Heroes & Ghosts

by SA Payne

  the scrubbing or the too hot water, Rye's pale skin was flushed red.

  "Rye? You okay?" Which was absurd because it was pretty obvious the man wasn't.

  "I can't get clean." He muttered out under the water. "I can't get the feel of them off my skin."

  Ichi reached in and shut the water off. "I don't think you can scald it away or scrub it away, here now, let's get you dried off." It made him feel like someone had kicked him in the chest but Ichi knew enough to at least get Rye out and dried off.

  Rye moved as he was directed but with little will of his own. When Ichi wrapped a towel around

  his hips he simply held it in place, not able to summon the energy to care that he was dripping

  water everywhere. He let himself be towel dried easily, shivering a little in emotion and not cold

  and when Ichi pressed the mug of tea into his hands he accepted without protest.

  He left Rye leaning against the countertop and pulled clothes for him to wear. Ichi dug out the

  loosest, warmest clothes they'd gotten for Rye. It was all soft fabrics that were cut in generous

  sizes, what Ichi called comfy clothes that Rye had seemed baffled by. He also dug out the

  thickest, warmest socks, knowing the other man was still getting used to being allowed to wear

  socks or shoes and, like chairs, still not fully comfortable in them.

  "Here." He offered the stack of clothes over to the still and silent man. "Before you catch chill."

  Rye took the clothing and petted across it's soft fabrics. The smallest of smiles tugged at his

  mouth. "Comfy clothes." He dressed quickly, even pulling on the fuzzy socks without protest.

  The clothes made Rye look smaller, younger, more vulnerable as he literally was swimming in

  the fabric. It made Ichi wonder a little bit about how old Rye might actually be. Pet's had no real age, grown to the desired age and than modified, they had neither birthdays nor childhoods. Rye

  had both, even if he couldn't remember either. Ichi only knew that Rye was an adult, Amanda

  guessed maybe in his mid twenties but suddenly, standing there, Ichi felt he was much younger.

  Rye petted the loose clothes that hung from his body. "They're nice, thank you."

  Ichi held the mug of tea out to him and Rye accepted. He led them out of the bathroom and back

  to the living room and got Rye pressed down onto the sofa. The tea got set aside, un-tasted, and

  Rye pulled his knees up under his chin again.

  "Want to talk about it?" Ichi asked softly, feeling completely out of his depth.

  Rye just shook his head no.

  Ichi tucked his own legs up under him on the sofa and just sat. There was plenty to think about,

  plenty that had changed in both his personal and professional life but he found his mind empty.

  He sipped his tea but only to have something to do and just sat while Rye struggled with

  whatever thoughts were buzzing around inside his head.

  "Tomorrow, I'll talk to Amanda about getting a different room." Rye finally said, his voice empty of emotions.

  "What?" That snapped Ichi's thoughts from the empty wanderings they'd been in.

  "I have no right staying here." If he did he'd not be able to resist Ichi, he wanted the other man so badly, so deeply, and he knew he shouldn't touch the reserved man, that he had no right.

  "Is leaving what you want?" He managed to make his voice steady but his heart started racing.

  Rye slowly shook his head, unable to glance over to where Ichi was curled up at the other end of

  the sofa. "What I want and what I should do aren't the same thing."

  "Stay."

  "I can't."

  "I thought you said you wouldn't leave unless I sent you away?" Ichi's voice broke, his control was crumbling and he wasn't sure if he was hurt, angry or scared.

  "Ichi, I can't, I, you don't know." But Rye did, he knew it all now, he remembered it now. It was no longer hazy or wrapped in cotton feeling, he really knew what had happened with his first owner.

  There was no backing away from that knowledge.

  "Tell me, or not, I don't care."

  "You should!" Rye stood up and started pacing. "I'm a whore."

  "Don't say that."

  "I am! I have no right to love you!" He almost shouted but the words drained the anger away into embarrassed horror. "Damn it! Worse, I'm a brain damaged whore! I can't even think something

  without blurting it out!" His legs refused to hold him and Rye dropped to sit on the floor.

