go really wide. “ All of you,” he repeats. “What like. All of you. And me.”
“Yeah,” Chuck says. He rubs at the tingling, sensitive mark Alex left on his neck, can’t help squirming a little, impatient to have this resolved one way or another before his dick really starts taking issue with his jeans. “Like, a group thing. If you don’t want that it’s cool, we can kick ‘em to the curb, who cares.”
“Hey,” James says.
“Yeah, hey,” Rich says. Basil just snorts.
“What, uh, what… how would that… you really…” Alex looks around again. “You guys would want to?” he asks, in kind of a small, crushed, pathetic little voice.
“Uh, yeah,” Rich says.
Basil says, “Have you seen yourself? Holy shit.”
“Oh,” Alex says. “Holy shit. Okay. Then, yeah. Absolutely. Wow. Yeah!”
“Are you sure,” Chuck asks, because it seems like this is kind of important.
“Dude,” Alex says. “Yes. Wow. Really sure. How, uh, how’s it—how’s it going to work, like, you guys know—how—you know how to do this right? Like, sex, with, lots of, uh. Us.”
“I mean you basically just wing it,” Rich says, and stands up. He cracks his back out, stretches his arms ostentatiously: Chuck eyes him and all his stupid, nicely maintained muscles resentfully. It’s one thing for Alex to look like how he does, he’s a cadet, but it’s just dumb and lame for techies to maintain such a showy amount of mass. He’s not even an engineer anymore! He wrestles code around like Chuck, it’s not heavy lifting.
“My eyes are up here, buddy,” Rich says, and nudges Chuck’s chin provokingly.
“I could not give less of a fuck, pal,” Chuck says, and elbows him in the hip. Rich just laughs and hauls Chuck out of his chair, slinging him over his shoulders in a completely absurd rescue carry.
“Okay, we’re going back to my pod,” he says cheerfully. “I’m the least drunk and have the biggest bed and the coolest sex toys, let’s go.”
“I’m not arguing with most of that,” James says, “but I have some pretty cool sex toys.”
“Do you have a dildocopter?”
“That’s not a sex toy. That’s a hoverdrone you taped a dildo to,” Chuck protests. Being sort of horizontal while getting bodily carried off is not doing any favors for his equilibrium. But also being bodily carried off is doing a lot for his dick. He bites Rich’s neck just to feel him squawk and hear Basil giggle.
“Yeah okay my bad,” Rich says, kind of breathlessly. “It’s a totally normal toy, suitable for all ages, we’re rolling it out to the under-tens this spring.”
Chuck has to stop biting Rich in order to laugh, which he kind of resents. Alex catches up to him while Chuck is still giggling, and pats him clumsily on the shoulder. He’s definitely reeling, arms half-spread for balance, gait way too loose and stumbling.
“You okay?” he asks.
“Yeah, you?” Chuck asks.
“Uh-huh, I feel awesome,” Alex says. His face is flushed and lit-up with excitement. “Am I drunk? Did I get drunk?”
“James did get you drunk, yeah,” Chuck says.
“That’s cool,” Alex says, and tries to kiss Chuck. His teeth awkwardly bonk into Chuck’s jaw, and Rich has to grab him before he tries again.
“Okay, someone deal with this,” Rich says. “James, you break it, you bought it, can you grab him?”
“Yeah, I’m on it,” James laughs, and goes and gets Alex’s arm over his shoulders.
“You guys are so nice,” Alex says wonderingly.
“They got you drunk to fuck you,” Chuck points out.
“Yeah!” Alex agrees. “Man! This is awesome! Like I have no idea how this is going to work but I’m super into it!”
“If that isn’t enthusiastic consent I don’t know what is,” James says.
“Yeah, you wouldn’t,” Basil says, and James mimes a shot to the heart, then has to scramble to catch Alex before he falls over and slams into a wall. Chuck can’t help giggling in a really unattractive, wheezy way that lasts until Rich gets them to his pod and dumps Chuck on the bed.
“Oof,” Chuck complains. “Romantic!”
“Shut up and put out,” Rich says, and flops onto him. Chuck squirms and makes a very sincere complainy noise, but then Rich grabs his throat with one hand and a big fistful of his hair with the other and Chuck is abruptly not interested in complaining anymore. This is great, actually. There’s a reason Basil has been a distracted, sloppy mess ever since he and Rich first hooked up, and that reason is that Rich is a really good fuck. If Chuck hadn’t been busy dating Alex and Basil hadn’t spent the last six months doing his level best to claim a monopoly on Rich’s free time and also his dick, Chuck might have thought about dating the guy himself. As is, he’s got no complaints about taking whatever’s on offer.
Rich kisses under his jaw, bites hard enough to hurt, kisses again. Alex has been so tender and soft and cautious with Chuck all this time, which has been really sweet and nice, but god sometimes Chuck just wants to get mauled.
Right, Alex. Is here. Is drunk. Is gonna get mauled by like a lot of dudes. Chuck twists around in Rich’s grasp until he can peer dizzily over at whatever the fuck is happening with that, then yells and shoves Rich hard.
“Hey, what was that!” he demands. “James, you sketchy motherfucker, what did you give him!?”
“Holy shit, mom, chill out,” James says, holding his hands up. “It was a stim tab!”
“It was just a stim tab,” Basil confirms. “I had one too.”
Chuck squirms off the bed, storms over, reeling but determined. Grabs for the packet in James’ hand, squints at it till the words resolve.
“You had one of these?” he asks Alex, who is looking blearily worried now.
“Uh, yeah,” Alex says. “Is that, is that bad, am I bad?”
“No, it’s.” Chuck makes himself take a deep breath. “Fine, it’s fine. It’s fine. I overreacted. It’s fine. You’re sure this is what you took?”
Alex nods, looking openly scared now.
“Okay. Sorry. Fuck. Sorry, it’s fine. Okay. It’s fine.” Chuck wobbles back to the bed, collapses on the edge. “It’s just a stim tab, you’ll be fine.” He pops one out for himself, sets it under his tongue. Breathes slowly through his nose. “Fuck,” he adds. He’s starting to realize just how much of a mess he’s let himself become: he spent all his brain tonight on making sure Alex would be cool, he wasn’t keeping track of shots, his asshole friends got both of them stupid drunk and it’s all Chuck’s fault, god. Fuck.
“Hey, it’s gonna be okay,” Rich says, “we’re gonna have fun,” and kisses his shoulder. Chuck makes a pissy growl and elbows him, and Rich just laughs, wraps his arms around Chuck, pinches both his nipples at once. Chuck jerks, squeaking, and Rich pinches again, drops one hand between Chuck’s thighs and starts rubbing. He’s nowhere near hard yet thanks to, again, being a total fucking idiot who went and got wasted, but there’s definitely a yet going on, and god, that feels good.
The other three dudes come over and help themselves to the bed: James just flops over, Basil goes and sits on James’s butt, one hand fisting firmly in James’ hair, and Alex perches very carefully and cautiously beside Chuck, staring.
“Can I, uh, kiss…?” Alex asks.
“You get to kiss him all the time,” James says. “Come over here, huh?”
“No, hey,” Chuck says, breathing hard. “You’re—c’mere, you’re mine,” and grabs for Alex’s face. Kisses him hungry and sharp while Rich laughs at them, moans when Rich flips Chuck’s pants open and grabs his dick skin-to-skin. Alex makes a pretty little whimper when Chuck bites him, then kisses him wet and panting and hungry when Chuck moans and hitches into Rich’s fist on his dick, definitely getting hard now, definitely losing track of what’s going where and who’s touching him and why he should care.
“Clothes,” Alex pants. “Too many, I want, off, can we— please—”
“Yeah, let’s strip him,” Rich says. Alex laughs giddily and peels off Chuck’s shirt, while Rich strips his jeans off with his sneakers all in one go. Chuck falls back dizzy and startled and intensely turned on, hits the sheets with a gasp. Rich is on him in another second, strong hand on his throat, teeth on his ear.
“I’m gonna fuck you,” Rich murmurs. “I’m gonna show your pretty boy how to pound you stupid. Cool?”
Chuck whimpers agreement.
“Cool,” Rich says, and leans back. “Who’s got condoms?”
“Here,” James says, then adds bitterly, “Because apparently we’re not going to get to use ‘em.”
“It won’t kill you to exercise a little patience,” Rich says.
“It might. You don’t know.”
“I’m willing to risk it,” Rich says, and fumbles around behind Chuck’s butt for a minute, putting it on one-handed without letting go of Chuck’s throat. Chuck buries his face in his forearms, panting a little, feeling increasingly self-conscious.
“Lube?” Rich asks.
“God, do I have to do everything around here,” James grumbles.
“You can leave,” Chuck growls.
“Okay, okay, I’ll get the lube,” James says, and flounders sulkily off the bed. When he comes back he throws himself down hard enough to set the mattress rocking, and squirts cold, tingly lube all over Chuck’s back.
“Oh, fuck you, dude!” Chuck yelps, while James and Basil start giggling like mean little twerps. “Yuck!”
Even Rich and Alex are laughing— when Chuck peers up from his arms he can see Alex half-covering his mouth, looking like he knows he shouldn’t be, but can’t help it. It’s actually pretty cute, as is the apologetic, guilty grin he shoots Chuck when he realizes he’s being observed. Chuck sighs at him, long and exasperated, and buries his face in his arms again. Hitches his butt up at Rich kind of pointedly.
“Someone’s feeling neglected,” Rich observes, and scoops a bunch of drippy lube off Chuck’s back. Drags slick fingers down his butt, presses inward. Chuck whines in the back of his throat at the sensation, shivers when Rich gets just the tips of two fingers inside him and then starts rubbing back and forth.
“I’m feeling neglected too,” James says.
“If you wanted this dick you could have said something in the last, mm, five years,” Rich says. “But no, you said, and I quote, ‘if that fucking ultra golem gets anywhere near my business I will terminate it with extreme goddamn prejudice’, end quote.”
“Yeah, I don’t want anything to do with your personal monument, dude, I want my own situation attended to.”
“It can wait,” Rich says. “Or you can leave.”
“Who’s running this thing, anyway?” James demands.
“Not you,” Chuck growls, glaring up at him.
“Sure as hell not you, either,” James sneers. “The way you roll over for—”
“Shut the entire fuck up,” Chuck says.
“Thin ice, James,” Basil warns.
“It’s true though,” James says, which Chuck can’t actually argue with. He ducks his face again, feeling incoherently pissed off about it, and then Rich shoves in far enough to get at his prostate and it’s kind of hard to be mad when everything feels so good all of a sudden.
“I think maybe you should be nicer,” Alex says slowly. Like he’s uncertain.
“I can be plenty nice,” James says. “I could be nice to you. C’mere, I’ll show you—”
“Hey, no, I meant— no, I meant to Chuck—”
“No, come here,” James says, and Alex makes a startled, unhappy noise, and the stim tab must be kicking in because Chuck’s at James’s throat in an instant, tearing him away from Alex and dumping him off the side of the bed.
“He said no,” Chuck snarls. “You creepy douche, don’t touch him!”
“Hey! What the fuck!” James yelps, and grabs clumsily at Chuck’s leg when Chuck tries to kick him. “Dude holy shit cut it out!”
“Get out! Go away!” Chuck yells. Rich grabs him and hauls him off James, sighing, and it just makes Chuck angrier. “He said no, you can’t make him!”
“You’re fucking deranged!” James yells. “God, who’d want to put up with any of you anyway! Get scrapped, I’m out!”
