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It's not as if he can't scratch out the alphabet or spell his own name. His father gave him lessons before he died, but there wasn't always ample time for schooling, or available supplies. Kyle practiced his alphabet in the dirt, writing with a stick.
Connor gives him a notepad and a fancy pen, tells him that any observations he makes about his life may someday become an important historical record, but Kyle just doodles on the pages when he can't sleep. Blair shows him how to draw block letters.
"I used to draw these on my binder in class," she says. "Like, my initials, a plus sign, then the initials of a boy I liked." She grins, and Kyle wonders if she's thinking of Marcus.
Blair is Marcus' only friend, even though Marcus gave up his heart for Connor. No one trusts a machine who handed over his human heart and went on living. Kyle doesn't really know what to make of Marcus himself, except that he knows Marcus wanted to save him, either because he's human or because he was programmed to want that. Kyle considers Marcus to be a particularly interesting walking dilemma, and Marcus seems annoyed by Kyle's curiosity, though he will show Kyle how to do things on occasion: how to hot wire a Jeep, how to play poker, how to hold on to his gun. Kyle has a list of instructions that he got Marcus to write down for him in the back of the journal that Connor gave him. Locate the red coil wire. Try not to look excited when your cards are good. Don't expect anything that's not tied to your wrist to stay in your hand for long.
Marcus doesn't even spend much time with Blair, usually keeping to himself around the base when he's not assigned to some task by Connor, who is still weak from the heart surgery. Connor seems to resent Marcus' continued strength, but he's civil toward him, as he should be, considering that Marcus saved his life. They have an odd working relationship that isn't exactly rife with tender feelings, or with trust. Kyle thinks that if you can't trust someone after he gives you his heart, you've got issues, and Connor seems to have no shortage of those.
"Is it gonna be like your hand?" Kyle asks Marcus over dinner one night. Dinner is served at two long tables in a warehouse-like space; tonight it's mashed potatoes and mystery meat gravy. Kyle is working on his second plateful, still unable to believe that he's allowed to have one.
"Is what gonna be like my hand?" Marcus asks, giving Kyle a warning look. Kyle was scared of Marcus at first, but he's learned not to be. Marcus is the kind of guy who'd hand his heart to John Connor after Connor tried to kill him multiple times. He's not as mean as he looks, and sometimes he doesn't even look all that mean. His eyes can get softer than Star's when he's not paying attention.
"Your heart," Kyle said. "Will it grow back?" The skin over Marcus' metal hand grew back over the course of a few days. It was a somewhat gory sight, and Kyle thinks it would hurt pretty bad, the slow progress of a heart reforming in Marcus' chest.
"Who knows," Marcus says. "They didn't give me the owner's manual."
Kyle drops hints that he wants to start going out on missions with the other Resistance members, but despite the fact that Connor gave him a Resistance coat, he doesn't seem to want Kyle fighting with his men. Marcus goes out on every mission, because he's considered indestructible. Kyle isn't so sure that they're not jumping the gun on that assumption.
"What's it like?" he whispers across the space between their bunks when Marcus returns from a mission one night. He looks grimy in the low light of the men's dormitory, and he's still breathing a little hard. Kyle wonders what his lungs are made of, and what sort of engine is beating in the place where Marcus' heart used to be. He wonders if Marcus ever lets himself think about it. It's enough to drive a guy crazy, as Kyle's father used to say, when he was contemplating the impossibilities of the world that they'd been left with.
"What?" Marcus says, turning toward Kyle. His eyes are doing that soft thing. There was a rumor, after the team came back, that some guys died on the mission. Nobody's talking, though.
"What's it like, going out there, fighting with a team?" Kyle asks. All he ever had in the way of a partner was Star, and she was a good little soldier, but he was always thinking first of protecting her, and felt guilty for how much he relied on her help.
"Frustrating," Marcus says. He makes his eyes hard again, and turns to stare up at the ceiling. "Go to sleep."
"Frustrating? Why?"
"Because - just because. Why are you awake?"
"I don't know. Why are you awake?"
