Chris must escort Jake through the Mojave to a secure BSAA facility while he recovers from a private ailment.

"Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
Prone to leave the God I love;
Here's my heart, O take and seal it,
Seal it for Thy courts above." —Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing

0m.

He stands broodily examining the bag of clothes he carried from the airplane. Burn marks etched over his hands, elbows, fore arms. Tender and pink. Scabs and cuts. And the scar - slicing through the paleness of his cheek with pearlescent tissue, dead and unfeeling. He is sweating in the Mojave heat, in a white clean T-shirt, blue jeans, and boots. He's already coated in the dust of the desert, marked by the sand.

Chris packs in the bottled water and snacks, and spares him another glance. Jake doesn't know but Chris is aching. Piers is a fresh wound, and every time he looks at Jake he feels himself bleeding inside. "Get in," he ordered. "The sooner we get this show on the road, the better you'll feel."

Jake throws his bag in behind the bottled water. He climbs into the back seat and slams the door. His pale head bows at once, maintaining a wrathful silence.

It will be the longest 324 mile drive of Chris's life.

5mi

Jake puts his feet up on the front seat. Chris bites his lip and doesn't say anything.

10mi

Jake has dug through his bag, hunched over the back seat. He grabs a bottled water and what appears to be an iPod from his bag. He slouches in the back seat and listens to music until the battery dies because he forgot to charge it the night before.

25mi.

The empty water bottle is shoved between the seats. It crinkles every time Jake moves. The music is still playing and while he's looking out the window into the stretch of endless brown-grey, he follows a vulture suspended on an air current high above. Somehow it brings him nothing but sorrow.

Suddenly he swears under his breath before shoving the iPod and earbuds into his pocket. He glares at the roof of the jeep.

Chris arches a brow in the rear view mirror.

27mi.

"I have to piss."

"There's a gas station. Just a few miles."

"I ain't holding it. Pull over."

Chris is annoyed. A stop so early in the ride can only mean that there would be frequent stops. The jeep rolls to a halt and Jake climbs out. He does his business quickly, taking a moment to notice a beetle crawling beneath the sand. He returns. This time, he sits in the front and after they drive, he turns on the radio and changes the station.

28mi

Chris turns off the radio.

28.1mi

Jake turns the radio on.

28.2mi

Chris levels a long look at the young man seated in his passenger side.

He turns off the radio.

28.3mi

Jake turns it on and turns the volume up high. The jeep shudders and Chris slams on the breaks, turns off the radio, and snaps off the knob completely. He rolls down the window, letting in the cutting hot wind, and tosses it out the window. It rolls far, past the shoulder of the road, and under a prickly bush that he didn't know the species of.

He drives.

28.4mi

Jake scowls at the road ahead. He puts his feet up on the dashboard, and crosses his arms, leaning the seat back as far as it will go. The car is too silent, and for the next several miles he fidgets in his seat.

33mi

"Knock it off."

"What? I'm not doing anything."

"You're twitching over there. Do I need to pull over again?"

"Shut up and just drive."

35mi

"Get out your iPod."

"It's dead." Scowling.

"I have a car charger."

Chris fidgets with the power and volume control on the radio. Then he reaches into a mass of cords beneath the stereo and uncovers a cord that could connect the iPod to the stereo's speakers and to the car charger.

The radio works - the little stem of the radio knob still functions.

Jake takes the end of the cord dubiously, unplugs his earbuds from the iPod, and plugs it in to the jeep instead.

I need a sign to let me know you're here

Jake leans back again. He looks out the window and for the first time since he'd been with Sherry, he is beginning to smile a little.

45mi

Jake sleeps in the front seat, his head turned away and wobbling with every gentle bump in the road as Chris continues on. He's scrolling through Jake's music, turning it down low. Then he shuts it off for awhile to let it charge.

He's sure Jake is asleep for awhile. So he cries silently, squeezing the steering wheel. Looking away into the desert as if he's doing something shameful.

51mi

The gas station smells like candy, gasoline, bread and bathroom cleaner. He picks up a couple sodas and some sandwiches to put in the cooler in the back. Jake wakes up when Chris shuts the car door and begins off again with the tank topped off for the long haul.

Chris hands him a soda.

"You okay?"

Jake is sweating even with the AC on. "-Fine." He sips at the soda, glancing at Chris and finally looking at him.