  Ichi stood and moved carefully to sit near the openly tormented man. "You are not a whore, they made you, that's rape, you didn't want it."

  Rye groaned a little and folded forward over his bent legs, curling up again. "But I did want it, they made it so I would want it. God, Ichi, he even took that from me. Made it so I wouldn`t even

  be able to stop that."

  He sat silent and tried to process what he'd been told. When he thought he had absorbed it then

  and only then did he speak. "I don't care. I don't care if you've been sexually involved with every Concord citizen and their dogs. I don't care if you enjoyed it or hated it, begged for it or refused.

  It doesn't matter to me, so long as you don't leave."

  Rye sat up, sniffed hard and rubbed at the unshed tears in his eyes. "You can't mean that." But the spat of anger and pain was draining away into exhaustion thanks in large part, he knew, to

  the drugs Amanda had given him.

  "Of course I can, I'm not a child." Ichi nearly snapped back. "Naïve, yes, I will grant that but I'm not ignorant. It hurts me that anyone hurt you, now, in the past, or tomorrow, the very idea

  makes me ache but Rye? How can you think I would hold that against you? How can you think I

  would be jealous or upset or sullied by your past? You don't know, I could have slept my way

  through college, or across the universe and you wouldn't know!"

  The idea of Ichi sleeping around made Rye half chuckle. "Did you?" He asked in a weakened, tired voice.

  "Well, no, but I could have. I'm not unattractive you know."

  "I've noticed." Rye reached out and brushed stray hair back out of the hazel eyes. "I have nothing

  to offer you."

  "What?"

  Rye shook his head. "I can't even offer you this body, there's nothing I haven't done, no

  innocence left to share, not one aspect that isn't dirtied or broken." He'd been thinking about the conversation he'd had with Will a lot and hadn't liked the raw and truthful answers he'd found. "I have no money, no job, no future, no name even. The only things I seem capable of doing is

  killing people and fucking them. I have nothing to give you." He swallowed hard and couldn't

  meet those steady eyes. "There's no reason for you to keep me here, no role I can fill except

  being your whore and while I would totally enjoy that, you deserve better."

  It baffled Ichi. "But, last night, you said... I mean, and now, didn't you mean that?"

  It took Rye's clouded mind a second to translate what Ichi was trying to say. "That I love you?"

  Ichi nodded.

  "I do."

  "I, Rye, I..."

  "It's okay, I don't expect you to feel anything toward me. I know what I am."

  "I just learned today that it's unusual for someone to have never heard those words before. I

  don't know what to do with that, Rye, I, god it makes me feel so good and scares me silly." Ichi confessed quickly before he got frightened. "So I don't really know, but isn't, just, being together enough? Isn't that offering enough?"

  Rye suddenly understood why Ichi had been so freaked out that morning. "Oh, Ichi..."

  "Just, offer me yourself, okay? That's all I want, just a chance to know you, be with you, trust you and have you trust me." The raw honesty of his words surprised him and made him blush. Ich
i

  glanced down to the bandage cut on his hand. "Seems Will's crazy Avalon blood is screwing with me. My father would have a fit if he heard me spouting about love like some mad poet."

  "So, I should stay?" Rye asked carefully, unwilling to believe, finding it too painful to hope.

  Ichi nodded. "I don't know what I'd do if you didn't. It's just, Rye, you have your past, I have mine. If I can't catalog it, explain it, document it, I can't understand it and relationships, emotion?

  I've no idea how to process that. Give me space to figure out things and I'll give you space to

  figure out yours. Okay?"

  "Sounds like a plan." Rye agreed. It didn't make him feel any less dirty, any more worthy, but he no longer felt cut off from the only thing he'd found that really mattered.

  "Now, how about some food?" Ichi asked as he pushed himself up off the floor to move toward the kitchen, needing to retreat to the practical world of day to day care to settle his uneasy

  nerves.