"Don't be a smart ass," Marcus says, and it sounds like serious advice. Kyle wants to ask Marcus to write in the back of the journal, under the instructions for card playing and gun holding: Don't be a smart ass. He wishes Marcus would break down the steps of not being a smart ass, because Kyle doesn't really understand how exactly he was being one.
"Marcus?"
"What?"
"Did you feel anything? When she took your heart out? Did it hurt?"
"They knocked me out first. I didn't feel shit until I woke up and they told me I wasn't dead."
"Oh." Kyle had left the tent. He hadn't wanted to watch Marcus die. He'd cried, in fact, a little, which was weird. It had just seemed too unfair to stand. His eyes had only watered with anger at the unfairness.
"Do you have a pulse?" Kyle asks. He rolls toward Marcus' bed, wanting to walk over and feel for one. "Something beating in there?"
Marcus doesn't answer, and Kyle feels guilty. Maybe it's a sensitive subject. Definitely it is. How would Kyle feel if he lost his heart, and had to see the guy he gave it to walking around, had to know that his heart was in that other man's chest? He pulls his blankets into his fists, feeling angry again, this time at Connor. Kyle isn't opposed to Connor being alive - he's not that weird - but he doesn't like the idea of Marcus' heart in there. He wants to scoop it out gently, with two hands, and press it back into Marcus' chest, so he won't have to feel quite so inhuman.
"It doesn't matter," Kyle says, loudly enough to draw some shushing from the other beds. He looks at Marcus, but Marcus is still staring at the ceiling.
"I've known my share of Terminators," Kyle says. He's been preparing this speech, hoping it will make Marcus feel better. "And they've all tried to kill me. You tried to save me. You're human."
Kyle waits for a response, but Marcus won't even look at him. He's got his arms crossed over his chest, and doesn't look anywhere close to sleep, his jaw and shoulders tight with tension. Kyle stares at him for awhile, watching the rise and fall of his chest, and it doesn't occur to him that Marcus might notice him staring until he turns his head toward Kyle abruptly.
"What?" Marcus asks, and Kyle rolls toward the wall as if he's been pushed.
"Nothing," he says. He doesn't like how small his voice sounds in comparison to Marcus'. Kyle used to think of himself as a pretty hard guy, an unflappable warrior. From the moment when Marcus took his gun, Marcus has made Kyle feel like a kid. Kyle wasn't prepared to like feeling that way, second in command to someone stronger. He hates it when it's coming from Connor, the way Connor shepherds him and questions him and treats him like he'll break. Marcus doesn't hover or harangue him, but he does keep close, and it's nice. There are a lot of new faces here, and Kyle wasn't exactly raised to trust strangers. Connor looks out for Kyle in the obvious ways, keeping him off of dangerous missions and badgering him about eating vegetables from the courtyard garden. Marcus sticks close at night, while the other men grunt and snore in the bunks around them. It's like Connor wants to protect Kyle's body, while Marcus looks after his heart.
Kyle wants to tell Marcus that it's too late to keep him safe from strange men in dark places. Kyle still has something beating in the place that his heart was ripped from, a half-healed thing that sometimes feels as warm and real as it did when his father was alive, and he wants to explain this to Marcus, this thing they have in common, but like the blank pages of the journal, he doesn't have the words.
"Here," Marcus says, and the sudden closeness of his voice makes Kyle startle a bit. He rolls onto his back to see Marcus standing beside his bed, his shoulders level with the mattress. They both sleep on the top bunk of their adjacent beds, nobody on the bottom bunks but ghosts.
Kyle holds his breath when Marcus takes his wrist. It's the sort of touch that Kyle hasn't allowed himself to miss: gentle, selfless. Kyle's eyes are wide as Marcus presses his hand to his chest, and for a moment Kyle is too stunned by the gesture to realize that he can feel it against his palm, through the thin cotton of Marcus' t-shirt: a heartbeat.
"What is it?" Kyle whispers, reverent in the presence of this magic. It's strong and steady, quickening a bit when Kyle's hand twitches under Marcus'.
"I don't know," Marcus says. For a moment he looks worried. "Kate wants to examine me. I told her that I'd done her enough favors for one lifetime. I'm not going to be anybody's science experiment. Not anymore."