Chris drives. His forearms are corded with a relaxed, easy tension, directing the Jeep with effortless, languid movements. Then the road again unravels ahead. But Chris is not watching the road because there's hardly any traffic. He meets Jake's gaze for a split second.

"Were you crying?"

He shakes his head.

Jake nurses at the soda bottle, then props it between his legs.

"Do you hate me?"

Chris sighs. "No, Jake."

"I'm not like him. No matter what you're thinking." He presses the soda to his forehead.

"I don't know what to think. When I look at you."

"Don't think then. That's easy for you, right?" It's a joke and yet he's being cruel in his seriousness. "Cut me some slack sometimes, all right?"

"I will if you do me the same favor."

"Fine." Jake keeps the soda on his forehead, and leans back in his seat again.

55mi

"So what was he like?"

Chris frowns.

"I mean, before. Y'know. If there was a Before Crazy."

"I don't know where to start."

"Pick something." Jake scrolled through songs. Everything from angry aniegreign death metal to piano concertos. He didn't play anything yet. His eyes unfocused, and he sat up suddenly.

"Pull over."

"Bathroom break again?"

"I'm gonna puke."

Startled, Chris stops. Jake leans out of the passenger side door and vomits - one hard gush of body-temperature water from his stomach - until he's dry-heaving. Chris sits helplessly, watching him. He reaches across the seat and rubs his back with hesitant, small circles.

"Is it too hot in here for you?"

Jake shuts the car door. Paler than death. "Just drive."

Chris drives.

57mi

"Are you gonna tell me what's wrong or what?"

"Nothing's wrong with me. Shut up. Drive."

"Hey. Fair trade. You want me to tell you about Wesker, but you won't tell me what the hell is up with you?"

Jake can't stop shaking. He rubs his hands together, rubs his arms. He fidgets in his seat. Chris thinks he's never looked so miserable, never seen someone so uncomfortable in their own skin.

But Albert Wesker's son doesn't say anything.

58mi

Chris detours off the beaten path. He calls someone important on his phone. They're staying overnight at a hotel. Jake is sick again before they reach the hotel.

He trembles all the way to the room and trembles to the bed and lies in bed shaking.

"It hurts," he says.

"Withdrawal," Chris says flatly, dropping their bags to the floor in the middle of the room.

Jake buries his face in the pillow and sobs.

It feels like a nightmare. First it's Jake on the bed, writhing and sweating. Then Jake in the bathroom, dry-heaving over a yellowed toilet bowl. Jake screaming and shoving Chris, raging at the entire world. He refuses to drink anything. He hates everything that touches his skin and fights Chris with thrown punches when he wrestles him to the bath tub.

When he touches the water he screams as if he's being murdered in cold blood.

"Everything's okay," Chris tells the lady who knocks on their door. "Thought he saw a scorpion."


Jake has soaked the sheets in sweat. Lying beside him, he feels like he's cooling off, naked limbs swaddled in sheets for some semblance of decency. Every wired cord of muscle is strung like bridge wire. The air in the room smells sickly but Chris holds on.

"I'm sorry."

"You didn't bring anything with you?"

Jake's teeth clench. A fresh shudder rakes through his nerves, assaults his bones. "I'm quitting."

"You could die going cold-turkey. You know that, right?" There's real alarm in Chris's voice. He doesn't dare move. Jake is holding onto his forearm like a lifeline.

Jake just squeezes his eyes shut and holds tightly. "I know."


Morning. Jake's breathing steadily in his ear and warm beside him, though there's an inch of space keeping them apart now. He doesn't mind this Jake. He closes his eyes, turning his back to him. He feels like Wesker, he thinks. Stabbed with nostalgia, followed rapidly by guilt.

Jake is showering. He smells the body wash he brought with him. He peels the sheets off the mattress, the cases off the pillows, listening for him. The bathroom door is open and suddenly, Chris turns to just look. To see if he's all right. He sees the curve of his back, roadmapped scars, tattoos, muscle. His breath catches. Not like Wesker at all.

Wesker was perfect.

He's not sure about how he feels about it. He rakes his hands through his hair, drawing in a breath.

He's eager to get out of the hotel and keep moving.

65mi

Jake's listening to music, in a clean shirt. He's sipping another bottled water and nibbling on the crackers Chris bought from the gas station.

"Feeling okay?"

Jake shook his head, lifting his eyes and watching Chris's profile. "I don't think I ever will."

