⭑Action .ᐟ

“Shit.” 

You were unable to halt the regretful notion from falling out of you as he entered your line of sight. The air was stale, filled with nothing but mourning silence interrupted by the sprinting pierce of your heartbeat. You’d run when they’d told you, taken off with such a needy pounce that, if given the chance, you’d wince at your mannerisms. 

But the chances were irrelevant. Your sanity was dying alone in a room. 

Simon had been restrained, a solid silver band around each wrist, conjoined eventually by a common chain that was secured to a bar installed for this very purpose. His one allotted item, a creaky wooden chair that was too small to hold him, was filled by his slumping body. His balaclava had been torn and punctured, jawline exposed fully, joined by little samples of his face you could make out through the other heterogeneous holes. His skin was covered in blood, the edges of the fabric forced into crusted peaks from how much of the ruddy substance it’d been made to absorb. Bits of skin that he’d shot off the infected were stuck there, too; smeared across old lines and weighing down the mask. 

He looked at you when you opened the door, agonizingly indifferent to the situation. You’d be crying, you’d be panicking, you’d be many things if it were you. But he was just dirty. Sitting there soaked in residue sourced from the bodies that had lost to both the outbreak and to him. He took it like it wasn’t a problem, like it didn’t make him sick because he wasn’t granted the right to be. 

He grunted at your reaction to him, a discarding of the harm that happened with such a blunt exclaim. “Y’shouldn’t be here.” 

The rejection made your teeth scrape, prison bars aiding the limitation of all you wished to say. 

Simon had been put in the quarantine room, the sole occupant of an empty wing that you’d silently prayed you’d never have to use. Beyond the door, directly connected to it, were four more reinforced walls made for observation. It was home of a small control panel, a large window, a first aid kit, a sink, and whatever other miscellaneous things that were important enough to be demanded. 

You exited his part of what was ultimately a large rat cage and went into the half that would become your own. You filled a bowl with saline and rooted for one of the rags left lying around, walking back to him when you had what you wanted. 

“I had to see it for myself.” 

You set the dish down on the floor, squatting in front of him to submerge the cloth in it’s confines. You wrung it out, standing back up and stepping closer. 

“Can I?” 

You listen to him sigh, defeat sinking into his posture where function typically held it up. It took a lot to make a man out of Simon Riley, to make him see outside of his own technical wiring. He just nods at you, hands clenching once when your own make contact with face.

The glimpses you get of what lies under his covering feel risqué, disrespectful. They’re something you’re only getting on account of his victimhood, a glance at the nakedness of a man on the crux of death. You wanted nothing more than to see him under different circumstances; to be someone he granted the honor of witnessing him, not just someone he trusted wouldn’t speed up his current falling. 

You swiped the rag over all the dried livelihood, maneuvering the best you could around shredded cotton that stood sedentary when you shoved against it. You were making decent progress on his chin, wondering if it’d be possible to soften the mask as well so it wouldn’t make him itch as he rotted away. 

God, you were going to be sick. 

“You can take it off.” He was staring at you so delicately, sullied by the weight of loss but giving you this one thing in spite of it. “Won’t be alive enough to think about it when you leave.” 

You’d never been so internally polarized, needing so badly for this act to be a sacred thing and knowing there was no longer time for moments of sanctity with him. 

You lifted it from his face, breathing in the intimacy and letting it jostle around somewhere more contained within you. You couldn’t tell him how much this meant. You couldn’t tell him the gravitational upending that would take place in his disappearance. These last hours were for him, were for his suffering. You were just there to help carry it. 

It took copious effort to not gawk at him. You knew he didn’t like his face, didn’t like people’s eyes on it. Your vetting would have been nauseating, just like the judgment you’re sure he’d borne many times in the past. A lot of the skin was scarred, ranging from various deep velvet gashes across his cheeks to white nicks along his mouth and eyebrows. There were old burn marks crawling up the left side of his neck and kissing the underside of his correlating bit of jaw. His top lip beamed up in a small line, breaching the right side of his cupid’s bow and ending below his nostril. 

You thought he was beautiful. Enough to steal the air from your lungs, or line verses of poems with the kind of adoration meant for nautical deities or the things nature made but couldn’t explain. You wanted to tell him so, wanted him to know you meant it. 

But he wouldn’t look at you. And you understood, fatally, that it wasn’t something to be decided on, to be expressed. He had his facts, and you had yours. These two paths no longer existed in a world where crossing was possible. He’d die thinking he’d cursed your eyes with an offense equal to what lurked outside the lab walls; and you, inversely, would tuck the sight of him into your heart where the rest of him already lived. 

You made a point to see him, and to say nothing about it. You didn’t appear bothered, you didn’t appear shocked. You just tilted his head and began grating the guts off his forehead from where they’d soaked through the balaclava. 

The soreness in your throat could be rivaled only by the feeling of swallowing a golf ball, the impending lack burrowing greedily into the soft parts of you as you swallowed all urges to weep. 

You bent down again, rinsing off the first layer of grime that’d been removed, and watching the liquid turn murky and textured as it accepted the offering you’d placed within it. You wrung it out once more, returning dutifully to your pyre. 

“How’d it happen?” 

He sniffed, the question and it’s respective answer both equally insignificant. His own lack of care was beat out every time by the desire to fulfill your indulgences. Whether spouting bad puns when you were down or reciting the tale of how he’d lost the fight, he would do it with the same urge to satisfy you. To be someone you wanted around. 

“Crowd of ‘em got too close. ‘S my job to protect you, ain’t it?”

You felt your fingers tighten around the slick give of the rag. 

“It is.” It felt like poison, that dawning. How foolish it was to forget that growing fond of a shield didn’t cease it’s purpose, that eventually it would get hit so you wouldn’t. That there was no mercy in an apocalypse. “Just wasn’t expecting it, I guess.” 

He was shifting much more now that you were touching all he kept hidden. You worried, as you brushed over knife cuts and bullet grazes, that you were hurting him. That your attempt to increase his comfort was doing nothing but burdening him. 

He wasn’t hurt, not in the way you were thinking. 

Simon took no pride in being a hardened entity, simply did what it took to keep himself on his feet. An alien trapped inside the grubby hands of mortal needs. He ate plates of solid color, foods indistinguishable from each other in his busy brain. He trained and yelled and ran and shot. He didn’t choose. He didn’t think. He had routine and he had commands and that kept him dangling above the abyss instead of drowning in it. 

That’s part of the reason he found you so intoxicating. You were malleable in the areas he wasn’t, trusted with the fate of the world and still willing to mingle with those on the fast-track to infection. Those who stood outside the walls. 

You chose him. In more ways than he lets himself think about. You chose him to talk to at night, you chose his jokes to laugh at, you chose him to defend you. Now, you were choosing to meet such an ugly sight with a softness he was unaccustomed to. You saw his shackled hands and cleaned him, cared for him. 

He didn’t understand you. He was addicted to you. He couldn’t let any of that be known on the chance he’d lose it entirely. 

He was unsure if all monsters were unlovable, but even with the possibility of exception, he was certain the rule applied to him. 

This way, at least he got to die still in your good graces. You’d think of him kindly one day, after all of this was over and you got to settle down with someone far more worthy than him. 

It was painful, having you hold him like this. Knowing that, not only was he undeserving, but that he’d never get the chance to have it again. He’d never get the chance to have you at all. 

You’d gotten him as sanitized as you could, deciding that it was leagues ahead of when you’d first entered and feeling alright leaving it as it was. You let the washcloth rest in the solution, pushing it aside and speaking before you could talk yourself out of it. 

“Can I see it?” 

A lot of your reasoning was built purely on exposure. The more brutality you could physically view, the quicker it would sink in that he was really being taken from you. That, within a day or two, he’d be nothing but a subject you studied. A carcass housing a way out of the dark. 

He hesitated a moment, debating the damage of such a thing. He knew you’d seen pictures of it, knew you worked tirelessly to unpack the virus in an attempt to kill it. He knew you weren’t a child and were capable of handling unruly sights. 

The bare truth was simply that he didn’t want you to. But that wasn’t good enough to stand on it’s own, and he couldn’t explain it further. 

“Pull it up.” He extended his arms, hands unable to reach across enough to tug up his sleeve. 

When you did, the majority of the wound was revealed. It was square on his wrist, and you had to move the cuff up as much as possible to get a better look at it. 

It was so tiny. The fragile jaw of a fetal being. Each tooth perfectly outlined under his disdain and thick coat of hair, carved cruelly and resolute into his skin. The mark’s surrounding area was a blistering red, giving way to the sour yellow of an old bruise, then finally the inky black that was spreading venom upward in veined lightning strikes. 

The virus didn’t behave like the ones you were used to scoffing at in media. It truly was a sickness, slow to crawl and slow to kill. It had taken them all the time you’d been here just to get things in the world semi-orderly again, and figure out how to cope with the raging plague that was showing no signs of stopping. You didn’t know if it had mutated yet, if it could affect people in different ways, if there was even any hope of restoring normalcy. In most cases, infection went unnoticed until it was too late. 

“‘S ironic. Dyin’ to bloody baby teeth.” 

It wasn’t a joke, but you find yourself laughing small and wilted. Your eyes are locked on his penance, oblivious to the way his world’s axis is you. That it’s probably unhealthy and definitely nonreciprocal, but in the months he’s spent with you, you’ve redefined something in him. Some ancient belief he’d thought was set in stone. 

You brush your fingers over the injury, cupping his wrist and holding him like he’s tangible light. Like he’s something with substance. Like he’s not the hollow killer he is to everyone else who values his presence. 

You value him for this. For how he feels. For who he is. 

He watches as your lips start to tremble, despite the way you tighten them in a plea to make it stop. He knows it’s not the job of the condemned to comfort the innocent, but he can’t make himself not try.  

“Gettin’ off easy for all the things I’ve done.” He jerks his wrist, nudging your hand off him. You return his sleeve to how it sat before, taking the hint that he was done holding the weight of your sadness. “Far worse fates than bein’ your lab rat, yeah?” 

You give him a small smile, the kind that clearly means nothing to either of you but is done out of courtesy. A way of saying you see what he’s doing, that you’re not rejecting him, that you’re not happy but you’d fake it for him if he needed it. 