Kyle nods. It's better this way, not knowing exactly what's inside your own chest. He's sorry when Marcus takes his hand away, and forces himself to take his hand back. He'd forgotten what that was like, touching another person outside of the heat of battle, brushing up against someone else's fragility rather than just being alone with his own. Marcus isn't supposed to be fragile, but Kyle felt it, like a moth trembling on the branch of a powerful tree.
"Thanks," Kyle says as Marcus walks back to his own bed, and then he feels stupid. Marcus laughs and hoists himself back into the top bunk.
"Anytime," he mutters, and Kyle hopes he means it.
*
There is an informal sort of game room at the center of the base, and Kyle spends most of his time there, hiding from Connor and his bizarrely phrased attempts at teaching Kyle life lessons. Kyle would rather perfect his card playing skills, if he won't be allowed to train as a sniper or a pilot. He's stopped badgering Connor about this, because his reactions to the idea have been so intensely negative. Connor claims that he'll integrate Kyle into his forces when he's eighteen, and that's just a little over a year and a half away. In the meantime, Connor gives long speeches about fate and responsibility, always sounding as if he's talking to an auditorium full of downtrodden troops rather than a sixteen-year-old boy. Kyle pretends to listen, zoning out while he stares at Connor's face and tries to figure out why he looks familiar.
Marcus hardly ever comes into the game room, even when Kyle begs him to. The others take every opportunity they can to give Marcus long looks, so Kyle supposes he can't blame Marcus for not wanting to be around them during his leisure time. Still, he can't stop thinking about Marcus when he sits there alone, trying to figure out if it's possible to play cards against himself.
After a couple of months on the base, Kyle discovers Marcus' hiding places, and pretends to stumble onto them accidentally. One of them is a lookout tower on the relatively quiet west end of the base, accessible only by a rickety old ladder. The gun that was once mounted over the tower's railing has been blown to bits by something long-range, so the area is always unmanned, except when Marcus is there, leaning beside the remains of the gun, his elbows on the railing.
Kyle works up the nerve to climb the ladder and join him there late one afternoon, and he approaches Marcus without returning his bewildered look. He puts his elbows on the railing beside Marcus' like he belongs there, as if they're on duty together.
"Kate had her baby," Kyle says after a few minutes of pretending not to notice that Marcus is staring at him, waiting for him to explain what he's doing here.
"I heard," Marcus says. "Boy or girl?"
"Boy." Kyle yawns. He's never seen a baby before, and hasn't yet gotten a good look at the squirming bundle that is now always pressed against Kate's chest. It makes him nervous, the idea of something so helpless, like a glass ornament that somehow survived the apocalypse and was found intact amongst heaps of rubble.
"You tired or something?" Marcus asks when Kyle yawns again.
"Yeah," Kyle says. It's normally not the kind of thing he would admit, even to Star. She never asks questions like that out loud, but sometimes she gives him knowing looks, and Kyle gets defensive, pretending not to be tired or hungry or sad.
"You never sleep," Marcus says, and Kyle flushes at the thought that Marcus has noticed.
"You don't, either," Kyle says, feeling a little accused. He wants to push his bony elbow against Marcus' on the railing. Maybe as joke. Maybe he could pull that off, a friendly shove. He doesn't try it, just fidgets. Marcus is still looking at him like he's trying to figure out how he got here and what he wants. The base is so quiet that Kyle can hear a vulture screaming down in the canyon.
Kyle yawns again, and Marcus laughs. Kyle can't remember the last time he felt this tired. It has something to do with being comfortable: here alone with Marcus, the sun making the desert around them seem not barren but golden.
"Am I boring you?" Marcus asks, and it's sarcastic, because they both know that Kyle came here looking for him.
"No," Kyle says.
"Blair," Marcus says, and then he pauses, picking at some skin that's been rubbed raw over his elbow. "She thinks I'm exciting."
"Yeah," Kyle says vaguely, the ease of the moment dissipating in a way that feels like betrayal. Blair is exciting, too. They're a match. Kyle was hoping that Blair would be turned off by Marcus' metal skeleton, but apparently she staged a mutiny to try to free him even after she knew what he was. Kyle leans away from Marcus, putting his head down on his folded arms.