Chris frowns at the road and chews his lip. "Listen. We can turn around. We don't have to go out here. We'll get you into rehab."

Jake leans toward him, his eyes hardening. "No. Hell, no."

225mi

They're driving through another little town now. As they slow down and obey traffic laws, they inch past a couple of teenage girls that look like college age women - smooth and dark-skinned and generous thighs glistening under matching a sheen of sweat - one blonde and two brunettes in light tank tops and all of them bearing bottled water and apparently immune to the noonday sun.

Jake is sweating again under the A/C but now Chris thinks it's because he's still sitting in direct sunlight. He is following Chris's eyes as they pass. They're lovely willowy creatures of the land of sand and heat. Jake watches the blonde, her hair unkempt and tied back in a mess of flaxxen locks. Natural blonde, bleached in the sun. He devours her with his eyes, shameless. Chris is more covert, shooting glances. Licking his lips.

Then they're chugging through the green light and around the corner when Chris mumbles, "Blondes."

"What?"

"He had a thing for blondes."

"Really?"

"Really." Chris leans his arm out the window, well on his way to a trucker's tan which would do well to remedy his pallor. "He loved women in general. But he was a fool for women with fair hair, great skin. Mile long legs."

"No kidding."

"Yep."

"I mean - well—" Jake waves his hand and then rubs his forehead, a frown creasing between his pale brows. "I didn't know he had time for screwin' around, y'know?"

"Do you?"

Jake snorts, crawling to the back seat for water, digging through the plastic of the 24 pack case for another bottle. "Fuck do you think?"

"Well, there you go."

Jake drops back into the front seat, uncaps the water and chugs it.

Silence for awhile. Jake sips water and smiles; he's thinking about Sherry.

Chris looks to the road and only bites his tongue. He's thinking about Jill Valentine.

234mi

Jake's turned on the radio again, because he's tired of listening to the same twenty seconds of every song on his iPod as he decides which one he hates the least. He lets fate control what they listen to and keeps it on a station that Chris doesn't frown at.

235mi

Jake starts singing to Perfect Situation, softly at first, when it comes onto the classic rock station. Chris joins in and then it's both of them, loudly (and badly) at the chorus, belting 'whoa whoa's' together with overwhelming enthusiasm and they are grinning like idiots.

240mi

"Okay. Sigourney Weaver?"

"Too butch."

"How 'bout the girl that plays— Kirsten Stewart, that's her name. Her?"

"I don't like her eyes." Chris makes a less-than-pleased expression, gestures at his face vaguely. "Too… close together, I think."

"Megan Fox."

"Bangable."

"All right, fair enough. Uhh… how 'bout people we know?"

Chris rolls a shoulder, but now he feels a little touchy. Treading in shark-infested waters. "I dunno."

"Come on. Don't tell me there isn't a single woman you know that you haven't wanted to drill through a mattress."

"Nah. That's more Leon's bag."

"This is between you and me, but he kind of strikes me as a whore."

"It's not as bad as you think," Chris says in defense, but adds shortly and quietly, "But yeah, he kind of is. Was."

"No, but really—" Jake has his feet up on the dashboard again. He's leaning back, the windows are rolled down, and they're talking loudly above the roar of the wind through the jeep. "There's nobody back there in a tight little uniform you've got your eyes on?"

Just the pair of them in the jeep. It's okay, Chris thinks, to talk about this kind of stuff. But it's uncomfortable to discuss personal topics with someone like Jake - there are complications beyond complications, the boy still utterly and fantastically enigmatic. He wishes he could get straight answers as easily from Jake as Jake connives them out of Chris.

"I don't really engage in—"

"Come on, Redfield. Nothin' to be ashamed of." His eyes, alert and predatory, drilling holes into the side of his face.

"I'm not like that."

"So you've got a girlfriend already?"

Chris swerves evasively from the question. "Off-and-on kind of thing. We're complicated." Your father made sure it was.

"What about guys?"

Chris swallows, and his expression sobers.

Jake's folded his hands behind his head, giving him a sidelong look, unreadable yet curious. "You've fucked with guys?"

"Listen, Jake. I'm all for trying to get along here, but the questions are startin' to get a little fucking ridiculous. Can you just drop it?"

Jake glowers. He doesn't want to admit defeat. But there's a quiet desperation haunting Chris's expression, lurking beneath rice-paper-thin anger. He wonders for a long time what Chris doesn't want him to know here. He wonders how Chris could swing from cheerfully discussing women to shutting him down completely, closing off.