Chuck subsides back against Rich after James storms out, breathing hard and blinking back tears.
“He said no, right?” he says shakily. “This isn’t a rape thing. This isn’t, hhh, he’s, he’s safe, it’s gonna be safe for him. Okay?”
“Okay, kid, it’s okay,” Rich says, and hugs him very slowly and firmly. Chuck’s shivering all over, now, like an idiot. But it feels good. God, he wishes he wasn’t this drunk. It’s so hard to keep everything straight in his head, what’s going on, what he’s supposed to be okay with, what he’s actually okay with.
“Alex,” he says thickly. “Alex, are you okay?”
“Um. Yeah,” Alex says cautiously. “That was, um. That was really hot.”
Chuck laughs, sniffles, wipes at his face. “You think everything I do is hot.”
“Um. Everything you do is hot.”
“On that tender note, how do we all feel about continuing to do sex?” Rich asks. “I’d like to, but like, no pressure. You kids have some feelings and problems and shit. And we’re definitely not here to rape anyone, so.”
Basil says, “I agree with Alex. That was pretty fucking hot, dude. James needs to get his ass kicked way more than it ever, like, does. Get kicked. So I’m feeling like tonight’s going great.”
“I feel like I’m cool with Basil,” Alex says. “He’s nice. That’s great.”
“I feel like feelings are dumb and I don’t want any of them,” Chuck announces. “I want sex.”
“You sure?” Rich asks him.
“Yes. One hundred percent.”
“That’s a lot of percents.”
“One hundred of them. C’mon, things were getting good, let’s go back to that, okay?”
“Okay, okay.”
Chuck is helped back on the bed, pushed down on his back this time. It makes him feel a little more helpless, being pinned this way, but Alex leans back over him immediately and kisses him, hungry and toothy and devouring, and that’s pretty great. Rich gets his fingers back up inside him and starts doing some genuinely excellent shit to his prostate, and when he moans into Alex’s mouth he can feel the way he shivers.
It doesn’t take long to start getting impatient, when Rich seems content just to finger him like he’s some kind of delicate princess all night, and he finally hitches his butt back against Rich’s fingers and makes a complainy noise.
“Oh, sorry, are we not going fast enough, Chuckie?” Rich asks, cheerfully condescending. Chuck growls, annoyed now, and squirms. “Guess that’s a yeah. Okay, babe, find something to bite—” and the fingers that had been just rubbing back and forth start stretching him out in sharp, merciless jolts. Chuck moans, open-mouthed and grateful, rocking back into the pleasure that’s riding the exhilarating line of pain. The stim-tab’s definitely working, now, taking care of the mess he’s made of himself: clearing up the headachy sickness of too much alcohol, speeding up his heart rate, concentrating his attention, helping him flick from one thought to the next. It can’t do a thing about how he’s definitely, absolutely drunk as shit, but it can make it a hell of a lot of fun.
“Think you’re ready?” Rich asks, giving his entrance a sharp, almost painful tug, and Chuck gasps and shivers and nods eagerly. He groans when he’s picked up and turned over, put on his hands and knees, and groans even louder when feels the thick, blunt head of Rich’s pretty significantly large dick nudge into him. Alex is hovering by his head, and Chuck grabs for him, pressing his face into Alex’s hands and whining desperately when the ache and stretch of taking a really ridiculously-sized dick keeps going, opening him up steady and relentless. It’s a lot, it’s so much, he always forgets how much it is, even though he remembers just fine how good it feels. Alex pets his hair kind of frantically and Chuck pants and shivers, bracing himself, and groans again when he feels Rich get all the way inside him, hips grinding hard against his butt.
“There,” Rich says, breathless and satisfied, “there, good, hah, fuck. How’s that treating you?”
Chuck whimpers, squirms. Alex keeps petting him, breathing hard himself, murmurs something slurred and almost incoherent but definitely admiring, reassuring.
“Bet I can, hah, bet I can take Alex, too,” Chuck mumbles.
“God, you’re nuts. Go for it.”
“Um,” Alex says, and Chuck pulls back— whimpers, curses— to try and see his face. Alex is flushed and dazed looking, and when he pets Chuck’s hair again Chuck isn’t so messed up that he can’t tell how his hands are shaking.
“I don’t have to,” Chuck says.
“No, uh,” Alex says, and glances down at his own dick, back up to Chuck’s face, licks his lips, looks kind of wildly around the room. “I, uh. That’d be. Uh. If you, if you could? Can you?”
“Yeah,” Chuck says, and headbutts him kind of clumsily in the chest. He gets the idea, though, and scoots back enough that when Chuck goes back down on his forearms, his dick is like right there, straining up against the tight white denim of his jeans. Chuck fumbles the clasp open and frees the poor thing from Alex’s boxers, then licks his lips and sets to swallowing it down, uncoordinated and messy from the way Rich is starting to shift back and forth inside him, slow testing little thrusts. God Rich is big, it feels like Chuck’s gonna rupture something, and it’s gonna be awesome.
Alex makes soft, sweet little noises as Chuck takes him in, and Chuck hums approvingly, rubs at his balls with a thumb to try and coax him louder. Swallows hard when he gets to the base of his shaft, bobs his head, shudders and chokes when Rich shoves back into him. Alex whines and grabs for Chuck’s hair but Rich just laughs, the big jerk, and does it again, drawing out smoothly and then shoving back hard, sending Chuck choking and slurping like some kind of amateur around Alex’s shaft, uncoordinated and helpless.
God, it’s humiliating, and even worse is how much hotter the humiliation gets him, knowing he’s drunk and messy and pinned down between two dicks and shoved back and forth, no control, no finesse. He’s just gotta take it, shudder and whine and flail for balance and miss, hang on tight and do his best and fail and keep going.
When Alex pulls him off and thumbs worriedly at the tears streaking down his cheeks, mumbles something breathless and concerned but Chuck just shakes his head— he’s okay, he’s great, he’s got this— and squirms free of Alex’s hold to get at his dick again, spearing himself back on there. He wants this, to be overwhelmed, to just stop thinking, to be reduced to a stupid fucking mess who makes awful decisions and gets fucked for it. God, it’s good, it’s so good to get what he deserves.
Rich is on board for it, which is awesome. Rich slides back and forth, strong hands aching-tight on Chuck’s hips, pulling him into each steady thrust, not letting him get even a shred of control back. Pounding him stupid with one jolt of sharp, bruising pleasure after the next, and Chuck chokes and moans and swallows Alex’s dick over and over, tasting the salt and sharpness of his precome, the pulsing heat and the way Alex just gets more and more noisy, petting Chuck’s hair frantically as he loses his restraint. Starting to thrust up to meet each thrust forward, thighs shaking, balls drawing tight and hot— he finally comes and Chuck swallows, drools, coughs, swallows again. God, he’s such a mess, and Rich is still going, using him hard now, fucking him fast and deep.
He licks up the come he’s let go everywhere, dragging his mouth sloppily all over Alex’s softening dick and hard, twitching thighs, nosing at his ridiculous abs. Rich can last awhile, a whole lot longer than Alex, Chuck is gonna be here awhile, moaning louder and louder now that he doesn’t have anything to do with his mouth— Alex brings a hand around to try and wipe his jaw, wipe drool and come off his chin, and Chuck takes a few of his fingers into his mouth, sucks fiercely. Hears Alex curse, low and unsteady, amazed. He’s sobbing now, a little, in the back of his aching throat on every thrust, every breath. Rich is gonna take forever, he’s gonna be stuck like this forever, and it’s so good not to have a choice about it, to just take it, to be like this. Stupid and careless and drooling and screaming. He’s just got to hang on and take it, and he can, he can at least do that.
Rich comes with a soft, breathless moan, and bites one of Chuck’s shoulders as he shudders apart. Then he pins him in place, not pulling out, and finally grabs his dick, pumping him slick and firm and unmerciful and perfect, and Chuck doesn’t last much longer before losing the rest of his mind, going blank with pleasure and relief.
Rich finally withdraws, but pretty much immediately sticks a few fingers back in, tugging him back open when Chuck tries to clench. Chuck shudders and lets himself be tipped on to his side— he can feel the dull, muted twinge of pain trying and failing to get through the stim-tab and alcohol he’s got in his system. It just makes everything feel better, that he’s been used this hard, that he’s this wrecked. He pushes back into the fingers inside him, even though his dick’s going soft— it probably won’t even go all the way down, if he keeps getting played with like this. He can already feel the aftershocks of his orgasm easing into something deeper, sweeter, anticipatory.
“How’s, nnh, how’s. Fuck, stop, hold up,” he whines, and shudders. Rich pauses, petting his spare hand along Chuck’s spine. “How’s ever’n— everyone, doing?” Chuck asks, as clearly as he can.
“Just fine,” Rich says, and pats his butt.
“Impressed?” Basil volunteers, from where he’s slouched against the wall, watching them and playing with one of Rich’s many sex toys, pumping a fat vibrating dicksleeve back and forth on his straining dick.
“Good,” Alex says fervently. “ Really good.”
“Okay. Great. Tha’s great. Gimme y’r dick again,” he says to Alex.
“Oh, I, but—” Alex stammers. “But you, just, uh. How’re you?”
“M’fine, m’good,” Chuck says. “Give.”
Alex is already hard again, painfully flushed and dripping precome, and he doesn’t put up any more argument, just shuffles himself around on the bed. Chuck considers it, frowning a little, and presses his palm against the jumping artery in Alex’s thigh. It’s racing, pulsing so fast it’s almost a vibration.
“Did you... d’ja take one?” he asks, trying to think. “One tab?”
“Oh, I, yeah, please,” Alex says, shivering under his touch. “Please, I want— can you just please? More?”
“Yeah, yeah,” Chuck agrees, and goes down on him. He’s got no tolerance, is probably what’s going on, a fit young guy with no experience, the stim-tabs that techies pop like vitamins probably hit a clean-living cadet like Motorcity cocaine. This is gonna be a fun night. Couple of nights, depending on just how healthy Alex is.
It takes Alex a little longer the second— third? no, second, yeah— time, long enough for Chuck’s jaw and throat to start aching even through the chemical masking, long enough Chuck’s almost getting tired of it even with how Rich is being a total champ at keeping him squirming on his fingers. But he does come, flushed and screaming and messy and gorgeous, and Chuck swallows and pulls off and rocks his hips back against Rich impatiently.
“Can you go again?” he asks Rich.
“Not as soon as your escort, I bet,” Rich says.
Alex is just sprawled back on the bed, panting and trembling and gorgeously wrecked. He looks at them blearily.
“Wh?” he asks.
“How about you get to come after he’s done with you?” Rich says. “Give you some incentive to get him back up.” Chuck growls unhappily, but then Rich starts a really nice rhythm going on his prostate and, that’s convincing.
“Nnh,” Alex goes, pushing on Chuck’s face when Chuck tries to use his mouth on him some more, and Chuck pauses.
“Wh’s, mm. You okay?” He asks, as clearly as he can.
“I, yeah, I just. Mm. You, uh. You’re okay?” Alex mumbles. He’s still shivering, his eyelashes are kind of wet, his pulse is crazy under Chuck’s palm. He looks amazing.
“Great,” Chuck says. “I want you to fuck me.”
“Oh. Wow.” Alex blinks. “Wow.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah! I, yeah, wow. Okay.” He goes to grab his own half-soft dick, shudders, grits his teeth. Tries again.
