Trin

Trin by J.M. Snyder

Aspen Mountain Press www.aspenmountainpress.com

Copyright ©2006 by JM Snyder

NOTICE: This eBook is licensed to the original purchaser only. Duplication or distribution to any person via email, floppy disk, network, print out, or any other means is a violation of International copyright law and subjects the violator to severe fines and/or imprisonment. This notice overrides the Adobe Reader permissions which are erroneous. This eBook cannot be legally lent or given to others. This eBook is displayed using 100% recycled electrons.

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Trin by J.M. Snyder

Praise for the writing of J.M. Snyder Shorts For aficionados of m/m intimacy, Mr. Snyder definitely knows how to lay out the plot and characterizations and then turn up the flames! The themes range from hot biker sex, to pickup trucks, to horse stables; from swimming pools, to office environments, the Internet, and outer galaxies. Bondage, aliens, bikers, coworkers, musicians—Mr. Snyder has a creative imagination and the flair to make the reader believe. If you love gay fiction, or if you just seek a good quality read in a variety of settings and themes, don't miss out on this one. Annie. 4..5 Euro Reviews WARNING This e-Book contains sexually graphic scenes and adult language. Store your e-Books carefully, where they cannot be accessed by under-age readers.

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Trin by J.M. Snyder

Trin J. M. Snyder Aspen Mountain Press

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Trin by J.M. Snyder

Trin Copyright © 2006 by J.M. Snyder This e-Book is a work of fiction. While references may be made to actual places or events, the names, characters, incidents, and locations within are from the author's imagination and are not a resemblance to actual living or dead persons, businesses, or events. Any similarity is coincidental. Aspen Mountain Press PO Box 473543 Aurora CO 80047-3573 www.aspenmountainpress.com First published by Aspen Mountain Press, August 2006 www.aspenmountainpress.com This e-Book is licensed to the original purchaser only. Duplication or distribution via any means is illegal and a violation of International Copyright Law, subject to criminal prosecution and upon conviction fines and/or imprisonment. The e-Book cannot be legally loaned or given to others. No part of this e-Book can be shared or reproduced without the express permission of the publisher. ISBN: (10) 1-60168-007-4 ISBN: (13) 978-1-60168-007-5 Printed in the United States of America Editor: Sandra Hicks Cover artist: J.M. Snyder 5

Trin by J.M. Snyder

Trin The run-gunners roll into the outposts like the very devlars themselves. Wild men, guns blazing in the setting sun, raising a crowd of cheering spectators in the dust that trails them from the wasteland. Trin is in the garage, resting on a stack of balding tires and fanning himself with an oily rag, when the earth rumbles beneath his feet from the growl of their engines. As he stands, his stomach clenches like a fist. Behind him a door opens and slaps shut, a languid sound in the heat of the evening. "Gunners," Aissa says, coming up beside him. "I know." Trin doesn't want to think about the men—he's hot enough already. Running a hand through his sweaty hair to push it from his face, he watches Aissa cross to the open bay doors. When she leans out of the shadows to peer down the road, the last rays of sunlight set her long red curls aflame. Trin wants to call to her, tell her to come back, but what's the use? Whether or not they see her, the gunners are headed this way. They'll dump their trucks at the garage before they head for Blain's waystation in search of a hot meal, a cold drink, and a soft pallet to bed down in for the night. Blain is Trin's brother, older by twenty odd years. He was a gunner, too, until devlars got their parents on a run between outposts. Trin was eight at the time and doesn't remember his mother. In his memories, his father and Blain are the same man. Blain 6

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gave up the life and settled down in Arens with the waystation, garage, and a little brother his only inheritance. Aissa tucks a strand of hair behind her ear and laughs. "Gerrick's with them," she tells Trin. Turning, she gives him a wink and suggests, "Maybe finally—" Trin's face heats up at her tone. "Stop it," he mutters. He has a thing for the gunners—strong, brave men who tear through the wasteland, defending the runs against the creatures out there, preybirds and devlars. Gunners travel in packs, like wolves, two or three run-gun trucks barreling down the empty stretches of land that link the outposts together, kicking up hot, blasted sand in their wake. A couple times a month they come through Arens. Trin's only seen Gerrick once before but he's heard the talk and he's in love with the man. He asks every gunner about him— Blain's grown tired of his questions and doesn't even answer anymore. "I've told you already," he'll say, mulling over the accounts. He isn't a businessman and it takes him most of the month to keep the books balanced. "I haven't seen him in years, Trin. I rode with him once to Oriel, once, and that was it." "But he likes boys," Trin will prompt. That excites him, the thought that he might catch Gerrick's eye if the gunner ever does chance through Arens. "You said—" Blain will nod, weary. "He likes them, yes. Now get. You see I'm busy here." And now here he comes. Trin smoothes back his hair again and feels the grease in it. Maybe Aissa is wrong. Maybe Gerrick isn't with the gunners. Can he clean up before they 7

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get here? All this time talking him up, he thinks. He hates the smirk on Aissa's face. Let him keep going, please. Let him just pass right by. Here's his chance and suddenly he doesn't want it. What if Gerrick doesn't notice him? What if he doesn't care? Down the street, engines roar like caged beasts. Aissa shoves her hands deep into the pockets of her overalls and rocks back on her heels. "The trump owner told you he was headed this way." "Yeah," Trin concedes, "but I didn't think he was serious." The old man runs a store at the palisade selling face powders and dehydrated food. What the hell's he know about the gunners? He was just talking shit to get Trin worked up. "Aissa, are you sure it's him?" "It's his mark," she says. She has to shout over the sounds now, engines growling, cheers from the crowd, gunfire like caps popping in the heat. "On the side of the truck, Trin. I'd know it anywhere, you talk about it often enough." Gerrick then. Here. Here. **** Aissa is two years younger than Trin and sweet Jesus, twice as mean. She told him once that's all she has: her hair, her tits; her attitude, but in this world, that's a lot. She's not pretty and she knows it, which is one thing he likes about her. There's a strawberry-colored birthmark blotched across her forehead that darkens in the sun and she has a scar above her lip that she claims is from fending off a devlar attack. 8

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Trin knows better. He's known her since she was six years old—they met right after his parents died. He was sitting on a hitching post outside the waystation, waiting for Blain to arrive, not really feeling much of anything as he watched a scrappy slip of a girl across the street kicking stones. Every now and then he'd turn and stare down the dusty road, but his brother wasn't in sight. Each time he looked back, the girl was closer and she had a catty way of looking at him from the corner of her eye that unnerved him. The next time he glanced down the road, she ran over to the hitching post and pushed him, both hands flat against the small of his back, right the hell off. No reason. Scuffed his knees and hands in the stones she'd been kicking. She got the scar when he pegged a rock at her and it split her lip. He'd never seen so much blood in his life. "It's alright," he told her, trying to dab at the cut with the hem of his shirt. The fabric was dusty from where he landed in the dirt, and every time he tried to touch her, she wailed. Her jagged crying was like a saw cutting through his thoughts. "Shh," he said. The corner of his shirt found her face and she screamed in pain. "Shh, girl. Stop crying, will you? Just stop bleeding already." She punched him hard in the nuts and he yanked her hair, and they probably would've kept it up if Blain hadn't stepped in at that moment. Trin hadn't even heard him ride up. "She started it," he muttered. "She's a girl," Blain explained. He had a deep voice that scared Trin and hands that seemed too big to be real. When he knelt down beside Aissa, it seemed to take years for his 9

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knees to touch the ground. With large, saucer-like eyes, Aissa watched those hands. Once or twice she hitched her breath but the tears were gone, the cries, the screams. Trin thought maybe even the cut stopped bleeding once Blain arrived. Ten years later, she had that same wide-eyed look when Trin ran into her in the hall above the waystation common room. It was late and she should've been asleep, they both should've, but a gunner had promised to tell Trin about Gerrick's latest exploit if he'd touch the man and Trin was already half hard with anticipation when he bumped into Aissa. She wore a thin robe and nothing else—Trin could see the dark silhouette of her curves through the material. "Where—" he started. She pulled the robe closed at her throat and threw her hair back, defiant. The birthmark on her forehead looked like a burn against her pale skin. "Blain," she said simply. "If he'll have me. Good night." With that, she brushed past him. Always getting what she wants, that's another thing Trin liked about her. She simply told his brother look, this is the way it is, and in the face of that, what could Blain do? "You should give it a go, Trini," she's said. "You think Gerrick doesn't know you like him? The others have to talk about it. Be like 'there's this kid in Arens who's all about you, don't you know?' Mention your name and he'll follow you around like a lost pup. When he comes through here—and he will, I know it—when he does, just tell him, 'Hey. It doesn't even have to be love, you know? Wake up beside me in the 10

