People kept dying.
Sure, so did the machines. The Resistance had been able to damage some parts of their infrastructure greatly but that didn't change the fact that people kept dying and they were harder to replace than machines.
It weren't only the machines that cut into their ranks but also diseases, malnutrition. The nuclear contaminated landscape they were all living didn't help at all. Babies were born with deformities, people got cancer and died soon since they had no treatment available, not a few of them committed suicide which was better for everyone involved.
The Resistance retained a semblance of civilisation but the survivors that lived in scattered, nomadic tribes out there were little more than animals. They lived by the law of the jungle and killed each other mercilessly for the possession of worthless trumpery, stale memorabilia of a better time.
On most days it looked like they were fighting in a war they had long since lost. Of course no one wanted to say that out loud and those who usually didn't live long enough to repeat it or spread it among the others.
If it had only been the machines killing them, or the Grays, but Derek had seen whole outposts of the Resistance slaughtered by something that hadn't been metal or their human servants.
He had lost men and women to them, too, out in the open especially in the beginning when they hadn't yet realised that they had to watch out for their own people as much as for the machines.
And Derek could understand them. He had lived like that for four years until the machines had gotten Kyle and he had been picked up by the Resistance.
He didn't know how John had lived during the first years of the war. Maybe the machines had captured him as soon as the smoke from the nuclear bombs had cleared but John never talked about his past before the time he had met Kyle and usually John didn't talk about anything that wasn't here and now and today, and if they were lucky John talked about tomorrow.
/
you are back John always sounded faintly surprised when he said that and Derek couldn't blame him. So far he was one of the few who always came back.
John pulled him in and kissed him. He stroked Derek's short hair, kissed his lips, his forehead, his neck. They blindly crossed the room until Derek hit the cot with the back of his knees and John pushed him down, straddling him. His hands pressed Derek's shoulders down and he kissed him again, passionately but not violently.
He slipped his shirt over his head and Derek did the same while keeping his eyes glued to John, taking in the scarred skin and the gaunt, stringy body. In the dim light John's dark eyes seemed to glow with intensity and in another life he would have been a beautiful man with a boyish smile and laugh lines around his eyes but here and now he was just another haggard face short of starvation.
Derek loved him here and now.
They removed their clothes flailingly, trying to touch everywhere at once, entwined in hungry, clumsy embraces.
John let his hand trail down Derek's hips, his thighs and calves and Derek wrapped his legs around John's waist, trying to get them even closer to each other, trying to crawl into each other's skin and stay there.
i love you John whispered to him when they lay next to each other afterwards, half on top of each other on the small cot, stealing a moment before the ever present danger would interrupt them.
what if we die tomorrow? Derek asked back.
then today was still right. was John's answer it will always be right, never forget that
why would i? Derek asked curiously but John merely entangled their fingers and lay his head down on Derek's chest.
no reason