If it had only been his words – heartfelt though they were – Francis would still have doubted. But every touch had been reverent, every kiss ardent and hungry. Tris was starving for this; it gave Francis the confidence, when Tris again tried to go too hard too fast, to pull back just far enough to shush him, softly, and then press back in, taking control of the kiss, turning it slow and easy.
He heard Tris suck in a breath, and then, amazingly, he yielded.
Francis kissed him again and again, drawing it out, changing angles and stroking Tris’s jaw with just his fingertips, a gentle tease. When he passed the tip of his tongue along the seam of Tris’s lips, they opened right away, and he licked inside his mouth with the same lazy thoroughness, teasing, teasing, before pressing more boldly.
It went on for long minutes, until Tris was responding in kind; until it was a giving and taking, trading control back and forth.
Until hands latched onto Francis’s hips and, a low growl in Tris’s throat his only warning, he was hauled up into Tris’s lap. One hand tangled in his hair, and the other shifted to the small of his back, pressing him down as Tris lifted his hips. Straddling him like this, Francis could feel the whole hard length of him, fully-erect and straining behind his fly.
Francis gripped his collar, hard. “Oh, God, Tris, please–”
The world tilted, and he was on his back on the bunk, Tris above him, between his spread thighs, kissing him to within an inch of his life.
Fast learner, Francis thought, distantly, as Tris’s tongue slid along his own, and a rough hand urged his jaw wider.
Francis kissed him back, and petted his throat, his shoulder, his chest; felt the hard thumping of his heart through the wall of muscle on his chest and wished like hell for two hands. He tugged at the front of Tris’s shirt, until Tris reared up, suddenly, tugged it off and dropped it behind him, and then dove back in, attacking Francis’s neck with teeth and tongue; sucking a bruise over his pulse.
Francis touched every inch of him he could reach, skin shifting over iron-hard muscle, the feel of it headier than all the drugs they’d pumped into him over the past two weeks.
When he snaked a hand between them, gripped the hair on Tris’s chest and tugged, Tris groaned against his collarbone. “Christ, baby. Fuck, I’ve wanted you.”
He shifted back up and claimed Francis by the mouth again, wet, and heated, and clumsy in a way that wasn’t about practice, but about frantic want.
How long? Francis wanted to ask. He needed the answer like the air he wasn’t getting in the relentless string of kiss after kiss. How long have you wanted me?
But that didn’t seem important when Tris pushed his shirt up and touched bare skin, nothing like the careful, nurturing touches in the shower and the sick bed. Tris palmed his ribs, cupped his chest, thumbed over his nipples, urgent and needy, his tongue plunging deep in Francis’s mouth.
He didn’t need to ask how long, because he could feel and taste the answer. Melted down against the mattress and fisted his hand in Tris’s too-long hair. Whined into the next kiss. Please, please, keep showing me.
Unsteady, wet kisses trailed down his jaw and throat; over his chest, down the concave, trembling plane of his stomach.
Tristan kissed his hipbones, grown sharp from two weeks in bed; eased down his sweatpants, brushed a kiss to the head of his cock, and then drew him into his mouth all in one slow slide.
Francis had wanted, in all his many imaginings, to be eager and seductive in this moment. Had envisioned himself whole, and teasing, making all the right faces, giving as good as he got – convincing Tris that, yes, this was good, and he should want it again.
But he was tired, and dizzy, and overwhelmed; and even if his body was not whole, he felt wholly wanted in a way he’d never expected, and he was so, so eager in a way that left his eyes stinging and his throat aching. So he twisted his finger in Tris’s hair, and gave himself over to the drowning pleasure of it. Broken open, sated, and half-asleep by the time Tris kissed him on the mouth again, and offered him a taste of himself.
