Still

by Jane St Clair

He has fantasies that the others don't need to know about. The best one involves him and the Surgeon, locked together for an hour in the same room. And maybe a knife. It's an hour in which he has the chance to express to the man exactly how much damage he did and how many lives he destroyed. It's an hour in which he gets to take the man's skin off, very slowly. At the end of the hour, the room decompresses and they're both left standing in space.

He allows himself a full two minutes to appreciate the effects of explosive decompression on an unprotected human body. Rapid depressurization, flash-freezing, and massive ultraviolet exposure are all extremely fatal. And messy. Quite satisfying.

He doesn't know which one would work first. Not that it matters: he's not sure than anyone's ever survived losing their skin. But he likes to think about it. And someday he'll ask Midnighter which one would be most likely to work first.

That'll be about the same time he admits to harbouring these fantasies of vengeance. They'd feel more natural if the man had actually ever hurt him. But the things he received from the Surgeon were gifts: strength, invulnerability, flight, solar energy redirection. Luminous flesh and a love of the moving air. He doesn't need any of those gifts to carry out his dreams of punishment, though, so at least it isn't hypocritical. Unless you count his ability to survive in space, but as he's admitted before, the decompression is an excessive addition to the scenario, something unnecessary for satisfaction. Like mutual orgasm: fantastic, but not required in the sheer glory of the moment.

There are other details, ones he only summons up when he's alone and not afraid to laugh at his own sense of melodrama. Carving out the man's heart and showing it to him. Breaking each bone in his body, beginning with the slender phalanges in his fingers and toes. Burning him, very, very slowly.

That instant before he dies when the man gasps, 'Who are you?', and he gets to say, 'I'm Apollo. And I hate you. And I know that however much you've suffered, it's less than you deserve.' Always in the back of his mind are Midnighter's mass of scars, the constant cold in his body, his single-night confession of the Surgeon's drunken butchery that created him. About how much it hurt. Sometimes Apollo wonders about the ones who didn't survive creation.

He's fairly sure that the fantasies he has of Henry Bendix's death would make even the Doctor's skin crawl. Bendix died at the hands of Jackson King, but it isn't enough.

The Carrier keeps moving. Outside, loose-bodied creatures swim by and stare at details of the ship curiously.

Of all of them, Apollo's the least interested in the universes that flow outside the Carrier. He covers the portals with screens when he can, he takes walks on the inner pathways, he stares into the caged universe at the Carrier's heart. He talks to the others, when they seem to need it. He watches television.

Tonight, the Carrier's found him the single extant broadcast signal of 'Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.' So he's comfortably crashed with his bare feet up, popcorn bowl resting comfortably on his abdomen. Alec Guinness waddles through the world as pathetic George Smiley, looking for the traitor in his midst. Rain falls. Papers are shuffled. And one person dies, murdered by his former lover, who could never understand why he'd been betrayed. Nice movement, that. The final need for vengeance seems so human.

Whatever universe is currently outside, it shimmers between red and infrared, barely bright at all. Through the window screens, it's just a faint glow. Warm. Not quite solar, but nice.

"You're up late."

Midnighter. He hasn't come in yet. He's cautious of rooms, always. Stands in doorways for ages before he pulls himself together and takes that extra step in. Apollo tries to make it easier for him -- warms the air in the centre of the room, sits very still, watches. Nothing *come hither* about it, not really. He's never needed to. Midnighter came hither a long time ago, and there's as little danger of him leaving as there is of . . . well. Not much certain these days. Apollo isn't putting money on the sun continuing to come up in the morning, though he supposes he'll be well and truly fucked if it doesn't. But he'll bet on the chaotic nature of the universe and say there's as much danger of Midnighter leaving as there is of entropy grinding to a halt.

So. Warmth, comfort, eyes on the half-shadow in the doorway.

And eventually Midnighter does come in, and settles himself on the couch. One knee up and his arm half-extended in invitation. It's something, but not everything, and Apollo just keeps watching him. Until the other man hisses at him and curls the hand back up to pull the mask off and throw it with the coat on the floor. Apollo watches him.