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morning, think about me on the run, come back here when you can.' What more could you possibly hope to want?" **** The run-gun trucks tear through the open bays and crouch in the middle of the garage, idling. There are two vehicles, five men between them. Devlar hides are strung across the grilles and the beasts' wings hang like prizes from the antennas. Caked mud eats into the rust and paint, but Trin can see Gerrick's mark well enough. Aissa's right, he's finally here. When the men file out of the trucks, Trin sees him immediately. There's more grey in the blond hair and deeper lines around the grey-green eyes, but it's him, it's Gerrick, Trin would know him anywhere. Once, years ago, Blain took Trin out to Konstas with him to trade for parts and on the run home, their engine died. Sort of ironic, Trin thought at the time, lying on the hood of Blain's old jalopy and staring up into the nuclear sky while his brother swore at the truck. A bed full of burned out motors and none of them worked. If it weren't for the heat baking his skin and the dust clogging his nose, he might have even laughed. In the drowsy sun, Trin didn't hear the devlars until they were swarming over the back of the truck. "Trin!" Blain cried. His brother gave him a shove that sent him sliding off the hood and into the dust, and before he could stand Blain grabbed the back of his shirt and hauled him to his feet. 11

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Dark shadows flittered over the ground from preybirds circling above, sensing a kill. Trin got one good look at the devlars—claws and teeth and hateful eyes like drops of black blood—and then his brother foisted him into the cab of the truck, slammed the door shut behind him. Inside the heat was stifling and Trin could hear the insidious sound of dry wings rubbing together, teeth squealing off metal, his brother's gun firing laborious rounds into the horde. What about when the pillshot ran out? What about when they overtook Blain and Trin was trapped inside? He tried to peer through the windows but they were thick with dust. His heart hammered in his chest—three seconds ago, he was almost asleep. He couldn't seem to comprehend that this wasn't part of a sun-induced dream. The ground rumbled like thunder and Trin wiped at the windshield, desperate to see. From out of the swirling sand rode two large run-gun trucks, one gunner on each roof, another leaning out the passenger side windows, flames licking from their guns. The driver of the closest truck held it on the run with one hand and aimed into the devlars with the gun in his other. Trin saw the driver's hand steady on the steering wheel, felt the pellets from his gun strike the truck, each shot carefully aimed. Later, after the devlars were dead and the men gone as quickly as they had appeared, he asked Blain who they were. "Gunners," his brother replied. The look he gave Trin suggested that he thought the sun had melted part of his brother's brain. 12

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"I know that," Trin said. He remembered the driver's smoky eyes, the blond mustache above lips pulled back in a grimace, each shot fired true. Not one astray, not one. "But who are they?" he persisted. "Did you know them when you gunned?" At Blain's nod, Trin wanted to know, "The tall one, the driver? Who's he?" Blain laughed. "How do you know he's tall? He stayed in the cab." It was no matter to Trin, tall or not. He had to know. Those hands, those eyes. "Who is he?" "Gerrick," Blain told him. Gerrick. **** The evening sun slants into the garage, casting the chrome and steel in a golden glow. As Gerrick hefts a travel pack from the bed of his truck, he laughs at something one of the other gunners says. The crowd that followed the men through the outposts now jostles around the bay doors but Aissa won't let them into the garage. They stand at the shadow's edge and call out to the gunners, laugh, shriek, cry, anything to get the men's attentions. Each time someone shouts Gerrick's name, Trin feels a tiny jolt in his chest that sends his blood racing. He wants to be lost in the people, obscured by anonymity, free to scream out for the gunner, too. Aissa's voice rings through his mind, Don't you think he knows? Trin doesn't dare dwell on that. 13

Trin by J.M. Snyder

Gerrick tosses the pack to the other gunner, then starts to unstrap the hides stretched over his truck. From where he stands, Trin watches the flow of muscle beneath Gerrick's shirt, faded chambray bleached almost white in the sun. Each time he moves, sand trickles out from the folds of his jeans, and he shakes more from his hair, dusts dirt off the hides. When he looks up, his eyes fill with the dying sunlight and flash in a way that reminds Trin of a cougar's cry. Over the sound of the bay doors sliding shut, the gunner asks, "Who's the mech here?" For a moment no one answers. Beyond the doors, the crowd is muted like the sough of sand blowing against shuttered windows and Trin is all too aware of the quiet sounds inside the garage, the low talk between the gunners, the jingle of buckles as packs are shouldered, the click of boot heels on the concrete floor. Gerrick's gaze slides over Trin like he's not even there, finding Aissa instead. "You the mech? I blew out my shocks on the last run, and I think the carb's got a leak. You'll take a look?" "Trin will." As she passes by where Trin stands, she snags his arm and drags him after her. When Gerrick looks at him, he almost forgets to keep walking. Those eyes are much lighter than he remembered. "He's the mech here. You say the shocks are gone?" Studying Trin, Gerrick says, "Damn thing rides like a wild bronc." His lips curve into a slow, sly smile, and one eyebrow rises suggestively. "It's hard to aim straight when the road's bucking beneath you. That might be fine for the pallet but not 14

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out in the wastes. What's your name again, boy? I didn't catch it." "Trin," Aissa replies. She leans back against Gerrick's truck, props her elbows up on the rails of the bed behind her and gives Trin an amused smirk that he wants to smack from her face. "You just don't know—" Gerrick raises a hand to silence her. "So this is your garage, huh?" he asks Trin. Aissa nods. "He's the only mech here. His brother—" Irritation flickers across Gerrick's chiseled features and annoyance creeps into his voice. "Can't he answer himself? He's not mute, is he?" Trin's face flashes with bright heat. "I can talk just fine," he says, sudden anger and embarrassment prompting him to speak. Gerrick's eyes soften as he smiles, turning away from Aissa to give Trin his full attention. When he lowers his head, a strand of sand-colored hair falls across his brow and he looks impossibly young. "So you're the mech," he drawls. His gaze trails down over Trin's chest, his stomach, his crotch, as palpable as a hand caressing his skin. With a small grunt, he adds, "You want to take a look under my hood?" Behind him Aissa murmurs, "Do you even have to ask?" Trin wants to disappear. Fall through the grate in the floor, evaporate in the heat, burst into flames, anything to get out from under Gerrick's scrutiny. Don't you think he knows. Isn't that what Aissa said? That Trin thinks about him. That he asks about him. That he's dreamed about this moment, finally talking to him, finally meeting him, gotten off on it before. 15

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He's imagined getting lost in Gerrick's eyes and stroking his fingers through that dusty hair, and feeling those lips on his body. He knows just how Gerrick's moustache would tickle when they kissed. He knows what those hands would feel like holding his. Just standing here so close to the gunner has Trin flushed and hard as stone. And from the way Gerrick smiles faintly, his gaze straying from Trin's face as if he stood naked before him, oh sweet Mary above, it's so obvious he knows. **** Aissa makes no motion to leave the two of them alone. Her eyes shine like new copper pennies and she has to bite her lower lip to keep from grinning as Trin follows Gerrick around to the front of his truck. He gives her dark looks that the gunner doesn't see, but she ignores them. "Go get him," she whispers, giving him her best sex kitten growl, a rumbly rrrawr that makes his face burn. "Shut up." Aissa laughs and Gerrick looks back at him, bemused. "Don't you have anything else you could be doing?" Trin asks her. She thinks a moment—the other gunners are inside the waystation now, probably ordering lunch and popping coins into the jukebox. Aissa runs the kitchens but she has a slew of chore girls under her and doesn't have to help out when the men ride in. Shaking the curls from her face, she says, "Nope. Not a damn thing." At the front of the truck, Gerrick stops and leans against the running board, waiting for Trin. The gunner's gaze is like 16

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the sun on his body, warming his skin through the thin clothing he wears. "Trin," Gerrick says softly. Trin walks around the truck and resists the urge to fall into him. He tries to lift the hood and can't. He slips his fingers into the crack where the hood meets the rest of the truck and feels for the release mechanism, but it's not there. He tugs on the hood, sticks his fingers under it again in search of the release, frowns at the truck and tries to pretend Gerrick isn't staring at him. But sweat trickles down the sides of his face because it's hot in here, he's hot, and he can't get the damn hood open. He's done this a million times, he doesn't know why it's not working all of a sudden, he's found the release, he can feel it but can't seem to open the goddamn hood— "Here." Gerrick takes Trin's arm to move him aside and Trin almost swoons from the touch. "It's a little tricky, kid. You have to know what you're doing..." He eases his fingers under the hood and his tongue comes out to touch the end of his moustache as he looks at the ceiling, fingers fumbling for the release. "Temperamental," he says with a glance Trin's way. "Like an old man. You just have to touch him right and— " The hood pops up an inch and Gerrick steps back, grinning. He winks at Trin. "You'll get him up," he finishes. Sweeping an arm at the open hood, he says, "All yours, boy. Trin, is it?" Trin nods. The hood is heavy—for a few scary moments he can't seem to dislodge the thin metal rod that will hold it up 17