“Lube,” Rich says, and rolls it across the bed. Alex takes it gratefully, applies it. This time he touches his dick really, really carefully, light and trembling, but determined. Mission-focused.
“Toys?” Basil asks lazily. He likes edging, and he’s definitely taking his time tonight, rolling up slow and steady into his cocksheath, playing with his nipples. Enjoying the show.
Basil says, “I wanna see what a cadet looks like in nipple clamps. And a cock ring. And a collar.”
Rich makes a noise of intense approval, and goes for a drawer.
“Oh, wow,” Alex says, shuddering. “Wow, okay.”
“Okay?” Chuck asks.
“Yeah, I want, all of that sure, bring it,” Alex says.
“ Fuck yeah,” Chuck breathes, and raises himself up on his arms enough that he can bite marks across Alex’s abs, his chest. He’s so pale, he bruises up pretty. He squeaks when Chuck bites one of his nipples, makes an uncertain little noise when Chuck licks them. He doesn’t protest when Chuck drops a hand down between his legs to help out, just gasps and pushes up into Chuck’s light, careful touch, and it feels so good to mess with him like this, he’s so responsive. Rich gets a thick studded collar around his neck, vicious red against his pale skin, and sensitizing clips that buzz and throb around the taut peaks of Alex’s nipples. Another shot of lube gets Alex’s dick gleaming wet, and Chuck slides a beaded ring around the very base, behind the balls, gives it a squeeze to start it pulsing with a low, heavy vibration that makes Alex writhe, almost hyperventilating as his dick jerks up to full attention.
They play with him until he’s crying with sensation, his dick painfully engorged and so dripping-wet from lube and precome that Chuck hardly thinks they need anything more. He pushes Alex flat on his back and swings a leg over his hips.
“Condom!” Rich says, and Chuck moans with frustration when Rich grabs his thigh, keeping him from sinking down.
“Aww, c’mon!” he says, annoyed, and Rich gives him a sharp shove. He takes his leg back and kneels by Alex’s side, twitchy and impatient, while Rich gets Alex situated and then applies even more lube.
“You’d regret it later,” Rich scolds him.
“Det— debatable,” Chuck grumps, and finally goes and gets Alex’s dick up in him.
It’s a good dick. Not exactly monster-sized like Rich’s, but fine. And twitching even harder inside him, vibrating a little from the beaded ring and curved just right to get at his prostate when he rocks back and forth, and also Alex grabs his thighs hard enough to ache when he does, and whines something like holy shit—! which is flattering.
“Grab my— yeah okay fuck, thanks, great,” Chuck gasps, and Alex laughs breathlessly and pumps his dick in a sloppy, uncoordinated, trembling fist, and Chuck sets about fucking both of them stupid. It doesn’t take much— thanks to Rich’s teasing Chuck is more than ready to get off already and Alex is overstimulated as hell, flushed and frantic and acting like every little shift of Chuck’s weight is a personal miracle. Chuck comes first, spattering Alex’s chest and throat with come, which is a visual that should probably be immortalized in epic poetry or at least a holoscreen, and Alex is wild enough that he just sits up, grabs Chuck’s hips, and slams him back and forth a last few times before coming with a hoarse scream.
Rich applauds, sarcastically. Chuck flips him off, sincerely.
This time, when Chuck flops over on his side and Rich goes to touch his butt again, Chuck slaps his wrist.
“Aw, what,” Rich says.
“I’m done,” he says sternly, and slaps Rich’s hand when Rich goes for his dick. “I’m done, Merrill!”
“Oh, come on, you know you like getting totally fucked out. You really don’t want one more round?”
“No, dude, go maul your damn boyfriend, Basil’s gotta be up for it by now!”
“I am in fact really up for it,” Basil confirms. “Can I have Alex, too?”
“Wait, what, Merrill?” Alex says breathlessly. He props up on an elbow, looking flushed and well-fucked but dismayingly alert. “Richard Merrill?”
“Yeah,” Rich says. “Shit, kid, did we not get introduced?”
“No, I, yeah, I, forgot, I dunno, shit,” Alex says, and actually sticks his hand out to shake. Rich takes it, amused. “Richard Merrill, shit! I read your shit! On, on, suspension dynamics, shit, it was, it was awesome!”
Rich looks at Chuck. “What,” he says.
From the edge of the bed, still playing with himself, Basil says, incredulously, “Oh what the fuck, Chuck, your cadet reads nerd crap? He plays Enchantment and he keeps up with our papers?”
“I love nerd crap,” Alex says fervently. “Wow! Can I ask you, uh, about— okay, so when you substitute, um, hypo— hyper, I mean hyper, hyperspan corrugation for electrospen, ec— eclect— shit! Electro-suspendended trusses, what’s that do for the flow rate of the antigrav modulators? ‘Specially like, with the, um, the day— the temporal, the temperature differences. Over time. What’s up with that.”
Rich blinks a few times. “Wow,” he says. “Okay, wow. Uh.”
“Corrugation doesn’t do shit for the flow rate,” Basil says, his hand finally pausing. “That’s what the flux rigging handles.”
Alex makes a breathless noise of excitement, and looks back and forth from Rich to Basil like he just had fifteen birthdays at once.
“I never thought of that,” he says, with reverent delight.
Chuck yawns and rolls over, dragging one of Rich’s pillows over his head. Rich and Basil can enjoy some high-octane Alex Harley to the face for awhile. He’s done.
*
Mike is a little worried about Alex on Monday: he hasn’t seen the guy since Friday evening, and presumably everything went okay, or maybe it went so bad that Alex has been sulking for two and a half days straight.
It’s not that Mike likes the guy or anything. He’s just... concerned. Alex is pretty good for Chuck, probably. It would be a shame if he wasn’t. It’s not like Mike can do anything for Chuck anymore.
So he’s relieved when Alex comes by his office after lunch. And also... unnerved, because Alex is like... he’s clean, his uniform’s perfectly appointed, but there’s something weird about the way he moves, how bright his eyes are, the chain of bruises up his throat.
“Got lucky?” Mike asks, and is treated to an absolutely dazzling grin. Alex levers himself carefully down into the spare chair.
“I got like a statistically improbable amount of lucky,” Alex tells him. “Holy shit, dude. I owe you.”
“Language,” Mike says.
“Sorry, Commander Chilton. I meant, gosh, and also heck. But oh my god, techies are like— they’re so good at sex? They’re awesome, it was awesome.”
“They?” Mike asks, even though he already knows he shouldn’t. “Wait, so, you mean like. Not just Chuck?”
“Yeah, no.” Alex slouches back in his chair and does a slow, languorous, full-body stretch, tipping his pale throat back, stretching out the chain of red-purple marks.
He says, “I think I fucked like. Five guys.”
“Oh,” Mike says, instead of complaining about Alex’s filthy mouth anymore. “Okay, wow.”
“Six,” Alex says. “Including Chuck. He was there. He like. Ran things. He was so cool, dude, he like— he kicked this one dude’s ass? Who was being a jerk about things? He was amazing, he spent the whole time just making sure everyone was having a good time, except I guess he was asleep for some of it but we were fine. It was great. It was so cool.”
“Wow,” Mike repeats, more faintly. He licks his lips, looks away— doesn’t know what to do with hands, suddenly.
Chuck kicking someone’s ass is— that’s sure something, to think about. Chuck defending Alex, instead of the other way around. Good, that’s good, he should— it’s about time Chuck stood up for himself, really, or other people, or whatever. Mike... hasn’t, in a real long time.
When he looks back, Alex has gotten out of his chair, is leaning over the desk. His eyes are really bright, a vivid shining blue, and his smile is broad and weird and his lips are dark pink, kind of flushed and bruised and used. Six guys, including Chuck. Wow.
“I could show you,” he says. “What I learned. I learned a lot.”
“Uh,” Mike says. “You and, and, Chuck, though?”
“Yeah, me and Chuck,” Alex says, still grinning. He reaches out and touches Mike’s jaw very gently, his fingers cool and prickling-electric on Mike’s skin, kind of burning where they stroke down. “I think he’d like to know I was putting what he showed me to good use.”
“Oh,” Mike says breathlessly. “Oh, then, I, uh. Yeah?”
“Cool,” Alex says, and climbs on to the desk, and kisses him. And Mike doesn’t even like him, he’s a pushy, too-pretty jerk who stole Chuck out from under Mike and isn’t even sorry and hasn’t actually ever done anything wrong, not like Mike, but when Alex kisses him Mike shouldn’t let him because he doesn’t deserve it but he just, he kisses back. It feels really good.
Alex finishes climbing over the desk, and pushes Mike back in his chair, still kissing him. Mike’s nervous, uncertain, but he doesn’t want to stop— he keeps thinking, Chuck did this, Chuck showed him this, and letting Alex go in for more, biting his lips, licking against Mike’s tongue. Moving suddenly to catch his throat between his teeth, sucking hard, grabbing fistfulls of Mike’s hair and pulling his head back.
“Doing okay?” Alex asks, and Mike kind of wished he hadn’t, he doesn’t want to think about this, he doesn’t want a choice.
But he says, gamely, “Yeah, I, yeah, s’good,” and is rewarded with a low, triumphant laugh right in his ear, and a lot more sucking and biting on his throat.
“I wanna blow you,” Alex says.
“Oh wow god okay,” Mike says, hips jerking up just at the thought. “ Why? ”
“It’s fun,” Alex says.
It’s kind of hard to argue with that. Mike pants for breath, rubs a hand over his wet mouth, and nods. Gestures at his lap. Alex gives him a quick, toothy kiss and drops to his knees between Mike’s legs, running his pale hands over the white fabric of Mike’s thighs, staring eagerly at the rising tent of Mike’s erection.
“Nice,” he says, and fumbles with Mike’s belt, jerks his zipper down. “Wow, yeah. Nice. ”
Alex has blown like, a lot of dudes by now, apparently, so he’s probably not just saying that. Still, Mike squirms when Alex hooks the waistband of his boxers down over his junk, feeling shy and pleased and excited and also weirdly scared.
“Is it— it’s okay?” he asks. “It’s nice?”
“Yeah, it’s, you’re great,” Alex says. “You look great, you know.”
Mike did not know. It feels surprisingly good to be told, especially by someone as deliberately and offensively pretty as Alex.
Alex is gentler than Mike thought he’d be, for as pushy and confident as he is— for the way he fought, that time they fought. He trails his pink lips up and down Mike’s shaft, then his tongue, kissing slowly. Rubbing at Mike’s thighs and balls with his fingertips, soft but deliberate, going back and forth, working him up bit by bit... Mike’s gasping for breath in no time, shuddering under Alex’s hands and mouth, he can’t stop staring. This is the hottest thing he’s ever seen, let alone had happen to him.
When Alex finally sucks the head of Mike’s erection into his mouth, he hums like it’s delicious, like he’s actually enjoying himself— god, Mike hopes he’s enjoying himself, that he’s not gonna stop, this feels amazing. But Alex keeps going, taking more and more of him, squeezing and pumping with his hands where his mouth doesn’t reach, and Mike’s whining uncontrollably by the time Alex starts pulling back up. For a terrifying second Mike thinks the guy’s just gonna pull all the way off and leave, and he grabs Alex’s shoulders on automatic— but he doesn’t, just laughs and pushes back down. It feels even better the second time, and then the third, and then Mike’s hips are shuddering and rolling despite himself and he’s moaning low and helpless on every breath, falling apart, and Alex just likes it, sounds like he likes it, makes wet pleased noises and his hands on Mike are so firm and encouraging and his mouth is so, so good—
Mike comes, with a rough cry and an involuntary thrust up against the back of Alex’s throat, and Alex coughs and pulls off and jacks him hard and fast through the aftershocks, which is almost too much to cope with. Alex has a streak of come on his face now, Mike’s come, and his eyes are still so bright and his mouth’s even darker, pinker, freshly fucked. Mike fucked him, his mouth, his whole— everything, wow.