The image of the bite stays burned on your eyelids, replaying like tv static whenever you dared to blink. You look at him in a way you shouldn’t, a way not reserved for friends. You hope the grief can justify it. You know it never will. 

“Does it hurt?” 

You assume it does, you don’t know how something with that appearance could avoid being painful, but he’s so calm. He’s talking to you like he would’ve any other day where he was the half-alive hero he always had been. You know of his time in the military, you know he’s here because he can handle things. You suppose you’re more just asking for the sake of it. For the sake of hearing his voice respond cohesively to you before the sound of it slips away from comprehension. 

“Yes.” 

He stares back at you with that same undefined look, leaning too far for people of your status. You want him to push harder, you want to undo all that’s been done. 

“We’re gonna figure it out, you know. The cure.” Blind hope supplied by a blind leader. You were a pristine picture of deceit, but it was better than spewing the truth. You’d accept your lie if it hurt you less, you hoped he’d do the same. “You won’t be like this forever.” 

He eats up your sentences with the vigor of a man who’s been not living long before he was dead; assigning that fleeting assurance to every earthly craving he’d ever had beaten out of him, every instinct he’s ignored the screams of. With that meaning, it’s almost honest. He wouldn’t be like this forever, soon he’d be nothing at all. 

It helped, in it’s own right. Hearing those words straight from the mouth of his shepherd

He can’t offer you assurances of his own, he’s never had that power. He just nods. 

“I believe you.” 

His descent was every bit as unbearable as you’d been prepping for. It felt selfish to think about how hard it was for yourself given what was happening, but you couldn’t help it. You felt his absence every second it grew, a pinprick in your soul having it’s edges plummet until the gape was comparable to a trench. A bountiful plane that used to contain multitudes, now just ash.  

You’d gone out and retrieved a new mask for him, lacking his preferred signature, but a mask nonetheless. You knew what he’d told you, felt it rip at your sluggish insides as it sunk in, you just didn’t care. He wasn’t exposed because he wanted to be, and you figured it’s only right he die with his dignity. 

It made it more difficult to look at him, the covering making him look so close to the being you loved, yet holding within it nothing further. 

By the time you’d brought it back to him, the streaks of tar had reached his neck, and you imagined yourself draping your declarations and your affections over him just as you did the cotton. It was a stupid fantasy, fit for a schoolgirl or someone ignorant to the ways of the world, but it was all you had. 

You could have spoken every word you knew of. He was too far out to accept them now. 

You’d sealed the door shut with every internal promise you’d ever made to him still inside. You swore you’d meet the god responsible for the downfall that got you here. You swore you’d show that god just how much they’d taken. You swore you’d never move on, never forget, never leave this moment. 

You weren’t sure the longevity of the storm, but you promised to bear through it. That’s all he would want you to do.  

The sound of your door opening angered you. This was a classified unit, and you felt almost protective of the creature housed on the other side of the glass. You were the one studying him, you were the one he trusted to. He wasn’t for others to see, to prod at, to understand. 

You looked to your left, the critical interruption morphing into a brown-skinned man with buzz-length curls atop his head. He was dressed in the same tactical gear Simon often was, and the sight sickened you. You’d never see him in it again. 

“You can’t be in here.” It reminded you of what he’d said to you yesterday. You lacked the warmth he’d held, extending no kind greetings to this stranger. This projectile wasn’t for modesty, this was offense. “This area’s restricted access. You need to leave.” 

It was too harsh to sound real. You didn’t speak this way so unprompted. 

Grief did odd things to people. 

“No - I know, sorry. I’m Kyle.” He appeared slightly off balance by how short you’d been, probably hearing of you as someone different than who you were presenting as. “They flew me over to…you know, replace him.” 

Your face twisted, his audacity curdling the neutrality you’d been fronting. It didn’t surprise you that the organizers had already filled his position. You didn’t even think it was a bad thing to have done. It was just the way he’d said it. 

Replace him. 

How laughable. 

His fingers pushed into the sides of his legs, fidgeting in a way Simon never did. “They haven’t given me an updated badge yet.” 

Your distaste softens where your expression does not. It makes sense. You have no qualms, logically, with the strategy being presented to you. You know it’s not Kyle you’re mad at. You know your anger is somewhere irrational and undefinable; and that you’re really just coasting on fury until your flood gates open to something deeper. 

It doesn’t make you want to know him. It doesn’t sooth the bone-deep sting you’re nursing. 

You catch his eyes drifting to the same north star yours have been locked on for the past day. His face is tight, something you can’t read proudly residing there like it cost him nothing to feel for the chained corpse in the cage. 

He pays no mind to your resentment, speaking openly, “Did you know him?”

You angle your body back to Simon and debate not answering. You lose the argument. 

“We’re all trapped here. We all know him.” 

It’s not particularly true, but Kyle is not someone you deem worthy of knowing how far in Simon went within you. You wouldn’t explain your molecules to him, or your blood, or your brain. You wouldn’t explain your heart either. 

“Well, not everyone’s in here watchin’ him.” 

A test. An invitation. 

One you had no interest in fostering. 

“Nope.” 

You stare straight ahead at Simon, too still and too human. His chest was going up and down, mesmerizing in the cynical way every natural disaster is. It’s the one thing you had at the moment, watching him breathe and wondering if at some point he was going to start lashing out, running into walls. 

You didn’t leave room to elaborate on what your brief reply meant, but the new guard seemed to be unfazed. 

“We served in 141 together before the outbreak.” You pivoted your head, interest peaked. “Never thought I’d see him like this.” 

Once, a few weeks into being here, you’d been delirious with sleep deprivation, asking Simon to keep you company at an hour far too late to be hospitable. You hadn’t expected him to agree at the time, but he had. He sat down and let you rant about fear, about death. He talked back sometimes, and every syllable exchanged made you more certain you wanted him in your life. You asked how he was so put together in the face of global disaster, and he’d shared stories about his hardest deployments, about his team. 

He’d mentioned this one. Kyle. Gaz. 

It was nice putting a face to a name. It made it easier to share a space with him, knowing that the two of you were indirectly connected through a common name. 

You felt your lungs deflate, sighing with begrudging tolerance. 

“I work in Virology, and we got here around the same time. Formed a bit of a trauma bond, I suppose.” It viscerally disagreed with your system to speak of your relationship in past tense. Something that was no longer being added to, leather-bound and left to pick up dust. “Never worked in a place where you gain a test subject from your friend dying.” 

“Mm.” The sound rings in your ears, nonverbal agreement plucking the reminiscent strings of every question Simon had ever answered with grunts. “They’re makin’ you dissect him, then?” 

It’s so blunt that it makes you laugh a bit, spiteful and agonizing as you realize how little it takes to sum up your place here. 

“Something like that, yeah.” Your gaze flits to his gun, a single second distraction from your one-sided staring contest. “A lot of the military guys kill themselves when they get bit. I’ve been here almost five months and this is the first…” Your throat chokes up involuntarily as you have to categorize Simon as one of them. “um - infected, that I’ve seen up close.” 

He lets the statement simmer, making no movement to coddle the impact of the blow. You don’t either, in all fairness. Something like that earns no gentleness. Something like that must be felt in all it’s terror. 

You continue, despite knowing you shouldn’t. 

“I still don’t know why he let this happen to him.” You infer that, if he could see his face, he’d hate it even more with that sludgy midnight syrup pumping through his veins. “He was dying either way. He could have kept his body, at the very least.” 

Kyle’s nose twitches minutely, teeth clenching visibly at the speculation on someone he once considered a teammate. You wondered if you’d upset him, if he’d be short with you. He didn’t claim to know Ghost, wasn’t in his head quite like Price had been, but he’d understood the persistent trepidation. He’d understood pattern.  

“Dunno’ how connected he was to his body. He’s useful this way. Givin’ information.” He frowned so severely that slight lines snuggled into his forehead. “More useful than he’d be dead.” 

You could have cried at how cold it all sounded. At how it must have felt for him to make that choice. You didn’t want the information if this was the cost. You wanted him to find rest. You wanted him to feel like he deserved it. 

He certainly didn’t deserve to be used as some vessel for progress. To put himself through torture on the slim possibility you’d crack the code because of it. 

“He’s in pain.” That cracked tv screen replayed the traitorous image of his injury. You tried to calculate how long it may be before you saw anything else when you closed your eyes. You had no answer. “I saw it, it -” Your voice cracked, embarrassing and entirely too human. “It was horrible.” 

“‘S what he knows.” 

It’s said so casually, with so much finality. You feel the incision it makes, feel each individual letter press through that surgical slice and burrow into the most protected parts of you. You must wear it on your face, in your stance, how much it hurts. 

It was what he knew. You understood that before it happened, and you understand it now. He talked aimlessly on occasion about how many times he’d thought about pulling the plug. All the anti-hero bullshit about how much better off the world would be without his shadowy self clogging up all the good that gets done. You saw how carnally he needed to be given a purpose. The lengths he’d go to in order to fulfill it. 

It made sense that would extend to the most deadly of cases. How much he probably wanted it to extend that far. How much he wanted to prove he was devoted, could be worth something. 

He was as stubborn in death as he was in life. 

You let your chat with Kyle fizzle out, giving nothing but a hum back to him and bathing in the solitude that came after his exit. 

You’re not sure you’d ever felt so alone. 

The next 52 hours were charted meticulously, watching every mammalian spasm he used to be unable to suppress trickle out until he was nothing but methodical stoicism. He hadn’t moved, hadn’t given you any indication he was ever going to. The question of whether the bite had just fully wiped him out became prevalent. You had watched it spread, that you were sure of, but maybe it simply didn’t take. Maybe he was just done, and the melancholic metronome of his breathing body was a fluke. The remnants of a soul once activated. 

Those 52 hours had been without sleep, sheer will and adrenaline keeping your eyes peeled, nausea battling the boredom that was sure to seep in eventually. You wrestled many times with the rational prompt of leaving, of resting, of coming back as something that could actually be of use to him. It was just harder than it seemed. 

He didn’t know you were there. Your presence was unacknowledged by him as far as you were aware. The consciousness held by the infected hadn’t been mapped out yet, but by their brutality, it had been collectively assumed they didn’t have much. 