~*~
He was back in the clearing, kneeling in the mud, pain like a flashfire searing all the way up his arm, through his chest, like screws through his temples. Staring down at his arm. It already looked dead, waxy and unreal. As he watched, the fingers curled, shriveled; the skin turned gray, and then black, and then to dust–
He woke with a scream lodged in the back of his throat, gasping for air. He opened his eyes to a dark broken only by the soft glow of a single, recessed light up on the wall.
His nightlight.
In his dorm.
Not the forest, not that sickening moment kneeling in the mud.
The arm was gone, though. He lay on his right side, in his narrow bunk, and when he tried to reach out with his left hand, he knew only a tingling, pinching sensation at the place where the limb had been severed.
The scream became a whimper, one that slipped through trembling lips.
It was all real. The arm was gone; was probably shriveling and blackening on the forest floor where they’d left it; it would have swelled and split, first, crawled with flies and maggots, and the flesh stripped away by beetles and ants and…
The wall at his back shifted, because it wasn’t a wall at all, but Tris. His arm curled around Francis’s waist, and his face pressed into the back of Francis’s sweat-damp neck. “It’s alright,” he rumbled, voice still thick with sleep. “Shh, it’s alright.” He stroked his chest, pressed the pads of his fingers to the racing pulse at the base of his throat.
Francis swallowed with difficulty. “No – no, it isn’t. It’s not…” His teeth started to chatter, and he clenched them tight.
Tris shifted behind him, and when Francis turned his head on the pillow, he saw that he was propped up now, hovering over him, so he could see his face. He wondered what he looked like, if his eyes were white-rimmed, and his face slick with sweat. If he looked every inch the frightened child that he felt. It was easier, during the day, to drape himself in a confidence he didn’t feel and pretend that everything would work out.
But fresh from ugly dreams, in the near-dark, with Tris looking at him with worry etched in the lines of his face, Francis couldn’t pretend.
“They’ll send me home,” he choked out. “I only have one arm – and I can’t – they’ll send me home, and I don’t have a home to go to, I don’t–”
Tris covered his body with his own, a warm, heavy human blanket, a heartbeat thumping steady and reassuring against what remained of his left arm. Lips touched his temple, and lingered there. “Nobody’s gonna send you anywhere. Not if you don’t want to go.”
Francis tried to laugh, and it sounded pathetic and full of cracks. “You can’t – can’t guarantee that.”
Strong arms encircled him, the sure press of them soothing in a way nothing had ever been. “Yes, I can.”
Francis turned his head, seeking, so they were pressed cheek-to-cheek, Tris’s beard rough against his skin, the scent of him full in Francis’s nose, drowning out that faint, chemical tang of the hospital that still clung to him. Tris smelled of cordite, and Kevlar, and cold silver, always, even now. And of sweat, and sex, and the wall that had come down from between them.
“You’re alright,” Tris said again, the low purr of his voice vibrating through Francis. “You’re alright.”
He didn’t believe that, but he wanted to, when Tris said it like that, and sleep eventually reclaimed him.
~*~
“He doesn’t want to be sent home.”
Lance looked up from the paperwork he was signing at the tiny desk in his room and fired Tris a sharper glance than he thought was warranted for this situation. “What?”
“Gallo. He wants to stay on and not be discharged. The docs are saying–”
Lance waved him to silence. Stared at him a moment – then sat back in his chair, grinning. “You should see your face.”
It was something Francis had said several ti
mes in the past week – though his twinkling smile was much more welcome than Lance’s smug amusement.
“What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”
Lance chuckled. “Sir Tristan Mayweather, laid low by love.”
“Hey, jackass.”
Lance’s chuckles died, and his face smoothed with shock.
“I’m not ‘laid low’ by anything. And you’re one to talk, moping around after that girl, even though she’s still in love with a dead man.”
Tris was shocked by his own vehemence. He was older than Lance, and had grumbled his fair share of untaken advice in the past, delivered some affectionate insults, but he’d never spoken to him this way. Lance was his superior, after all.
Lance cleared his throat and said, “Ceasefire?”
Tris jerked a nod. “Yeah.”