He slouches back in his chair, just trying to breathe.
“Nice,” Alex says, and his voice is a low, sexy purr. They just had sex. Kind of. Maybe. Mike isn’t six guys, or even Chuck, but he’s pretty sure that was sex, his penis was there and everything.
“You got— haah, aah, uh,” Mike gestures at Alex’s face.
“Oh, huh,” Alex says, and wipes at it. Licks his fingers, wipes again. Mike is never going to think about cats ever again without being totally inappropriately embarrassed. When Alex has fixed his face up, he quirks an eyebrow at Mike, who nods— yeah, he got it, he’s fine— and Alex leans forward and licks the last few drips of Mike’s come off his penis, too, which has Mike squirming and panting all over again.
“Dude,” he protests breathlessly. “I, ah, hah, dude, c’mon, ahh!”
“‘Kay,” Alex says absently, letting himself get pushed off, and then pulls Mike’s underwear and pants back up. Mike feels— kind of stupid, and kind of amazed, and does his belt on his own.
“Are you, uh, are you okay?” Mike asks cautiously. “Do you need, like. Have you had enough sex yet...?”
“Oh, yeah,” Alex gives him another bright grin, but it looks... worse, now, weirder. It makes Mike uneasy. He’s got an erection, too, looking viciously hard and full against the front of his dress whites, and he palms it kind of absently, like it’s not actually as urgent an issue as it looks like, or like maybe he’s just gotten used to having that much of a problem down there.
“Okay, c’mere, let me try,” Mike says, and urges Alex up to sit on the edge of his desk. “That’s fair, right?”
“You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” Alex says, “that’s like, a rule, that’s the rule,” but he’s already undoing his belt, his fly. He’s not wearing underwear, wow, okay. And Mike hasn’t touched anyone else’s dick before, but Alex’s feels... really hard, just. Pretty desperate amounts of hard, for all that he didn’t have it when he came in and he can’t have spent that much time blowing Mike or anything. It’s a dark, dramatic purple-red against the blue-white paleness of Alex’s stomach, and wet all around the head, dripping precome even as Mike runs cautious fingers up the shaft. It doesn’t seem... normal, that Alex should turn on this fast.
“What do I do,” Mike says nervously.
“Just lick it,” Alex says. “Up’n down. It’s fine, it’s— I’m, I don’t, need much, anymore. I’m fine.”
He doesn’t sound fine. He’s breathing hard, twitching when Mike touches him, and he makes a soft and pretty moan when Mike does as he’s told and licks. He doesn’t taste bad, though, just... like skin, Mike guesses, and something a little sharp and bitter around the head. Mike licks up and down, till he’s wet, then pulls back and grabs with his hand.
“Can I, uh, with my hand?” he asks. “I know how to do this.”
“I wouldn’t, haah, wouldn’t’ve bet on that,” Alex says, and laughs breathlessly when Mike scowls and smacks his leg. “Yeah, go for it, mmh!”
Mike jacks him off, carefully, pausing to lick him wet again whenever it feels like his hand’s gonna stick. He’s so flushed, so raw and used-looking, bruises all over his thighs and balls dark and swollen tight and that chain of marks on his throat, the red soft shape of his mouth when he moans.
He really doesn’t take long, though. Just a minute or two, and he’s shivering and grabbing Mike’s shoulders, pulling him in to kiss him fiercely while he shoots off between them— Mike gives him another few strokes with his hand all slick and hot from the come, and then he’s being pushed away.
“Okay?” Mike asks. “You good, was that alright?”
“Yeah,” Alex gasps. “Yeah, fine, it was great, thanks.” He gives Mike another kiss, sloppy and messed-up feeling, then slouches back across the length of Mike’s desk, sighing.
He really looks like a mess, like this. Undone— or done too much, or something. Shivering and vague eyed and marked all over and come soaking into his overshirt. It makes Mike’s chest feel hot and painful to look at him. Kind of... possessive and ashamed, all at once.
He wipes his hand off on Alex’s overshirt, because it’s already ruined, then unclasps the thing and uses it to try and get the rest of his crotch and thighs cleaned up. Alex just lies there and breathes and shivers, staring at the ceiling. But he gives Mike’s arm a brief pat when Mike puts his equipment back in his pants and zips him up.
“Come to lunch with me,” Mike says, impulsively. He wants to... fix this, somehow. Make it right.
“What? Are we dating now?” Alex says. His eyes wander back down from the ceiling.
“No! I don’t— wait, did you want to?” Mike says incredulously. “You’ve got Chuck, why would you want to!?”
“Wow. Uh. That’s sad.” Alex blinks at him. “You’re kind of sad, aren’t you?” Yeah, there’s something wrong with him, Mike’s sure of it now, even if it’s just from having too much sex. His eyes— they’re too bright, the pupils too small, he’s not exactly tracking, and his smile’s all vague.
“Okay, we’ll talk about that later,” Mike decides, meaning never if he can help it. “Have you eaten? Drunk anything?”
“I had— I had drinks, there were drinks,” Alex says. When Mike pulls him to his feet he sways before he catches himself, then sort of swaggers after Mike, hips rolling, and it looks kind of a lot like limping, actually.
Mike wonders if any of the techies were up for some revenge this weekend. If Mike could actually blame any of them, if they were.
“Okay, we’re gonna get you like, a lot of punch,” Mike says. “That’s good for hangovers, right?”
Alex laughs an unnervingly bright, breathless laugh. “Yeah, so I’ve heard!” he says. “Let’s go find out.”
*
Chuck wakes up achy and disoriented to the sound of an urgent ping. When he rolls over and slaps vaguely at the air to bring up his comm screens, he finds like an entire stack of messages from Mike, of all people, and then a new one from Alex. It must have been the one from Alex that woke him up, because he’s had Mike on mute for like two months now, not that he’s sent a single message until... all this past day while Chuck was passed out.
> CHUCK, PLEASE reads the last one from Mike, and Chuck scrolls hastily back up to the start—
> Hey dude I know it’s been awhile and I’m sorry but I need to talk to you
>It’s about Alex
>I’m really, REALLY sorry please pick up
>This is really urgent dude
>Are you ignoring me? That’s fair and you deserve to be mad at me forever but I don’t think Alex is okay, I need help
>Alex needs help, he’s not okay, please pick up, I don’t know what to do
>Chuck please you never need to talk to me again I know I let you down real bad I’m sorry forever
>PICK UP
>CHUCK, PLEASE
Chuck’s got an awful, radioactive feeling going on in his heart when he swipes Mike’s messages over and goes to look at Alex’s message.
>Chuck, please come over, and then an address in the cadets’ barracks. Alex has never asked Chuck to come over to the barracks. Alex knows why Chuck doesn’t want to.
Mike... doesn’t. Mike has Alex’s comm account. Because something is wrong with Alex. Because Chuck’s asshole friends kept giving Alex weird shit when Chuck wasn’t looking and Alex swore he was fine and is probably on so many drugs right now and giving Mike all kinds of conniptions, Chuck would bet half his organs on it.
When he gets to the barracks receiving hall, no one’s there except Mason. It makes a slow, hot lick of dread roll down his spine, but he forces himself over there on wobbly legs.
“Chilton sent—” he says, and Mason just nods.
“He sent me to bring you to his place,” he says, and sneers coldly. He’s got a freshly split lip. Chuck wishes he had time to take a picture of his face and set it as his lock screen forever. “C’mon. Citizen.”
The cadet strides off stiffly, shoulders tight, hands very correctly folded behind his back. Chuck trots after him, baffled but relieved.
Mike pushes his door open a crack, when Mason knocks on it, and his expression is wildly relieved when he catches sight of Chuck.
“In,” he says tersely, and grabs Chuck’s hand. “You can go,” he tells Mason, who salutes and then books it.
Mike’s rooms look like a bomb went off. A weird science bomb. Everything normal is pushed to the edges and the rest is a weird cluttered tangle of metal and tarps and holy shit how did Alex get so many engineering and surgical tools, that’s a bench grinder.
Mike looks like he’s been having so many conniptions. And also... sex. He looks... wow. Okay. He looks really well fucked, in loose gym pants and an undershirt and a throat that’s all torn up with hickeys and his mouth all soft and dark and his hair rumpled up. There’s finger bruises on his wrists. That’s... wow.
Chuck realizes he’s staring at Mike’s neck and licking his lips at probably the same time Mike does, because Mike goes brick red and drops Chuck’s hand fast.
“Sorry,” he says, his voice hoarse, “He said it’d be okay, but, I don’t think any of this has been okay, he’s— he’s really messed up, and I didn’t know what to do, and I can’t stop him unless I call in a Captain or take him to Medical or something and then he’d get busted down to Cadet for doing drugs and if he loses his rank, everyone he’s pissed off so far is gonna kill him so I don’t, I don’t know what to do, I’m sorry.” He gives Chuck a desperate, miserable look. “Help? Please?”
Chuck just nods, voice sticking in his throat, and pats Mike’s shoulder. Mike breathes out a deep, shaky sigh, and slumps in relief.
“Thank you,” he says, and Chuck pats him again.
Alex looks up from the edge of Mike’s mattress when Chuck gets to the bedroom. He’s just in briefs and looks even more well-fucked than Mike, and there’s like ranks of scalples and drills and needles and inserters and forceps and shit laid out on the rumpled sheets. He’s putting together the last pieces of a fusion bottle with shaky, jittering hands, and Chuck freezes on automatic, one arm out to keep Mike from getting any closer— like a couple feet would make a difference, if Alex beefs it right now.
“Hey,” Chuck says softly.
“Hey!” Alex says brightly. “Chuck, look!” and he holds it up. Chuck can hear the rising thrum of the damn thing activating, and rushes over, snatches it out of his hand. Grabs the fucking collimation pin Alex obviously forgot and shoves it in fast, then the last couple components needed to snap everything together and keep it from melting half of Detroit. Then he drops the stable nuclear reaction to the bedspread and sits down hard on the floor, wheezing a little, and rests his face on Alex’s knee.
“Dude,” Alex says reproachfully. “I had it.”
“Um,” Mike says from the door. “I told him not to make a nuclear reactor in my room but he said it was safe. It wasn’t safe, was it?”
“It was not safe,” Chuck confirms.
“Well, now you’re here, we can install it!” Alex says, and pats Chuck’s hair. “You came to help, right?”
“Yeah,” Chuck says. “Hey, take this, would you?” and holds up an industrial strength sedative.
“Sure,” Alex says casually, and takes it.
“Um,” Mike says again. “Could you guys not do drugs right in front of me?”
“This one was medicine,” Chuck says.
“Yeah, anesthetic,” Alex says. “I need... anesthetic...” and he falls over. His eyes are unfocused and deeply confused. “Hey,” he says slowly, like he just thought of something, and then passes out.
Chuck heaves a huge sigh of relief.
“I am going to kill James so much,” he says.
“Did James do this?” Mike says. “Because I could probably help.”