"Fine. What else do you want?"

"Your boots. And your shirt."

Midnighter snorts at him, but bends over and releases each clasp on his boots. Kicks them off. The shirt comes off more slowly. Very slowly, in fact, so that Apollo can't tell whether it's a deliberate tease or a gesture to disguise some lingering pain. Big hands fold the shirt, offer it to him.

Apollo remembers one of the first times they did this. They were free-ranging, then, not even in America anymore. Canada, midwinter, somewhere on the flat, high snowscape of the prairie interior. Someone had tried renovating an old house and given up when winter buried all the stacked materials in the yard. It was empty, it was sheltered, and the view was one he'd loved. High on a riverbank, looking across at the coniferous forest on the other side, lower down and stretching into grey distance.

Almost not urban at all. And close enough to the city's core that they could be there at night and haul the odd police officer off whatever Indian kid they'd decided to "take for a ride." They'd only been looking around -- or, if he admits it, flying for the pleasure of it under cover of night -- but they found the boy and couldn't leave it alone. He and Midnighter split up -- one to collect the kid from the remote snowdrift they'd dumped him in, coatless and beaten, one to convince the gentlemen who'd left him there that they wouldn't do it again. Ever. To anyone.

He remembers Midnighter perched on the fence around the old power station while he took the boy to the Salvation Army shelter. Remembers the smell of Midnighter's coat around him, disguising the sheer ridiculousness of his costume. Invisible blood on the cuffs from Midnighter's 'discussion' with those responsible.

There were no bridges that far out, and their chosen shelter was on the other side of the river. He gave Midnighter's coat back and they walked the two miles along the bank until they were parallel with the house. Just a very quick jump in the cracking light, through ice crystals in the air and hanging fog that poured off the open parts of the river. Heated by the power station, so that it didn't freeze again for ten miles.

Home that morning, Apollo peeled off his shirt and just knelt in front of the windows, soaking up the diffuse light as best he could. He'd been shocked how dark it was there. Had to fly above cloud level to get any kind of real solar charge. But basking was nice. If he waited long enough, maybe the clouds would break and he could suck up whatever light the world was willing to give him.

Midnighter came to him, then, and sat beside him fully clothed. More than an hour before Apollo reached out and pulled him into a half-embrace. And over the next three hours slowly peeled him out of all of his clothes and stroked away the lingering tenseness in Midnighter's shoulders and back. He knew it didn't hurt him, exactly, but the release of tension was palpable, and after it was gone he could just channel warmth through their contact until Midnighter turned and kissed him.

Midnighter holds his arm out now, and Apollo comes forward into it. Settles himself on the outside of the couch and feels his lover curl in behind him. No sunlight here, and the shimmering jellyfish outside don't provide any nourishing light, but the flicker of the television crawls across them, and if it's dark, at least he's comfortable. Big hand on Apollo's belly, stroking casually down to his groin.

"Are you all right?" Quiet, and every time Midnighter asks that question, he tightens his face like he expects to be pushed away.

Apollo thinks about it. "I'm better." He still aches in some places, and there are bits that his mind reels away from. He hadn't been prepared to lose quite so completely. Most of the time, his mind only provides fragments of remembered pain, and then Midnighter holding him in the middle of the ruined street and crying quietly. Other times, he gets flashes of being held down and . . . not going there, not yet. But it's detached enough that he doesn't think he's post-traumatic, at least not in any sensationalistic way. Just a little wired. Tense, sometimes. Midnighter spends a lot of time wrapped around him lately.

The dimness, he decides, is comfortable. Nice, even. Midnighter's hand rubbing his belly is just edging onto the sensual side of gentle, and if it eventually pushes up under his shirt, and pulls it off over his head, that's alright. It puts him into skin-to-skin contact with the man who's been the centre of his world for more than half a decade. And who's very good, all things considered, at pulling him back together when he needs it.

Midnighter presses dozens of kisses against the back of Apollo's neck, nosing animal-friendly through the loose, pale hair. "Love me?"

Apollo twists until he's face to face with the man behind him. "What kind of a question is that?"

