Justin was easier to get along with now. He was never bitchy, he never talked back, he never stormed off in a huff or put up a front. He clung to Lance, whispered nonsense in his ears. Pointed and said, "don't you see them? They're shining." Sometimes, Lance could see moving shadows in the corners Justin pointed to.
Lance spent endless, exhausting hours with JC, bent over the malfunctioning radio, trying to make sense of the garbled transmissions and actually fixing the thing at the same time. It made his eyes ache with strain, and he wondered if he needed glasses. If maybe he had once worn glasses, but then he stopped thinking about that, because it made his eyes hurt more. He stayed next to JC, though, even though JC didn't want to talk to him, and only said anything when he wanted something, like the pliers or a set of coordinates to pass on over the crackle and snap to some nameless survivor on the other end.
A few weeks after the first transmissions started coming through, things started picking up, and Lance was learning the codes quickly, and was starting to understand what was going on, that there were people fighting some sort of war out there, skirmishes and battles and loud, sudden death. It seemed very unreal, and he wasn't sure on whose side he was. JC just shrugged when he brought it up. JC didn't seem to be interested in anything but the radio as a thing he was in charge of. Sometimes, Lance wanted to slap him in the face and scream at him, scream "they're real people! The voices aren't coming from inside the goddamn box!" but then he felt guilty, because JC was looking sick and worn these days, with a tightness around his mouth and his eyes circled with deep purple smudges. Sometimes they looked bloodshot and unfocused, and Lance wondered if he slept at all.
Sometimes he felt so guilty that he invited JC to their room. He never knew if it was appropriate, because sometimes JC said yes, and sometimes he said no, but he always looked a little uncomfortable.
"I'm gonna go see what Justin's doing," he said when he couldn't take it anymore - not the way his eyes watered with pain, and not the numbness of being ignored for hours. Justin was a convenient excuse, and JC always nodded frantically whenever Lance brought him up. Yes, go look for him, yes, take care of him, yes, yes, just don't talk about him.
Lance walked out into the back yard to find Justin sitting cross-legged in the hot sand, slowly pulling the feathers off a dead bird, one by one.
Like waking up from a slow, maddening dream, feeling it slowly drift away like a vapour in the chilly morning air.
His legs felt like he'd been walking for days. It was dark. He was thirsty.
In the haze of his mind, it was hard to catch any clear thoughts. Everything he knew seemed detached, somehow. Like how he couldn't remember his family, but he knew he should have one, but couldn't remember why he should have one.
He remembered his first name.
He stumbled over something large and soft, and fell on his face on the ground. He almost put his eye out on a sharp stick, and got what felt like a bone-deep scratch down his cheekbone instead.
"Jesus," he mumbled.
"Jesus," someone else mumbled, and there was a tug, like a brief sense of déjà vu, and then that, too, faded.
"Are you okay?" he asked, holding his hand over his cheek. He could feel the skin getting slick and wet.
"GodDAMN, you nearly kicked my kidney out through my back."
"Sorry, sorry," he said. It was getting lighter now, and he could see the fuzzy outline of someone getting up, clutching his side. "um, hi," he said, trying not to show the overwhelming, stomach-dropping, goddamn slippery-sliding relief he felt.
Whoever this kid was - tall, slim, fluffy pouf of hair outlined against the pale sky - didn't have any such compunctions. "Fuck, am I glad to see you," he said, and Lance heard the grin in his voice. The glimmer of dawn creeping over the horizon was growing stronger, and he thought he saw a flash of white teeth in the dust-grey darkness.
"Yeah," he said. "I thought I was, like--"
"--the last person on fucking Earth," the kid said. He sounded pretty young, with a fair voice that seemed to reflect every thought that moved through his head. "I'm Justin--" and there he cut off, and Lance saw a sudden movement: he was scratching his head. "I'm--"
"Hi, Justin," Lance said quickly. No need to linger on it. He couldn't remember his own last name, although he somehow knew he had one. Should have one. He let Justin wait in the growing silence as he carefully prodded the fluffy, elusive gap in his memory. It was like trying to gather a sackful of cloud, and it was starting to make his head hurt.
