Shifting Again

by Shifting Again (ant

  Hewitt frowned. "Don't know about crazy, but wouldn't be welcome back at base camp no more, if that's what you mean." He took the canteen from Vonne's hand and capped it back up. "But not you, neither, you know."

  Vonne was quiet for a moment. "So what, no hello kiss, no Jesus-it's-good-to-see-you?" he said at last.

  He was startled when Hewitt actually seized him and kissed his mouth. Vonne thought he felt fur against his skin, whispers, claws--almost thought he'd started his fever dreams again. But it was real, real as Hewitt was real, sitting back and wiping his mouth off on the back of his hand.

  "You're fighting it," he said.

  "What?"

  "You should just--"

  "Let go?" Vonne finished for him, scowling. He mopped his brow with his arm. He was wet with sweat. A fever ache had set up permanent camp in his joints. "Hewitt, I knew never would have said that."

  Hewitt crossed his arms over his chest and looked away. In the feeble light of the moon Vonne saw the whisper of another shape ghost over him, like a radio with bad reception overlaying two channels. "I'm still me," he growled at last, reaching up and pushing his cowboy hat low, scowling. Vonne had a foolish image, one he wasn't sure his eyes saw so much as his mind: a fierce, nasty Primitive with a smallish cowboy hat perched on its domed, furry head, triangular ears jutting out on either side of it. He laughed, and then felt sick.

  "You're the enemy now," he said.

  "So're you." Anger reddened Hewitt's pale cheeks, atypical anger that made him launch to his feet and pace. Vonne could almost imagine the Primitive's tail lashing behind him. But more like his usual self, instead of shouting or raging or releasing his temper, Hewitt only pressed his lips together and said nothing.

  "If you'd'a just held out--I was gonna bring a medic--"

  "Held out for what? You never came back, and I didn't want to fucking die!" Hewitt snapped. He collapsed to all fours, raked the ground with his all-too-human nails. "I'm a coward, I'm a fucking yellow bastard, okay? And all I want is for you to be a coward with me so I don't have to be like this alone--!"

  "You're the one that bit me?"

  Hewitt shook his head, not quite meeting Vonne's eyes.

  Vonne said nothing. Some part of him wondered if this was more trap, more temptation. The tiger-thing in waking moonlight. Curtis. Deklin's Joptur. But it was Hewitt before him, bent and sad like he'd never known Hewitt to be, except when Curtis had passed away. Even then Captain Cowboy had come back with a vengeance before long.

  He knew he ought to say something about his mission, about the weapon he was carrying in his blood; but he didn't. Hewitt was a dead man walking, he told himself. He was a dead man, too. Maybe it was better that way.

  "Well, I'm a coward too," he said at last. "Ought to kill you." Sweat running down his brow, chills so deep they hurt; he wondered just what that shit they'd stuck him with was doing. Was this the way it was meant to be? Or was intel's plan a failure? Wouldn't be the first. Adaptability was the Primitive's first weapon, after all. Who was to say they wouldn't just incorporate intel's strategy into their systems too?

  Hewitt turned away. His shape seemed to waver like the rest of the shadows, transient. "Wish Curtis was here," he said in a low voice. "Then it'd be the three of us, just like old times. Maybe he coulda shown us what's up and what's down."

  Dying--or whatever he was doing--seemed to loosen Vonne's tongue. "Just the two of you and me, you mean. What do you want me to say? 'Sorry I killed your boyfriend?'" He sounded like Deklin--like an idiot--even to his own ears. He should have apologized, but he didn't really want to. He could still feel Hewitt's lips on his own, and that pissed him off.

  "Don't be stupid, Vonne. Ain't nice to say it, but he's been dead to me for some time now."

  Vonne stared at Hewitt, not believing his words. He startled at the weight of a hand on his knee, heavier than he expected.

  "I know you'd rather pretend it was nothin', but I always known how you felt about me."