Chuck laughs a little, then levers himself upright. He tries to straighten Alex’s body out on the bed, but he’s heavy— Mike comes over, cautious of all the machine stuff, and helps get him all laid out and tucked in. Alex is sweaty, and spattered with metal shavings and oil and ash and a couple electrical burns. Mike’s gonna have to recycle these sheets as soon as Alex wakes up, probably.
“He didn’t wear any safety gear, did he?” Chuck asks.
“No,” Mike says.
“Dumbass,” Chuck sighs. Mike doesn’t even look reproachful about the language.
“Mind telling me what the heck just happened?” he asks, instead.
Chuck rubs the back of his neck, chewing on his lip.
“I’d like to know that too,” a deep voice says from the doorway, and Mike and Chuck both jump— Mike to attention, and Chuck about two feet higher.
“Captain Vogel!” Mike says, and salutes. “Sir! What, aaah, what can I do for you!”
“Cadet Jones alerted me to some irregular activity,” Captain Vogel says. Chuck shrinks back as the man comes further into the room— he wants to hide behind Mike, but then Captain Vogel says, “I trust you have an explanation?” and Mike gives him a look of wide-eyed entreaty, and, shit. Fuck.
Chuck takes a deep breath and steps in front of Mike and Alex, catching the Captain’s attention.
“Sir,” he says, and his voice cracks. He coughs, runs his hand over his hair, takes two. “Sir, I can explain.”
“Please do,” the Captain says.
“When he was visiting R&D, this past weekend, on my invitation— Commander Harley was exposed unwittingly and unintentionally to a number of experimental substances, I, I believe relating to, to research on increasing workplace efficiency. Commander Chilton realized that Harley’s behavior was abnormal today and contacted me to, um. Rectify the situation.” Chuck gestures lamely. “And I have. Sir.”
Captain Vogel lets Chuck and Mike stand there and sweat for a good twenty seconds.
“So you and your techie friends didn’t pump the kid full of weird sex drugs and send him back here to self-destruct?”
“No,” Chuck lies. “As far as I’ve been able to ascertain, it was a completely accidental incident that no one could have prevented.”
“And was Commander Chilton... affected?” Captain Vogel asks. He actually looks amused now, the dick.
“Only incidentally,” Chuck says. “Though I’d recommend a trip through Medical for both of them. Commander Harley may also have been exposed to, um. Pathogens.”
Mike blanches.
“Well, then,” the Captain says, actually smiling outright. “I believe I can escort Commander Chilton to Medical now, if you’d be so good as to continue supervising Commander Harley’s... situation.” He pauses, his smile fading just a bit. “He’ll be alright, won’t he?”
“He needs about twelve hours of sleep, but then yeah. Yes. He’ll be fine. I can—” Chuck waves a hand at the room. “I can get all this other stuff packed up and shipped back to where it should go, if that’s alright.”
“It’s appreciated.” The Captain looks around. “What was he making?”
“Bio-insertable fission core,” Chuck says. At the Captain’s blank look, he clarifies, “A nuclear battery that would, theoretically, replace most of your stomach and let you shoot incandescent plasma bolts out of your hands.”
“...Alright,” the Captain says. “Okay, then. Did he... succeed?”
“No,” Chuck says. “Mike got me soon enough. But the fact Alex got this far without any formal training in engineering or manufacturing, let alone nuclear physics, is frankly really impressive. If you guys are gonna kick him out of the Cadets for this, I strongly recommend a lateral transfer to R&D.”
“...I’ll keep that in mind,” the Captain says. “Chilton, with me.” And he turns and strides out of the room. Mike gives Chuck a grateful, wobbly smile, and raises a hand as if he’s going to clap Chuck on the shoulder— but drops it before he touches him, and then hurries off after his commanding officer without another word.
Chuck sighs, rubs his forehead, and looks around the absolute disaster zone of a room. Then he pulls himself together and gets to work.
*
By the time Mike gets back to his bunk, it’s two hours past lights-out and he’s tired, thoroughly worn out on adrenaline and stress and humiliation. He had to get tested for STDs. He had to get lectured about STDs. He has STDs. The medical lady who did all of it also gave him a really horrific amount of condoms, too, and Mike feels like the box is going to burn through his fingers and everyone in the entire barracks will know that Commander Chilton had unsafe sex like a moron and got STDs about it.
God, today sucked.
His rooms are quiet, and dim, and clean, though. The furniture’s been moved back to reasonable locations, if not the same ones, and all the weird science crap Harley ordered in has been sent back out. The weird little metal bottle Harley built that was apparently a surgically implantable nuclear reaction is sitting on the table, though, and Mike skirts warily around it on the way to his bedroom.
Chuck’s still there. He’s in Mike’s bed. Not that Mike hasn’t had this fantasy about fifty million times, but Harley wasn’t in them before, and he is now. Here, that is. In real life. In Mike’s bed, also, with Chuck, all curled up against Chuck’s side with his head on Chuck’s chest, breathing slow and peaceful while Chuck slouches back against the headboard and types one-handed, his expression perfectly, beautifully calm.
They look so good together. Mike’s heart kind of wants to die about it.
Chuck glances up when Mike eases into the room, and Mike realizes a second too late that he’s still clutching the box of condoms when he sees a broad, malicious grin spread across Chuck’s face. He recognizes that grin. Chuck is never going to let him live this down. This is going to be the time he tried to do a backflip off the top bunk when they were eleven and knocked his front teeth out all over again.
“Well hey there, Plague Rat,” Chuck says.
Every single atom of Mike’s entire body does a cringe.
Chuck gives a soft, low laugh, and then goes, “Aw, no, Mikey— hey—” as Mike slinks off towards the bathroom. He pauses and looks back over his shoulder, face hot with shame, and Chuck’s just— looking at him, smiling, kind of rueful. He shifts in Mike’s bed, sitting up a little straighter.
“Sorry, bro,” he says. “Rough luck to get something on your first time.”
Mike nods, then blurts out, “Hey, it— how’d you— it wasn’t necessarily my first— um.” His face is gonna burn off, and he rests his forehead against the bathroom doorframe as Chuck laughs at him again.
“Okay, yeah,” he says lamely, and gestures with the box of condoms. “Alex— it was my— first. I didn’t, um, he said— it would be okay? He said you wouldn’t mind?” He dares a furtive, sideways look at Chuck.
“No, it’s okay, I’m not mad,” Chuck says. “I just— I guess I’m just glad you’re both in one piece after— y’know, everything. God knows what he thought was appropriate to try out on you, he’s such a vain little show-off, even when he’s not hopped up on enough stimulants to reach orbit.”
Mike’s shocked into laughing. “Yeah, he’s— wow,” he says, and rubs at the back of his neck. “He’s, yeah. There was, uh. There was a lot of showing off. I’ve been, uh, I’ve been. Very shown.”
Chuck’s smile goes wry, crooked. One of his hands smooths over Alex’s bare shoulder, and the guy makes a sleepy little noise, cuddles closer against Chuck’s chest. Mike isn’t sure which of them he’s more jealous of, suddenly, and the shame of it makes him feel even more awkward than the whole STD situation.
“Well, anyway!” he says, and waves the box of condoms vaguely. “I got! These. And education. And I’m gonna, uh, I’m gonna— shower, and then, uh. Hm.”
He looks at the bed. Chuck blinks, and looks at the bed too— what little of it isn’t occupied by two pretty large dudes. Chuck used to be so small, but he really isn’t anymore, he’s all grown up.
“I’ll clear out,” he offers.
“No!” Mike says hastily. “No, you— don’t, you shouldn’t, you gotta look after Alex! Twelve hours, you said twelve hours, right?”
Chuck’s looking at him again, frowning now. “Yeah, I guess,” he says. “We could both clear out. You got work. You always got work.”
“Stay,” Mike says. “Alex is probably getting put on probation, if not demoted, and, and you’re— you’re both gonna be safe, here. While you’re here. With me. Please stay.”
“But your work...”
“Screw work,” Mike says, and Chuck’s head snaps up. His eyes go wide. Mike takes a step forward, and blurts out, “I just wanted to keep everyone safe, Chuck, and then they— they hurt you and you never said and I’m so sorry. I just, I just wanted to— I wanted to— I swore to keep everyone safe and I can’t and I’m trying and it’s not enough, everything— everything I’ve worked for all this time isn’t enough but, please. Just. Stay here. Let me do, let me try— just, I’m sorry.” He’s shaking, he’s so tired, today has sucked so bad but if Chuck leaves again and never comes back he’s probably going to die.
Chuck takes a slow, shaky breath in, holds it, lets it out just as slow. He wipes his face with one hand and his eyes are shining a little.
“Okay,” he says. “...Okay. We’ll— stay, tonight, and, and figure things out in the morning. Okay.”
“Yes,” Mike says. “Yes, great, thank you.”
He turns to go into the bathroom and have a nervous breakdown in the shower, but Chuck says, “Hey,” really softly, and Mike pauses one more time.
“You were my best friend,” Chuck says, and Mike’s heart breaks all over again at the past tense. But Chuck says, “Not my bodyguard. I didn’t ditch you for someone who would take care of me better, I ditched you for someone who would actually make time for me. Can we just... if we... if we try again, I wanna try again, I missed you so much, but can you just— be my friend again? I missed you. I’ve been missing you.”
“Yes,” Mike says. “I’ll do better this time, I swear. I’ll, I’ll do anything you want. I didn’t think— I didn’t think you ever would want, but, if you do— then— anything. Yes.”
“Okay,” Chuck says. “Yeah. Yes. Go shower.”
Mike smiles at him, so relieved he could scream, and goes and shuts the bathroom door. Starts the shower and shoves the box of condoms under the sink and strips off and goes and stands in the water and maybe cries a little, very quietly, exhaustion and relief fighting it out inside his face and relief mostly winning. Chuck wants to be friends again, holy crap. Chuck missed him. Mike doesn’t deserve this, but he’ll take it.
When he comes out of the shower, toweling his hair off, the bedframe is disassembled up against the wall and the mattress pad is laid out on the ground, twice as broad but half as thick. Mike blinks at it, puzzled, and Chuck looks up from a new set of screens and freezes.
“Um,” he squeaks. “You, um. You sleep...? Naked...?”
Mike bolts back into the bathroom. This time, he gets another towel, and makes really extra sure it’s not going anywhere before he ventures out again.
Chuck’s looking kind of frazzled, and peers at Mike very, very cautiously. Mike gives a grin that’s more of a grimace and gestures at his towel, and Chuck lets out a high, nervous giggle, letting his head thump back against the wall.
“Jeez, dude,” he sighs. “Next time give me a little warning before you put on a show, would you?”
Mike gives a nervous, embarrassingly squeaky giggle at that, too, and edges over to his dresser to grab some sleepwear. Usually he just does boxers and maybe an undershirt but tonight feels like a really good time for sweatpants and a t-shirt. And maybe a medieval chastity belt, but he doesn’t have that, so. He retreats back to the bathroom for a third time and kind of regrets not rubbing one out in the shower previously, because this is gonna be a really, really rough night, if the mattress being twice as broad means when it pretty obviously means and they’re gonna sleep together and what if he wakes up cuddling someone and his penis is like... right there.
God, he’s tired. It’s gotta be past midnight. He doesn’t know how techies do it.
He slouches out of the bathroom yet again, gives Chuck a weak smile. Chuck smiles back, pats the mattress— Mike goes over and eases on to it, running his hand over the foam curiously.
“Most mattress pads split in half like this, if you tear them along the grain of the nanofoam,” Chuck says. “We can just fold it back up later and it should seal back together.”
“Oh, huh,” Mike says. “That would have been cool to know when we were kids.”