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for him, but finally the rust breaks away and he can prop the hood open. Peering into the maw, Trin catches his breath when Gerrick leans down beside him. He has to clear his throat twice before he's able to speak. "The shocks?" he asks. Dimly he's aware that he sounds as if he's never seen a motor before. A firm hand encircles his elbow. "Trin," Gerrick murmurs. When Trin turns, he finds the gunner right up on him, so close that he can see the sunburnt skin begin to flake on the man's forehead. "Blain's brother, right?" Those gray-green eyes look through him and Trin thinks, Blain who? "How's that old bastard been?" "Alright," Trin whispers. In his dreams of meeting the gunner one day, he never imagined that all they'd have to talk about was his brother. He always has a million questions for the others who come through here—"How do you know Gerrick?" and "Where's he been running lately?" and "Tell me about the last time you met up with him, everything he said, every little detail." And now that he's confronted with the man, his tongue can't even form the most rudimentary words. With those sure fingers on his arm, his brain is having a pretty hard time even thinking in language. At the moment he's just a swirl of emotion inside. "Trin," Gerrick says again. Hearing his name in that voice, Trin's heart skips a beat. Those lips curve into an amused grin below the grey-blond bristles of his moustache. "So you're the one always asking after me, eh?" 18

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Footsteps puncture the moment as Aissa moves away from the truck. Trin's gaze flickers to her as she comes around to where they stand—she sees that hand on his arm and hears the gunner's soft words, and the look she gives them says she expected as much. "Going to get the hose," she laughs, walking away. "Don't mind me." Gerrick sighs, an exasperated sound. He releases Trin's elbow. Ghosts of his fingers linger on his skin. "How about tonight, kid?" he asks. Trin catches his breath and Gerrick shrugs. "I've heard the things you'll do for a gunner who mentions my name. What I want to know is," his smile widens suggestively and his eyes brighten, "what'll you do for me?" **** "What'd he say?" Aissa wants to know. She hounds Trin long after Gerrick has followed the other gunners into the waystation, leaving the dazed mech to stare into the shadowy depths of his run-gun engine. One word rings in Trin's ears like the clatter of a wrench dropped to the concrete garage floor. Tonight. If Aissa would shut up long enough to let him gather his thoughts together, he could tell her what it is she wants to know. He said tonight. But when he mentions that he can't get a word in for all her questions, she turns the hose on him. By the time he calls it a day, his hands are black with oil from changing the shocks. At the pump he has to scrub with stones to see his skin again. Aissa primes the handle as he rinses off, more than once splashing him out of spite, but he 19

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barely feels the water—his pants and shirt are damp and clammy from where she sprayed him earlier. "So," she wants to know, letting the pump run dry, "you excited?" "No," he lies. His heart flutters like a bird caught in his chest and he gets dizzy if he turns his head too fast. There's a barely perceptible quiver to his fingers that has nothing to do with the icy water running over them. He can picture himself walking down the darkened hall above the common room. He can imagine stopping in front of Gerrick's door. He can even see himself inside, the pallet spread out like an invitation on the floor, the gunner standing beside it and smiling at him. What would you do, he asks in Trin's mind, for me? Then he begins to take off his shirt and somewhere between the first button and the last, Trin explodes. Flicking him with the last of the water as it rushes from the pump, Aissa declares, "You're full of shit." "What?" She shakes her head, her curls tumbling over her shoulders. "You're already so worked up over him, Trini, that you ain't gonna be any good in his pallet tonight." "Maybe that's not what he has in mind." Trin pouts, though it's surely what he has in mind and if he doesn't get a piece of that man tonight, he's going to be more than a little disappointed in the morning. He'll be crushed. Still, it's not really any of her business what he does with his clothes off, is it? "Maybe all he wants to do is talk." "Bullshit." 20

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Trin holds his hands up in her face and shakes them dry, splattering her with oil and water. "Eww!" One leg shoots out automatically to kick him in the shin. "If he wanted to talk, he could do it here. Stop it. Trin—" He drops his hands to his stomach, where they fist in a clean spot on his shirt. She lowers her voice to an intimate level and watches his fingers twist in the material. "All someone has to do is say his name," she murmurs, "and you're all too willing to bend over for them." "That's not true," Trin protests, but he can't meet her gaze. He's never actually let any of the gunners fuck him just so he could hear Gerrick's latest exploit. He'll touch them, lick them, suck them, rim them, finger them, sure. Hands thrust into pants, lips on hard dicks, the taste of salty cum lingering in his mouth, that he's done before, just to hear Gerrick's name. But now he's here. It'll be the man himself tonight, no one else. Finally. The only other guy Trin's ever put out for was a kid his own age, Monet, back before he even knew Gerrick existed. He was the darkest boy Trin ever met—his skin glistened in the sun like flints of obsidian and his black eyes were redrimmed slits in the high plains of his face. A beautiful boy who rode through Arens from one of the inposts, with thin copper wires tied to his wrists like bracelets and hoops piercing his ears, his eyebrow, his nipples. In the heat of summer six years ago he stood in the shade of one of the bay doors and watched Trin work on the run-gun trucks. When Trin came close enough, Monet told him, "You skittish but I like ya. Ever been with a boy before?" 21

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The answer was no, but Trin was fifteen and already lusted after the gunners. Any port in a storm, he thought at the time. He took Monet up to his room, a tiny closet space above the kitchens where he sleeps. He didn't even wash up first. In his mind sex is his pallet hard on his knees and elbows, hot hands on his thighs, his hands and face grimy with oil and dirt. Sometimes, thinking on it, he almost comes remembering the heat alone. It's been years since he last saw Monet. He frowns at his hands clenched in his shirt and recalls that the boy was killed by devlars two or three months after he left Arens. The creatures swarmed over him like bees, biting and scratching and digging into his flesh, hard skin, sinewy muscles. A gunner passing through told him it was over quick. "Devlars git 'cha like that," the man said, his hand on Trin's knee beneath the table and steadily rising up his thigh, "you ain't got one scream in ya before yer dead. A shame, really. Sexy boy. Dark." Sensing a shift in his mood, Aissa laughs brightly to distract him from his morbid thoughts. "If he asks, just tell him you were practicing," she says. Then she gives him a saucy wink. "That's what I told your brother." Trin scrunches up his face. "I'm not hearing this," he cries. Aissa and sex are incongruous in his mind. Add Blain in the picture and devlars eating him alive sounds almost pleasant. When Aissa starts to say something, he covers his ears with his hands. "I'm not!" he shouts, laughing himself. "I don't want to know!" 22

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Aissa tugs at his arm so he'll listen to her. "You'll find out soon enough. After riding in hard off the wasteland, you don't honestly think all he wants to do tonight is talk, do you? God, Trini, you're not that naive." **** In the waystation Trin watches Gerrick flirt with the girl who served his meal. She's a leggy blonde with straight hair that falls to the small of her back and an annoying habit of leaning against the gunner when she laughs. Trin nurses a tepid cup of tinny water as he scowls at her in the mirror behind the bar. "Don't worry about it," Aissa tells him. She takes his cup and with a flick of her wrist, dumps the water into the sink. Then she refills the glass before setting it in front of him again. "If it bothers you that much, you go sit on his lap then. Otherwise stop brooding. He told you tonight, didn't he?" That he did. Trin waits for him at the bar. One by one the other gunners find someone to accompany them upstairs, a chore girl whose shift has ended or one of the fans that crowded around the run-gun trucks earlier. As the night wears on, Gerrick notices a young man hanging around the jukebox, a few years older than Trin, and loses interest in the blonde. Dusty clothes mark this one as a bounder, probably riding from outpost to outpost to find work. He watches the gunner from the corner of his eye. Trin knows the guy knows Gerrick's checking him out. When he goes to put his coin in the jukebox slot, he drops it, a deliberate move just so he has 23

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to bend over and Gerrick makes an appreciative noise in the back of his throat at the way those dingy leather chaps frame a tight, denim clad ass. Trin hates him, too. A little before midnight, a lone gunner sidles up beside Trin and sets his stein down on the bar. He has grizzled sideburns and long graying hair that falls back from his face in flat, wide plaits. "I ain't seen you looking," he says, meeting Trin's gaze in the mirror, "but I just thought I'd stop on by anyway, see if you might be interested. Your call." Another night and Trin might move a little closer, touch the gunner's forearm maybe, watch his finger trace a blueblack vein like a river winding over a map. Lowering his voice so the man would have to lean down to hear, looking up into that weathered face, he'd ask something along the lines of, "You ever run with Gerrick? I hear he was in Oriel last. You ain't been out that way lately, have you?" Half the shit the gunners tell him is made up, Aissa's said as much, pretty lies to get him upstairs, but as long as it might be true, Trin will take the chance. Except tonight he has other plans. With a sad smile at the gunner, he's just about to say he's sorry when a large hand claps him on the back and Gerrick's laugh curls through him with a warmth like whiskey. "Find another boy," he says. Trin likes the possessive fingers that rub into the base of his neck. "I've got dibs on this one." The other gunner nods as if he expected as much and moves away. 24