You stayed because you were selfish. Because you needed him even when he didn’t need you back. You needed to keep him in your peripheral, needed to keep your pen jotting down every inhale that each 60 second segment contained. 

You were obsessed. You could feel it. But obsessed people got things done. 

Your resolve gave way eventually, sleep beckoning you like a mistress you couldn’t refuse. You didn’t turn the lights off when you left. You couldn’t stomach walking to your room while he sat in the dark. 

Now, returning to your post, you wished you’d never deserted him. 

The vacant balaclava was torn down the middle, the gap for his eyes parting into sagging curtains that hung loosely on his cheeks. He was on the floor, hunched, knees as close to his chest as he could get them. Half of his chair was frayed and splintered at the base of the wall it’d been thrown against, the other half a few feet away from it. And, in his hands, one of it’s legs. 

His teeth were sunken into the wood like he’d bit through butter. He wasn’t gnawing at it, wasn’t doing this for the purpose of consumption. The treatment more resembled a newborn’s painful teething. Like there was an itching in his gums so unruly that he’d take any pressure he could just to sate it. 

The front of his face was visible because of what he’d done, and you saw how far that black had travelled. It danced behind each of his scar lines like the most elegant, insufferable backdrop. The bags under his eyes were enriched with the color, the once pink shine of his gums following suit. 

But, whatever the virus had bullied him into becoming, it hadn’t tainted his eyes. They were still doughy, still unwillingly soft. It hadn’t taken that from him. 

It hadn’t taken that from you. 

You understood, then, that his hunger would overtake him if not dealt with. 

The dreadful truth about the apocalypse is how apparent it becomes that human life has never been valued. Animals had been preserved and rationed as efficiently as possible once the pandemic hit an official status. Many insect species were killed in ignorance, not wanting the risk of quicker transmission. 

Everyone knew cannibalism would arrive sooner or later, once things got serious enough. And, when you’d been taken into the lab, they informed you that you were far closer to that point than advertised. 

You hadn’t had to eat human meat, not yet. But, as they’d told you, they’d taken the populations of those condemned to death penalties and life sentences and housed them in special facilities. It was a last resort for the living, with another off-book use. 

In the case of a quarantined infected, the prisoners could be pulled from as a food source. 

Your hands stopped trembling soon after you’d gotten here, fear deep enough to lick marrow but your determination equally as high. You’d squeeze when they shook, and eventually they stopped squirming without your permission. 

This was different. This brought the tremors back. 

Death took a separate form entirely when it was forced upon you. It was filthy work, staining what it came into contact with and leaving no room for petty analysts to decipher it.

An invitation, however, was impossible to manage without letting death into yourself, as well. You were calling it. You were stepping quietly to managers and speaking quietly in code. It was less irredeemable this way, they’d said. You weren’t organizing the violent murder of another person, you were furthering the research that could save the world. 

You would have to ask for a sacrifice. And you would have to track every millisecond that sacrifice spent in the bubbling maw of whatever monster awaited it. 

You should have accounted for this, realistically. Simon was obviously going to need sustenance at some point. He had a way of dulling your professionalism, even after his own demise. Surely you couldn’t be expected to think critically when that meant feeding your best friend the rusty spirit of some guilty sulker.  

Shock and horror had no home in the new world. Only work. Only survival. And that’s all this was. His survival depended on this. 

When you left this time, you did flick the lights off. If his face had to be bared, you wouldn’t prolong it. You wouldn’t be cruel to him. 

Travel that’s blessed with a stamp of necessity from the government is almost always done by aircraft. Driving is too noisy, draws too much attention to the goods inside. 

It took about a day, following your request, for the inmate to be delivered. You hadn’t been alerted when he’d gotten there. You were bracing for a call, for someone to be tasked with summoning you considering you’d been the sole jury on this decision. But you got nothing. 

You’d been where you always were now, in observation, when Kyle simply opened the door and dragged him in as unceremoniously as any prey would’ve been. The man was almost as tall as Simon, his width meek in comparison. You’d asked for larger bait if possible, not wanting Simon to remain peckish once done eating. 

This guy would do nicely. As unfortunate as it was. 

Gagged, bound, and blindfolded. Even through all that was inhibiting him, he wore his future like a brand. You could see that he was braced for the worst, that he knew this would be the last place he existed in. 

Kyle’s face was tense in the most minuscule of ways. Lips in too tight of a line, eyes hardened as though the space behind them was vacant. He seemed to be performing the role of a puppet, hands belonging to someone grander, using him to throw fish to a shark. 

He could not be responsible for the snap of that shark’s jaw. He did not choose this. 

You did. 

You knew that Simon had seen a considerable amount of death throughout his time in the 141, you assumed Kyle was much the same. You wondered what his kills had looked like in the past. If he’d held the handle of a blade and forced the sharpness into trapped skin. If it’d been in search of information or simply in search of emotion. Something to tell him he was still alive. 

That’s what Simon used to say to you. That he’d done what others had ordered; and that life was not a force, but a currency. What others lost, he gained. The dying flicker of someone’s soul would serve as kindling for the flame in his own. The one that always burned low and cold, no matter how much tinder he dumped onto it. 

Perhaps this man would produce a similar result. Perhaps he’d make Simon real again for the split second it took for fire to catch on wood. 

Kyle doesn’t look at you, nor you at him. He walks over to the door separating you from the end of the world and holds for your approval to poach it. You settle yourself at the panel, 2 buttons of red and green await the smudge of your fingertips on them. 

Red and green. Open and close. Good and bad. 

Yet another small nod at how critical harsh duality was clung to in the post-outbreak wasteland. You used to be either alive or dead. Life got harder when a grey area was added to these 2 opposites. It was overcompensation at it’s finest, but even you couldn’t argue that some things were not meant to have a compromise. 

Your index digs into the temple of the hard green plastic, the quarantine door opening with a hiss of steam and an audible crank of the track it’s on. 

The worm wiggles on his hook. You’re tempted to apologize but make no move to. 

“Kyle,” you say. He angles himself towards you, slightly upset at your prolonging of this act. “Chains are two feet long. Try to keep double that.” 

He nods, stepping forward into the make-shift den. Simon had stayed bundled up in his corner since you’d seen him yesterday.

Now, as direct wanderers approach something they cannot comprehend, his head raises in interest. 

He’s slow to process what’s in front of him. You watch his gaze soak Kyle in it’s heady toxin, the burden of being acknowledged by a predator. His fingers twitch, the first sign of unintentional movement you’ve seen from him. You write it down, breaking his existence down into bullet points like he’d never been conscious at all. 

When his stare shifts right, his whole body bolts up and forward, pouncing like a ravenous snake. It’s so violent that you jump back in your seat, that you worry for the structural security of the pipe he’s chained to. 

Kyle barely flinches, and the pure dichotomy of soldier and civilian instincts makes you question if you’d ever have gotten along with these men under normal circumstances. It makes you question how much humanity can vary. 

Simon flings his arms in another preening yank, trying to grasp the only meal he’s been offered in days. 

Kyle seems to remember where he is and what he’s there for, and shoves the former prisoner at the entity begging to kill him. The result is instantaneous. 

Kyle steps out as quickly as he can. You, alternatively, find yourself unable to look away. 

His hands plant firmly on the man’s shoulders, his teeth hooking like fangs into flesh that is far too eager to bend and break at the will of an undead being. You watch chunks of skin be torn off in long, narrow sheets. Blood careening out like the break of a hurricane when it finally hits the welcoming shore. It spills and spills; ignored by your friend, too focused on the gooey parts that he can bite into and tear apart. 

You track all the organs you see excavated from a corpse that still lashes like it’s ignorant to what’s being done to it. Liver, pancreas, kidneys, large intestine, small intestine. 

When he reaches the brain, horrifyingly, the only thought that manages to break through the haze is ‘how cliche’. 

And you beg to know, as he chews around bone and chomps through tendon, how it feels to be so unrestrained in your animosity. How it feels to be an animal in every right, with no hint of punishment from what used to be your peers. 

Simon is big, and he eats like a glutton until every ounce of that livestock is pearly calcium on the blood-stained floor, or cubes of the finest cutlet, churning wonderfully in his stomach.  

You only remember to close the door once he swallows his last bite and strays back to his chosen corner. You chastise yourself, obligatory jabs that this is not someone who would treat you warmly should you come into contact, that the door needs to be closed for the safety of everyone involved. 

And, shamefully, that no amount of unabashed brutality could make something beautiful. That not all things deserved admiration simply because they were unconventional. 

It was a disgusting sight, truly. Not something fit for the mind of a person hoping to remain unchanged. 

But Simon had already changed you. You didn’t know if you had it in you to be disgusted. 

“Is that all?” 

Kyle’s voice draws your attention to the door that led out of observatory. His back is to you, presumably had been for the entire duration of Simon’s feeding. 

Many of the military personnel you offhandedly spoke with used their tolerance as material they could boast. They could withstand the sight of any gore any living thing could produce. They were macho enough to kill, to be killed, to hate and vandalize. 

It was commonplace for them. 

The fact that Kyle had no interest in viewing whatever had occurred made you respect him more. It made you respect yourself less. 

It was your job to witness, not his. That was believable for now.  

“Yes - yeah, that’s all. Thank you.” You didn’t know if gratitude was appreciated or expected for something like this. He didn’t seem interested in it. “You can go.” 

Then, you’re all alone with him again. Moments you used to cherish and now have to justify with academia. 

You used to chat about movies, about the past, about how the future had never been guaranteed and how it’s shocking so many people lived like it was. 

You stare at him, at the mess he’d made, and question if he’d enjoyed what he’d eaten. If he still had flavors he kind of liked and vehemently disliked. If his texture preferences had persisted, or if they’d intensified. You questioned if you’d ever figure out a way for him to tell you so. 

You sit down in the same chair you’d condemned that inmate to death in. The seat you’d been glued to for almost a week. You probably wouldn’t depart for another few hours at least, still at odds with leaving him by himself. 

Still selfishly hoping he didn’t want you to. 

You’d fallen asleep on the console that night, fogged pupils burning harsh lines into the back of your brackish eyelids. Your hand was numb from the weight of your head, having rested on your folded arms. Your back hurt, as did your legs and neck alike. 