  There was dirt under his friend's fingernails; he didn't know if it was weirder that he'd noticed or weirder that it was there. Vonne pulled away from Hewitt, unwilling to meet his eye. "So what? Don't care if you or everybody knew."

  Hewitt moved quick as a cat, quicker than Vonne could react, crouching in front of him. Both his hands cupped Vonne's knees, fingers gently curled, nails softly scratching Vonne's thighs. Their faces were so close together that when Vonne finally got hold of his senses he jerked backwards. The thick, weird smell of Hewitt settled down around Vonne, stirring something to life in him. His nose worked out why: under the earthy scent was the smell of spent sex, full of guilt and familiarity. Vonne had spent so many nights trying not to notice the heady reek of it when Curtis and Hewitt's bedroll would finally stop moving late at night. He swallowed thickly, leaning back as far as he could without physically twisting himself away, weight braced on one arm behind him.

  "Hewitt," he said huskily. "This ain't you--"

  "You're wrong, Vonne. I'm more myself than I been for years," Hewitt told him, crouching lower. In the darkness, feverish as he was, Vonne's eyes played tricks on him; he swore the shadows came to life behind Hewitt, that the ghostly shape of some monster overwhelmed him for a moment. And then he was just Hewitt again, so goddamn close and so goddamn good smelling and looking as alive and happy as Vonne remembered him before the war. Hewitt reaching for him like he'd always wanted--Hewitt leaning in, brushing lips against his, tentative.

  Vonne was never certain when his fear became something else entirely, but he thought it might have been the look he saw on Hewitt's face right then, like a man finally released from some burden he'd borne too long, so long he'd forgotten he could stand straight if he really wanted. Whatever it was, it made him throw away his own fears and reservations, if only for that short while.

  He grabbed Hewitt like he'd always wanted and he kissed him like a starving man attacking a ten-course meal. He was gripping Hewitt's shoulders too hard, he knew--hard enough to crush, hard enough that he imagined no living thing could have pried this man out of his fingers.

  Hewitt didn't seem to mind, gave as good as he got: yanking and grabbing double handfuls of Vonne's shirt at the small of his back, grinding stomachs and cocks together. Clothes couldn't survive that kind of vicious assault for long. Vonne opened up Hewitt's trousers from waist to mid-thigh with one over-eager jerk and Hewitt's handful of shirt became all that he had while they both broke into laughter.

  It wasn't how he'd imagined, not the way he expected Hewitt to be, not the way he remembered Curtis and Hewitt in their stealthy trysts in the barracks. It was urgent and brutal and dirty, like the fucks Vonne had before and after battles--as if this were their only chance, their last chance, thank god for living and thank the devil for fucking. His skin burned in long swatches over his neck and shoulders from Hewitt's stubbled cheek, teeth leaving deeper marks than that. Bruises were already forming on Hewitt's pale skin from Vonne's rough groping. Vonne couldn't help but kiss the marks, suck them and scrape his teeth against them, until Hewitt groaned and rolled them, slamming Vonne back into the ground.

  Vonne growled somewhere in the back of his throat, shaking his head. He wrapped his legs around Hewitt's waist and wrestled them over again, grabbing for Hewitt's wrists and pinning him down. Hewitt struggled, but it mostly for show--Vonne was by far the bulkier, if the shorter. A kiss turned into a bloody collision of mouths, leaving them both laughing; and then as if the taste made them hotter, they came together even harder, Vonne shoving his tongue deep into Hewitt's mouth, feeling Hewitt both inviting and fighting him, giving way at last only when he'd had his fill. He fucked Hewitt's mouth with his tongue and then he took his cock in hand and asked to be let in lower; the wet twitching shaft of Hewitt's cock pressed against his stomach and the velvet pucker of Hewitt's ass against his cockhead making a half-step from crazy.