Trin by J.M. Snyder

"Come on, kid," Gerrick says. For a moment the hand tightens on his neck, but it falls away when Trin pushes back from the bar and slides off his stool. With a final look around the common room, Gerrick heads for the stairs. Following him, Trin can't help but think that maybe he's weighing his options. The bounder in the corner booth, the giggling blonde, or the starstruck boy behind him. Trin knows he's not much to look at, skinny and tall, dusky skin that matches his drab hair, nothing pretty. Nothing that warrants a second glance. When Gerrick stops on the first step, Trin thinks he's going to turn him away. He can almost hear the words aloud, "On second thought..." But the gunner gives him that smile he's been dreaming about and asks him, "Do you have a room? Or should I get one?" Relief rushes through Trin, so poignant that it surprises him. "Last door on the right," he says. Gerrick steps aside and lets him lead the way. "All the way down the hall." Upstairs the only light illuminating the hallway comes from the window at the far end, where a neon sign stutters VACANT outside the waystation. In the darkness where no one can see, Gerrick reaches out for Trin. He snags the back of Trin's pants and his fingers slip into the waistband as he looms like a shadow behind him. His breath is hot and alcoholic and intoxicating on Trin's cheek. "What's your name again?" the gunner wants to know. Trin isn't surprised he doesn't remember. "Trin," he says. Gerrick sighs it into his neck, "Trin." 25

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Desire shoots through him, an arrow that stiffens his already half-hard dick into an uncomfortable rod crammed into the front of his jeans. The hand on his waist slips lower, smoothing over flesh that kindles to the touch. Gerrick, he thinks suddenly, and his step falters. The only thing holding him up is the arm around him, the body tight against his own. Sweet Christ, Gerrick! Then his brain shorts out and he's nothing but a raw nerve, on edge, every sensation compounded tenfold. Each footstep is as loud as thunder to his ears and despite the darkness he can see the knots in the floor, the faint stucco texture of the walls, the very atoms that make up the air. His clothes chafe his skin. He suspects that the second he undresses, he'll cum from the mere thought of sexing this man beside him. Finally, Gerrick. He's so wound up that he almost walks past the door to his own room. Into the wall, that would look suave, or maybe take a tumble down the servant's stairs that lead into the kitchen. Fortunately Gerrick stops him. "This it?" With a sheepish grin, Trin nods. "Yeah," he sighs. He takes the doorknob and turns, suddenly coy. Backing up against the door, he looks at Gerrick—in the scant light, the gunner's hair wisps around his head like a halo and his lips are just a thin, wet line beneath his moustache. No talking tonight. No prompting for another story. No crawling out of the pallet after his partner falls asleep, no going back to his room to jack off to the image of Gerrick in his head. The man is here with him, here. Trin can't seem to remember how to keep breathing, and every few seconds he draws in a deep, quick 26

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breath like he's trying to jumpstart his heart. Tightening his grip on the doorknob, he laughs breathlessly and admits, "I almost can't believe you're here." The shadows shift on Gerrick's face as the gunner smiles. "Nervous?" he purrs as he leans closer. Trin's a little disappointed that sparks don't light up the night where their bodies touch. A strong, gentle hand caresses his face, then trails down his throat, his chest, his arm, to gather around Trin's fingers resting on the doorknob. Gerrick moves towards him, blocking out the light. He's only a dark shape in the hall. His words tickle Trin's lips when he speaks again, closer now, so close. "Don't be nervous." Trin's eyes slip shut and he's sure this is it, the kiss, one that erases every other man he's been with before. Practice, he thinks, that's all they were, just like Aissa said. They taught him where to touch, where to lick and suck, how to kiss and how to let his libido take over. Tonight he'll use every trick he's learned to do his damnedest to make Gerrick forget all others, as well, and in the morning he'll be like look, this is how it is. I've wanted you for years now, he thinks as Gerrick leans down to kiss him. Each breath is full of the gunner's sharp, sweaty scent, and Trin's whole body hums with anticipation. I'm not saying it has to be love on your part but holy hell please just please give me a chance to show you that it could— Gerrick's lips barely brush his, and then Trin stumbles into his room, the door falling away behind him. 27

Trin by J.M. Snyder

"Watch it," Gerrick laughs, an arm around his waist to catch him. A thin blush heats Trin's cheeks, God. He must look like a lovesick fool. He searches for something to say as the gunner breezes by him into the room. From the way Gerrick looks around and mutters, "Nice," Trin knows it's not. There's a pallet on the floor, hastily made with patchwork blankets. Two pillows that didn't quite make it under the covers lean against the wall at the head of the pallet. In one corner a stack of old wine crates hold the few clothes Trin owns, jeans and t-shirts mostly. From the top crate hangs an ancient leather jacket which used to be his brother's, but Blain gave it to him when he gave up his guns. The zipper's broken and the lining's torn, but Trin wouldn't trade it in for anything on the racks at the fiver across the street. Unbuttoning his shirt, Gerrick glances at the pallet, the crates, the one unshuttered window that looks out at the junkyard behind the waystation. "Kind of tight in here," he says, stepping over the pallet to stand in front of the window. He drops his shirt to the floor in a rustle of sand and fabric and the broad expanse of his back gleams faintly in the low light. Unbuckling his belt, Gerrick unzips his jeans and rubs his hands down the small paunch of his lower belly. His fingers push his briefs down and though Trin can't see anything from where he stands, he can imagine all too well what Gerrick's toying with as he looks out over the rusted cars and scrapped metal below. With a laugh, the gunner adds, "Just the way I like it. Close the door, kid." 28

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Trin can't obey fast enough. The sound of the latch is loud in the quiet room and when he turns again, Gerrick's pants gap at his crotch. One hand rubs into his briefs while the other smoothes over his stomach, still flat for all his years. A slow smile spreads across his face as he looks over his shoulder at Trin. "So you're Blain's baby brother," he says, amused. "Where is the old goat anyhow?" "Should be in tomorrow," Trin tells him. He stares openly at the gunner's naked flesh, the dark hollows where his jeans pucker away from his narrow hips. His chest and back are so light, a contrast to his sunburnt arms and face and a thin dusting of fine hair covers his body. Once golden but greying now, it shimmers when he moves, a nimbus surrounding him that Trin wants to lick down. "Some guy at one of the inposts had a jalopy for sale and Blain wanted to take a look at it before he shelled out the money for another hunk of junk." Gerrick nods, a distracted look on his face like he doesn't know what Trin's going on about and he doesn't much care, either. Trin feels the need to fill the silence between them so he keeps talking. "Blain told me he only ran with you once," he says, scuffing his shoe on a loose nail in the floor. He watches his foot like it belongs to someone else, an anxious boy who's finally alone with the man of his dreams and won't shut up. Blain again, ugh. "I know you don't remember this, but a few years back? I was like fifteen at the time, so it'd have to be six years ago now. Jeez, I didn't think it's been that long..." A soft rush of material, the slap of metal against wood, and Trin looks up to see Gerrick's pants on the ground around 29

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his ankles. Long legs, strong, covered in that greying hair that looks like so much fuzz from here. "We were in the wasteland," Trin manages. His throat works around the words but they don't want to come out. Muscled thighs, thick, Trin wants to wrap his hands around them and try to touch his fingers together. He wants to feel their strength press against the sides of his head as he kisses down soft, trembling skin in search of the hard length that he knows hangs between them. "Our truck stalled out on the run and it was hot..." With a faint smile, Gerrick hooks his thumbs in the waistband of his briefs and slides them down, too. Whatever heat lingers in Trin's memory is nothing compared to the sudden rise in temperature as the gunner stands, naked, and runs his hands over his body. Trin watches, mesmerized, as those fingers dance over places he aches to touch. "Devlars," he whispers. What's he going on about again? He hears a dry click in his throat when he swallows. "Holy Mary." Cold light spills through the open window, splashing the gunner's legs, his chest, his groin. Like quicksilver he moves through the shadows as he crosses the room, already hard, hungry. Trin's body yearns for Gerrick's. "Go on," the gunner prompts. "It's what we're here for, isn't it?" Trin's fingers fumble with the buttons on his shirt in his haste to undo them. Watching him, Gerrick sinks to the pallet and scoots back until he leans against the wall. There's a jar of petroleum jelly close enough beside Trin's bed to be 30