You felt no remorse, however. Ironically, you felt more comfortable around him than you did on your stiff cot in your stuffy quarters. 

You take a moment to stretch out the ache in your muscles, standing up to see what the dark had made of your forgone companion. You assumed he’d still be curled, still be hiding his face behind his knees. You expected the shame to beget itself once more, to force his hand even after he could no longer perceive it doing so. 

You didn’t know how to feel at the absence of it. 

His stomach was lovingly pressed to the floor, shirt riding up a bit to expose a sliver of rear midriff. His left cheek was much the same, cloth and skin mingling with the icy pressure of tile. His arms were spread up and out, as though mimicking the start of wings. A vessel posed in piety, holiness encased in immortal rot and rapture. 

Bones sat atop scuff marks on the ground, the smaller ones having been snapped in half from the frenzy he’d entered when feeding. Blood had claimed most of the territory for itself, now dried and waxy in a perimeter of sacrilege around the man. This, alone, was as loud of a warning as you could get.   

Crucifixion would have been a more merciful end than this. He had that going, at least. 

You saw no movement from Simon, his face resembling that of sleep. He hadn't exhibited this behavior in the days you’d been his guardian. You hadn’t heard of this phenomenon in any other infected, never heard a whisper of something this strange. 

It was more likely his body was done being puppeted. Though, you’re lost as to why it’d happen now, why it’d happen at all. 

His chest remains stationary, his fingers don’t twitch; and, for one paralyzing minute, you’ve well and truly lost him. It feels nothing like the news he’d been bitten, nor like the sight of his skin greying rapidly.

It feels like finality. Like his body being zipped into a bag and hauled away. 

And, like the fool you’ve proven yourself to be, you run towards the end in hopes of stopping it. 

You press the button, the door hisses open, and you know vaguely that you should have called Kyle. You know blatantly that this is dangerous, that you need protection, that you could die. 

It’s indescribable how little logic means when emotion is called into question. When the soul is at stake. 

You approach him slowly, the deafening thump of your heart making your blood feel thick where it sloshes in your veins. It weighs your limbs down, makes your head light in a way that feels lethal. 

You breach the safety barrier. You can see the line in the sand dissolving by filthy ocean waves. You can feel like lack of emanating heat, so far from human yet so close to mortality. 

You squat down, shaky where you balance and careful where you analyze. You remember how often you’d taken to this pose in your childhood, examining insects or rocks, watching nature eat and birth itself in the cyclical way it always had. You felt far from intrigue when doing it now, much closer to unfounded faith than fascination. 

You raised your arms to touch him and pulled back just as quick. It wasn’t certain if the virus was spread exclusively through biting. You didn’t know if it could be transmitted through touch, if you had any cuts his illness could sneak through. 

It was common knowledge not to put your bare flesh on a contaminant, especially one so unexplored. 

You rose, planning to snag the rubber gloves that you knew sat in one of the drawers in observation. You turned, in a rush, and were pulled back equally fast.

The palm of Simon’s capable hand grasped tightly at your ankle, knocking you off your feet. Your collision was violent, your reflexes being the only thing saving your forehead from meeting the floor. You felt the flex of his fingers, the mythological strength he used to yank you backward. 

You slid against grime and gore, thrashing and clawing. Flakes of that ruddy stain piled up under your nails as you fought, never standing a chance at victory. It took a couple of weak tugs to get you close enough he could release his hold, latching onto your hip and turning you onto your back. 

The switch costed you what little leverage you had, now completely separated from any attempt you could make at freedom. You couldn’t feel the temperature of the ground through your clothes, but you felt the pressure along your spine, a reminder of your mistake harshly digging into the back of your skull. 

He got on top of you, and you ready yourself for the never ending sting of sickness. For the pierce of his canines. The weight of his body on yours is more than enough to pin you down, and the slight twitch of his head has your hands flying up in defense. 

He doesn’t lunge, he doesn’t prod, doesn’t even scratch. His chest is heaving, and you can hear the slight whistle of a whimper on each harrowing exhale he makes. It reminds you of a dog, exerted and begging after a long day. 

Up close, you can see the blood spatters around his parted lips, sprayed on and blotted off but never fully removed. There are specks of it on every bit of him, dots of deep red with some having snail trails of where they’d dripped off of him. Scarlet lines trek towards his irises, and, though burdened and bloodshot, they trudge over your face with deep concern. 

Guilt, you think, burns there too. 

He leaves the fear on your face as is, sweeping down onto your useless hands, up as though they could make any difference should he actually choose to harm you. The sight seems to make him antsy, his breaths quicken, his own fingers flinch. 

And, for some reason that must only make sense in his mind, he nudges your hand with the back of his. It’s a simple tap, one he repeats multiple times until you finally see it as a call to action. 

Your fingertips slowly find the meat of his wrist, halting his movement and making him grunt at the contact. You curl them under his sleeve, pushing it down just enough to reveal the wound responsible for all of this. 

You remained gentle, touching the bite with a kind of respect you’d only ever give Simon. This disease didn’t deserve your softness, but he did. You couldn’t embody anything harder, couldn’t bring yourself to be scientific when someone you loved was trapped inside the thing you studied. 

He visibly calms with the affection, bowing his head like a worshipper as you caress the culprit of his undoing. This ugly, spiraling thing absorbing all the care you can muster and giving it to the internal being locked inside the beast. It’s disgustingly tender, private in a way that couldn’t possibly exist under the eyes of an outsider.  

You took a moment to breathe, to let yourself feel the semi-sturdy trust being established between the two of you. It was a reintroduction, a rekindling of something that once could have burnt down a forest it you’d let it. 

You start sitting up, tactile and timidly, giving room for him to adjust as you did it. Before long, slowly but surely, he inched his way off of you, chains chittering as he retreated back to the corner he felt safest in. 

You didn’t feel solid when you stood, extremities trembling with the force it takes to befriend something rabid. You walked backwards until you were beyond his reach, not in fear of what he’d do if you turned your back, but with desire to keep him in your vision. To keep this experience painted on you for as long as possible. 

The close of the door was excruciating, motorized monotony clashing hard with the pure nuance you’d just witnessed. 

Up to this point, you’d been working with the assumption that the illness was mindless. That it ate up everything one kept inside and filled the empty slots with a ravenous famine. That it built tools that did nothing but take, nothing but eat. 

You see now that it’s no such thing. His memories remain at least somewhat intact, with a newfound instinct that parallels animals on the brink of extinction. 

This is a new battlefield entirely, an extension of the mandated finish line proctored by clueless government leaders. This was life inside of death. Light inside of dark. 

This was hope. 

The next twelve hours curdled into a primitive hypothesis that your colleagues would have called you idiotic for entertaining. 

Simon’s insistence that you acknowledge his bite made you wonder if the cogs in his head were spinning the cracked frames of what happened in the last hour he was himself. If he was clinging on to the images he could see the clearest, the ones that were fairly recent but belonged to a timeline different than the one you were in now. 

And, consequently, you also wondered what kind of outcome you could produce by playing into it. 

You harnessed all the same materials you’d had on the day of reckoning, sulking into quarantine with a bowl of saline, a rag, and a quaint reverence that only ever became apparent in his company. 

It most likely wasn’t a good idea to be approaching him again so soon. You were still entirely in the dark about what mannerisms he would take to, about if the disease was still progressing, about if he’d grow tired of your hovering and put an end to it. 

He’d touched you yesterday, you’d touched him right back. You’d stroked criticality like the scalp of a cat, patient and enamored. You didn’t feel bad, didn’t feel affected. 

The virus was slow but it was not silent. It held pride in the scrape of it’s footsteps, every bootmark an indication of how happy it was to be invading. Surely, you would have seen the black dispersion, the bruising, something. You would have seen something if you’d been contaminated. 

And you hadn’t. So you came back. 

Moth to a flame.   

He stood up when you entered, stare falling to the items balanced in your shaky hands. You listened to his breath stumble a bit on it’s climb upward, a tremor forcing his head minutely to the left. 

A raspy exhale, a twitch. You didn’t know the connotations of these actions. You made a mental note to start forming a pattern with them for the possibility of translation. 

You stepped closer, back straight and shoulders squared in hopes of appearing confident. The solution rocked gentle waves in synchronization with your strides. You loved this being, you’d been in unnecessarily near proximity more times than you’d care to count. You could do it again. You wanted to do it again. 

You wanted to be someone he let help him. 

His back stayed hugging the wall, looking almost more scared of you than you of him. He had the fangs and the nails of something nasty, something that would delight in corruption. He’d developed these sinister assailants in his exile, but they didn’t register to either of you. He let you set the bowl in front of him without ever showing intent to use his strength, so you simply chose to believe he wouldn’t. 

He had no chair this time around, so when you bent to soak the rag, you rose again immediately after. 

All the vitriolic sayings you’d heard throughout your lifetime were rigid in nature, unforgiving and immovable in their purpose. Sink or swim. Do or die. Make or break. Everything harsh and everything happening right now. You moved or you fell, these were your options. This was the ideology that was taught to you. This was the ideology you were expecting when starting this interaction. 

When reeling in a feral entity, it would kill you or it would not. 

But here, with plumes of apprehension wrapping widely around you both, equal and equidistant in your conjoined hesitance, you understood black and white were things of fiction. He feared your ethos the way you feared his potential, each image incorrect and muddied with personal insecurity. 

He was not threatening you, and you were not saving him. 

This was just perseverance, a forged connection withstanding the trials of time and hardship. Just an elevated version of any other unifying issue. Just another thing to push through. 

His jaw felt rougher than it had back then, the unhinging weapon of a killer resting nervously in your palm. You slid the damp cloth through the sewing pin pricks of his incoming stubble. It was noticeably patchy, small planes being untouched by hair due to the abundance of scar tissue. It was endearing, in a way, seeing something so specific to him after watching him be eaten alive by something general. It made the blood cling harder to him, forcing you, in return, to scrub with more pressure. 

You didn’t mind it; angling him every direction you could, cleansing the sharp edges and dipping into the texture his skin held to ensure every bit of congealed plasma was gone. 