"That was never something I wanted to be," Marcus says. "Exciting."
"Why not?" Kyle asks, though he thinks he understands. He's always wished that his life was less excitement, more routine.
"I guess I don't like being the center of attention," Marcus says, muttering. Kyle snorts at the irony, and Marcus gives him a look.
"Me either," Kyle says. "I hate the way Connor treats me like I'm some kind of – exception to the rule of everyone else, but then won't even let me go out on missions."
"Yeah," Marcus says, clearing his throat. "About that. He never tries to, like. Fool around with you or anything, does he?"
Marcus is mumbling and avoiding Kyle's eyes now, so Kyle assumes he's talking about sex. He laughs, and Marcus glares at him.
"No, no," Kyle says. He straightens his shoulders, not sure if he should be amused or disturbed that Marcus has interpreted Connor's attention this way. Kyle thought that might have been the case at first, but only because it was the logical conclusion, not because Connor ever gave off that vibe.
"If anyone ever messes with you, just let me know," Marcus says. "So far I think I've cut everybody off at the pass, but --"
"Cut everybody off at the pass?" Kyle says, laughing. He's never heard the expression. "What are you talking about? Who've you had to cut off?"
"A few guys," Marcus says. He's still glaring at Kyle, trying to hide the fact that this conversation is embarrassing him. "And if Connor ends up being another one who needs to be warned off of you, I don't care how powerful he thinks he is, I'll take his ass out with the trash."
"Take his ass out with the trash," Kyle says, grinning: another new phrase. Marcus seems annoyed by his reaction, and agitated by the subject matter.
"Just be aware that I've got your back," Marcus says. "Star's, too, but Blair's been looking after her for the most part, over there in the women's dormitory."
"She can take care of herself," Kyle says. "You'd be surprised. I can, too, but - thanks. I'll let you know if Connor tries to put the moves on me." He laughs again at the mental image: Connor, with his gruff voice, his grave seriousness, his newborn baby and beautiful wife, slipping his arm around the waist of a scrawny teenage boy. The thought that someone would take that sort of interest in him out of anything but desperation is a strange one.
"Fine, be a smart ass," Marcus says. He turns his back on the sunset, his elbows resting on the railing. He's so big; Kyle wants to climb him like a tree, to test the sturdiness of those metal bones. He wants to pull Marcus over him like a two hundred pound blanket.
"Is there anything you can't do, like, that humans do?" Kyle asks. "I mean - not that you're not human, but. Do you have to, like. Pee, and stuff?"
Marcus glowers at him, and Kyle laughs nervously. He presses a fake punch into Marcus' arm, for the excuse to touch him.
"Would it hurt if I punched you in the chest?" Kyle asks.
"I still have pain receptors," Marcus says. "But I don't think they're as sensitive as they were when they were connected to actual nerves. I don't know, maybe I'm just more accustomed to it now."
"Accustomed to what?"
"Hurting," Marcus says, and he scoffs when he hears himself say it. "Pain, I mean."
"I guess I'm pretty accustomed to it, too." If one of these guys Marcus is trying to cut off at the pass were to corner Kyle somewhere, he'd be able to bounce back pretty quick. He's trained himself not to take it personally.
"You're good, though," Marcus says, out of nowhere, and Kyle laughs.
"What?"
"You're good." Marcus frowns as if this declaration should be taken very seriously. "You're idealistic. That's a neat trick, considering."
"Considering?"
"You know." Marcus turns to gesture at the desert. "The world."
"Yeah, but you're good, too," Kyle says, waving the praise away. "Better than me. I wasn't about to give up my heart for Connor. You really thought you would die, didn't you?"
"Who the fuck knows," Marcus says. He turns away like he doesn't want this train of conversation to continue. "Maybe some part of me knew I wouldn't."
"It was so weird," Kyle says. "You were just like, 'hey, take my heart.' I wanted to stop you."
"Why?"
"I don't know." Kyle wishes they were the same age. He hates how young and small he feels, the way he can't stop fidgeting while Marcus just stands there, motionless as a boulder.
"I think I grew a new one," Marcus says. There's a thin line of worry in his eyes, and Kyle leans closer, wanting to comfort him, barely remembering how that's done.