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embarrassing, but Gerrick says nothing as he unscrews the lid and scoops out a generous gelatinous dollop. Then he crosses his right ankle over his left knee and begins to slather his erection with the petroleum. Darkness pools in the space between his legs where his hand works, so inviting. Trin wants to dip his fingers into those shadows to see what he can find in their depths. His shirt slips off his shoulders almost negligently as his hands start to unbutton his jeans on their own. Gerrick ... in his pallet, for the love of Christ. As Trin shucks off his pants he doesn't blink, doesn't dare take his gaze away from the gunner, just in case this is some trick of his imagination. He's dreamed the guy into being, how else can he explain it? In the faint moonlight, the gunner's hair looks silvery and his eyes reflect the stars. Trin steps out of his jeans, kicks them away, tugs off his underwear so fast that the damn briefs twist behind his thighs and he curses as he struggles to get them off. On the pallet, Gerrick watches with his barely-there grin, the one that flusters Trin's fingers and stirs his blood. Once his clothes are piled by his feet on the floor, the gunner pats the pallet beside him. "Come here, kid," he says softly. Trin corrects him. "It's Trin." "Trin," Gerrick amends. The look in his eyes says he's humoring the boy, anything to get that naked body next to his. At the side of the pallet, Trin kneels down, his hands on his thighs because this close to the gunner he's afraid to touch the man. I've been with men before, he tells himself, but never this one. 31

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Gerrick uncrosses his legs and sets both feet on the pallet, knees in the air. "Up here," he says, patting the tight drum of his abdomen. Trin stands, gawkish beside the reclining gunner, as awkward as if this were his first time with another. As if he's never been naked before ... he wants to say he's not usually this bad. But then Gerrick's hand finds his ankle, the rough skin cool and slick from the petroleum jelly, and Trin doesn't want to ruin the moment with idle words. Strong fingers lift his leg over Gerrick's midsection to set his foot down on the opposite side so that he straddles the gunner. Those large hands are on either ankle now and together they move up his legs, over the downy hair of his shins, up to his knees. They leave a trail of stickiness in their wake. "Down, boy," Gerrick laughs. Trin falls to sit on the gunner's knees. When Gerrick opens his legs, Trin slides down his thighs onto a stiff hardness that pokes at him, but one of the gunner's strong hands guides the lubricated cock inside him. As the gunner thrusts up into him, Trin lays his head on Gerrick's shoulder. Those hands grip his ass, spread him wide, hold him down as Gerrick takes him, a rough fuck that fills him with starshine and dreams. Deeper the gunner drives into him, moaning in his ear "Yes," and "Yes," and "Oh God, yes." Through the sweat and sand Trin clings to the gunner. This is what he's been waiting for, he tells himself, this man beneath him, in him. These hands clenched in him, these lips brushing heated kisses over his cheek and neck, Gerrick. Their coupling is hot and tight and fast, a wild ride that both 32

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thrills and terrifies him at the same time. It's everything Trin's always thought sex should be Gerrick. **** In the morning Trin wakes to soft grumbles and the pallet shifts beneath him as Gerrick rises. Rolling over into the warmth that the gunner leaves behind, Trin just barely opens his eyes to watch Gerrick stand. With a loud yawn the gunner stretches awake, his knuckles almost scraping the low ceiling overhead, his buttocks clenched as tight as fists. Trin's heart swells in his chest. He loves this man. Bright sunlight streams through the open window, dappling Gerrick's nude body and catching in his golden hair. At that lithe nakedness, Trin's lust stirs anew—he could use a recap of the night before. Beneath the blankets one hand trails up his inner thigh to press against his balls and he shifts on the pallet, but Gerrick doesn't seem to notice. Unaware that he's awake, the gunner stumbles around the pallet towards the window and Trin turns his head to follow him with his gaze. He wonders if Gerrick would be gentle this time, slow and loving in the early dawn, or if they could burn away the start of the day with another bout of hot rutting. Leaning down on the window sill, Gerrick stares out into the morning. Not much of a view, Trin knows—rusting heaps of junked vehicles, scrawny cats slinking through the lot, a chain-link fence along the palisade that circles the outpost to keep devlars at bay. But from where Trin lies in his sheets, the view is damn fine. Gerrick may be older than Blain but 33

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there's little fat on his body and his muscles are well defined, sculpted and firm. His ass is flat and tight, his stomach taut, his nipples like nuggets in the fuzzy hair that covers his upper chest. Give me this, Trin thinks suddenly. This intimacy between them, this peaceful awakening, this quiet moment of unabashedness, the two of them naked, each alone in his own thoughts but together. No words, just emotions, the way they were last night. Give me this every morning for the rest of my life. Gerrick bends down for his briefs, still on the floor where he left them last night. As he steps into them, he glances at the pallet and finds Trin looking back. "It's too early for you to be up, kid," he says. Tugging the briefs up, he snaps the elastic band at his waist and starts to shake the sand from his pants and shirt. "Get back to sleep." Trin stretches his arms above his head, knocking his hands against the wall at the head of the pallet. "I'm all slept out," he murmurs with a smile. "Time to get up." "A boy after my own heart," Gerrick laughs. He squats down and begins to rummage through his pockets, emptying the contents into a small pile on the floor at his feet. "Trin, isn't it? Did you get a chance to look over my shocks yet?" "Yesterday." Trin doesn't want to talk about the shocks. He doesn't want to think beyond getting out of these sheets and more than anything right now, he wants to get Gerrick back in them. Propping his head up on one hand, he frowns at the gunner. He hates the way he sounds when he asks, "You don't have to go right yet, do you?" 34

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Gerrick doesn't reply. Instead he gathers up all of the items from his pockets—a battered wallet, a handful of change, spent casings and live bullets and gunpowder stored in the small twists of torn paper the gunners carry—and wraps everything into a handkerchief that was tied onto one of the belt loops of his jeans. Trin resists the urge to press him for an answer. He watches the way the gunner's muscles move beneath his skin and doesn't say a word. When someone knocks on their door, Trin lets his eyes slip shut. Before Gerrick can call out to the visitor, the door opens and Trin knows it's Aissa without even having to look. He's told her a million times not to burst into his room—she thinks because she knocks, it's alright. "Knock and wait," he's said. "What if I'm in the middle of something and don't want you barging in?" With a scornful laugh, she said, "Oh please, Trini. It's not like you're jerking off." "I could've been," he muttered. Just like he and Gerrick could be getting busy; she doesn't know what's going down on the other side of a closed door. He has half a mind to throw off his feign of sleep and sit up in the pallet, ream her out about that knocking shit. But Gerrick's voice is colder than anything Trin could pull off. "I didn't invite you in," he says. He speaks softly, as if he doesn't want to wake Trin, even though he's not asleep. "It's not your room," Aissa replies, already bristling. She makes no effort to lower her voice. Trin suspects that she knows he's up. 35

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Opening his eyes into cat-like slits, Trin watches Gerrick stand, his clothes in hand. The legs of his pants dangle from his arms, doing little to cover his briefs and bare thighs. Aissa whistles, a sexy sound that makes Trin blush. "Damn, you're a piece of work. No wonder Trin goes on about you so." "You came to tell me that?" Gerrick looks her over with a disgusted grimace. "You're not my type." Aissa laughs. "I'm with Blain," she tells him, brushing him off with her typical brusque behavior. "I didn't say I wanted to fuck you, man." If her crass words surprise him, Gerrick doesn't show it. He tosses his clothes to the pallet, where they land on the blankets covering Trin's legs. "What did you want?" he asks. Something heavy hits the floor and Trin almost jerks around, sure she's fallen or maybe Gerrick knocked her down, but then she says, "I brought your bags. Don't thank me or nothing. Is Trin up?" "Does he look like he is?" Gerrick counters. How could I sleep through this? Trin wonders, but he keeps quiet. Minutes pass, long and strained, and finally the gunner asks, "Well?" Trin doesn't have to see Aissa to know she's pissed. He can practically feel the ire radiating from her like heat from the sun. She's probably turning different responses over in her head, playing out what she could say, how the gunner would answer, anything that will one-up him. For as long as Trin has known her, she's always had to have the last say. 36

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She has to win. Finally, in clipped tones, she declares, "You're an ass, you know that?" Before Gerrick can reply, she turns on her heel and leaves, slamming the door behind her so hard that the latch doesn't catch. It strikes the jamb and then Trin hears the hinges squeal as the door eases back open. That's one of her tricks, storming off. Cautiously, Trin turns, an apology already on his lips. "Sorry about her. She's wicked sometimes." With a short, humorless laugh, Gerrick says, "She's a nosy bitch." Stepping over the pallet, he kneels by his bags and takes one of the ties in his hand. "Look at this. She's gone through them. If something's missing—" "She wouldn't take anything." He sits up and pulls his knees to his chest, gathering the blanket around his ankles like a long skirt. Gerrick begins to root through the bags, first the small belt pack full of bullets and money, then the saddlebags with his razors and soap and matches, then the large haversacks. There are two of them and Gerrick dumps their contents out on the pallet to make sure nothing has been stolen. Trin watches him go through jeans and shirts, briefs, socks, a coverless paperback held together with rubber bands, a handful of tarnished badges that look like throwing stars, two sheathed hunting knives, more bullets, little sacks of gunpowder, condoms. As Gerrick spreads it all out across the sheets, Trin asks, "Well? Is it all there?"