“Okay, so.” Lance shuffled some paperwork that probably didn’t need it. “He wants to stay?” He managed to sound almost casual. “I don’t have any problem with it, but I don’t have the final say-so.”
Tris knew as much. He folded his arms and braced his shoulder in the doorjamb. “But you could put in a good word.”
“I’ll happily put in ten good words.” He braced his elbows on the desk, finally, and glanced up at Tris, dark gaze assessing, and not without true sympathy. “And given how short-handed we are…” He winced at his own choice of words. “There’ll be something for him to do around here.”
“He wants to be a Knight,” Tris pressed. “He wants to stay on with the company.”
Lance sighed. “I know. I know, but–”
“You said yourself that prosthetics have come a long way.”
“They have. But we’ll have to see if one allows him to execute a regular drop. If he could sling one of us over his shoulder if he had to. If it’ll support his full weight if he needed–” Before Tris could protest, he held up a hand. “I like Gallo, okay? I don’t want to replace him. But we need to be prepared for every eventuality.”
The worst part was that Lance was right. Tris knew he was; a few months ago, he would have been the first person to insist that the company turn loose of a Knight who might prove a liability to himself and others. But Francis wasn’t simply a fellow Knight anymore.
When Tris had suggested to him that he might still be able to work on base, in the command center, operating a radio or acting as a Knight liaison with the army, Francis had gone white and turned his face away, throat bobbing painfully as he swallowed.
“This isn’t a fun gig,” Tris had tried, feeling helpless. “It’s just rain, and blood, and bullshit.”
Francis had blinked a few times, and then turned the fiercest look up at him, his jaw set. “I’m not going to fail before I ever got the hang of it.”
For reasons he didn’t quite understand, Francis was determined. It went beyond doing his part, or even following in his dead father’s footsteps, Tris thought: there was a need in him, a burning light, a call to prove himself, though no one had demanded it of him.
Tris didn’t see what he could do but be supportive.
Like he was trying to be now.
“Put more weight on your front foot,” he said, as Francis righted himself from another near-stumble. “You’re still balancing like you’ve got equal weight on both sides, and it’s throwing you off.”
Francis pushed sweaty hair off his forehead, nodded, and adjusted his stance.
His left arm, which ended in a now-smooth stump just past his elbow, had been declared fully healed by the doctors. He’d been given a sleeve to wear over it, for protection, and the doctor had looked grudging and unhappy when Francis had asked about returning to his workout routine – but ultimately agreed that he wasn’t going to do himself any harm hitting the treadmill, or elliptical, or even lifting weights with his remaining hand.
Francis hadn’t told the doctor about the sparring, but if it pained him at all, he hid it well.
Tris put up his hands and launched the next attack.
It was weak. He knew it was, but he didn’t care; didn’t push too hard, or move too quick, or even try to land a blow anywhere on him.
Of course, Francis noticed. He let out a frustrated growl and stalked around the edge of the mat, shaking his head. “Stop going easy on me!”
Thankfully, they were alone in the training room; it was late, well past dinner, the time they’d been taking for their own since Francis returned to regular activity. Tris had even locked the door, not liking the idea of someone coming in to gawk at the one-armed Knight trying to regain his stamina.
“I’m not,” Tris lied. Badly.
Francis shook his head some more, his smile tight and humorless. “Look, if you can’t stomach it, I’ll ask Rose to help me train.”
“Stomach it?” Tris had been surprised by the deep well of his own patience the last weeks when it came to Francis; something tender and previously untended had been coaxed to the surface in him, and he was damn near doting these days. But he bristled, now, because Francis, it turned out, sucked at being an invalid. “I’m trying to help you ease back into–”
“I don’t want to ease!” Francis shouted, flinging his arm out, the stump of the other lifting to show that it would have been a symmetrical effort, if he’d still had both hands. He turned to regard his own stump with open disgust. “I can’t even be properly pissed off!” He shot Tris a glare. “You could at least pretend that I’m worth your time on the mats.”