“Yeah, we could have made way better pillow forts,” Chuck agrees, and Mike smiles wider, because— even after all this time, it still feels kind of special and perfect when they’re on the same page. Thinking the same thing.
He lies down on the opposite side of Chuck from where Alex is cuddled up and tugs a little nervously at one of the blankets, unsure if Chuck’s gonna want to share without hassling him a little more. But Chuck just shifts it over for him, tucking it around his shoulders, then ruffling his hair. Mike has to press his face into the mattress to hide the sudden prickle of tears that threaten, at how— how tired he is, how relieved and tender and screwed up about all of this he is. He huffs a stupid, shaky little sigh into the foam, and Chuck’s hand on his head goes heavy, soft. Kinda lingers there. It feels good. Mike doesn’t deserve any of this but it feels so good.
“G’night,” Chuck says softly.
“Yeah,” Mike mumbles. Sighs again, relaxes: it’s quiet, and dark, and soft, and he’s so tired, and he can sleep now. So he does.
*
Too much has happened today, way too much, and Chuck only woke up four hours ago. So he sits up against the wall, tries to ignore the way his head aches and his back’s cramping up, and determinedly chews through his backlog of work orders.
He’s a little less okay at ignoring the way Alex is cuddled up on one side of him and Mike’s shifted in his sleep to press close to the other, especially when Mike makes a dozy, rough little murmur in his sleep and wraps himself around Chuck’s thighs.
God, he looks so good like this, clean and sleepy and— sated, mouth still kind of dark, a hickey showing past the neckline of his shirt. Chuck can’t get over the bruises on his wrists, the thought of Alex all bright-eyed and reckless, holding him down and fucking him, riding him or pounding his ass, maybe one and then the other, fucking him all goddamn day in between building a nuclear reactor from scratch. Two near-virgin cadets all wound up and unleashed on each other, learning what their perfect bodies can really do...
Chuck finds himself tracing a finger over Mike’s wrist, heat prickling through him with weird, sad, jealous hunger. Then he feels like a huge creep and goes and extracts himself from the cuddle-pile to jerk off in Mike’s bathroom, leaning against the shower wall, thinking about Mike and Alex and pale hands on olive skin and how Mike looked, naked and wide-eyed and flustered and just— god. Fuck.
He thinks about going and sitting at Mike’s little office space table to do the rest of his work, but he’s not actually that good of a person. So he washes his hands really carefully and goes and climbs right back into bed with his— with— two extremely handsome boys who seem to like him way more than is plausible. This time it’s Alex that makes the really cute little noises as he snuggles up. Chuck sighs and pets the fuzz of his close-cropped hair, then goes and does another couple hours of programming.
The alarm pretty much scares him out of his skin, though. It’s six AM, apparently, and Mike sits up with bleary confusion, fumbling at a patch of wall before figuring out that he’s not in his usual sleeping position and leaning over Chuck and Alex to slap the alarm clock silent.
“Mnfgh,” he says, and rubs his face. Then Mike seems to realize he’s sprawled himself out over most of Chuck’s torso, while Chuck is breathing really hard and Alex is making mostly-unconscious protest grumbles, and does a frankly awesome-looking flip directly out of bed and on to his feet.
“Huh,” Chuck says. “That is not fair.”
“What?” Mike asks, looking wide-eyed and flustered again. “Dude, I. Uh. Alarm? It... happens.”
Chuck can’t help snorting a laugh at that. “No, man, I mean, the cool flip, that was crazy. The alarm’s fine.”
“Oh. You were awake? It’s early.”
Chuck shrugs. “I’m fine, it’s not even late for me. Go and— do whatever.” He waves a hand. “Breakfast.”
“Right. Yeah.” Mike gives him a final, lingering look that Chuck can’t even begin to read, then turns on his heel and starts going through some kind of practiced morning routine. Stretching, peeling his sleep-wear off, shrugging his cadet stuff on. He gets some kind of cadet chow block out of a box on his table and then seems to remember Chuck’s in the room, and holds one up at him with a questioning look. Chuck shrugs, then yelps a little as Mike throws it right at his head: it bounces off one of his flailing arms and falls right on top of Alex, who makes a piteous whine and burrows under the blanket.
Chuck looks back up at Mike, biting his lip hard, then loses it and starts laughing when he sees Mike is also trying not to crack up. It feels— good, really stupid but just, good, to be laughing at the same stuff again, to have a few moments like this where they’re together again. Mike even comes back and eats his breakfast unit sitting on the edge of the mattress, and Chuck tries not to glow too pathetically about that. He missed him, so much, missed this feeling that Mike actually thought he was someone worth hanging out with, spending time with, stealing these quiet little moments of connection. He glances sidelong at Mike from time to time, while he’s eating his own breakfast thing, and when he meets Mike’s eyes he grins, so stupidly happy for even just this much of Mike’s attention.
“I really missed you,” he says again. “I know it’s kind of dumb, but.” He shrugs. “Guess I’m dumb.”
Mike grins, and rubs at the back of his neck, and looks away. “C’mon, if you’re dumb, I’m a vegetable,” he says.
“Well, I didn’t wanna say anything,” Chuck says provokingly, and laughs again when Mike elbows him in the ribs. He shoves Mike in the head, and gets shoved back, and it turns into an extremely dumb shoving match that ends with Chuck getting pinned down over Alex’s ribs while flailing and yelping and yanking at a big fistful of his idiot ex-ex-best friend’s hair.
“Fuck,” Alex whines, and wriggles. “ Augh. Guys. Please. Sleep.”
“Wow, someone’s not up for another three days of crazy sex stuff?” Chuck asks. “I wonder why!”
“Mnnngfgh,” Alex goes, and whaps at him vaguely.
“He has an STD,” Mike says with bright, cutting cheer. “That’s why. He’s a huge jerk who gave me an STD and if he tries to have more sex with anyone before he goes to medical I’m gonna get a knife from the cafeteria.”
“I’m never having sex again,” Alex says, and shoves Chuck off him. “Both of you fuck off.”
“Wow,” Chuck says. “Jeez. Cold.”
Mike’s still kind of... tangled up with him. Chuck hasn’t let go of his hair. Chuck should probably do that.
“Hey, do you have an STD?” Mike asks.
Chuck lets go of him. “No,” he says. “Fuck you.”
“Language, man.”
“Screw you. I get tested regularly and use condoms,” he says. “When I can, anyway. I’m fine, unlike Commander Sex-Drugs over here. And you. Seriously, what were you thinking, boning a guy on that many drugs, who came back from fucking like that many guys? You’re supposed to be responsible.”
To Chuck’s intense delight, Mike sort of folds in on himself, going from blithely self-righteous to hangdog. He’s actually blushing.
“I, uh, guess I wasn’t,” he admits. “Oh hey look it’s the time, it’s time! For me to go! And, uh. Do things! At the place where I do those things.”
He scrambles out of bed and back to his feet, tugging his uniform back into shape.
“Enjoy your things,” Chuck says.
“I will! Thanks!”
Chuck finishes the remainder of his breakfast bar, then gets the last one out of the box on the table and pokes Alex in the face with it until he wakes up enough to take it.
“Tired,” he mumbles. “Hurts.”
“No shit, brain hero,” Chuck says, and pets his hair a bit more. He groggily chews his way through it, then pushes the wrapper off the edge of the mattress and face-plants back into unconsciousness. Chuck sighs, wanders around the room a little, then curls up around Alex again and gets back to work.
Seven hours later he’s stiff, groggy, and ravenous. Alex has done nothing but sleep, whine piteously when forced to be awake, and look at Chuck like he’s a hero for fetching him cups of water, and there’s no more meal bars. Chuck doesn’t have the discretionary allowance to order food in, and Alex can’t focus for long enough to even bring up a screen. Mike won’t be back for another five hours, probably. Junior cadets only have an eight hour day, but then they graduate to twelve hour shifts and Mike’s been pushing for Captain for ages, picking up plenty of overtime, clocking the kind of schedule that would make even techies wince.
Chuck’s gonna have to go out, to get food. He’s gonna have to go out to leave, anyway, and he can’t just ditch Alex like this, probably, he doesn’t want to be gone when Mike gets back, it feels wrong. So... he’s gotta go get food, like from the cafeteria, like with all the cadets around and everything. Or explain to Mike when he gets back that neither he nor Alex have had a damn thing but breakfast rations for twelve to sixteen hours. Chuck knows that techies don’t exactly have the best reputation for self-care when they’re on coding benders, but he’s not. And he’s hungry.
He still stands at the inside side of Mike’s door for ages and ages, clenching his fists and rocking on his heels. Amping himself up. This is going to suck, is the thing. This is really, really going to suck. Alex is incapacitated, Mike is— Mike knows about— how things have gone, maybe, for Chuck, but it’s not the same as— being able to do anything about it, not when he’s not there.
But Chuck’s hungry, and he can’t just hide here forever.
So he goes out.
It’s nerve-wracking. Nine out of ten cadets don’t have the first clue who Chuck even is and they definitely don’t care. But a few of them pause, and look at him before continuing on their way, and it feels like Chuck’s some kind of old fashion clockwork, getting wound tighter and tighter every time anyone makes eye contact, whether they frown or smirk or just glance his way. All of his bones feel like they’re grinding together and he’s gonna snap and just start screaming...
He makes it to the cafeteria. He even gets in line and collects a bunch of high-protein whatever-the-fuck on a tray. Two bowls of room temperature, gloppy cadet chow. God, no wonder Security’s always so awful to everyone, their lives suck and they have literally no fun whatsoever.
When Mason steps out of the crowd, smirking nastily, Chuck finds to his surprise that he’s not actually going to explode. Instead it’s a weird kind of relief, an end to the unbearable escalation of tension. The trap is sprung, the worst is happening.
“Hi, Mason,” he sighs, and puts the tray of chow down on the nearest table, before it can get slapped out of his hands or tipped out against his shirt or whatever malevolent juvenile bullshit Mason feels like doing to prove he’s a tough guy with an above-average penis.
“Hey, Chuckles,” Mason says. The split in his lip is a dark, nasty-looking scab today. Chuck thinks about how satisfying it would be to punch him, just once, before he dies. It’s not gonna happen, though, and especially not now. Mason puts one big, muscular arm around Chuck’s shoulders and goes, “Walk with me, why don’t you?” and Chuck doesn’t miss four or five other familiar faces surrounding them, falling into step.
They get him out of the cafeteria. They get him down the hall and around a corner and into a— into a small— there’s a room and some gym mats and Chuck’s shaking and somehow it’s the smell that does it. Not the nearly-chewable air of gleeful menace that the boys surrounding him are exuding, not the big hand on the back of his neck clamping down like a vice, not the familiar rising chorus of giggles.
The fucking smell. Gym mats and old sweat and sharp disinfectant, the smell of rooms that no one goes to except for fucked up shit like this. It makes his heart clench up with rage and dread even while his dick twitches in expectation. This smell means humiliation which means sex which means shame, and pain, and sex, everyone laughing and grabbing at him and he’s still getting hard anyway and they made him like being humiliated, assholes like Mason, taught him to get off on it. They warped his whole fucking brain and he hates everything about this and he’s done. They can’t do more than kill him.
Chuck looks up at Mason’s stupid fucking face, scared out of his mind and weirdly calm about it.
“I don’t want to do this,” he says, out loud, for the first time ever. His voice shakes. “I hate you.”