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Gerrick grunts. "Tell her to stay the fuck out of here," he growls, shoving his things back into the bags. "Least 'til I roll out. Can you do that for me, kid?" "Sure," Trin says, a little too quickly. His thoughts are a blur. Did the gunner just say he's staying with him until he leaves? Staying here, in this room, sleeping with him? He has to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from grinning like an idiot. In here. This pallet, his. He'll nail the damn door shut if he has to, anything Gerrick wants. **** Aissa finds him after lunch. He's in the garage, the hoods of both run-gun trucks open like cavernous mouths of hungry gators while he leans back in the creaky chair by his workbench, feet kicked up on the table. "You're hard at work," she says, tossing a lukewarm can of soda into his lap. Sitting up, Trin winces when the can strikes his crotch, and Aissa laughs. "And I do mean hard. Jeez Trini, didn't you get enough last night? I could hear you guys all the way down the hall." "Bullshit," Trin mutters. The room she shares with Blain isn't but a few doors down from his, certainly not what he'd call down the hall. He pops the can open, chugs down half of it—the garage is sweltering and even the hot soda tastes good on his throat. "I'm taking a break." She doesn't look like she buys that. "Uh-huh." Knocking his feet off of the workbench, she hops up in their place and opens the other can she carries. With a nod at the trucks, she wants to know, "When do you need these done by?" 38

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Trin shrugs. "Whenever." He doesn't want to think about fixing the trucks right now, because once the shocks are replaced and the hoses patched and the engines purr like bobcats, Gerrick will be gone. It's been almost twenty years since the gunner rolled through Arens—how long until he came back this way again? How many more times will Trin have to mess around with someone who isn't Gerrick just so he can hear of the gunner's latest exploits? After last night, he doesn't think he can get with anyone else, he doesn't want to. The man is everything he imagined he'd be, wild and passionate and sexy and it might be selfish but Trin doesn't want to give that up, not just yet. Not ever. At his age, he still believes he might get what he wants out of this world. Look at Aissa, she's with Blain. How hard can it be to hang onto Gerrick for a while? There's no reason to rush through this. So he lingered in his pallet long after Gerrick dressed and left and when he finally made his way downstairs, the gunner had already eaten and gone out. "Went to see the tumbler," one of the chore girls told him when he asked. "Your brother's back. He wants to know why you're not hunkered down over those trucks. He's in the common." Because Trin didn't have an answer for him and because he was a little worried that Blain would have something sarcastic to say about Gerrick in his room, he ducked out the back. He locked himself in the garage and tore out the engine of one of the trucks. Steel parts still gleam around the floor like instruments on a dentist's tray. Trin has no intention of 39

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putting them back together today. Or tomorrow, for that matter. He found three good shocks in the drawers of his workbench and promptly threw them away. Stood on the stoop behind the garage, just pitched those babies out into the junkyard, not knowing where they landed. He'll get more, he knows he will, when Blain takes a run inland or if that bounder by the jukebox last night has anything worthwhile in his bag to sell, but it'll take time. Trin wants it to take forever. Aissa kicks the arm of his chair with one booted foot. From the way she looks at him, Trin suspects she saw him outside tossing the shocks away earlier. She won't say anything about it though, because it's something she would do herself. Lord knows he's learned from the best. "I'm taking my time," he tells her before she can ask. Her slow grin lights up her eyes and he knows she knows he's full of shit. "Did you come here for something in particular? Or just to bother me?" She kicks again, this time hitting his knee instead of the chair. "Don't talk to me like that," she warns, "just cause you got lucky last night. Did he tell you I stopped by this morning?" Trin shakes his head—Gerrick didn't have to tell him but if he mentions that he was awake when she came into his room, she'll get mad. Flipping her hair off her shoulder, Aissa rolls her eyes. "I don't know what you see in him. Sure, he has a nice ass for a guy his age but he's nothing all that great to look at." 40

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"I think so," Trin pouts. When she kicks out again, he slaps her foot away. "Shut up, Iss. I don't go around asking why you think Blain's all that. And don't tell me either. I don't want to know." "He's a jerk," Aissa says. "Gerrick, not Blain. He about bit my head off for bringing up his bags this morning. He didn't even tell you I stopped by?" Trin shakes his head, slapping her foot a second time when she kicks at him. "You know he can't keep his hands to himself, right? You saw him with Gertie at dinner, and this morning he was all over Dray. I surely hope you had fun while it lasted, Trin. I hate to be the one to break this to you but—" Trin interrupts her. "Let him look, if he has to. He's still staying with me." "He told you that?" The incredulous tone of her voice says she won't believe it, even if the gunner told her himself. Trying hard not to smirk, Trin replies loftily, "He said to keep you out of my room until he leaves. If that doesn't say he's sleeping there—" "It doesn't," Aissa points out. "Until he leaves what, the waystation? Arens?" With arched brows, she adds, "You?" "Shut up," he tells her again. She tries a different approach. "All I'm saying, Trini, is he probably has a boy in every outpost between here and the border and every single one of them thinks he's the only one. I know you've been waiting a long time for this but I don't want you blowing it all out of proportion. Once you fix his truck, he's gone." 41

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Trin feels that pout tug at his lips again and he covers his mouth with one hand so Aissa won't see the frown. "I know he has to move on but you're wrong, Aissa. Last night wasn't just another fuck, I'm telling you." She gives him a look that says he's fooling himself but he shakes his head, adamant. "It wasn't." "Alright," she concedes. She still sounds unconvinced. Suddenly Trin surges to his feet and gives her a push off the workbench. "Get outta here," he says, stretching to get his blood flowing again. He doesn't want to hear about Gerrick checking out Gertie or pawing over Dray, who Trin has never heard of before but suspects might be that bounder by the juke last night. But which room are the gunner's bags in, hmm? "I've got work to do," he tells Aissa, giving her a shove towards the door. "Go on, get out of here." **** By the time the sun burns red and low in the sky, Trin is all too ready to get with Gerrick again. He still can't quite comprehend it, the gunner's his—he'll be fiddling with the spark plugs or repadding the brakes and the memory of last night will hit him so hard, he almost reels beneath it. His hands tremble to dwell on their sex, his lips still feel their kisses and the longer the shadows grow, the more anxious he becomes. Sure, the gunner's been gone all day, as Aissa so maliciously pointed out, but whose pallet is he going to bed down in tonight? 42

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Trin works until it grows too dark to see and he has to squint as he rebuilds the engine that doesn't belong in Gerrick's truck. He keeps on, though, until the Christ bells ring out when the sun finally falls from the sky. The bells hang high in the loft of a building along the far side of the palisade, a place the older folks call a church but it's no more holy than anything else in this world. Trin's only been inside of it once, when his parents were brought back to the outpost and laid to earth. He remembers staring at his father's hands folded across his lifeless chest, large hands, grey with death. When Blain came up behind him and touched his shoulder, Trin bit back a startled cry—for a brief moment he thought it was his father's hand on him, resurrected. He almost expected to hear the man's voice, too, "Come away, Trini." As the years pass and they both grow older, Blain sounds more and more like their father every day. The bells signal nightfall but to Trin, they mean supper. At the front of the garage he has to jump to reach the chain hanging from the top-sliding bay doors. He misses on the first jump, just grazes the chain with his fingertips on the second, then grabs it in a tight fist and yanks hard until the doors come shuddering down. The padlock that keeps them down at night hangs from the bolt where Trin left it this morning, locked. He's so eager to get out of here that he can't get the damn thing open at first—his fingers fumble through the combination but it just won't unlock. Why did he have to snap it shut when he opened the front doors anyway? Why not just thread it 43

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through the bolt and leave it like that? Stupid, he berates silently, twirling the lock face to clear it. Taking a deep breath, he forces himself to slow down as he runs through the combination again. God, he's probably wondering where the hell I am, horny as fuck I'm sure, and I can't get the goddamn lock— This time he feels the telltale click in his hands. "Holy hell," he mutters, moving quickly to make up for lost time. He latches the doors down, locks them shut, checks the back door then double checks it because he can't remember if it's locked or not. It is. The garage is dark around him now and he's all too ready to go. He strips off his overalls where he stands and leaves them in a ball on the floor at his feet. Beneath the work clothes he wears a dingy t-shirt that the jumper did little to protect and a pair of jeans washed colorless by time. Squatting down, he wipes his hands on the overalls, his skin almost as black as the shadows, covered in grease and oil that refuses to come off easily. The pump in the corner gleams with a dull shine but he doesn't feel like using it—he'll shower upstairs and sit naked on his pallet while he waits for Gerrick. Who's probably already up there, he tells himself. He's hard just thinking about the gunner, and in his room! Trin can't seem to get over that part of it. With one last look around the garage, he leaves through the back door. Outside the air is hot and stifling despite the growing dusk and Trin works up a thin sheen of sweat simply crossing the junkyard to the kitchen entrance of the waystation. The door is open but the screen locked—he leans 44