“I never said you weren’t.”
“You don’t have to! Look at you, acting like I’m five-years-old. You’re – you’re placating me!”
Tris ground his molars. “You wanted to spar,” he gritted out. “We’re sparring.” And you’re falling down half the time, he didn’t add.
Francis snorted. “You’re not even breaking a sweat.”
Because I don’t have to, he wanted to shout at him, suddenly. Because you’re not up to it, and this isn’t even a challenge. His heart twisted painfully with the knowledge, because this? This wasn’t the performance of someone who’d be allowed to go out on missions with the company. Francis was bound for a desk, and a chair, and, Tris could tell, a downward spiral into the sort of depression that killed people.
“What do you want me to do?” Tris asked. It came out a growl.
Francis stared at him. He looked older, now, post-injury. His face had lost some of its sweet softness, narrow and lined, now, a permanent-seeming groove notched between his brows.
When he moved, it was a sudden, forward burst. Three long strides that carried him across the mat and pushed him right up into Tris’s face. He gripped the front of Tris’s shirt, points of his knuckles pressing hard into his chest through the bunched fabric, and hissed, “I want you to fight me.”
Before Tris could react, Francis let go of him – only to hook his arm around his neck and drag him down to the mat.
It wasn’t a fight, and it definitely wasn’t a sparring match. It was a brawl. A tangled, floundering, rolling-around knot of inelegance.
Tris got a knee in the stomach, and an elbow to the chin. Francis knotted his fingers in his hair, and wrenched his head around.
Tris felt teeth at his throat, and, okay, that was it.
In a few quick, brutal moves, he had Francis face-down on the mat, his knees braced wide apart, his arm twisted behind his back.
A familiar pose.
But one made wholly different because, Tris noticed with a wave of horror that had him easing back, Francis was braced now on the stump of his left arm, instead of his hand like so many times before.
“Don’t you dare,” Francis growled. “Don’t you dare.”
Tris paused. He felt the throb of Francis’s pulse in the wrist that he held; felt the staccato beat of his breath in the ribs that pressed backward into his own.
Francis made a sound like he meant to speak again, an aborted little huff, and Tris understood, then.
They’d been intimate during Francis’s recovery – had not eve
n slept in separate beds, no matter how small the bunks were, since he’d been released from the med bay – but Tris knew that he’d been handling him carefully. That he’d been sure to take control in a way that resulted in Francis laid carefully on his back, or propped on pillows, without having to do much work and definitely without having to put any strain on what was left of his arm.
That had apparently been insulting.
No, he thought, catching a glimpse of the fire sparking in the one blue eye that he could see from here: that had been devastating.
He took a breath, and leaned back in, hips tucked to Francis’s ass, weight pinning him down.
Francis gasped.
“What do you want me to do?” Tris asked.
“Finish what you started.”
Tris didn’t think he meant tonight, now, in this moment. He thought of another moment like this, weeks ago, when he’d still been resisting, before any of this had happened, and he’d been cold, and cruel, because he didn’t want to open himself up to something with this kind of power to hurt him.
And Francis had been the one to get hurt instead.
“Alright,” he said, voice tight now from a mix of anticipation and regret. “Alright.”
Tris kept hold of his wrist, but slid his other hand down from between his shoulder blades, down his neck, and over his nape, until he had a grip of his hair.
Francis let out a low, immediately-heated sound. “God.” He spread his knees a little wider, so that Tris rested against him more fully. “Tris…”
“Shh, it’s okay. I got you.”
Francis sighed, and the tension bled out of him, even though he began to shake with want. “Please.” The quiet, breathy plea went straight to Tris’s cock.
He let go of the wrist he held, tightened his hold on Francis’s hair, and looped an arm around his waist; felt the trembling in his belly, beneath the sweat-damp cotton of his shirt. When Tris sat back on his heels, he lifted Francis up with him, back to chest, Francis’s legs spread wide so he was all but straddling Tris’s lap.
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