  "Ichi?"

  "Hmm?"

  He wanted to tell him how much he loved him, how much he needed him, how right and whole

  and normal he felt when they were alone together but the words melted when Ichi glanced back

  to where Rye still sat. He'd be blind not to see how much the other man needed to back away

  from such raw, vulnerable emotions.

  "How about pasta?"

  There had been a long enough pause between whatever it was Rye wanted to say and what he

  actually did say that Ichi knew he'd changed it. He smiled softly, gratefully and nodded. "Anything you want."

  Chapter Twenty Two:

  Cleaning out his lab was one of the most difficult things Ichi had ever been forced to do. He

  refused help from his station mates and Rye alike. Only Rye didn't listen to his protests and

  helped him anyway. Over the course of days it took to tear apart and dispose of all the

  containers, Ichi found himself stopping to just sit, overwhelmed by all that had been lost, on

  several occasions. Some of his collection he'd maintained the same line of since university,

  raising and caring for generations of insects and it was all gone.

  "You know." Ichi said late in the afternoon, the lab nearly stripped to the walls around him. "This might be a blessing."

  Rye dropped another sheet of containment plastic onto the cart and wiped at his forehead.

  Working, the hard physical work of tearing apart, felt good. "How so?" His only regret, other than the pain that often flickered in Ichi's eyes, was that his cushion and blanket and the sign hung

  over it would most likely be too contaminated to save.

  "If we layout the room better, the containment can be laid out better. Compartmentalize the

  areas, gas only the sections with breeches, save anything not being threatened? Might even be

  safer for us too, if we can rig up a way that seals the room into parts, might only get caught with one or two of the swarm. Two won't kill you." He was trying to picture the new system in his head.

  "And if we do this right, I can have a larger habitat for them, maybe divide it into sections. Seal them in one section to make modifications or testing in another? It'll give me a lot more

  flexibility."

  Rye leaned against the side of the cart and downed some swallows of water. "You just figure out what you need and I'll build it." He was finding he had a good knack for that too. An innate

  knowledge of how things fit together to build or take apart and the sheer physical strength to

  wrestle even stubborn panels in place.

  "Will do, I..." but his notebook beeped at him and broke his thoughts off. "Hang on." Ichi had to stretch to reach where it had been set on one of the few work surfaces they hadn't torn out.

  "Yes?"

  "Ichi?" Amanda popped on to the screen. "When you two get a moment, swing by over here okay?" She glanced off camera. "We have something to show you."

  "Sure thing." He clicked the notebook off and glanced up. Rye was covered in a light sheen of sweet, his shirt sleeves had been pushed up to show off strong arms and he was so stunningly

  handsome that Ichi forgot how to speak for a second. "Want to take a break and go see what's

  on their mind?"

  Rye licked the last clinging drops of water from his lips and felt his skin grow hot from the way

  Ichi was watching him. If he'd known working for the quiet man would get him so turned on, Rye

  would have been lifting heavy things for weeks. He set his water bottle down and nodded.

  "Sure, just, one thing first." He crossed the space between them and rested a knee on the crate Ichi was sitting on before he lowered down to kiss him.

  Ichi moaned into the kiss, letting his head tilt back into Rye's hand, loving how the red head

  towered over him. "Rye?" He gasped when his mouth was released.

  "Not fair looking at me like that and expecting me to walk away." Rye whispered into an ear before he nipped it. His hands sliding across Ichi's clothing covered body to draw out more

  startled gasps.

  When those teasing hands started to open his pants, Ichi tried to pull away. "Rye, no." He hissed out, breathless and embarrassingly hard from such little contact.

  "Yes." Rye chuckled softly and deftly finished parting the fabric.

  Ichi tried to protest again but Rye was quicker and the words he was trying to form melted into a

  needy moan as Rye swallowed him whole. "Oh, god." He managed to gasp out, unwilling and

  unable to stop Rye. "The door.... Oh oh please, yes...." He shook his head and half fell across the crate. "Rye, the door doesn't... oh... doesn't lock." He managed to get out in what he hoped was a clear manner. He could feel how red his face was at just the idea that someone could walk

  in on them.