"A new heart?" Kyle says, and Marcus nods. Something about the way he does so makes Kyle feel like they are the same age, like Marcus is just a scrawny boy, too, no matter how sturdy his bones are.
"It feels like one," he says, touching his chest. He looks at Kyle questioningly enough to prompt Kyle to put his hand beside Marcus', feeling for his heartbeat. He nods slowly in confirmation. It feels like a real heartbeat. Kyle wants to rest his cheek against it.
"Does it beat faster when Blair is around?" Kyle asks, because it's beating pretty fast now, pressed under Kyle's hand. Marcus shakes his head.
"She doesn't do it for me," he says.
"Why not?"
"Fuck if I know."
"Who does it for you?" Kyle asks. His own heart is racing, the sky turning an almost purplish red behind Marcus' shoulders. Kyle wants to sleep up here in the tower with him, curled in his lap, listening to his heartbeat.
"Nobody," Marcus says.
"So that's one way you're not human?" Kyle says, disappointment settling onto his shoulders like dust. "People don't do it for you anymore?"
"I guess not," Marcus says, pushing Kyle's hand away. He goes for the ladder, but freezes in his tracks when Kyle makes a soft, involuntary noise. Marcus turns back, and Kyle stands there with his mouth hanging open, hands in fists at his sides. He doesn't know what to say, only knows that there's a painful knot of indistinguishable words lodged in his throat, making him tremble with unspent inertia.
"Come on," Marcus says, his eyes softening. "Let's get some dinner."
They sit next to each other at the communal table, Kyle's stomach making high-pitched whining noises. It aches, but not with hunger, so he just pushes his food around with his fork. Marcus pretends to listen to something Blair is saying about Kate's baby, his eyes focused on his plate. Star watches Kyle like she knows what he's thinking, and he scowls at her for it, but she just raises an eyebrow and goes on staring.
That night, Kyle goes to bed early, trying to relish the feeling of safety that the thick walls of the base provide. Attempting to sleep used to be an anxiety-riddled exercise, and it still makes him feel better to wake up several times during the night and check his surroundings. Now, instead of echoing darkness, he can look over and see Marcus lying there, on his back, contemplating the ceiling. It makes Kyle's toes curl inside his blankets, knowing that someone is looking out for him, that he can rest without worry of a random attack.
He hasn't had a nightmare since he came to the base; his sleep hasn't been deep enough. But tonight he doesn't need deep sleep to manage the sort of raw terror that used to send Star running for cover when he woke her with his screams. He dreams about the things that he's taught himself to shrug off in the light of day: hands on his throat, then at his waist, pulling off his clothes. It was all that talk of Connor or whoever else trying something with him, Marcus' fears and Kyle's attempt to laugh at them, and when he wakes up panting and sweating, clinging to Marcus' shoulders, he wants to explain this, but he can't. His throat is all closed up.
"You're alright," Marcus is saying. He's carrying Kyle somewhere, away from the stares of the other men. "You're okay."
They end up in a storage room that's loaded with barrels of grain that smells golden. Kyle's breath is still ragged as Marcus sits down on one of the barrels, letting Kyle wrap all the way around him. Kyle gets as close as he can, still too deep in the haze of the dream to be embarrassed by the way his knees shake against Marcus' sides. He'd managed to forget how horrible it was, that first hard slap of realization when he knew he was trapped, and he wants to forget it again. He hides his face against Marcus' neck and tries to breathe normally.
"It's my fault," Marcus says. His hand is soothing across the back of Kyle's neck, and his heart is slamming against Kyle's chest, as if he was just as shaken by Kyle's nightmare as Kyle was. "I scared you, talking like that. You shouldn't have to think about stuff like that. You're too young."
"You didn't scare me," Kyle says angrily, lifting his face. "It wasn't like I wouldn't have known – wouldn't have thought of it -- if you hadn't said anything -- before you, there was nobody to -- do you really think I was that lucky?"