"An honest one." Brown eyes an inch from his. It only takes a tiny shift of his head to press their foreheads together.

The first time they laid like this, it crossed his mind that Midnighter at close range is a mass of raw energy that feels like getting your skin peeled back.

Sigh. "I love you. Yes." Tilts his head in and catches Midnighter's mouth, holds it for a long instant in which just their lips are touching.

"Good. Just checking. And I love you too. For the record."

The next kiss is deeper, wetter, and Midnighter's shifted closer to him, so that there's a black-clad thigh between Apollo's legs and their groins are touching. One big arm gets thrown around Midnighter's back, pulling him closer. Chest hair rubs across Apollo's breastbone, then down slightly as Midnighter twists in closer yet, rubbing hard between Apollo's legs. Delicious pressure there for him to buck against, and Midnighter obliges him by shifting again and bringing that wonderful knee up to gently press against his balls.

Wet slick tongue in his mouth, roaming over his teeth and the hard flesh around them. His hands are down between them somewhere, trying to get at least one pair of pants open, and he's well aware by now that they're probably not going to make it as far as fully naked and making the more exotic kinds of love, but even flesh on flesh is going to be good.

Just that second when Midnighter's hard in his hand, a little slick and pushing towards the warm hollow of his navel. He gives it a long stroke before he releases it and gets to work freeing his own erection. Tangles his hand with the ones already there and gets it lifted away for his trouble. Their kiss breaks, but only barely, and he's left watching Midnighter kiss, then suck, his hand from a distance of barely three inches.

The tongue between his fingers, he knows, is an illegal weapon in Canada and the European Union.

It takes him two tries to catch that mouth again. But he gets to watch wonderful brown eyes wrinkle into what would be a smile if they weren't lip-locked, and they're skin to skin, Midnighter rolled up against him and almost on him, rubbing them off frantically and kissing him with brilliant, manic intensity.

There's just this half-second in orgasm when Midnighter loses control. He doesn't change his posture, even. Just stiffens a little, pushes himself forward like he could crawl into Apollo's mouth and disappear. Then releases it and kisses his face, his cheekbones, forehead, down his jaw. Under it, at the vulnerable place where head and neck meet. Still rubs himself against Apollo, but less frantically, and eventually pushes a hand between them to bring him off.

Still close enough together that Apollo can just tilt his head a little and whisper, "Yes, I love you," and come, protected from the rest of the universe by Midnighter's sheer bulk looming over him.

They're still on the couch. Their couch, this time. Once upon a time, when only seven people lived on the Carrier, they could have done this anywhere they wanted. Upstairs, downstairs. Behind nearly-public doors. On furniture that other people might wander in and collapse on someday. He used to joke that it made it harder for Jenny Sparks to track them down and spy on them.

He misses her. She used to slide up beside him in the mornings and drop herself down wherever he was sitting. He remembers her offering him a shot of "liquid sunshine" that turned out to be vodka with a little orange juice mixed in it for flavour. How she used to tease him. He remembers the night or two she came and cried on his shoulder. The heavy-proof smell of her hair as she laid against him.

He'll tell Midnighter about that someday. He hasn't yet, but things have a tendency to come out between them, and he expects that Midnighter will understand why he hasn't mentioned it before.

At some point, they'll probably get up and go to bed and drift there until morning, if only because the couch isn't really big enough for them to adjust their positions without hurling someone to the floor. And in bed, if he wants to, Apollo can curl in on himself, and let Midnighter curl around him. One of these days, there are some lingering uglies he's going to need to talk out. Maybe create a few revenge fantasies that belong just to him. Soon, probably.

Midnighter kisses Apollo's collarbone gently and lays his head back down. Apollo remembers waking up beside him that winter in Canada. How the light didn't leave any shadows. How cold it was. They'd scavenged enough bedding to nest themselves in, and with the heat Apollo radiated, they were alright, but only just. Slept close together a lot. Woke in the mornings desperately tangled.

Midnighter's fingers scrape softly over his chest and settle against his ribs. This is good. Nobody else is ever going to be allowed to touch him like this.

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