  And then he was inside and everything--

  --exploded in that first moment of push
ing himself into that tight hole, stretching Hewitt's body as Hewitt's hands clawed the ground at his sides and arched and spread himself wider moaning--

  --got condensed into one purpose one mindless animalistic black world filled with scent sound sight everything making him alive alive alive on fire he reared his hips back and he slid backwards and out and his teeth were clamping down and Hewitt was bucking under him hand jacking himself off arching rippling fur and skin and claws and the smell of something primal and blood and semen and the scent of heat and arousal coiling changing dissolving him he--

  --was coming oh god he oh yes fuck hewitt he

  --opened his eyes FUCK he

  saw

  --"Oh, Jesus," Vonne said, before he collapsed, senseless.

  ***

  Deklin was famous for Stupid, but taking this mission had to top all his other Stupid by the height of Mt. Everest.

  Half-chewed and filthy, he was beginning to think the jungle would get him despite intel's fancy-pants dope when he ran into Vonne three miles from Unit GJ's mobile base camp. Both emerging from opposite stands of wood into a wider clearing, Deklin had to admit he had his finger in his trigger no slower than Vonne had his. He knew he looked like shit--he could feel the remnants of saliva all over his chin, powdery dried flecks of foam. He was sane, though, at least now he was, and he could prove it. But he might not have said the same for his compatriot, muddied from head to toe, blood down his back and something clutched in his restless hands.

  Then Vonne spoke.

  "Hey," was what he said, and he sounded exhausted, but otherwise normal.

  "...Hey," Deklin returned, if a little suspiciously. But after that first look the other man didn't act out of the ordinary; so Deklin didn't shoot Vonne, even if some part of him still thought he ought to. "Mission success?" He nodded to the crust of blood on Vonne's back. Vonne didn't answer, but Deklin shrugged it off. "Found my ape doing a good impression of worm food when I finally pried my face out of the dirt this morning. Intel'll be happy, yeah? Think we'll get a bonus? Leave and hot chicks down in Hudson's Bay?"

  Vonne shrugged. Deklin stared at him, and then shrugged back, and resumed walking. "More for me, if you're not interested."

  More silence. Deklin fucking hated silence. "I mean, if we still fucking got the bay, yeah? But even if we lost it now we got this weapon and if those fucks think they can change us we're totally gonna fuck their shit up--"

  Deklin stopped abruptly when Vonne turned and looked at him. Later he'd tell stories of a 'wild look in his eye', but at the moment, he only thought Vonne looked like a man trying to work something out for himself.

  "Hey," Vonne said, "That thing bit you, you think you were gonna die? I mean, really, truly, gonna die?"

  "Maybe for a minute... but then I remembered I got intel's shit in me, yeah?"

  "I... There was this moment, I was sure, that was it for me--and then I just knew I woulda done anything to live..."

  Deklin frowned. "Yeah, well, heat of battle, yeah? Survival instinct?"

  Vonne blinked, slowly; he turned the thing he was clutching around in his hands, and Deklin saw that it was a crushed cowboy hat.

  "Survival instinct," Vonne agreed, and he nodded.

  Deklin gave him a disgusted look. "So?"

  "So...." Vonne repeated. Deklin scowled, but Vonne had only paused. "I've decided I'm gonna live, yeah? Fucking live. And nothing's gonna stop me." His hands tightened on the hat. "Took me a while, but that's what I've decided." The corner of his mouth twitched, like he was working up to a smile, or a hysterical fit of laughter.

  Shaking his head, Deklin muttered, "Well, good for you, eh?"

  "Yeah," Vonne said tranquilly, and in that moment Deklin felt an odd sort of protective brotherliness toward him; he slung an arm around Vonne’s shoulders and put them back on the path to camp. Obviously, he figured, the immunization didn't work perfectly yet--Jesus fuck, after some of those dreams he'd had? Couldn't blame a man for losing his mind.

  "Hoy!" A man called, diverting Deklin's attention. It was the perimeter guard. Deklin recognized Joon on sight and excused himself a moment, went ahead to heckle his friend a bit. Eventually he heard Vonne behind him. He turned to introduce his buddy, feeling unusually civilized after all he'd managed to survive.