  Rye paused long enough to glance up, catching hazel eyes nearly green with desire. "Let them

  watch, let them see how beautiful you are like this." He whispered and was rewarded with a long shuddering moan before Ichi fell across the crate, melted.

  As he lay there, overwhelmed and happily so, Rye swallowing him like some rare candy and

  roughly stroking himself off with his free hand, Ichi found he didn't care if anyone walked in. In

  fact, he was starting to wonder if he might need to add exhibitionism to his growing list of new

  found kinks. Wouldn't be a bad one to add to the list, a small voice teased him, given that Rye

  seemed willing to pounce on him anywhere. Even as he writhed, moaning while his hands ran

  through red silken hair, Ichi knew he'd never really want Rye to stop pouncing.

  "Graces mercy you two, you're worse than newlyweds." Will teased as soon as Rye and Ichi

  crossed into their lab.

  "I wouldn't know what you're talking about." Ichi denied but his blush confirmed.

  Rye remained silent and Amanda just rolled her eyes. "Leave them alone." She warned of her own mate and thumped his arm.

  "Where's the sport in it if I'm not allowed to tease them a little bit?" Will grinned but it turned into a happy smile. He rubbed at the healing cut on his hand and the smile grew more contented.

  "You wanted to see us?" Ichi ignored Will and addressed Amanda.

  "Yes, please." She motioned for them to come all the way into the lab. "Rye, dear, you might want to sit down."

  "Why?" He asked, suspicious, but he took the offered seat, Will in the seat nearest him but Ichi hovering to his side.

  "Rye, we asked Ichi to send over all the equipment and supplies sent along with you. We've

  been going over it all, forensically, looking for gene code samples in the hopes that something

  might have been carried from one owner to the next." Amanda explained and leaned against the

  counter nearest the vid screen she'd pulled the files up on.


  "Hoping to learn who owned me and who I am?"

  "Yes, exactly. I didn't want to tell you, didn't want to get your hopes up in case we weren't able to PDF Created with deskPDF PDF Writer - Trial :: http://www.docudesk.com

  pull anything."

  "But you have."

  She nodded at him. "We have."

  His stomach turned over but he nodded. "Okay."

  "Most of what we found is incidental. We ruled out any hits we got from Ichi or yourself and we found one hit on a man that comes back as an employee of Pets, he works in the shipping

  department and most likely just roughed off some skin cells while packing the supplies up. We

  blacked out his code and kept looking." She folded her arms and wondered if this was the best

  thing to do.

  "What did you find?" Rye asked carefully.

  "Most everything was either new or clean enough to not matter. However, the collar you were

  sent with, is ornate. Scroll metalwork over leather, perfect collector of DNA. It's been cleaned but not sterilized, we found plenty of trace evidence of your blood on it, in the scrollwork of the

  metal."

  "And?"

  "And one trace semen sample with a gene code that wasn't blacked out."

  "Who?"

  "Ready for this?" She asked and waited until Rye nodded before calling up the picture. "His name is Howard Conti." A standard identification image appeared of a man with thick white hair, a face that was carrying a touch too much weight and neutral scowl. "Five eleven, brown eyes,

  aged 68."

  Rye had to close his eyes to keep from getting sick. A warm hand slid onto his shoulder and

  Ichi's touch gave him a current point of reference to focus on. "That's him."

  "Who is he?" Ichi asked for them both.

  "He's CEO and grand poombah of Lerman Securities Limited. Real big wig and connected

  enough and wealthy enough to keep most of his profile secured." She checked with Will but at

  his nod continued. "What he isn't, Rye, is your father. At least, not in a biological sense. Even when we deconstruct all the mucking that was done to you, there's virtually no chance that he is

  related to you by blood."

  "We called him Father Conti." Rye whispered but he forced himself to open his eyes and look at the man.