You heard that same hurt-dog whimper rattle around in the back of his throat, sounding out with every breath he took. He said nothing as he took you in, letting you control his movement, letting you take the reins for as long as you wanted them. He basked in the sting of you seeing the sins he had stamped all over him, in the fact you were choosing to absolve them. 

Once you finished his face, you raised his hands up, one by one. You let the rag suck up every bit of extinguished life that stained his fingers. And, by the end, they looked capable of kindness again. Callused and scuffed and too big for his own good, but still something that didn’t have to cause harm if he didn’t want them to. 

For that short time, you joined him in the state outside humanity. You were two of the same unearthly species, one grooming the other so they didn’t sit in filth alone. 

Simon allowed it to happen with all the eagerness of someone who’d been craving it. An idea based on complete nonsense struck you. Not scientific, not founded on principle, just the desperate coping of someone who couldn’t make themself give up. 

“I cleaned your face last week when you got bit.”

You didn’t look up at him. You were unsure if your speaking would affect his status, if it would make things better, if it would make them worse. Your biggest fear, you suppose, was that it wouldn’t affect anything at all. 

“Do you remember that?” 

Your eyes went from his collarbones to your own shoes, preferring the sight of a red-slicked floor to that of your best friend’s gaze holding no warmth for you. 

You stay that way, despite hearing sounds beckon back and forth behind his teeth, a verbal confirmation he can no longer enunciate. Frustration drives an increase in his breathing, words stuck inside a carcass with no way to escape. 

He settles for something else instead, turning his hand around where it sat in yours, now palm to palm. His fingertips press into your knuckles. He squeezes. 

Yes. 

You can feel the force seep into the gesture, a testament to the power he has just under the skin, a promise that he won’t use it on you. 

He squeezes again. 

I do.

The illness maintained a sentience you were unprepared for. 

Your curiosity was immense walking away from him, burning the edges of the picture you’d painted. It was a refusal of obedience, a deviation from all you’d seen portrayed. 

Simon responded to you. He showed proof of neurological processes you were certain he shouldn’t have access to. He showed food preference and emotional bandwidth. He made it clear to you, explicitly and undoubtedly, that he was alive under all the decay. That the man you’d known kept his wits about him while his body was whisked away.  

He knew what you were to him, and evidently held recognition for those he once loved. And, as a scientist, the urge you struggled with most of all was pushing. 

You wanted to trace every boundary this prospect held. You wanted to know if the registration stopped at some point, if there was an amount he had to have known you in order to know your face when it counted. 

He’d told you, only once, about a man he hated. 

Pre-outbreak, back in the 141, he’d been a part of a mission that sent someone to confinement instead of to the grave. It’s the most worked up you’d ever seen him, vagrantly going on about the atrocities he’d seen that man do, about how he’d asked for the clearance to kill him and been denied. How much it had gutted him to surrender him to higher power. To not have the assurance that execution brings. 

The apocalypse escorted that man out of his classified status and straight into the livestock pen of the common criminal. There was no hierarchy in the end, just puzzles and those who solved them. Just you and him. 

With some specific inquiry, you found the facility he’d been herded into. It took two minutes for his name to be searched, and with a rush order placed on his arrival, it took only a single night for him to be shipped. 

Kyle pulled his leash straight into your open arms once again. He didn’t give you any inclination that he remembered who he was leading, but the subtleties gave him away. He hadn’t been so harsh with inmate number one, he hadn’t wailed him about like he contained no value. This was a personal kind of disrespect, an intimate one. 

He looked almost disappointed when you dismissed him. He’d been so hellbent on avoiding the carnage before, but now resembled a child being denied dessert. It was almost comical, and it could have stayed that way, had he not pressed into your avoidance. 

He said it wouldn’t be safe to leave the job in your hands alone. You weren’t armed, you weren’t trained, you weren’t ready to take out an enhanced soldier who’s mind was muddied with unstoppable rage. 

You told him you knew what you were doing. He told you that didn’t bridge the gap. 

You only got him off your back when you exposed that a different plan was being followed through. That this wasn’t a routine feeding, that this was an experiment and he wasn’t needed for it. 

And, in that regard, it was your job. It was your job and it wasn’t his, meaning you held authority and could express it to the fullest degree. 

You swore you’d be careful, and that if you got ripped to bits it was on you and not him. He left very begrudgingly, letting the door swing shut instead of closing it himself. You didn’t make a move until the sound of his footsteps were no longer audible. 

The hostage was dressed as the last had been; blind, gagged, bound. All signs of power stripped away and stapled back on like a grievance personified. Power was nothing but proof of guilt around here. Power was nothing but restraint. 

And, in his case, it was nothing but a vow of hostility. A place to reap what he’d once sewed. 

He didn’t squirm as you walked him into quarantine. You’re sure if his mouth had been uncovered, some volatile exclaims would have flung their way out. In the moment, you felt only gratitude that you wouldn’t have to listen to the kind of words that come from a man like him. 

Simon, sturdy and in wait, clenched his jaw when the man finally looked at him. At the creature he’d grown into. 

He’d done the motion so abruptly that a small click sound echoed out into the dull air. A punishing threat and a humid promise that whatever storm was rolling in was guaranteed to be excruciating. 

For the first time since your brief introduction, you heard the man make a noise. A wet, petulant sob soaked through the wad of stitched cotton that’d been shoved into his mouth. You’d never seen someone realize they’re doomed. Not like this, not at the hands of another. 

The stink of fear was prominent, floating in bloated pulses off the sentenced criminal you currently held upright. There was such little distance from human to animal. The outbreak emphasized this heavily, how moronic it was to live as though you’re an elevated version of something. As though you share no commonality with a bear, with a rabbit. 

He was face to face with a predator, and he felt it just as the mouse did when squared against a cat, unavoidable and non negotiable.

You mused on that his arrogance put him here, that he could have ended up anywhere else had he kept his nose clean. But, deeper down, you would have given Simon anything. Anyone. 

This ruse was believable, a mask you didn’t mind wearing to keep up appearances, but it wasn’t authentic. You possessed a desire to explore the virus, yes. More than that, though, you wanted to know every detail of how it affected him. 

You weren’t doing this for generalization, to help the others. Not entirely. 

You just wanted to bring him back. You would have wrangled in any being, any object, that could aid that goal. 

It wasn’t right, you don’t think. It wasn’t moral. It wasn’t ethical. 

Looking at the man being glared at by the person you cared the most about, you found yourself void of care. Something prodded at your ribs from inside, an insidious declaration that you were just as much a monster. That this wasn’t instinct, or necessary. 

This was obsession. This was devotion. 

With that tidbit fully established, you shoved him forward past the four foot perimeter, much like Kyle had done days ago. 

You wondered if this was what true allyship felt like. If this feeling rivaled that of wartime destruction on the behalf of a government agreement. You didn’t know if this was something all friends would do for each other. Maybe Simon had never been a friend at all. Maybe he’d always been something more. 

This was far less mindless than it’d been previously. The second that man was in his reach, he was eviscerated. Simon tore limb from sternum, four times over just to watch the muscle stretch and break. Organs were torn out with his teeth, skin shredded with blunt nails and a fiery will. Above all else, agony was prioritized. He did as much as he could with the man still alive, grinding down sanity until he was hollowed out. Less substance than a zombie. Just a murderer begging to die. 

Not a single speck was swallowed. Simon wanted nothing to do with him. This was all justice, all anger. 

You watched, once more, as he lost himself in the elegance of a brutalist pursuit. This had been years in the making, and he was every bit as primed as he said he’d be. 

It was heated in the places it shouldn’t be. A lesson in eroticism and the thin line it walked between homicide and holistic vulnerability. Teeth met the thin veil of a neck for many reasons, all overlapping and interconnected. 

There shouldn’t be any joy in seeing such a thing, yet you were completely fixated on how easily he dismantled a being that was supposed to be superior. There shouldn’t be excitement in it, shouldn’t be arousal, yet that was no deterrence for the feelings that persisted anyway. 

He stood in the middle of it all, bloodied and heaving like a body put to work. Pieces of the enemy were scattered like snow around the spacious room. 

You stood just opposite him, right outside the reach of his arms. 

“You didn’t eat him.” 

It was a rather insignificant thing to commentate on. Though, that was valuable data, all things considered. His hunger wasn’t domineering, it couldn’t hijack his rage or his drive for penance. Death was death, and fuel was fuel. He was unwilling to cross those two wires. 

He agreed in a sound you were growing familiar with. He didn’t eat him. This you both were able to settle on. 

Your vision drifted toward the man’s head on Simon’s side of the room, sitting still in a viscous, honeyed puddle that you had no business gawking at. He’d been alive not minutes ago. Life was fickle like that. 

You jolted your gaze to where it’d previously been at the loud clash of chains. The shock forced you back a bit, laying in wait as he attempted to break his tether, attempted to get closer to you. You hadn’t even realized he’d wanted it. 

“Simon - hey -” 

It was continuous, longing tugs filled to the brim with every bit of supernatural strength he carried. The cuffs had been designed for someone with immense physical power, but even the designers hadn’t accounted for the variability of the virus. He’d been strong even as a man, let alone as something much more.   

Your breathing labored, your certainty balancing on the thinnest of tightropes. He wasn’t listening to your words, wasn’t listening to your warnings. He had a mission, and you’d never seen him disregard an order. 

You still held true to the belief he wouldn’t hurt you. He’d had many chances to do it up to this point and he hadn’t. He’d seemed saddened at the fear you embodied the first time you’d been in quarantine. He knew who you were. He didn’t want to kill you. He’d never tried to bite you. 

And, just when you were beginning to buy the snake oil you were peddling yourself, a snap ricocheted anywhere it could reach. It bounced off the door, off the blood, off the porcelain floors. It claimed every square inch it could reach, submerging you in a deadly concoction of terror and tantalization, blurring every line you’d ever let yourself have faith in. 

You made the mistake of staring him down, of meeting his eyes. It was a reflex, more than anything. A hindbrain plunder of assessing the threat you might be at risk of.

He took it, fondly, as an invitation. 

“Wait -” 

You couldn’t even see the end of your sentence before he was shoving you against the wall. Commands meant nothing, constraint meant even less. The sense of death just for the sake of it was intoxicating, and he was higher than he’d ever gotten while alive. 