His eyes narrow, then finally close again. "Fine. Roll up the windows, would you? It's fuckin' baking in here."

275mi

Busted tire. Jake is bemused that a multi-million dollar military company cannot afford vehicles with tires that could withstand a simple journey across a bit of desert. Or at least afford the tires for the job. Chris is livid. He glares at the offending wheel as they stand in the slanting sun, mesquite trees leaving long jagged shadows across the packed dry earth.

"Well, that's bullshit." Chris opens all the buttons on his shirt and takes it off. Underneath is the white T-shirt he slept in last night, holding Jake in the dark. Jake stands back and waits to help him. The jeep came with a replacement tire, tools to fix it at least. As if they expected the thing to bust, Jake thinks.

And then he's watching Chris. His shoulders are strong and broad. The way his uniform had been built around him, it seemed, when they first met - guns ablazing, adrenaline high, tempers scorching. He remembers him being strong-looking even then - and remembers that Chris was the one who killed his father. This fact does not hurt or upset him as much as it did then.

As his muscles stretch the fabric of the Tee, he thinks, this is the man who killed my old man and I can't bring myself to hate him.

A drop of sweat crawls from his temple and down Chris's jaw, a silent bead of diamond-bright moisture.

The bad wheel comes off. Chris grunts, rolling it away and leaning it against the jeep door as Jake turns to roll the good one over. They lift together, a moment of comraderie sparking between the pair as they settle it on. It does not go unnoticed. Then Chris is screwing on the bolts, affixing the new wheel patiently.

"I'm glad you're here," Chris says honestly, straightening as he wipes his brow with his forearm. He's soaked with sweat already. Jake crosses his arms, fingers picking at a burn scabbing over.

"You're the only one who is."

They push the broken wheel back into the trunk, reload all their food and drink items, and push on. The A/C gushes hot air until it cools again. Jake is miserable until it starts to cool him off.

"Don't say that," Chris says as he watches him from the corner of his eye. He's tossed his shirt into the back seat. A dark patch of sweat is forming against his chest. He reaches over, hand on Jake's shoulder. "What about Sherry?"

"She doesn't want anything to do with me. You think a girl like her would want anything to do with a drugged-out asshole like me? Not counting the fact that my father was a mass-murdering bioterrorist social reject." Jake drugs on his thighs, then shoots a look at Chris. "No one wants me. No one cares. You're the only one that does right now. In this whole world... you're the only one that gives a shit." Jake lets the words sink in, before he looks away. He's not sure where this is coming from at the moment. For now, he's just hot and miserable and he wants this miserable ride to just be over.

Then he can do whatever the fuck he wants when they have enough of his blood to make their miracle serum with. He's fidgeting once more, and for all different reasons - as if he could explode out of his own body and free himself of it, and everything that comes with being attached to it.


Chris hasn't spoken for a long time. He continues on ahead. Jake reclines, an arm across his eyes to shield it from the sun. Then slowly, Chris pulls over. He leaves the jeep on, the A/C on. He gets out, shuts the door hard, and leans against the car with his arms folded and staring into the Mojave with deep concentration. Jake rolls his head to stare at his back. Unbelievably, Chris isn't moving. Then, after what feels like a half an hour has gone by, of Chris just standing, staring, thinking, Jake feels the car shift as he opens the door and climbs back into the driver's seat.

Jake finds this behavior quite unsettling... but fascinating. He doesn't understand Chris anymore. In truth, they still barely know each other. He peers at him for awhile and Chris knows he's being watched. Somehow, it's fine for the both of them.


It's very sudden. Chris leans over, meaningfully, as if to speak. He keeps his hand on the wheel. But there he is, his breath fanning against his cheek, and lays a kiss there. It's very sudden... and Jake doesn't move, and in fact he's paralyzed with fear... and understanding.

Every tiny little thing makes sense in a way that Jake hasn't expected. He tilts toward the kiss, breathing shallowly, quickly. "Stop."

Chris pulls away suddenly. "Shit. I'm sorry. I thought-"

"No. Stop the car."

"Are you sick?"

"Just stop, moron."

Chris stops. They dip into the side of the road.

Jake reaches for Chris.

But he hesitates.

"It's him, isn't it?"

