11: Ken

When we got back to the ISO HQ, I was met with applause.

Joe was seized by MPs and locked into handcuffs. He couldn’t even put up much fight, weak as he was with his malfunctioning cybernetics.

“You’re not locking him back in that cell,” I said.

“I’m sorry, sir,” the closest MP said. “We’re to take him back.”

I looked at Nambu. “I want to talk to the General Court-Martial Convening Authority. Now.”

“One does not normally order the judge to come to court,” he said quietly, watching me. “And you need medical attention.”

“I’m going to refuse it until I get to talk to the GCMCA.” And I hoped it would be soon, because I was in imminent danger of collapse. Or maybe because I was in imminent danger of collapse. The GCMCA needed to understand that Joe had saved my life, and that he was an integral part of the Science Ninja Team. More importantly, the GCMCA needed to understand that by destroying the Hypersuit when he had, Joe had averted a far worse disaster than even my death.

#

They kept me under close supervision for days, but as interminable as those days were, they were a million times better than the time I had spent in Galactor captivity. They gave me a cocktail of L-Dopa, acetylcholine, and SNRIs, trying to get my body to work correctly again. The shaking and tremors faded with sleep and the meds, and they only had to stab me with adrenaline once to keep me alive, which I thought was pretty good.

Jun came to see me the third evening, when they finally let me have visitors. She closed the door carefully behind her, pressing it into its frame. I noticed that the latch didn’t catch, and the door floated open an inch. She came around the bed to sit in the chair there. She took my hand, squeezing it lightly. “How are you?”

“I’m fine. Where are they with Joe’s case?”

“You’re not fine yet, Ken.” She smiled. “But you’re getting there. The docs think the meds may actually correct the problems the Hypersuit caused, given time. Now that the Hypersuit is gone and the damage isn’t ongoing.”

“What about Joe?” I repeated.

“There’s paperwork involved; it all takes time.”

“They’re going to withdraw the charges, though?”

She nodded. “It looks that way.”

I wanted it done; I wanted him freed. I wanted to see him, but I wasn’t allowed out of my little room, and he wasn’t allowed out of his. His had bars; mine might as well have had them.

“Ken, I need to talk to you about something.”

Her tone made me uneasy, and I dragged my mind back to the present. “About what?”

Her fingers tapped restlessly against mine. “We thought Egobossler had actually killed you. Just…assumed you were nobody and killed you.” She was looking at our hands, not at my face. “And you probably heard I didn’t do such a great job when I was in charge. I couldn’t stop thinking about what had happened to you, whether you might still be alive somewhere, how to find you.”

I knew where she was going, and I resisted the urge to pull my hand away. I was good at maneuvering around the topic with her, though, and I braced myself to do it again. “We’re teammates,” I said, injecting an extra measure of heartiness into my tone. “We have to look out for each other.”

I watched her, waiting for her to take the cue like she always did, smile, nod, laugh a little ruefully, and let it go. But she didn’t. Instead, she looked at me and said, “I’m in love with you, Ken.”

I had no idea how to maneuver around that one. She’d really put it right out there, hadn’t she? I felt suddenly angry, that she would push this on me, put me on the spot, make me respond directly to something I definitely didn’t want to talk about.

“Look, I know we’re not supposed to be involved with each other…” She was looking at our hands again. “Two-factor theory and all that. But it’s not just about almost losing you; I feel this way about you all the time.”

“I’m not…right for you, Jun.” It sounded awkward and contrived, but it was kinder than I don’t want you that way, Jun.

“Have you ever thought about it?” She leaned a little closer to me, her expression earnest and intense and direct. “About just…trying it? To see what it would be like, you and me?”

I shook my head. “Jun--“

“There’s no one else in either of our lives, Ken. What would it hurt to try?”

I gently withdrew my hand from hers, thinking about the way Joe had felt in my arms. The way he smelled and tasted, wild and familiar at the same time.

“Ken?” Jun said.

“There is someone else,” I said softly. “I’m sorry, Jun.”