You could feel the dig of his fingers into the fat of your hips, the blood that was saturating your clothes from how covered in it he was. Your upper back was flush against the cold, but he was tugging your lower half forward to slot against his. It was such a minor bend, but the distance felt lethal. 

You said his name again, the repetition sour on your tongue but your mind at a loss of what else to do. He was close enough that you could smell the metal and dirt that clung to his clothes, could feel the focal point of ruin and debauchery. It frayed like a cut cable, spitting out sparks hot enough to melt steel and yet palatable enough to fan your internal flame. 

You put your hands on his shoulders, intending to get him away from you, intending to do something that you’d be able to stomach in an hour. He only seemed to delight in the contact. 

He pushed against you, clothes failing to save you from the grind of his cock against the unbearable sensitivity that’d built up from seeing him in action. Your grip dropped, palms falling flat on his chest with no force behind them. It was new, touching him there. Damp with that keen scarlet and the steady beat of his heart. 

He fussed with the hem of your pants for nearly no time at all, gentlemanly remains no doubt peeking through the haze before being squandered by the fact Simon was nothing of the sort. The fabric came apart at the seams, sides ripping away from each other and landing as meaningless scraps on the ground. More shriveled rags to lap up the mess you’d made. 

It was an awfully loud thing to happen, your slight gasp burdening the space when it did. You hadn’t been expecting it. You hadn’t been expecting any of this.

It was occurring too fast to think about. He repeated the motion with your underwear, leaving you bare and him scrambling to catch up. His haste was a marvel, getting his pants down to mid thigh before losing care for the rest. 

He finally, finally had you. Months of unrest and weeks spent undead.

His love, his need, had been the only thing that stayed centered through everything. Stuff shifted around it, orbiting like the earth around the sun. But the sun had remained the same, had stayed whole despite the things that depended on it. You had remained as the same crushing totality, the same person he couldn’t help but indulge in. 

He wrapped his fingers around the back of your neck, stepping into the role of puppeteer, an escape from being the one on strings. 

He held your forehead to his and pressed into you, force and desperation stopping him from being the kind of lover he’d have rather been. Your nails dug into his chest from the stretch, a curse fleeing your mouth in a strangled whimper that he drinks up like he’s dying for it. He doesn’t let you hide from him, doesn’t let you run from the feeling. The tips of your noses are touching, and he’s hellbent on keeping your eyes locked with his. 

He’s close enough to kiss you, to delve into just how disgusting you’d let things get under the guise of loyalty, but he doesn’t. The blood smeared across his face has made it’s way to yours, and that feels more obscene than anything he could do on his own. A large, evident stamp of the levels you’d stoop to, of the way you could be owned by someone else. By him. 

Then, he moves, and you wonder how you’d ever avoided doing this with all the months you’d spent in his company. It’s torturous, fast and deep and all consuming in a way you hadn’t thought existed. 

The revolting things that the virus had done to him combined with the delicious sweep of him against that rough spot inside had you clenching hard enough to make the both of you cry out. The grey of his skin was even starker against the jet black of infection, and the reminder that this was the corpse of your best friend rained down on the last little bit of consciousness you had. 

“Mm - shit -” 

His teeth nipped along your jaw, the liquid bits of the man still on the floor smudging onto the skin there. It wasn’t enough to break it, wasn’t enough to make you one of him; it was just enough to remind you he could. That there was so much power and so much danger housed behind his six feet of bone and muscle. That he could make you miserable if he wanted, and all he desired was to make you feel good. 

That, you think, was what tipped you over the edge. The fullness and the heat and his unyielding reverence even in the face of dystopian challenges. 

It wasn’t a graceful fall by any means, months of stress and care and want all bubbling to the surface, begging to burst each time he thrusted back inside you. Letting go was euphoric, something you didn’t see a point in warning him about and something that spread through you quicker than sickness could ever strive for. 

He worked you through it, continuing the rhythm and inadvertently sending you quietly into slight overstimulation. You needed to feel closer, to feel Simon and not just the decomposing image of him. 

You reached up to the hand cradling your neck, stroking your fingers over the indents of his bite mark. A cotton-soft moment that added meaning to every moment you’d manufactured throughout the last week. 

He whimpered like it hurt, pace stuttering before halting entirely when his pelvis was fully nestled against yours. You felt warmth coat the new parts of you he’d touched tonight, the end and the beginning to something without set limits. 

You shifted, and he held tighter onto you, territorial to a fault in that unchanging way he’d always been. You kept your fingertips tracing over each divot of each mark where a tooth had once sunk, lazily basking in the afterglow like you were two normal friends in a normal situation. 

You didn’t know what kind of person this made you, but whatever kind it was, you’d be it for him. 

you’re the skittish newbie in 141 who has clung irrevocably onto ghost for reasons they don’t grasp. you’re sort of like a mini him, in a way that was endearing at first and is now just routine.

you don’t talk much, you lurk like a shadow behind him, your eyes follow the friendly shoulder pats and the sarcastic elbow jabs that get thrown at him. he respects the vigilance, he understands the concern, and he’s only mildly annoyed by the hovering.

at first, he was. but you burrowed your way into his protection rather quickly.

the others joked about you being like a service animal, an extension of him…and ghost just kinda went with it.

he’ll mutter a “stop slouchin’, pup” when you’ve been sitting too long, thumb pressing into the back of your neck to straighten you.

the others stopped looking at him weird eventually, not understanding the dynamic but not caring enough to press into it. that was a private affair.

you were both part of the team. if you were inclined to trail after him while he mildly dehumanized you, that wasn’t any concern of theirs. no complaints had been filed.

and, when he finally gets you back to his shitty sanctioned apartment, your body on his sheets and his dick nestled heavy inside you, he’ll stick his face in your neck and mumble, “ya’ begged me for it, mutt. gotta’ let me in.”

because you’re his dog and good men take care of their dogs <3

The mutations hadn’t always been apparent. 

A bio-weapon mishap during the second world war had birthed the haphazard case file for a new oddity that dumbfounded scientists had dubbed Enhanced Genome Activity Disorder. The fallout of a genocide attempt had instead paved way to soldiers with increased strength and agility. They heard things they shouldn’t have, smelt around spaces like dogs, and itched at their gums when their canines started bulging. 

It had turned them rabid, way back when. The perfect pack to sick on enemies and the perfect way to build a reputation as a nation with feared strength. It worked flawlessly, for a short while. Their elasticity was greater than ever seen, bouncing back from non-lethal bullet wounds like they were paper cuts. The men were almost always found in high spirits, somehow alright with the hand they’d been dealt.  

Word spread about the impacts, and long before anyone could stop it, most of the planet was nearly unrecognizable. The weapon was gaseous, distributed across nations and consequently contracted like a world-wide wound that had been subdivided like something ethical. It was poison, above anything else. 

But it was progress. 

And so it was done. 

It wasn’t apocalyptic by any means. Many of the EGAD-affected men tore each other apart on the battlefield before they could reproduce. Some were inherently immune to the infection, staying perfectly human in the face of mass transformation. 

The studying came after the war was won. The remaining boys were moved to sites of examination, confined to the behaviors of a beast and the treatment of something lower than man, something lower than monster. 

The history of such brutality was preserved and peddled out to every sophomore textbook in the country. Every person knew vaguely what had been done back then. They knew vaguely that EGAD still got diagnosed once in a while; though, it was rarer than Halley’s comet and it was seen more as a handicap than anything revered. Anything respected. 

They taught you the classifications and buzz words as monotonously as any other atrocity done in the name of victory. Alpha, omega, heat, rut, bond. The lesson required a permission slip and a content warning but it was done as an honor to the hoards lost to the madness. It was a topic that made the students squirm, awkward glances and stupid jokes thrown out into silent classrooms in hopes of drawing attention away from the breeding patterns of the beings that had carried the nation to security. 

It was simply one of those necessary evils. Most were happy, and purely homosapian. The gene was massively recessive, hardly a thought anymore with how unlikely it was to present as generations continued. 

It’s why, upon learning that the attending for your new place of education had presented, it made you a little nervous. It wasn’t out of judgement, or pity, or any other condescending trend of superiority that people with EGAD often got stuck with. It was just new. Something unfamiliar. 

Modern medicine had come a long way for those who lived with such a thing, and ferocity was a thing of the past. Scent neutralizer was sold over the counter in huffable sticks, suppressants were an easy oral tablet and an even easier prescription. But tales of old were still smeared on present day perceptions, as hard as you tried to push against it. 

He wouldn’t have gotten so high up if he was anything but capable. There was absolutely no threat, no reason to feel fear. 

The fact didn’t stop your hands from shaking as you stood in scrubs with three of your peers. It was primarily first-day jitters, but looking around, you couldn’t refrain from attempting a guess on who it was. You wondered greatly which busy man in doctor’s uniform had lived his life with such elevated abilities. 

There was no way for a human to spot it, lacking visibility or clean identifiers. You’d only know him by name, by reputation. 

He was the last to join your pre-shift huddle, every spilled introduction doing nothing to quell the anticipation you felt waiting for your curiosity to be sated. The senior residents explained the layout, the hierarchy, what your roles were as students. You seemed to be the middle child in your group of amateurs. The youngest was a prodigy and the eldest was your usual path as a med school attendee. 

Not that it mattered. This position was a unifier, nobody above and nobody below. The four of you were there to learn. 

Which sounded easy enough, but as the final piece of your ER puzzle took his place, you understood it might be a little bit more challenging that you’d been betting on. 

As he entered the building, before anyone else had noticed him do so, you took a chance to watch. It was creepy, and most likely unprofessional, but he had a way about him that called you to witness, called you simply to observe and marvel. 

He stopped for a second not far from the entryway, eyes moving jaggedly over bustling crowds. He didn’t seem particularly determined to find anything, more of a slightly confused onceover of his environment. You saw him inhale, his chest remaining expanded as he stood straighter, intentionally halting the exhale like he had a point to prove before he could release the oxygen. His hand was reaching into the pocket of his unzipped jacket at the same time, calmly tugging a small object from the inside of it. You saw him pop the top off and bring it to his nose, breathing it in with a slight recoil. 