"Fucking hell," Justin said.
"I'm Lance," Lance said.
It was a crow, a moth-eaten, dust-black thing. Justin was planting the feathers in a spreading pattern around himself. He was crying softly, singing tunelessly under his breath.
"Justin, what are you doing?" Lance asked. The half-naked bird looked like an omen. Justin had taken off his shirt, and there was a smudge of dirt or blood or both running across his chest. When he turned to Lance, the sun fell straight in his face and made it shine. His eyes were impossibly blue with pinprick pupils, because he didn't squint, just stared into the sun with tears running down his cheeks. He looked like a blind child. Lance said, "don't stare at the sun, Justin," and he immediately looked down.
Then Justin rose with effortless grace, and Lance saw clearly what he'd done with the feathers. Of course.
"I don't think I got it right," Justin said with a small frown, and he sounded ... clear-headed. A little pensive. Lance looked at him sharply. He was looking at the ground, at the simple, perfect outline of a man with black wings sprouting from his back.
"It's--" Lance started, but he couldn't say 'beautiful', because just looking at the feather-portrait made him shiver and remember how sick he'd been after he'd drunk the water. Sick for days, sick all over the place, and he'd been laughing like crazy, and nothing had been real. Justin was still in that place. It was almost three weeks ago, and he didn't seem to be coming back.
It was a lot like taking care of a small child. Justin had to be stopped all the time. He was inordinately fascinated with shiny things, and Lance didn't know how many knives, razorblades and pieces of broken glass he'd confiscated. He told JC to keep his tools locked up. Justin couldn't be trusted to sit still and look pretty; he'd wander off at the drop of a hat, and everyone seemed to think he was Lance's responsibility. When did that happen? Justin was a tall, beautiful doll with empty, glittering glass bead eyes and a headful of cotton wool, and he gave great head but couldn't string a sentence together most of the time.
Lance missed the old Justin, even though he'd been hopelessly self-centered and a pain in the ass. But he'd known the difference between a hawk and a handsaw, and right now, Lance would like someone to tell him what that was.
They had to spend another night in the desert, just the two of them, and it got piercingly cold, and the wind bit through Lance's clothes and his skin, it seemed, and flesh and all the way to his fucking bones, and Justin shivered next to him in his thin shirt. It was Justin, always Justin, who took the first step, put shaking hands on Lance's shoulders and pulled him closer. Hmm, huddling together for warmth, Lance thought and went along. When Justin kissed him, he kissed back. They were alone, after all, maybe the last people on Earth. And Justin was a beautiful boy, with a big laugh and clear eyes. When he reached down and fumbled with Lance's fly, Lance didn't stop him. And that's how it started, and they didn't stop even after they met JC, who hugged them both the second he saw them, hugged them and cried and said, "thank god, thank god, thank god" over and over again.
"Who are you?" Justin asked, and JC froze. Lance could see it, how he stiffened up and turned into a statue.
"I'm Lance," Lance said quickly, because Justin was starting to look confused, and after just about twenty-four hours with Justin, Lance knew he could get insensitive when there was something he didn't understand. JC didn't look like he'd stand any insensitivity right now. "This is Justin."
JC, whose name Lance didn't know yet, of course, didn't say anything, just blinked a couple of times and swallowed. He didn't say his name until Lance asked.
He woke up at night and tried to talk to JC, but JC didn't want to talk to him. JC was also gliding into some private crazy place of his own now, sitting glued to the radio as if it was his fucking umbilical cord. Sometimes he stared at Lance as if Lance was a malevolent ghost and JC was just waiting for the exorcist to show up.
Chris and Joey were joined at the hip now, growing old and stodgy in their chairs outside the door. Lance thought he saw, behind their young, smooth faces, the outlines of two geezers with weather-worn, deeply lined skin and bushy, grey eyebrows.