He's not sure how much of that was intelligible, but trying to talk about this and watching Marcus' face fall is enough to make angry sobs well up in his chest. He swallows them down, cursing, and hides his face again. Marcus wraps him into his arms, more tightly now, and he takes a giant breath that seems to sink into Kyle's chest as Marcus exhales. Kyle clings, wanting him to do that again, to breathe him back into the real world, out of the snagging remainders of the dream.
Marcus doesn't say anything, and Kyle is grateful, though more for the way Marcus is holding him than for his silence. His arms stay locked around Kyle like armor that won't come off easily. Kyle likes the feeling, and he relaxes into it, letting his eyes fall shut again.
"Was I screaming?" he asks when he's successfully beaten back the urge to cry.
"Yeah," Marcus says. His voice is suddenly rough, as if he's just waking up. He tugs Kyle a little closer, his fingers curling more tightly around his waist, his shoulder.
"Shit," Kyle whispers. "They already think I'm a dumb little kid. Now they'll never -- they'll tell Connor, and he'll never let me fight."
"The fact that you're so excited about the chance to fight is what makes you sound like a dumb little kid," Marcus says. "Connor's right to keep you here, where it's safe."
"Why should I be special? There must be other kids my age who go to battle with him."
"Maybe there were, once. I haven't seen anyone like you since I woke up and found out the world had ended. Never really saw anyone like you before that, either."
"Like me?" Kyle opens his eyes, but he's afraid to sit up, doesn't want to move. Marcus smells so good up close, like a cleaner version of the humans Kyle has known. Marcus is quiet for awhile, and Kyle gives him time to think about his answer.
"Whoever hurt you," Marcus says, his grip tightening. "I hope you killed him."
"I did," Kyle says, and he sits back, amazed that Marcus would give him this much credit. But it's true, and putting a rusted soldering iron through that man's throat was almost worse than what came before. Kyle has never been glad that he did it, until now. Marcus nods, his eyes locked on Kyle's.
"You can take care of yourself," Marcus says, and Kyle feels his whole body grow ten degrees warmer, every word dropping into him like hot water.
"I can," Kyle says. But not really. He could survive, if he had to, back out there again. Being taken care of is something else entirely. He feels like he's only now learned of a basic element that he was living without. Food, water, and shelter are things he knows how to get, but he can't imagine getting what he has right now, his heartbeat flitting like a stone skipped over a pond and his stomach filling with heat, from anyone or anything but Marcus.
"You shouldn't have to, though," Marcus says. “Shouldn't have to be alone like that.” He looks so torn up about it that Kyle wants to kiss him. Kyle's father used to do that before he fell asleep, when Kyle was very young. He'd kiss Kyle once on each cheek, then over the bridge of his nose. Kyle loved it, the one moment of tenderness that their day allowed them, and he wants to give it to Marcus, but he's not sure if he should, so he ends up hovering just in front of Marcus' face, his lips shaking.
"Does Blair kiss you?" Kyle asks as Marcus stares at his mouth, his tongue poking out just slightly, to wet his lips.
"Nobody kisses the robot," Marcus says. "That would be pointless." When his eyes snap up to meet Kyle's it's like being shoved over a cliff, but he's still in Marcus' lap, both of Marcus' arms circling the small of his back now.
"You're not a robot," Kyle says. To prove this to him, he kisses Marcus' left cheek as carefully as he can, trying to remember how to do it. He must have done it right, because Marcus sucks in his breath, and heat blooms through Kyle's chest, sinking down between his legs as he kisses Marcus' other cheek, then his nose, his forehead, his chin, the corner of his lips. He stops there, because to kiss his lips felt different, better, and he's seen men and women kiss like that - Blair kissed Marcus, that day when they thought he would die - but he's not sure if he's allowed to want it from Marcus as badly as he does.
"That day," Marcus says, as if his mind has run alongside Kyle's, a dog following a car. "When I gave Connor my heart. I looked at you, and your eyes welled up, and it made me want to stay."
"Why?" Kyle asks, embarrassed that Marcus remembers his eyes getting wet.
"I thought you needed me," Marcus says. Kyle nods as hard as he can, and Marcus crushes their mouths together, patient with Kyle's greedy lips and tongue and with the way he fists Marcus' shirt while Marcus shows him how to kiss. Kyle eases his grip on Marcus' shirt only when he's left panting, his mouth wet and his lips buzzing like they've been stung and healed in quick succession.