Must have been a scent stick. You’d heard how foul they were. Wonderfully effective, but foul nonetheless. His shoulders slackened again, his rigid demeanor fading into something more friendly. Then he was walking over. 

He spoke with an aged voice and a preppy spirit. It seemed to reverberate, bounce around your ears like your brain wanted it to absorb slowly, wanted to savor it. His name was Dr. Robinavitch - Dr. Robby - and he was thrilled to see so many new faces. 

It was a quick break once he got there, promising each of the students that he was going to have a one-on-one meeting with you to properly speak. He’d find you at some point in the little pockets of reprieve he’d get every once and while. 

Aside from that, the shift was beginning. And that was that. 

You felt tiny flecks of shame kicking up in your stomach, twisting around the nerves that were already alight with the new-kid syndrome you got from being here. You’re sure you weren’t the first to acknowledge that Dr. Robby was attractive. Knew you weren’t, if the handcuffed old woman spewing mildly homophobic remarks was anything to go off of. 

Whatever was happening beneath your skin just felt off. Visceral, in a sense. Something you could feel deeper than the few unwelcomed butterflies that chittered close to your ribs. When his voice had sounded out, it’s impact was a meteor crash to the flat terrain of your well-maintained serenity. His entire presence was nearly a disturbance, rather than an assurance of peace. 

And his cologne. You could smell it as soon as he’d gotten close to you all. It seemed just strong enough to be too much. You felt your face crease a bit as it entered your orbit, looking around slightly to be met with nothing but undisturbed faces. It wasn’t unpleasant by any means, just overbearing, just there. 

It was remarkable how layered it was. A lot of mens’ perfume seemed to smell distantly similar to each other, but his was as unique as you’d experienced. Something tinged with campfire smoke and thunderstorms, before delving into something richer, something sweeter. It was addictive, in it’s own right. Masculine without being obscenely manly, softening in the center notes. 

It made sense that his coworkers would be used to it, but the students were just now being exposed. Surely they all were as surprised as you were. Maybe they just had better self control. 

He’d seen that look, unbeknownst to you. Watched the way your features had coiled against your will, watched the way you tried immediately to set yourself straight. 

Shifts at The Pitt were already long enough to nip at peoples’ heels, to test the limits of their sanity. 

He had a feeling this shift was going to be the longest one yet. 

You’d had a similar inclination at the beginning of the shift, and the hunch had proved impressively intuitive. 

The end was dawning as real as the sun set, fifteen grueling hours of initiation that had challenged the very beats of your heart with how much gore it had to offer finally settling down. Throughout the day, you’d watched Dr. Robby pull the respective newbies off to the side for no more than five minutes, engaging in a hushed conversation and then waving them back to work. You’d been waiting patiently, watching him scurry around in search of anyone aside from yourself. 

His avoidance wasn’t personal. Logically, it couldn’t be. But, unwillingly, you were a bit jealous. And even more frustrated at yourself for being jealous. 

In addition to the newfound emotional illness, you were quickly succumbing to the physical manifestation of the same such qualms. The entire ER was hot, a vapor slurry of excreted body heat in a tightly packed chamber. You felt the heaviness of it like a stamp spanning your skin, inky and pronounced. The back of your neck was damp with sweat, only worsening hours ago when the victims of PittFest started filing in. 

It hadn’t been a massacre, but it’d felt like one. The young souls you’d lost wandered the walkways amongst the injured bodies waiting on your willing hands. And you felt it. You felt everything. 

The lights glared back at your squinting eyes in a way they weren’t supposed to. The friendly, tough-but-gooey charge nurse had a voice that you’d liked when your shift had started, but now couldn’t listen to for more than a minute or so. All things capable of overloading your system were doing just that. You were as sensitive as a live wire, fraying and sparking in any given direction like you’d never handled anything before. It was nearly embarrassing. 

And the ER was so hot. Your body felt boiled, like if someone cut you open, you’d be well done inside, solidified and steaming from the slow broil. 

That smell had been the only thing keeping you tethered. Right when you felt your feet brush the precipice of a meltdown, it had a way of finding you, curling around you like sentient plumes of smoke. It’s like it sunk into you, pushing back at the impending feeling of overwhelm. It was so alarming, because you’d hardly even met the man, and he was at least a quarter-decade older than you, but it was so safe. 

Even when he was halfway across the grounds, that cologne would creep back to you. It was a wonder that nobody had complained, nobody had even questioned what thing was so strong that it could withstand the grime-filled hallways of a hospital. But not a blip was said, not a single displeasured remark was uttered, so you let it happen. You allowed it to be what it was. 

Quietly, though. A personal and one-sided tie to the man who would pass by you, look at you, and then look away as though that would undo what he’d just done. 

The limited finalities known about the brain were known to you. You’d liked biology in school. You understood chemicals, pheromones, comfort. On whatever subconscious or subatomic level it chose to appear on. That scent was sturdy, masculine, authoritative. 

Fatherly, in a slightly gross way that made your head spin too much to dwell on. 

You doubted you’d been the first flaccid creature to find a forced serenity in something so domineering. It was assuring to have an anchor when all you did was bend around things. You could mold yourself to it, could latch onto it. And, consequently, latch onto him. Just a little, just enough to be ashamed about it. 

You could nearly feel the night air on your tongue when he’d called your name. Your scrubs had been returned, normal clothes draped over your slumped figure. When you turned around, his state was much the same. 

Your heartbeat grazed lightly at the back of your throat. He looked so cozy. Simplicity wrapped in a pair of jeans and the same unzipped jacket. Domesticity painted on each individual fiber of fabric, a faux-paternal promise of invincibility, of something you could melt right into. 

It was warm, something that should have been entirely unappealing to the fever-stricken form you were approaching. It just wasn’t, somehow. In the same impossible way you’d felt him all day despite never feeling him before. 

He asked for you to hang back a minute for the check in, nodding sideways in the direction of the stairwell. The thought of dragging your stiff legs up stairs was unbearable. But he’d asked. So you walked. 

It was two floors up, him shortly saying that it was under renovation, that nobody ever came up here. Then he said nothing else until the trek was over. Until you were face to face, surrounded by solid walls and semi-transparent tarps dangling from the ceiling.  

The silence sliced through you without hesitation, malevolent in nature and crushing in execution. You were alone with him. He’d forced you to be alone with him and he wasn’t saying anything. That scent was so strong up close. You questioned for the nth time how anyone ever managed to stay away from him when he smelled so good.

You didn’t shy away from the eye contact he held, looking frightened into the split galaxies pooling in his irises. You were confused. He was expectant. 

He finally sighed, a long exhale triggering the end of whatever bridge he’d been building in the quiet. 

“You broke my scent stick.” 

It hadn’t even been close to what you’d thought he was going to lead with. You swallowed your nerves in search of clarity.

“What?” 

The few times you’d managed to stare at him without him staring back, he’d been clawing the thing out of his pocket and huffing it like it was the one thing that could save him. It certainly hadn’t seemed broken. He’d even stopped recoiling after the second or third hit, needy enough for the salvation that it didn’t bother him anymore. 

He reached carelessly into his pocket, pulling out the capped container and holding it like it was worth nothing. To him, it probably was. Inexpensive and indefinitely needed. 

“There’s only about twelve doses in these things. Had this one for years. Never had to use it much before today.” 

His voice wasn’t harsh, but it was missing the soapy kindness it’d held this morning. You’re sure the shift had taken most of that with it, but part of you feared it was your fault. His tone remained soft in the center, just hardened a bit around the edges. It wouldn’t have been anything noteworthy if it’d been anyone else, but something about the fact it was him, it made you want to fix it. Made you skittish. 

You almost apologized in response to what he’d said, but he didn’t let you. He kept speaking. 

“I don’t mean to be blunt, but individuals with EGAD are required to notify their employers about it. There are rules for an alpha/omega dynamic in the workplace. Especially for ones in your,” he took a breath in, his jaw tightening in alliance with the action. “...condition.” 

Confusion lined your face, creasing the malleable parts and drilling down into the immovable ones. 

“No - I -” You weren’t even sure what to say in a situation like this. He was so sure. He was telling you this like you’d say sorry for the inconvenience and solve an already solved problem. “I don’t have EGAD. Why would you think I have EGAD?” 

You were close enough to be able to watch his eyes soften, slackening in a sympathy-filled stare that adults gave children when they saw good intentions get caught up in insufficient expression.

“Is that a joke?”

Your own eyes widened in defense when he said that. 

“Of course not, no. I really…I don’t have it.” 

You could feel your head shaking back and forth in tune, moistening your eyes and weakening your knees. Halfway through your rebuttal, you felt the churning inkling of a cramp in your stomach, marching quickly towards full pain by the time you’d stopped talking. 

It felt like fire. Like the heat you’d been baking in all day had finally found your interior. You leaned your back against the wall, finding it unnecessary to use your dwindling strength to stand straight if you didn’t have to. 

“Okay.” 

HIs voice was quiet, and you watched his whole face soften this time, shifting something deep in the core of you. Like a sand dune caving in at the sight. 

“Well, you’re visibly woozy, and you’re sweating. You feel hot, yeah?” 

You nodded as an answer. He’d put his obsolete scent stick back in pocket not long after he’d taken it out. You’re really wishing he hadn’t. That haunting smell was all over you, all over everything. It seemed like it amplified the cramp, amplified the craziness you felt.

“You’re in heat. Textbook. And I can -” He stopped himself, opting for something less personable. “Alphas. We can…we can smell it. When it happens.” 

He clenched his hand once, reaching up to drag it along his jaw in what looked like an attempt to keep control in his grasp. “Been trying to drown you out all day - it’s just,” he shook his head, inhaling and regretting all over again, “it’s not working.”  

The denial seeped in like infection. You’d never shown signs, never exhibited any behavior that would hint towards this diagnosis. Most people with EGAD knew before they hit double digits. 

“No,” your eyes watered as you whispered out the word, more pleading than stating. “That’s impossible. I’d know. They would have seen it. No.” 

As your panic increased, he painted tiny reassurances over your rejections, and it helped. It soothed you like aloe on a sunburn. And that was bearable. Robby was comforting to everyone. He was meant to be, he was the overseer. That didn’t make it true. That didn’t mean anything.