  "Joon, this is Vonne, one crazy motherfucker like me--"

  Deklin stopped when he saw there was no one behind him, all too aware of Joon's penetrating look.

  "Fuck, no, I swear, he was right there, he was right fucking behind me--"

  "You mean he was one of those things," Joon said, hefting his heavy long-range rifle and sighting it just for good measure, "but luckily he got an eyeful of me and Lucy here."

  "No man, no, we got this immunization, this shot, him and me and six other guys, and... FUCK." Deklin began moving back toward the forest, searching for some sign of Vonne, certain the fucker had just lost his mind and wandered away; Joon hooked a hand in his elbow, shaking his head. "He said he was cool, man, said he was all live life to the fullest now or some shit, I mean, he can't be fucking gone--" Deklin shook his head. "I mean, fuck, I mean, FUCK, do you think he was a ghost or Jesus H. fucking Christ those fucking APES--!"

  Joon gripped Deklin's shoulder and gave him the barest hint of a shake. There was a glimmer of warning in his eye. "Chill, man. Those apes get under your skin and in your head and you'll never get 'em out." His fingers tightened. "So let it go."

  Deklin stared at Joon, and for once, said nothing.

  rescuing ryan

  by sara bell

  "I can't believe you actually wanted to live out here." John pulled a box from the back of Ryan's SUV and set it in the driveway before grabbing another. "I get that the mountain air is supposed to be good for you and all that, but living twenty-miles from the closest town?" He shuddered. "How can you stand it?"

  Ryan gave his younger brother a pained eye roll. "It's not like I'm living on an island in the middle of the freaking Pacific."

  "Might as well be." John stacked up the last of the boxes and then shut the hatch. "No offense, but this place is the butt crack of civilization."

  "You just can't imagine living so far from the nearest Starbucks." Ryan limped over to where John was standing. "This all of them?"

  John nodded. "Let me help you carry them inside."

  Ryan was shaking his head before John even finished. "You've already done more than your share by helping the movers get the furniture settled in. I've got the rest."

  John opened his mouth to argue, but he must've thought better of it, because he closed it again a second later.

  Ryan clapped him on the back. "Thanks for all your help. You got time to share a quick beer with me?"

  "I wish I did, but I promised Marcy I'd be home in time for supper." John smiled. "The closer she gets to her due date the more nervous she is about staying alone."

  "Smart woman, my sister-in-law." Ryan grabbed a box from the top of the stack and balanced it against his good leg. "Give her a kiss for me."

  "I will." John started for his truck only to stop a second later and turn back around. "Hey, Ryan?"

  "Yeah?"

  John hesitated for a full minute, then said, "If you're doing this because of Pete--"

  "Pete doesn't have a damn thing to do with my decision." Ryan's gut clenched as he fought to keep his temper from rising to the surface. "I made the choice because it felt right."

  "Uh-huh." John's tone said he knew better, but he didn't push it. "Just remember, I'm only twenty minutes away."

  Ryan snorted. "More like ten, the way you drive."

  "Whatever it is, if you need me, you'd damn well better call." John pointed one finger in Ryan's direction. "Don't think because of that bum leg you got that I won't kick your ass."

  With that warning hanging in the air, John left, and Ryan was grateful. He loved his family, but what Ryan most needed right now was some space. Time to heal, his mother called it. Ryan made a face as he shouldered t
he box and headed into the house. More like time to hide.

  An hour later, after the last of the boxes had been piled into the living room, Ryan was wishing he'd taken John up on his offer of extra help. Ryan's leg was aching like the devil, and the still-healing scars on his chest were itching like crazy. Still, he was glad he'd taken on the task himself. Chalk one up for the cripple.

  As soon as the thought popped into his head, a picture of Pete sprang up. Pete, the golden boy, the man Ryan was certain would stand by his side no matter what. He shook his head. Amazing the things a man learned from almost dying.

  "Okay. Enough of the self-pity shit," Ryan said into the empty room. He caught a whiff of his pits. "Right. Time for my stanky ass to shower."