Chris says nothing. He thinks of Piers and he thinks of Jill and Wesker and all the men and women he's ever kissed like that and he doesn't want Jake to be hurt. And he doesn't want to get hurt either.

"Wesker."

They sit silently for awhile, suspended conversation in favor of letting each other know the quiet between them was not hostile.

"All I've got left of him is you." Chris massages the steering wheel till his knuckles are white and his veins pop along his arm, uncomfortable. He doesn't look at Jake... but he is yearning, aching. He thought he could forget it, put it aside, drown it. But Piers made him ache that way. Before that, Jill. Wesker. And now Jake, infuriatingly young and yet so hopeless. He tries again to lean over, touching his fingers to his scar. "You're all... that's left."

His lips meet no resistence at all. Jake tastes sweet beneath all his sour. He doesn't fight because he's curious and maybe he's known all along that the only man to kill his father should have been the one who loved him.

He lets Jake push him back. He needed that much - to control, to delve into unfamiliarity on his own terms. It's fine with him.

Endless fascination. Jake never considered men this way before. Chris's longing and aching, however, lures him in, exploring every muscle, every sinew, not letting his mouth escape. His face is scratchy - but deep, past his teeth, he's soft, melting. Not so different.

Chris moans when he touches his cheek.

Not a car on the road goes by.

Wesker's son pushes him into the reclining driver's seat.

Jake learns how to make Chris weep.


The road rolls by. Jake doesn't speak. He listens to his headphones, filling his head with sound, and leaving Chris with the fateful radio. Every sad love song seems to find its way onto the station and Chris growls under his breath.

He can still feel the teeth marks on his shoulder. Felt them throb and wondered if it was visible - that throbbing twinging pain.

Slowly, Jake pulls out one of the earbuds and says, without looking, "You okay?"

Chris blinks. "What, me? Oh. Yeah. Great."

"We're almost there."

"Yeah, just a few more miles."

Jake scrolls through the dozens of songs and bites his lip. "I'm scared," he admits quietly. "What if... if it's like China?"

Six months, staring at the white walls, doing nothing but learn Mandarin and miss Sherry - Sherry who wanted nothing to do with him once their hands shook good-bye and money had changed hands.

"It's not," Chris says sternly. "You're a free man here, Jake. They can't do anything to you if you don't want them to, got it?"

"Yeah," Jake agrees, but he doesn't believe. "You'll walk in with me, right?"

"I'll be right there."

Just like that, the potent male that had claimed Chris in the driver seat is gone and Jake is just a young man again. A child, even. His eyes look bruised and tired from his trial overnight. He's curling up in his seat now, trying to drown out the hammering of his heart with the loudest music he could find.

But only Chris's voice knifes through. "I'm not leaving you. No one's throwin' you to the sharks, Jake."

324mi

The facility is friendly at second glance. Local flora planted to outline the parking lots prettily, as if to spite of the tall chainlink fence with constantina wire framing the top. It was a single warehouse-sized facility, thousands of square footage, all neatly packed into offices, living space, laboratories for examination.

Chris Redfield is admitted for clearance. He had called ahead and confirmed his ETA, apologizing again for the lateness. Jake had been sicker than a dog last night and traveling was out of the question.

They are greeted by unfamiliar faces at the door. Jake carries his bag and stuck out his jaw, defiant and aloof. But chris knows and he won't tell. He's still scared, but months of hardened military experience have stripped all the boy away and left a calloused, tattooed exterior.

Chris walks in with him with his hand on his shoulder. He squeezes so hard, it hurts.


"Any allergies?"

"No."

"Any medication?"

"Nope."

"Are you or have you ever been sexually active within the past six months?"

A quirk of a smile. "Yeah."

A mark checked off.

"Have you ever used any drugs such as cocaine, methampetamines, or any other substance?"

The smirk fades quickly. He glanced to the two-way glass. Chris is watching through it, right there, but he can't feel his heat nearby.

"Be honest," Chris had said. "No matter what they ask you. It's not their job to judge you based on your answers, all right?"

"Yes."

Chris nods and smiles, and Jake looks down at the clean faux-wooden table, hating the cleanliness, the bright lights. He sweats underneath them.

Everything in here is made of plastic. Fake.


"You get your own room for awhile and everything." Chris does his best to smile reassuringly. "They'll help you get off your addiction, get you settled down. I know it's been rough."