But then he moved closer. An infinitely small step in the gaping void between you and who you thought you were. It didn’t even look intentional, but it happened. 

And it hurt. 

The pain in your stomach turned from a low smolder to the mean drag of a knife over every fleshy bit inside you. You felt a wave of heat roll over your shoulders like a volcanic tsunami, plunging every salvageable bit of you into ash thick enough to block out the sun. And it all went down. Just the faint promise of his proximity made you wetter than you think you’d ever been. You felt yourself soak straight through your underwear, your skin sweaty and breaths heaving. 

He felt that shift too, closing the distance to help stop you from slipping down the wall. 

“Hey. I got you, kid.” His hands held your face, keeping your line of sight strictly on him. It was impossible to move down when he was up. As horrifying as this realization was, you didn’t want to be apart from him. Even if it was by a few feet. 

He sounded as strung out as you felt, but his touch felt like a lifeline. A sinking ship failing to rescue a screaming sailor, simply enjoying the process of conjoined drowning instead. 

And the name. So unabashed in it’s depravity. He shouldn’t be calling you that. He wasn’t anything to you, wasn’t your protector. This whole thing was most likely his fault, and he had the audacity to infantilize you. But it kicked around like it meant something. It felt like everything. 

You heard yourself wheeze out something akin to a whimper, half at the pain, half at the feeling of disgusted arousal pricking it’s way down your spine. “Hurts-” 

Your cheeks were proudly housing your tears now, some dripping off your chin and some pooling in the long dip between his thumb and his pointer. It only served to smear the salt back across your face whenever he wiped fresh ones away. Nothing had even happened yet, and it felt so raw. 

His scent felt fused to your cells at this point, bone-deep and blade-sharp. It lined your chest cavity and festered out to wherever it could reach. It was the most divine undoing, tainting the world with the smell of heat and home. 

“I know it does, I know.” He spoke so soft. Like you were something so precious, so worthy of gentleness that he wouldn’t dare muddy the waters with any more brazen tones. “I can make it better,” his breath was warm and minty against your lips, and you nearly sobbed at the proposal. “Want me to make it better?” 

His face was so close that, when you nodded as vigorously as you did, your mouths brushed against each other. 

“Please.” 

It was as desperate as you’d ever sounded, but at this point, you were far too gone to care. Your entire being felt like a knot waiting to be untangled by his calloused hands. 

It was the last thing he registered before submerging himself in the sullied ocean of hormones and haze that was slowly filling up the unused floor of the hospital. The kiss was etched in totality, the clash of your teeth and the taste of your tongue instantly too addictive. It felt too much like forever, like something he’d never get over. 

He pushed harder into it, harder into you. The unyielding force of him silenced the searing in your stomach momentarily. Your body was bracing - happily, at that - for what was now set in motion. 

His hands were gone from your face, fingers gripping the pudge of your hips and tugging them forward. He wanted you as close as he could get you, unhinged in his mechanisms and bordering on barbaric in the way he maneuvered you. The eager press against him allowed his cock to slot right against the place you needed, hard as stone and leaking pearly drops beneath the denim confines.

The feeling forced noises out of both of you, a minuscule sound barrier settling between your lips for just a moment while they separated. You and him were back together before you could comprehend the departure. 

He knew, buried very deep, back with the sane part of his mind, that he shouldn’t be doing this with you. He was old enough to be your father, and this was a bad thing he was doing. This was evidently your first heat. Instead of being something sacred, something rare to be shared with someone you loved, your new boss was going to fuck you in a dilapidated, in-repair floor of your workplace. Twice your age, he also bore twice the responsibility. And he didn’t care about any of it. Not when you were half-mad and humping him like you’d die without it. 

“Nowhere in the hospital I could run to without smelling you.” You whined when he broke the kiss, his face moving down beneath your ear, inhaling right where most EGAD patients had an extra scent gland. “Could have fuckin’ killed that guy in triage for how he looked at you. My pretty girl, hm?” 

He didn’t even look at you while he said it. You felt his hand swallow the side of your neck his head wasn’t on. It was like he was trying to box the scent in, trying to hoard you close to his open maw, trying to eat you alive. 

He sounded like he’d lost the ability to filter out what he should be saying and what he shouldn’t, just speaking as it came and disregarding the possibility of rejection. As if you’d reject him. As if you could. The ownership made your lips part, your thoughts slur. You weren’t just pretty, you weren’t just a girl, you were his. It cued another one of those molten waves to crash over you, and even though it hadn’t been a sincere prompt, you nodded anyway. 

A confirmation. You were his. At least as long as you were here. 

You felt the exhale of a slight laugh against your neck, the feeling grazing a knuckle up each divot of your back. You got goosebumps from it, more evidence of the begrudging submission you were melting into. 

“Yeah? My pretty omega?” 

You would have nodded again, but he moved quicker than your dragging conscience could keep up with. The hand on your neck moved up to your face, stained with tear tracks and spit. He squished your cheeks in, just enough to make your lips pucker a little, just enough to be degrading, and nodded for you. Just a slight up and down, the perfect blend of arrogant and elegant. A gesture of control and nothing more. 

You made a noise you’re positive had never left you before, needy and primal and most likely putrid to anyone on the outside of whatever was happening. It was the signal he needed, though. A similar expression leaving him before he moved back up, mouth meeting yours somehow even rougher, even better. 

Your hands fumbled for the button on his jeans, coherent enough to know it was the thing you despised most in the world. The one thing keeping you from him. 

He was much less patient, opting to rip your pants at their seams instead of fussing over buttons or zippers. You’re sure you would have been angry if it’d been any other time, but now, you were just happy they were off. You couldn’t care less about the scraps or where they ended up. He tore the pathetic, saturated excuse for your underwear away all the same. 

You felt the sting in your stomach whip around again, pounding like a drum behind a brick wall. There were nerves somewhere beneath the need, but they couldn’t be accessed anymore. Just felt, considered, and ultimately deemed irrelevant. 

When you’d undone his button and fly, the both of you were grabbing and pulling at the fabric, pants and boxers lowering just enough to allow him freedom from the material. And you got why he was cocky. Flushed at the tip, and leaking, and pretty. Genuinely pretty. You should have guessed. You thought the rest of him was pretty, too. 

You hardly got to stare, maybe a millisecond of uninterrupted marveling before he was pulling your leg up around his hip and sinking in. 

“Thaat’s it, kid.” He slurred the syllable, patronizing and ruined and gruff. It made you clench, made him groan. “That’s it” 

“Robby-” 

Without the inhibition of fabric, your arousal was dripping down your thigh in opaque droplets that he hated seeing go to waste. But he couldn’t focus on that. He couldn’t focus on anything but the feel of you. 

You were much the same. It didn’t take much for him to bottom out, the moderate burn of the stretch lessened severely by how wet you were. It felt like seeing color for the first time, like the feeling of winter-chilled air in your lungs. It was such a vibrant feeling. Your neck eased, your head thumping against the wall as his forehead rested on your covered collarbone. 

“I know, sweetheart, I know.” He whispered it, the words seeping into the fabric of your shirt like something sacred. It felt sacred, felt special. “D’you feel better?” 

“Yes -” The exclamation balled in your throat as he pulled out, stopping with only his tip nestled inside you, and pushed right back in. Your back arched from the wall, leg tightening around his waist. “Feels better.” 

It did feel better. He repeated the motion, building a rhythm that was slow enough to let you feel every textured bit of his drags, his coarse hair rubbing perfectly against your clit every time he’d thrust all the way back in. The pain that had been so debilitating at the start of this was echoing out and rebounding back slightly less at the same pace he was moving. It all hurt enough to be significant, to add to the pleasure he was giving you. 

You’d never been so sensitive. Your sensory input and your emotions felt stripped bare,and all your nerves were taking after them. Each time he pushed back inside you felt consumed by it. Entirely and completely, like you could feel it in your throat. He brushed over spots that you’d never touched, reached depths that made your hands tighten around his shoulders just so you didn’t make your palms bleed. And he took it. He moaned at the pressure, at the carnal feeling of being so lost in someone that you hurt them and it only fans the flame. 

You felt the buildup too quickly, too intensely to be ready for it. You felt your internal tides pull back like all your lifeforce was being yanked back into that same volcanic tsunami. You could do nothing to stop it. You could do nothing but hope he’d be there to swim through it with you. 

You felt something happening to him, too. Felt him almost swelling, his movements feeling tighter each time his cock pushed back into you. You’d been familiar with most of the EGAD breeding specialities. It wasn’t all that different to average people, just heightened, feral. This you were unsure of. 

“What’s -” The heaviness of your breath, along with the way he was mouthing along your neck, made it increasingly hard to speak. “What’s happening?”

 “You’re ok.” That tone, and the scent, and how close you were made it so impossibly difficult not to trust him. There was gray in his beard, and his voice was like honey, and you couldn’t make yourself not believe him. “You’re a big girl. You can take me.” 

And you agreed. You could take him. You would do anything in this moment if he wanted you to. If it meant he’d keep fucking you. 

It didn’t take much longer for you to cum around him, an ushering moment of finality to the most painful awakening imaginable. You didn’t get a chance to warn him, didn’t get a chance to do anything aside from squeeze your eyes shut and sob out a fractured version of his name that made him groan into your neck. You tipped him over the edge, a punishing warm spill of him being trapped as he enlarged. It was like a lock, stretching you beyond what you were prepared for. 

It made your jaw drop, so full it was indescribable. Good and pure and somehow completely untainted in the midst of every filthy thing that had occurred. His teeth dragged over that spot below your ear, razor-sharp and pin-tipped. 

A part of you begged for it. Some quiet, banished cells that held no shame and abided only by basic biology. But even though you were far from sobered, you knew he couldn’t do that yet. 

“No,” you rasped. You hardly even knew him. Just that he smelled like every indulgence you’d ever craved and looked like serenity. “Don’t…don’t do that.” 

He exhaled over the spot, kissing the spot so solemnly it could have made your legs give out if you weren’t so plastered to him. 

He accepted it, as apprehensively as one could accept any unsatisfactory thing. There’d be time. There’d be more times like these. Lust-drunk and nature-driven. It’d happen eventually. 

That was one knowledge you mutually shared.  Bond.