Mason backhands him, like he expected, but it still feels like a victory. He staggers back, already tearing up from the pain and terror. God, they’re gonna hurt him so bad, they’re already laughing. Mason grabs his shirtfront.
“Like what you want matters, you bony little slut,” he sneers, and rubs a few blunt, unsubtle fingers across Chuck’s mouth, catching his lips against his teeth. “Harley’s dead meat and Chilton’s going down with him, and we’re gonna show you a real good time without them.”
He probably practiced that speech in the mirror. While cranking it. Chuck would say as much except there’s fingers in his mouth, now, hurting his tongue, and he’s shaking so hard it feels like his brain’s rattling. He meets Mason’s nasty self-satisfied leer head-on, though, and he bites.
Mason screams, a beautiful high shriek, and shakes him frantically to try and get free. Chuck won’t, though, grinding his teeth down until he tastes blood and wishing he’d thought to wait until someone had put a dick in his mouth before he tried this, but determined to do what damage he can. Mason screams and hits him and finally he has to let go, hurting all over, and someone hits him again.
Now is the part where they kill you, he thinks, but at least he finally said no. No one can pretend he likes it anymore. No one can say he was asking for it. The blood in his mouth is probably mostly his, by this point, but some of it’s Mason’s.
He screams when someone kicks him, and dimly hears someone curse, someone say something about shutting him up— he screams louder, vengeful and pained and furious and triumphant, and when someone grabs a fistful of his hair and yanks his head back, he twists and grabs and gets another hand to sink his teeth into. When that cadet finally pries him loose, he thrashes and screams some more until he gets the chance to bite someone else. All these boys are bigger than him, trained for combat: he doesn’t have a chance at punching or kicking. But at least he can scream, and bite, and feel a berserk thrill that not all the blood in his mouth is his this time.
“What’s going on here,” someone snaps, and it’s— okay, it’s Mike, larger than life and twice as loud, standing tall in the doorway. Chuck is dropped to the ground and lies there gratefully, struggling to breathe through a bloody nose and bruised ribs and the jittery hysterical aftermath of a pretty sound beating.
“None of your business, Cadet Chilton,” Mason says, squaring up to him.
“It’s Captain, actually, Cadet Jones,” Mike says, and grins viciously. There’s a moment of oh shit silence in the room, and then the gym mat squeaks as Mason takes a step back.
There’s only three or four boys left in the room, after the smarter ones realized that a dogpile of a screaming biting maniac wasn’t the no-frills gangbang they’d signed up for and subsequently bailed in the chaos. Mike goes through them all inside a minute, leaves them slumped against the walls and whimpering, and breaks Mason’s nose with a sound that Chuck will be replaying in his dreams. The really sexy ones.
Then he kneels down by where Chuck’s been dropped, and touches his shoulder with hilarious caution.
“Chuck...? Buddy, hey...”
Chuck finds himself wheezing a little, choking on a hysterical giggle— it’s not like Mike ’ s gonna make this any worse, now, not like Mike can hurt him more. He rolls over, hissing at the pain, and reaches an arm up. Mike’s got both his arms around Chuck in the next minute, hauling him into a tight embrace, and, ow, it does in fact appear that Mike can hurt him more, but fuck it. Chuck hugs him back just as tightly.
“I told them no,” Chuck gasps. “I told them, Mikey, I said.”
“Shh, shh, I know, I know,” Mike says, but he doesn’t get it. Chuck shakes his head, knocking his jaw into Mike’s, and tries to pull back a little.
“No, you don’t— I told them,” Chuck repeats. “First time ever. I said no. I knew it wouldn’t matter, but I still— I still said—” he laughs again, ragged, pathetic. Triumphant. “Finally fucking said no.”
“It matters,” Mike says, unexpectedly. Chuck blinks at him, and he says, “we’re gonna string them up for this. You said no, buddy, nice and clear for the cameras. And I’m gonna make them pay for not listening.”
“You’re a Captain now,” Chuck realizes, and Mike’s answering grin is all vicious teeth, brilliant and terrible and almost unbearably sexy. Chuck’s breath stutters in his throat, and he— god, this is a bad idea, but he wants— he leans forward, presses his mouth to Mike’s.
Mike shoves backwards, fast, shoots up to his feet. His expression is terrible: he looks like Chuck just bit him, just shot him, just tore out his heart. There’s a smear of blood on the side of his mouth, now, and Chuck realizes he’s got blood all down his chin, that he hurts all over, that he’s sad and screwed up and he’s fucked up, pretty badly.
“Sorry,” Chuck says. “Sorry, I, shouldn’t have.”
“It’s cool,” Mike says, “It’s okay,” but he doesn’t look like anything’s going to be okay ever again. He holds a hand out, helps Chuck to his feet, but he won’t look Chuck in the face.
“Dude— c’mon, I’m— I’m sorry—”
“Let’s get you to medical,” Mike says firmly. “You’re shook up.”
Chuck takes the out. He sighs, nods, and leans on Mike when Mike lets him.
Alex meets them halfway to the cadets’ medical station, looking like freeze-dried garbage. He’s got his overshirt buttoned half the wrong way, his belt’s missing most of the belt loops, and he’s pale enough that he’s practically the color of the white walls around him. With the bruise-purple shadows under his bloodshot eyes, he looks like a very handsome corpse.
“Oh, you’re up,” Chuck says stupidly.
“Yeah, I, the alarm,” Alex says, incoherently, and closes the distance in an unsteady rush. Chuck finds himself abruptly squashed, because Mike doesn’t let go of him when Alex latches on. He sputters a little, squirming, and manages to get an arm around Alex’s shoulders.
“Hey, hey, it’s okay, I’m okay,” Chuck murmurs. “Chill, dude.”
“You’re covered in blood,” Alex says, hugging harder. “You’re not okay.”
“Okay, so, maybe I’m exaggerating about the timeframe a little, we’re going to medical, I’m going to be okay,” Chuck says. “If you’re up, you should come with us.”
“Yeah, I’ll— escort— I got you,” Alex says. He’s definitely not firing on all circuits just yet.
“Fix your shit,” Chuck says, and tugs at his rumpled collar. “You look like a disaster.”
“You’re covered in blood,” Alex repeats, this time a little more plaintive. But he folds his collar down, falls into step with them and fixes his buttons, does his belt. He shadows them watchfully all the rest of the way to medical, like a... well, like a Security guard. It makes Chuck feel warm and shy and stupid all at once, but when he smiles back over his shoulder at Alex, and Alex smiles hopefully back, it’s worth it.
*
The trip through medical is cold, uncomfortable, and weirdly boring. Chuck sits on a barely-padded bench and gets scanned by a series of frowning medical technicians, then his bruises and contusions are cleaned off and taped over while he holds very still and tries not to shake or scream or run away. It’s nothing like the ad-hoc treatment he and his techie coworkers give each other in the crash room, leaning over a repurposed lab sink while one friend scrounges up some good painkillers and someone else gets out the packing gauze and electrical tape and superglue, and Carl, who has a not-so-secret fetish, suggests that maybe you need stitches, no, for real.
When Security gets hurt, they get fixed. When Techies get hurt, results may vary.
No one stitches him up. There’s just a few neat squares of dermal regeneration tape, a paper cup with some nanite pills, and an ice pack for Chuck’s jaw.
Alex has been given a big bottle of punch, a course of antivirals, a box of condoms, and a stern lecture he pays no attention to, instead coming back to hover around Chuck’s bench and get in everyone’s way at every opportunity.
Chuck appreciates the sentiment, but doesn’t relax until he’s back in Mike’s rooms, and then his explosive sigh of relief makes Alex jump and Mike’s dark gaze snap over to his face.
“Sorry,” he says, running his hands through his hair, sighing deep. “I— sorry. That was a lot. Sorry.”
Mike’s gaze softens, and he rubs at Chuck’s shoulders with one warm, strong hand. Chuck smiles at him gratefully, then remembers that he actually went and kissed Mike, like an idiot, and Mike made it pretty damn clear he wasn’t interested in what Chuck was offering.
Can we be friends again? It would be enough if they could. It’ll have to be enough.
“I’m gonna shower,” Chuck says. “Alex, you too. We reek.”
Alex blinks at Chuck groggily— his brain’s already gone offline, and he’s made a beeline for the mattress pad. Chuck grabs his arm before he can collapse back down on it, and hauls him off to the bathroom. He bitches and moans about it, but quietly, and then he just stands under the spray and stares vaguely at Chuck while Chuck washes himself and then his ridiculous zombie boyfriend.
“Hey,” Alex finally says. “Um. C’mere.”
Chuck comes here, and is gently smooched. It’s sweet and soft and perfect, and something in Chuck unwinds, slowly, as Alex kisses him. He finds himself running his fingers over Alex’s sharp hip bones, warmth curling through him.
Alex breaks off the kiss with a sigh, and rests his forehead on Chuck’s shoulder.
“I’m so tired of all this shit,” he murmurs.
Chuck laughs, and hugs him tightly. “Tell me about it,” he says.
“Mmn,” Alex goes, and then reaches an arm out to turn the water off. “Sleep,” he says. “I need... stay with me?”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m done with solo adventures for now,” Chuck says. “Let’s go sleep.”
Alex wanders off into the bedroom area while Chuck’s still toweling himself off, and Chuck feels a twinge of malicious satisfaction when Mike makes a sharp, high noise of surprise.
“Let’s get you some clothes, buddy!” Mike says, and Chuck leans out of the bathroom to go watch Mike try to herd a groggy, bewildered, bare-ass naked Alex towards his own closet.
“You don’t have to,” Chuck says, and grins as Mike jumps half a mile. “He’s decorative.”
“I mean— okay, but—” Mike makes a completely helpless gesture with both hands. “Please?”
“Mmnfgh,” Alex says, and then kisses Mike when he gets close enough. Apparently when the guy’s brain turns off, his dick takes over, which is... fine with Chuck, actually. It looks pretty much exactly as hot as Chuck would have imagined, Alex all pale and handsome and softly dazed, Mike still in full dress uniform, a little blood-stained and highly flustered. The kiss goes on for a lot longer than could be accidental, on Alex’s part, or unwilling, on Mike’s part, and when Mike does finally step back the first thing he does is look at Chuck, flushed and guilty, and lick his lips.
Chuck gives him a thumbs-up, and goes back in the bathroom to finish drying his hair, and maybe also settle his boner back down through sheer force of will.
He comes back out when his hair’s extremely dry and his dick is at least reasonably non-intrusive. Alex has burrowed right back in bed, and Mike’s sitting at his little office space desk, half a dozen work screens up, typing. He looks tired, but... focused, competent. Chuck leans against the doorway, watching him. He looks so grown up, now. Somewhere along the way, while Chuck was watching movies and playing games and sucking dick, Mike went and grew up, instead.
God, Chuck feels stupid.
“So,” he says, and jumps a little when it makes Mike jump.
“Oh!” Mike goes. “Hey! Hi! Okay.”
Chuck laughs, coming closer. “Forgot I was here already, huh?”
“No, I just, uhhh.” Mike runs his hand through his hair, smiles awkwardly. “I don’t normally have anyone over, you know? This is...” He waves his hand vaguely. “A lot?”
“We can go,” Chuck says.
“Don’t,” Mike says. “No. Don’t.”
Chuck sighs, and finishes coming all the way over, and props his butt on Mike’s desk. He’s rattled, from the fight, from everything, wound-up and anxious, and he wants... honestly he really wants the grounding reassurance of touching someone, right now, but Mike’s not really a huggy dude anymore, and even if he was, Chuck’s so wired right now he’d get turned on by a firm handshake, probably. Sitting close is gonna have to do.