After Lance threw the dead crow in the trash, he went and got his own chair. Put it next to Joey's and sat down. Justin trailed after him, and sat by his feet like a large, shaggy dog. Lance wished he'd remember what breed he was thinking of. A dog with curly fur. Huh.
Joey and Chris stared at him for endlessly stretching seconds. He almost said "Sorry." Then Joey gave him a lopsided grin and handed him a beer from the cooler.
"Y'all are gonna run out of beer soon," Lance said.
"Nah," Chris said. "There's like a million and five cans left. Whoever stayed here liked his beer."
"Or maybe there was a delivery just before ... whatever happened, happened," Joey said.
"I'm too young to drink beer," Justin said quietly.
"What's that, kiddo?" Chris said. They all turned to look at Justin. He was drawing lines in the fine sand. His hands were dirty.
"It's always, like, touch and go, they'll recognise me and give me beer cause of who I am or they'll recognise me and not give me beer cause of who I am."
"Uh, yeah, bummer," Lance said, playing along.
"Beer, beer, beer, beer, beer," Justin whispered and sounded like he was about to cry again.
"Give the kid a beer," Chris said.
"I don't--" Lance started. But what the fuck. He could hardly get any worse.
Justin didn't drink his beer. Instead he poured it slowly over the dusty concrete and watched enraptured as it fizzled and ran over the bumps, collected in small pools, swirled deep barley-golden in the sunlight.
Chris shook his head. Joey did, too. Lance looked down at his hands and hated Justin for five seconds.
He started thinking they were going to die. There was a strange doubling in his head: this time, last time. Lost in the desert with no one but Justin for company. How fucking stupid could they be?
"How did we get lost again?" he asked.
"Fuck should I know. We took a wrong turn at-- uh. We took a wrong turn at. Someplace. Fuck!" and Justin kicked the ground in frustration. "I can't handle this shit. I am fucking done with this!"
"Shut up," Lance said, "you're gonna get us killed."
"Why? There's nothing out here. You know, if you weren't so good in bed, there would be nothing about you to like," Justin said, narrowing his eyes.
"Ditto," Lance said, more by rote than actual feeling. Justin acted like a jerk sometimes, but he never seemed to put any real malice into the outbursts.
And all that said, the sex really was good. Not worth dying for, though, and now they were over thirty-six hours without water, and Lance was desperately trying to remember how long it took to die of thirst. His tongue felt thick and cracked in his mouth. That had to be a bad sign. Justin's lips were chapped and dry.
They found the waterhole just as the sun was hovering breathlessly over the horizon. Justin hadn't complained in hours. That was another bad sign. They were trudging along, side by side, stubbornly. They were both stubborn people. Like mules, the two of them.
"Oh, Jesus Christ," Justin whispered hoarsely, and it wasn't an epithet, but a prayer. Lance reached out and grabbed his hand. His head swam and his stomach lurched and rolled. He thought his nostrils actually flared.
The water was warm and tasted bitter, and for about two-thirds of a second, he worried about that.
Then he puked, and drank again, and puked, and drank again. Justin was pretty much doing the same, and they tried, and tried, until they lay exhausted and wrung out like smelly rags next to the shallow pool.
They were already wrapped around each other when the hallucinations started, and for a while, fucking seemed like a really swell idea. The world buckled and bubbled around Lance's head, and Justin seemed like the only real, solid thing. The rock under them felt soft and damply organic, as if it was the inside of some gigantic beast, and they were being slowly digested. Lance pushed Justin down and climbed on top, and for a while, he kept the fear at bay by trying to climb inside Justin, digging deeper and deeper until Justin screamed in his face and clawed at his back, and he thought he came for way too long, like the orgasm just went on and on until he was afraid his entrails were dropping out through his dick or something, and Justin was biting his shoulder, gnawing and gnawing and screaming into the torn flesh, and it wasn't Lance's name he screamed.
He thought he forgot about that once he sobered up, but it came back in nightmares, all of it, as elusive as all the things he could almost remember.
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