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against it, hands cupped to his face, and sees one of the chore girls at the grill. She's younger than he is, younger than Aissa, with straight black hair that shines blue where the light hits it. Trin likes her because she doesn't like Gerrick, not the way he does. She doesn't like men and sleeps with two of the other girls in the room next to his. "Beck," he calls out. She can't hear him over the sizzle of chopped steak so he raises his voice a little. "Hey Beck, let me in here, will you?" Without glancing up from the grill, Beck stretches one arm towards the door and unhooks the latch. Trin falls into the room. "Thanks," he sighs. He locks the door behind him before she can ask. On the grill, the sandwich steaks look so tempting that he has to ask, "One of those for me?" Beck gives him a quick smile. "Blain's looking for you," she says by way of hello. "He's out behind the bar—" "I'm a mess," Trin interrupts. As if noticing his dirty hands for the first time, Beck raises her eyebrows but says nothing. The last thing Trin wants right now is to see his brother— it'll be why didn't he get the trucks done today and take a look at the new jalopy before he turns in and what they're saying about Gerrick isn't true, is it? For some reason he thinks that's going to be Blain's biggest gripe, him and the gunner. I've talked him up for years—you can't think I'm not going to seize this chance now that he's finally here. Stepping up beside Beck, Trin pinches a bite of chopped steak off the grill and pops it in his mouth. He blows his 45

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cheeks out, mouth open slightly, to cool the morsel off. "Sweet damn, that's hot!" "Idiot," Beck mutters. When he reaches for another bite, she smacks the back of his hand with the flat of her stainless steel spatula. "What'd you think, it'd be cold? Go find your brother and stop picking at my food." Blithely, Trin replies, "Blain can wait." "I'm going to tell him you said that," Beck warns. With an uneasy laugh, Trin tries to snag another bite of steak from the grill but she slaps his hand away again. "Do you have a death wish? Stop it already or I'll call your brother. Blain!" She raises her voice slightly—not enough to be heard out in the common room, true, but enough to scare Trin into thinking Blain might come running. "Tell him I had to wash up." He steals one more tiny piece of the sizzling meat, nothing he can even taste, it's so small, but he likes the way Beck squeals as she swings the spatula his way. He dances out of reach, laughing. "I'm gone." A narrow flight of stairs leads from the kitchen up to the back hall—not as grand or sturdy as the steps out in the common, but these come out right by Trin's room. More importantly, he won't have to push through the swinging door that separates the kitchen from the bar. He won't have to chance sneaking past his brother. Trin might be twenty-one years of age but his brother is twice that and still scares the fuck out of him. Not because he's ever raised a hand against him, which he hasn't, or because they fight a lot, which they 46

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don't, but because there's a very small part of him that thinks Blain feels saddled with him. Disappointed in life, in his life, and who wouldn't be? He gave up gunning when he had to take on the waystation and Trin knows that no matter how much Blain swears he didn't mind it—that he wanted a change of pace, he wanted to slow down—the thrill of the run still quickens his blood. It must. Why else would he take off like he does? Sure, he says it's for parts but he's not the mech, Trin is. And Blain never hires a gunner to ride with him between outposts, never. He carries his own guns, holstered low on his hips within easy reach. Drawing them is easy—it's something he'll never forget. Even now he still comes back with devlar hides drying on the rack of his truck. Those are the real reason he rides out. There's a streak in him that likes the killing, the adventure and he'll never be satisfied with a staid life behind the bar of a waystation. It's that streak of gunner in him that Trin doesn't want to face tonight. Quickly he crosses the kitchen, weaving through the chore girls busy with dinner. He holds his hands out so they can see the grease up to his elbows and won't ask him to help. His mind is on one thing and one thing only. Gerrick. He's so sure the gunner's in his room right this moment waiting for him that he has to choke back the urge to call out that he's coming. There's a pull in his stride from the way his hard cock rubs into his jeans. Oh jeez am I ever. He takes the staircase two steps at a time and he's halfway upstairs when he hears the whap-whap of the kitchen 47

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door swinging shut. No, he prays, his feet faltering. Don't let it be— "Trin." Blain's voice is like a stone wall in front of him and he stops. Shit. He stares into the darkness of the stairwell, up the last few steps, so close... "Get down here, boy." Clearing his throat, Trin looks straight ahead and calls out, "I have to get cleaned up, Blain. I'll be right down." Blain waits. At his sides Trin's hands curl into dirty fists and he tells himself to keep walking but he can't. His feet won't move. He's not the most obedient person in this world, Lord knows, but he's never been able to ignore Blain. There's too much of his father in the man, too damn much. The kitchen has grown quiet, the chatter of the girls silent, the running spigot turned off. Even the sizzle of the grill sounds subdued. Waiting. Watching. Keep going, Trin tells himself. His body refuses to listen. When his feet finally move again it's backwards, down the stairs. On the last step, Trin holds out his hands and looks down at them so he won't have to meet Blain's steady gaze. "I'm filthy," he says softly. In the stillness of the kitchen, he feels like he's shouting. "I need to wash up." "Use the pump down here," Blain tells him. Trin nods— there's no argument in him. In the same even voice, his brother adds, "I'll prime it for you. Haven't seen you all day, kid. You girls get back to work." 48

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Trin follows Blain to the kitchen pump, set back in the corner beneath the stairs. There's one single bulb hung from the underside of the steps and a long, frayed string dangles down from the socket. The string is threaded through a small picture hook tacked to the wall so that whoever wants to use the pump doesn't have to stumble around in the darkness or splash through the water in the drain trying to find the light pull. Trin doesn't see why he can't use the pump upstairs. Somehow this is Beck's fault, she distracted him and Blain heard her call his name. If Trin had only been a little faster on the steps then his brother would've seen an empty staircase when he came into the kitchen and Trin would be with Gerrick already, fending the hungry gunner off with giggles and halfhearted protests. "I'm a mess," he'd say. Gerrick would be smiling and his moustache tickling Trin's neck right about now. Should be anyway. "Blain," he tries, hating the whine in his voice. "I can do this upstairs—" "You're already here." His brother tugs at the string and the bulb flares to life, illuminating the warped floor around the rusted pump. Blain's sleeves are already rolled up on his forearms but he shoves them past his elbows and grabs the pump's handle in both hands. Large hands, his father's hands. Muscles stand out from his arms and neck as he works the pump once, twice. Trin hopes the thing's rusted shut. But on the third prime, water spurts from the mouth of the pump in a reddish rush and Blain sighs. "There you go," he says. As Trin watches, the water begins to run clear. "It's a 49

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little cold, I'd imagine. I see the gunners rolled in. Soap's in the corner there." He points out a pumice soapstone and Trin reaches for it automatically. I see the gunners rolled in ... so that's what this is all about. Trin suspected as much. Next it'll be mind that Gerrick, he's a rover. Trin wants to say don't bother, he's heard the spiel from Aissa, but he can't talk to Blain like that. Rubbing the harsh soap between his hands, Trin watches blue-brown lather rise up from the grease and oil on his skin and tries to think of nothing at all. Maybe Blain just wants to talk at him. If he doesn't ask an outright question, Trin doesn't really have to answer. Unfortunately, his brother doesn't play like that. He leans against the pump and watches Trin work the soap into stained skin. When he speaks, it's in an almost bored tone of voice, like he's just trying to pass the time and heaven knows he has all damn day. "I can't believe Reech still has that old heap of junk. It's about ready for the yard, don't you think?" Trin shrugs—he doesn't know who Reech is, but from the way Blain talks it's probably the gunner who owns the truck that isn't Gerrick's. "When did they ride in?" "Yesterday," Trin mutters. He frowns as he rubs soapy streaks up his arms, first one, then the other. It takes all the strength he has not to say more. When he doesn't offer anything else, Blain primes the pump again to get the water flowing and tells him, "Rinse off, Trini. How are you coming along on the trucks?" Trin shrugs again and plunges his hands into the icy water. "Alright." 50

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Blain gives him a look that says he saw the parts strewn across the concrete floor out in the garage. "So you finally met him," he says. No preamble, no name even, but Trin's heart flutters nonetheless. Gerrick. Who has to be upstairs by now, has to be wondering where the fuck his boy is at. Above Trin, the bare bulb buzzes faintly. The back of his neck warms under the light and he feels like a criminal at an interrogation. If his brother wasn't so humorless, he could almost think Blain planned this. The burning light, the itching soap, the whole bit. As Trin rinses his arms, Blain wants to know, "What do you think? Did you get to talk to him?" "A little." We didn't really talk much, but he doesn't say that. Blain already knows Gerrick spent the night in Trin's pallet—it's written out in his eyes. Aissa must've said something as soon as he walked through the door this morning. Three guesses who our Trini's bedding down with? And what of it? He'd like to know but he's too scared to ask. Quietly, he adds, "I'm sure Aissa told you as much." Blain barely nods. "He's the best gunner running," he says, as if Trin doesn't know this already. "Fastest draw in the outposts bar none. I ran with him, boy. I'm telling you real." In Trin's hands, the water trickles off. "I know. The pump..." Ignoring him, Blain continues. "He's a fun guy, Gerrick is. Always smiling, don't you know and dead on with that gun. But listen, you look at me, kid." 51