“What are we gonna do about Alex?” he asks.
Mike blinks, like he hadn’t expected that question. “We?” he asks.
Chuck blinks, too. “I— yeah, we, what— you’re not— you’re not gonna just cut him loose after this, are you? I thought you guys were friends.”
“I, we’re not— it’s— I meant, I didn’t think you— I didn’t think you could do anything about Harley. I was gonna try to help him on my own.”
Chuck pushes his bangs back, rolls his eyes at Mike. “You can’t be everywhere all the time, Captain, and anyway he’s my boyfriend and I kind of got him into this mess in the first place. It’s on me to get him out.”
“Yeah, but you’re a techie,” Mike says, blankly puzzled. “You can’t do anything.”
Chuck blinks at him. Then he taps open a command and control screen, sets it to capture, and swipes the red plane perpendicularly through Mike’s screens, and collapses the whole stack between his palms.
“Fuck you, dude,” he says, and flicks open Mike’s account.
“Hey,” Mike says. “I. What. Hey!”
Chuck renames Mike’s account from Cpt. Mike Chilton to Ask Me About My Many Sexually Transmitted Diseases! and then has to bail off the edge of Mike’s desk, laughing, when Mike squawks in outrage and grabs for him. Chuck manages to jerk his sleeve out of Mike’s grasp the first time Mike catches him, but his rooms aren’t very big and there’s nowhere much to run to, and when Mike grabs him a second time his hands are warm and strong and Chuck goes down in a breathless heap. They roll over a few times, laughing, and Mike yelps when Chuck bites his arm, then laughs again.
“God, what are you— five—”
“Get off!”
“Change my name back!”
“Okay, okay! Get off! You’re heavy, shit!”
Mike heaves himself off and gives Chuck a firm noogie. Chuck swats his hand away, and retitles Mike’s account to Captain Mike ‘STDs’ Chilton, then bursts into juvenile giggling all over again when Mike yells incoherently and shoves at him. They’re already sprawled on the floor, there’s nothing Mike can actually do about it.
“C’mon, Chuckles, please,” Mike says, and yanks a handful of Chuck’s hair. Shivery heat bolts through Chuck, at that, and he barely catches his teeth around a startled moan— he curls on to his side, suddenly, hoping he can maybe not spring a gigantic and inconvenient boner right in his completely uninterested friend’s face.
“Okay,” he says breathlessly. “Okay, okay, since you asked nicely—”
“I’m prepared to beg,” Mike says, and Chuck shivers again.
“Well, don’t,” he says. “Gross.” He reverts Mike’s name entirely. “Okay, so. Um. Hmm. Alex.”
“Right,” Mike says, and takes his fingers out of Chuck’s hair. “Alex. Um... So.”
Chuck sits up, props his elbows on his knees, and flicks through a few screens, thinking about it. “So, last night, you said he was getting put on probation, if not demoted. Any updates on that?”
“Uh, yeah.” Mike shifts awkwardly, rubs the back of his neck. “The, uh, his hearing was today, and... obviously, he wasn’t in a position to explain himself, so... he’s been busted back down to base cadet. With a three year limit on any kind of promotion. Like at least he wasn’t dismissed entirely, but his career’s pretty much on hold for, like... awhile.”
“Jeez,” Chuck hisses. Techies don’t really have ranks, but... they don’t need to, for Chuck to understand that this is bad.
“I tried to stick up for him,” Mike says, intensely. “He had extenuating circumstances, good ones, for every breach of protocol, I swear I wasn’t in there trying to, to get ahead off his mistakes, Chuck, I didn’t earn my Captain’s stars by selling him out—”
“Shut up, of course you didn’t,” Chuck says, surprised. “You’d never.”
Mike blinks, and then smiles, a heartbreakingly broad and grateful grin. “Okay,” he says, and sighs like a huge weight just came off his shoulders. “Yeah, no, never, I swear, I wouldn’t.”
Chuck reaches out and gently swats Mike across the back of his big, dumb, handsome head.
“I know, Mikey, you huge doofus,” he says. “You’re good. We’re good. Shut up already.”
“Okay, okay. So— Alex, he’s— not popular, y’know?”
“I’ve figured that out, yeah.”
Mike shrugs, uncomfortably. “So. He’s always just been, uh, kind of... distant? Like, superior. It gets on a lot of people’s nerves, no one likes it when someone thinks they’re that much better than you, and they like to let you know, even when they did make Commander at eighteen. And then since... recently, he’s gotten even worse, just. Beating up on people, throwing his rank around... I get that a lot of it is trying to deal with how people were mistreating you, but, uh, it’s... been kind of disruptive? I guess?”
“Shit,” Chuck says. His boyfriend’s a dick. His boyfriend is such a dick even the other cadets, who are almost universally dicks, think he’s a dick. This is not great.
On the other hand, it’s kind of nice for Chuck’s self-esteem that Alex hasn’t ever been a dick to him.
Mike sighs. “So he’s gonna have a really rough time, back in the rank and file. Even with Mason and his gang benched for the duration of conduct hearings over your case, there’s plenty of guys who’re gonna want to get some hits in while they can.”
“He doesn’t even like being a cadet,” Chuck says. “Like, he’s good at it because he can’t stand not to be the best at whatever it is he’s doing, and this is what he got assigned to, but he just straight up hates it here, I’m pretty sure. You should have seen him with some of my friends, talking about the stuff that actually interests him, it was like he was just...” He makes a vague expanding gesture with his hands. “...He was really happy.”
“You told Captain Vogel that he was like, really smart and talented and stuff, that he invented some cool battery thing on his own. Were you just trying to cover for him, or was he really that good?”
“He’s brilliant,” Chuck says frankly. “Maybe he’s been acting like a big superior douchebag, around here, but the thing is he really is smarter than...probably everyone around here. He’s been wasted as a cadet.”
Mike runs his hands through his hair. “Yeah,” he says. “Okay. It feels...kind of crappy to think that, you know? That he shouldn’t be Security. He’s fit, he’s got great scores, he means well, generally. He’s never been in trouble before now. So I shouldn’t think it’d be better if he just cleared out and transferred to the techies —”
“Thanks for saying it like that,” Chuck comments, and Mike shrugs a guilty shoulder.
“—Anyway,” he says. “You’re right. We should swing him a lateral transfer. Better he’s happy and busy in another department than burnt-out miserable in this one.”
“ ‘It takes everyone to run a city!’ ” Chuck quotes the aphorism.
Mike gives a tired, dutiful “Ha,” of not-laughter, then says, “It’s true, though. Security has...this whole attitude problem going on. We think we’re the next best thing to executives, and we’re—not. Obviously.”
“ Obviously,” Chuck drawls, and Mike swats at him weakly.
“Well, you can fix that, eventually,” Chuck says. “You’re a Captain now. You can break some heads. Bruise some egos. Whatever.”
“Yeah. I will. I’m going to.”
“You don’t sound so enthusiastic.”
“It’s...no, I am, it’s just a lot of work. It’s gonna be a lot of work.” Mike bites his lip, knots his fingers together, looks at his hands. Adds, real fast, “And I miss you.”
“Aw,” Chuck goes, and rolls over to sling his arm across Mike’s chest, and press his face to Mike’s shoulder. He’s so much less bony than he used to be, when they were fourteen or whatever, he’s getting broad and stocky with muscle. And he smells amazing. And Chuck is suddenly, achingly aware of how close Mike’s pulse is to Chuck’s mouth, how fast it’s going, how easy it would be to just kiss the soft fragrant sweep of his skin.
Chuck says, instead of doing any of that, “Techies still need people to mop the cubicles and empty the trash. You could probably swing a transfer to Sanitation, if you didn’t mind a really long internship.”
“Oh my god,” Mike says, and noogies him.
After they break apart, panting and sweaty and in Chuck’s case a little bruised, they just smile at each other for a long time.
“Take care of him for me, okay?” Chuck says. “Until I can get him transferred.”
“Yeah,” Mike says. “And then— you take care of him for me.”
“Sir, yessir,” Chuck says, and Mike smiles, and shoves him, and Chuck scrambles stiffly to his feet before they can devolve into another stupid scuffle, and goes out the door without looking back.
*
Mike makes his way into the R&D lobby cautiously, heart in his throat. There’s a robot at the reception desk, sleek chrome with the Kane Co logo across its smooth domed head.
“Welcome to Kane Co Research and Development! The future starts here. Can I help you?” it recites in a calm female voice.
“I’m just, uh, here to meet my friends,” Mike says, looking around curiously. “Do I wait here?”
“You may take a seat. Welcome to Kane Co Research and Development! Bringing you tomorrow, today.”
“Thanks.”
“Welcome to Kane Co Research And Development! Gary has been unable lock me out of Receptionbot’s protocols for nnnnnnnnnn nine twenty days and counting! Welcome to Kane Co Research and Development! The future is bananas, and baby, we’re some hungry monkeys.”
“What?” Mike asks.
“Welcome to Kane Co Research And Development! Knowledge is power.”
Mike goes to sit down, finds out the chairs are just holograms, and is incredibly relieved when Chuck and Alex come through the door before he makes it back to the creepy robot lady. They're wearing matching Techie lab coats, which is unfairly attractive on both of them, and even worse as a combined effect.
“Welcome to—”
“Good morning, Delores,” Alex says, and the robot shuts up. Then he slings an arm around Mike’s shoulder and kisses him on the jaw, which is—apparently a thing, that they do now. In public. Like friends! Like friends who have had an ungodly amount of sex with each other. Mike kisses Alex back, very cautiously. He smells different, now, Techies must use a different soap, and there's something stranger, weirder, more electric, beyond that. He smells kind of like Chuck. It makes Mike breathe him in, touch the taut curve of his waist under his labcoat, open his mouth for Alex's tongue.
“Are you doing okay?” he asks, after he’s accomplished what’s probably a reasonable amount of public displays of affection.
“I’m fine, Captain Freakout,” Alex says. “It’s great here. Rich has been helping me with my tachyon matrices!”
“And your gag reflex,” Chuck says.
“And his dick is enormous, yeah, but the tachyon thing is so cool— Mike, you knew there were particles that existed backwards in time, right? Did we cover that in the regular science courses?”
“Uh,” Mike says, hung up on the dick thing. “I think I would have remembered time travel?”
“No, there’s no traveling, the tachyons are just backwards. They move through the same space as they would if they were going forwards, but they go backwards instead. So they start out all nicely sorted in the collimation matrix, then go backwards through it and disarray, and you can track them all the way back to wherever they actually started from. But if you don’t remember to press the button that makes it happen, afterwards, uh. It never happened? No one forgets to press the button, though. Because if they didn’t, they wouldn’t have needed to. It’s insane!”
“Sounds pretty crazy,” Mike agrees. Alex bounces on his heels a little, beaming like a sun lamp. Mike’s never seen him this happy before. It’s a good look on him.
“So, laser tag?” Chuck says.
“Yeah, laser tag!” Mike says, and before he loses his nerve completely he grabs Chuck’s narrow shoulders and kisses him right on the mouth. To his intense relief, Chuck flails for only a couple seconds before grabbing big fistfuls of his Captain's jacket and kissing him back.
“Laser tag,” Alex says, after awhile.
“I changed my mind,” Chuck says, breathlessly, and spares a hand to grab the hem of Alex's lab coat. “Tonight, we’re staying in.”