Chris is being nice. So nice, in fact, Jake can't stand it. He turns and glares at him, anxiously throwing his bag to the comfortable twin-sized bed in the room. It's furnished like a hotel - very accomodating.

Still. To Jake it feels like a prison - a soft cushioned prison to keep undesirables.

"Is this where we hug and kiss and say good-bye? Tell each other we'll never be apart?" Jake spits venom.

"Don't be like that."

"What other way am I supposed to be?" Jake scornfully pushes the alarm clock toward the wall. The time isn't even set right. But at least there are windows. The desert stretches on ahead. "How long do you think they're gonna keep me in here, huh? I don't want to stay in this shithole forever."

"Jake, quit it!" Chris takes a breath, and lets it out. There's an angry young Wesker in the room, mouthy and nothing like the man with a temper like frostbite. "Remember what I said? I wasn't going anywhere." He gestures. "I'll be just down the hall for a few days. Your door isn't locked. You're not a prisoner. There's a kitchen where everyone goes for meals but there's no rule that says you can't eat up here."

"I can go wherever I want?"

"Wherever you want." Chris grins. "Wait'll you see the greenhouse."


It's a huge terrarium. There are birds everywhere. Jake stands beside a group of a dozen different huge, dripping flowers with the distinct scent of life and heat pressing in all around him. But it's cool in here, too. Huge leafy trees crane overhead, shading him. Ten steps further and he was already lost. There was green everywhere and the colors soft and easy on his sun-burnt eyes.

Chris hovers, watching Jake look around. The place is as alien to him as the desert had been, coming from a part of the world that was so gray and so cold most of the year. He loses himself in the greenage, too. He hasn't thought of Piers in a few hours, and he looks around, wondering what he would have said of this place. The air in here is so humid, so thick, it chokes him.

"Jake?"

His eyes have singled out one flower. He's standing over it, turning his wallet over in his hands. Everything in it that was important.

"Do you ever miss him?"

Chris stands closer. He doesn't know what the name of the flower is, but it's small and unbelievably blue. Ther were a lot of blues in Chris's life - most potent of which was the blue of the jeep. Blue of their BSAA symbol. Their uniforms.

Jake's eyes were not the same blue. Almost white, actually. He remembers seeing a picture of a woman on the cover of a National Geographic - her face had been covered all her life as a woman by a shawl, and the photographer had loved her eyes - her olive-toned face had been unspeakably lovely. But it had been her eyes, so vivid - not the same as Jake's but that's what Chris thinks of.

Jake's fingertips move close as if to touch the rare flower. He hesitates.

"Yeah. I do."

"Sometimes? All the time?" His tone demands clarity.

"All the time," Chris decides. He doesn't know why. But he needs to be honest too. "I miss him all the time. I wish... all the time... if things had been different. Maybe...If I'd been a better friend - I don't know."

Chris is bad at expressing himself. He realizes too late that he doesn't know what to make of Jake, or Wesker - or any of this. And he can still remember the way Jake tasted on his lips, the way his skin felt under his tongue in the jeep on the side of the road. His eyes follow the slope of the young man's shoulders as he bows his head.

Back in his room, Jake stretches out on the bed naked, because even as he shakes and trembles with cold, he hates the feeling of clothing on his skin. He feels nauseaous and miserable, knowing that Chris is only a few doors away. He rolls over, sweat pooling beneath him on the sheets. In an hour he tears off the sheets and lies on the bare mattress. He tries to sleep for three hours until he wakes up, vomiting mostly-digested dinner into the bathroom.

In the greenhouse.

Jake curls on the soft dirty floor in a pair of jeans and his boots, a pillow clutched beneath his arm. He can't stand the plastic indoor-smell.

He sleeps fitfully until the groundskeeper quietly tells him the sun is coming up and he should probably go to his own room.


He's put off his breakfast by an upset stomach. Chris plops down near him as he lounges in the far corner of the cafeteria - big presence, big appetite.

Jake yawns.

"I hear you didn't sleep so good last night," Chris says quietly, pushing with one finger an entire piece of bacon into his mouth.

"What's it to you?"

"The garden guy told me you slept in the greenhouse. Why did you want to go out there?"

"What the hell do you care?" Irritation flares. Jake bites his lip, fidgeting. He doesn't feel good. The smell of the bacon is making him sick.

"Sorry." Slowly, carefully, Chris pushes his plate farther from Jake. He leans forward, but not too close. Not afraid. Cautious. "Jake."