Her eyes glistened, but she smiled at me as best she could. “I want you to be happy,” she said. She pressed her lips together, and a tear escaped. “I hoped it would be with me, but…” She shook her head and stood abruptly. “I just want you to be happy.” She leaned over me to kiss my cheek, and I caught her arm and pulled her down beside me. She stretched out beside me and I put my arm around her, and she cried. “I’m not crying because you said no,” she assured me. “I’m crying because I’m so glad you’re alive.”

And I believed her.

#

When finally they let me leave the infirmary, they made me promise to stay with one of the others for a few days. There was a time, I thought, when Jun would have been the first to offer, but she sent me a quiet smile and said nothing. If I wanted her to be the one to watch over me, I would need to ask.

I suspected I would be asking for things from her a lot more often in the future. I was already worrying about my tab at the J.

In the end, Joe was the one who took me home. Joe, who was on probation but back on the team, the charges dropped. There were still a lot of pissed off people at the ISO, but I told them I’d leave the team if they didn’t let him go free.

They didn’t call my bluff.

I was still pretty weak, but I managed the walk to the front door on my own. It was darker than the bowels of hell, and I wished I’d left a light on, but I hadn’t exactly planned to be gone so long when I’d last left.

Joe closed and locked the door behind us and followed me down the short hall to my room, making sure I made it. I pulled off my shirt, stepped out of my shoes, and collapsed into bed, thrilled to be someplace without beeping machines and nosy nurses.

“Pillows and blanket in the cabinet where they usually are?” Joe said. He’d crashed on my couch more than once in the past.

I shook my head at him.

“You moved them?” He’d started to back out of the room, but now he returned. “Are you serious? Once you find a place for something, you never move it.”

“Just stay in here.”

He grew very still, his gaze developing the laser intensity I associated with fighting with him.

The silence grew, expanded, filling the space between us, surrounding us, pressing up into the corners and out against the window.

“Two-factor theory,” he said, very quietly, and if the stillness had not been so complete I would never have heard him.

“I don’t think that’s it,” I said. “I really just think that for some crazy reckless reason I want you.”

He came forward and rested one knee on the bed, and the mattress sank a bit beneath his weight. He gazed down at me. “I like crazy and reckless.”

I laughed. “I know.”

He lay down beside me, his arms encircling me, and I kissed him, sinking into the desperate eager heat of his body, into the hot wet taste of his mouth. I’d been half afraid that it hadn’t been real, that it had been some kind of crazy psychological delusion, but it was real, the way I wanted him, the way I needed him, in spite of myself.

He stripped away my jeans, and then his, his hands shaking but sure, his face flushed and beautiful. I fumbled in the table beside my bed, but my fingers were useless, and even after I’d found what I was looking for, I couldn’t get the top off, and finally he took it from me. He kissed my shoulder, the back of my neck, his mouth hot and wet, and I shuddered. And then he was inside me, and I arched back against him, the sensation both utterly foreign and staggeringly right.

“Yes?” he said in my ear, one of his hands skimming across my chest, my belly, pressing me back against him.

“Yes,” I breathed, and he wrapped his fingers around me and we finally finished what we’d started.

#

I woke a few hours later to the moonlight spearing through the windows and across the bed. I rolled over, carefully so I wouldn’t disturb him, and gazed at his quiet face. This is crazy, I thought, but the pull remained, a savage need that I suspected might never go away.

His eyes opened, and they were a clear, pure azure in the moonlight, not even a hint of gray. “Jinpei said he heard you talking to Jun. He said you told her you couldn’t date her because you have a girlfriend. You have a girlfriend, Ken?”

I leered at him. How could I not? He’d left himself wide open. “Yeah.”

His eyes narrowed. “How’s that?”

“You’re my bitch,” I said.

He looked affronted for a moment, but then snorted. “We’ll see about that.”

There was promise in his eyes, and my intentions were certainly depraved, but my limbs trembled with exhaustion and weakness and wouldn’t do what I told them to. The aftereffects of all I’d been through. I muttered a curse.

He chuckled, a dark, heated sound that rubbed against my skin like fur, and wrapped his arms around me. “There’s always tomorrow,” he murmured.

And there was that.

END