"What," Kyle starts to say, and when he realizes that he can't articulate anything resembling a coherent question he just kisses Marcus again, to further investigate what just happened.
They end up sleeping in the storage room, on a pile of burlap bags in the back corner, Kyle unwilling to stop kissing Marcus even as they both start to drift off, his heavy eyelids giving in before his lips will. Kyle is dizzy with it, and for the way the cradle of Marcus' arm shifts under Kyle's ear, real muscle moving over a metal frame. Marcus' humanity hasn't been replaced, it's been fortified. Kyle can taste every improvement as if it were made for him. Marcus can regrow a heart before the lack of one kills him, and if Kyle should again need a new one, Marcus will give his up. Lying in Marcus' arms, the wheat barrels around them like clay soldiers, Kyle feels like it's already happened. They've exchanged what remained of their battered hearts, and it's the best sort of treasure, those fragile scraps from another's chest.
"I'm so glad you're here," Kyle says, deliriously honest as he presses his face to Marcus', already close to talking in his sleep. He's hard in his pants, so excited about his excitement that he doesn't want to do anything about it yet. It's been awhile, and before this it always felt purposeless, like a cruel joke. Now it feels like a present that's too beautifully wrapped to open hastily.
"I don't think I would be here if it wasn't for you," Marcus says. “After they took my heart – it was like something in me decided to stick around. Some auxiliary system kicked in, but I don't think it was automatic.”
"That doesn't make any sense, though," Kyle says, yawning. Marcus scoffs.
“I stopped relying on things making sense around the time I woke up fifteen years in the future.”
“What was it like?” Kyle asks. He's fading fast, but trying to hang on to consciousness, flexing his spine, afraid that if he goes still he'll miss the best part, which is always going to be yet to come. “Waking up like that? What was the first thing that went through your mind?”
Marcus says nothing, so Kyle wrenches his eyes open and tilts his head back, determined to prove that it's a serious question. Marcus is watching his face like he knows this already, frowning a little. He reaches up to hold Kyle's chin in his hand.
“I thought about how much it didn't matter,” Marcus says. “Because I didn't know where I was, or what had happened, but nobody back in the place where I'd come from would miss me.”
“Me, too,” Kyle says, and it's like his bones are melting inside his chest, everything liquefied by how powerfully he understands what that feels like. “When I – after, you know, um, what happened to me? I thought it didn't matter, like a tree that nobody hears falling. I think it made me feel better, at first, because I wouldn't have to tell anyone. Nobody would have to feel bad for me. You know?”
He feels awake now, confessional again, and meets Marcus' eyes shyly, trying to smile, to show him that he's not a mess, not a wounded bird who needs tending. Marcus studies him, keeping his face impassive, his hand spread across the back of Kyle's neck.
“When they asked if I wanted to donate my body to science,” Marcus says, “I wasn't going to do it. It was a joke, the idea that I would do anything that selfless. But something stopped me at the last second, made me reconsider. I had this sense like I wasn't finished, like I still had something important to do. I guess I felt that way when I gave Connor my heart, only I didn't understand what it really was until after the transplant. I think part of me knew when I showed you how to hang on to your gun, and how to play poker, and all that shit. I was starting to understand.”
“Yeah, but saving Connor was more important,” Kyle says, laughing. He reaches up to tug at Marcus' ear, closing his eyes again, already drifting into a kind of sleep that he's never known before. “He's the leader of the resistance, man. The freakin' messiah, practically. I'm just – I don't know what I am.” He opens his eyes as wide as he can, which is not very, and grins. “I'm just yours.”
It's the only time in his life that he's ever felt articulate. Marcus' smile comes slowly, confirming it: Kyle finally said the right thing, had the right words.
He wants to ask Marcus to write all down for him, like a code that will always unlock this moment, allowing him access when he needs to remember what safe feels like, and warm and happy, all those words that were only theoretical for so long. Kyle falls asleep before he can figure out how to ask for this, but even as he sinks into it, this moment that he couldn't transcribe for the historical record feels like something he'll be able to keep.