"I'm not hungry."

"Try some toast."

"I don't want toast."

"All right." Chris gives up for now. Even so, he nudges a piece of toasted bread at him on a napkin. "I'm gonna finish this. After, you wanna go for another walk?"

"I don't know..."

"Come on... Maybe it'll take your mind off of it."

Jake eyes Chris. As if to say, shut up before I break your teeth in. Don't talk about it in here.

"Fine. I'll meet you by the greenhouse. Place looks huge. I'm sure we haven't seen all of it."

"All right."


The greenhouse is huge. There's a cornucopia of green life in here. The early morning mist makes it cooler, easier to breathe. They walk - Chris having nothing more to do until later, when he has a debriefing to enjoy with the Mojava Department Director. One hand is stuffed in his pocket and the other swinging with each slow lazy step. Jake sweats in a shortsleeve gray Tee, but moves alongside him, looking at everything, drowning his senses, drowning the noise in his blood, pounding out some semblance of rebalanced homeostasis.

There's a clearing - secluded and quiet, hanging branches with flat broad leaves. Jake stops, drawing a deep breath. The toast settles in his belly.

"What's the matter?"

"Here."

"What?"

Jake turns and pulls his hand out of his pocket. He pulls him deeper into the flush dark green, dragging fingers through his hair. Chris quells the urge to resist, to speak reason. He doesn't understand. He doesn't think. He knows Jake is after something to fix him, fix whatever's wrong.

He's looking in his hair, in his lips, under his jaw where his pulse is beating so very fast. In the pores of his skin.

He can almost taste it in his sweat, tries suck it out of his tongue.

He looks for it in his jeans, finds it in the breathless moan Chris muffles in his shoulder. And there's more in the powerful swells of muscle in his thighs when he pushes Chris into the pungent loamy earth, rolling and squirming. Whatever It is, he finds even more in after he pulls away handfuls of clothing, stripping him down to the raw, devouring him to the quick.

It's the only thing Chris has that can make it stop.

They're aching and burning together now - but the real pain comes when Chris feels Jake shudder, hears him sob, buried somewhere between hope and despair, in the cavernous emptiness of his heart and the weak delirium that fucking spills into his bloodstream. It comes so close.

But it's the only thing that helps.


"Head up."

Chris chews the inside of his cheek as he watches them examine Jake further. The nurse checks the lymphs in Jake's throat.

"You've lost a lot of weight?"

"Yeah."

"You haven't been eating."

"Just nervous. Hate hospitals."

Jake's eyes are bruised with sleeplessness. His jaw is set, already lining up every perfect answer to dodge her pointed questions about his addiction.

"You're experiencing withdrawal," the doctor said patiently, taking the clipboard from the nurse as she bustled away. "If these symptoms persist, we have medications here to help you get through it without having to suffer them."

The BSAA was equipped to deal with all manner of medical ailments - self-inflicted or not. It is no wonder that Jake's secret could not be kept to himself. He presses his lips firmly together, shifting on the table, leaning back to watch Chris who stands silently in the corner of the room. He doesn't need to be there but he volunteered to hear the answers.

"Other than that... you're in perfectly good health. No long-term damage due to the substance abuse. You're good to go. I'd suggest staying here for a few days to relax." The doctor smiled. She had lovely large brown eyes, long auburn hair tied in a neat pony tail. A pen was stuck behind her ear, and her nametag said PhD. Frederica. "If you're feeling miserable, come back to the infirmiry and we'll let you borrow one of our day rooms with some medicine. I'm prescribing you some nausea pills to help you get some food down."

It's a temporary fix. But Jake is starving suddenly, and when Chris presses a hand over his shoulder and squeezes, it hurts but not too terribly.

As they wander away from the infirmery they take the long hallway with the large windows that face the garden. Jake yawns. "I'm starving. I think I wanna take a nap."

"Feel free. You can use my bed." Chris sways closer, and it's almost romantic when he slides his hand along his lower back, hesitantly. Jake leans a few centimeters closer.

It's only a matter of time before he needs it again.

Jake naps in Chris's room, not sweating, with a stomachful of stew. He's as still as a corpse and almost snoring. Chris leaves him be and heads out, pulling on his jacket, wincing when he rubs his neck. There's dark mark on his throat when he checks in the mirror.

"Son of a bitch."

(End of Chapter 1)