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Here it comes. Without raising his head, he looks at his brother and doesn't like the gunner he sees looking back. Blain leans over the pump, close enough that Trin can see the individual hairs that make up his brother's bushy eyebrows. Thin hairs, wiry, silver in the harsh light. For the first time, Blain looks old to him, the lines on his face wrinkles, the grey at his temples like pockets of snow clinging to the earth stubbornly after a thaw. But his eyes are as sharp as a preybird closing in and there's nothing old in his hands, strong fingers gripping the pump handle so hard that the tips have drained of blood. "Listen to me, Trin," he whispers. Trin nods. "He's still just a man, you got that?" Another nod, this one emphatic. "Sure as hell ain't whatever it is you've made him up in your mind to be. So don't get all strung out on this, I'm telling you. It'll pass. He'll move on, they all do." "I know," Trin murmurs. Blain shakes his head. "You don't know, kid. If you did, you'd never pull your pants down for any of them, let alone the gunners. They're like the wind, Gerrick worst of all. They blow through here today and tomorrow they're halfway to Konstas, or to the coast maybe, or inland, who the hell knows? You can't change a man like that and the devil knows you can't keep him." Trin wants to point out that Blain himself was a gunner once and he's changed. Aissa has him on a short leash now, even if she does play the rope out a bit from time to time. 52

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As if he can hear Trin's thoughts, Blain hurries on before he can put them into words. "Your responsibility is the garage, you got that? Get those trucks running again and stand aside, boy, because no matter what that bastard says to you between the sheets, sure as shit he's gone in a weeks' time and you know it." Trin lowers his gaze to his hands, where the lather has begun to dry on his skin in lacy patterns. He blinks and his vision blurs—he has to blink again quickly to clear it. His lower lip pushes up in an ignoble pout. He bites the corner to keep it from trembling. Can't you just let me have this? In his mind he imagines the look on Blain's face if he should fling the soapy water at his brother in a fit of rage. There isn't much left in this world and you know THAT, so can't you just let me have whatever it is I can take? Is that asking too much? Is that unreasonable? "Trin?" his brother prompts. "You hearing me on this?" With a sniffle, Trin wipes his nose on the sleeve of his shirt and nods. "I hear you." He hates how easily Blain can make him sound like a sullen child. For a long moment his brother gauges him, just staring, and Trin can't meet his gaze. Instead he watches the way the soap squishes between his fingers. Turn on the water, he prays. Please Blain, just turn on the water and let me go. Don't say anything else. God please don't. Finally Blain stands back and primes the pump once. Cold water splashes over Trin's hands, washing away the soap and grime, icy and numbing on his skin like a headache. 53

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"Alright then," Blain says, his voice low. His tight smile suggests he's glad they had this talk but his eyes say different. When they look at him, Trin sees his brother's worry written out in their dark depths. You're wrong about him, he wants to say. You and Aissa both, dead wrong. At least, he hopes they're wrong. Gerrick didn't talk much last night at all, did he? Did he? Deep inside Trin, a tiny voice whispers, Please be wrong. He tamps it down quick, smothers it like a lick of flame, and it's gone. **** On their way back to the kitchen, Blain sees the furtive way Trin glances upstairs and says, "He ain't back yet. Been gone all day." "I know that," Trin replies, defensive. With scrubbed, red fingers, he picks at his soiled shirt in a lame attempt to keep it off his chest. "I've got to go up and change anyway." Blain gives him that look again, the one that says he knows better but what the hell, he'll humor the kid. Trin hates that look. He feels it on his back and shoulders like a palpable weight, and he climbs the steps as fast as he can to escape it. In the cool darkness upstairs, he prays that Gerrick is in his room waiting because it'll prove Blain's wrong about the man. More than anything else in the entire world, he wants his brother and Aissa to be wrong. But a quick peek into his room shows that Gerrick isn't on his pallet or at his window, and he isn't down the hall in the shower, either. There Trin strips off his clothes and bathes quickly, washing away the grime that covers the rest of his 54

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body with water a degree or two warmer than that in the pump downstairs. He keeps expecting strong arms to encircle his waist, a hot mouth on the back of his neck. At one point the door leading to the hall opens and through the curtain Trin watches the dark shape of a man enter the shower, sure it's the gunner, sure he'll join him ... but no. Another faucet adds its voice to the chorus of water raining down around Trin, slapping the tiles of a different stall. Suddenly cold air curls around his legs and he has to turn off the spigot. He's through. As he dries himself off with a threadbare towel, he wipes at his cheeks and tells himself his eyes sting from the soap he used in his hair, that's all. With the towel around his waist doing little to hide his wet nakedness, Trin hurries back to his room. His head hurts, congested and he has to keep blowing his nose between his fingers to be able to breathe. Where the fuck is Gerrick anyway? Gone all damn day, can't even stop by the garage to see how Trin's coming along on his truck. Maybe Blain's right, a voice inside him whispers. Maybe that's all you get. Trin shakes his head to clear it. No. Blain wasn't there last night—he doesn't know how desperately Gerrick gripped Trin's ass as he plowed into him, or how tight he held the boy in his arms while they fell asleep, or how his lips lingered on Trin's when he kissed him goodbye this morning. His brother knows the gunner, not the man. He's never touched the soft places on Gerrick's body. He's never had those strong fingers curve into him. He's never seen those eyes dance or felt that moustache tickle his upper lip. He 55

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simply can't see how gentle and loving those hands can be without a gun. It was only one night. Trin hates how much his conscience sounds like Aissa. "Shut up," he growls, glancing around the hall to make sure he's alone. One night he's dreamed of for years. Blain doesn't seem to be able to understand that. The door to Trin's room is ajar. He catches his breath and pushes inside, so sure the gunner is back. His blood stirs with an all too familiar lust. "Gerrick?" he calls. One hand toys with the towel around his waist, ready to rip it away. Take me, he thinks. Again and again and— The room is empty. He tells himself he isn't disappointed and tosses the towel aside anyway as he closes the door behind him. Harsh light falls in through the open window, a yellow glow cast from the halogens that shine down on the junkyard outside. Trapped in the confines of the small room, the glare makes the shadows stand out stark like an old photograph. The pallet, sheets hastily made and rumpled again. The pillows, clenched into the memory of fists. Gerrick's bags in the middle of the floor, an unfamiliar cloth balled up beside them. The musky stench of sex still hangs in the air despite the open window and the breeze cooling around Trin's damp legs. If it wasn't for the fact that he's the only one in the room, he could almost believe he just interrupted an early evening tryst. A slow smile spreads across his face at the memory of their coupling last night. Blain didn't see that, he has no clue how it is. So what if Gerrick's been gone all day? At the 56

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tumblers turning rocks maybe or at the trump store stocking up on supplies, who knew? Who cared? He's coming back. His bags are here, right? The pallet's just waiting to be fucked in again. Tonight, after the last call downstairs, after the lights outside are doused, after the day is gone and the night is fading fast, Gerrick will be his. **** Trin waits at the bar, sitting in the same seat he sat in yesterday. Hunkered over a glass of tepid water and a halfempty plate of spaghetti, something Aissa whipped up for him because she said he needed to eat, he surveys the common room in the mirror behind the bar. Gerrick isn't with the other gunners. He isn't sitting alone at a corner booth. And he isn't by the jukebox, or over at the pool tables, or at the pinball machines, either. The only good thing about his not being at the waystation is that Trin doesn't have to watch him flirt with the chore girls again this evening. The leggy blonde has turned her attention to the gunner who propositioned Trin the night before and the bounder who caught Gerrick's eye is nowhere around. Trin tells himself the guy probably left the outpost already. Moved on, isn't that what Blain said? Men just move on. A little after nine, Aissa comes over to freshen his cup. Trin suspects she has more than water in the pitcher she uses to refill his drink because there's a metallic undertone that takes his breath away, something alcoholic and heady. "You should get some sleep, Trini," she tells him, speaking in a soft voice so unlike her that it makes his eyes sting. As he sips at the 57

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spiked water, he finds it harder and harder to blink. "It's getting late and you've had a long day, come on." "I'm not tired," he says, hating how weary he sounds. Just sitting here makes his bones ache and the longer he stays, the harder it is to get moving. Aissa's right, he should head upstairs. He's tired of looking over his shoulder every time someone comes in through the front door. He keeps expecting it to be the gunner, and no matter how many times he turns around and it isn't, the next time it happens he still hopes that it will be. At any minute he might hear Gerrick's laugh or see the reflection of those shimmering eyes meet his in the mirror so he can't leave now. He might miss him. Aissa's persistent but he fends her off easily enough. She fills his glass again, shaking her head and clucking in her throat like an irritated hen. I could sleep right here, Trin thinks, turning as the door opens. This time it's one of the chore girls heading home, not the gunner. Frowning, Trin kicks back the rest of his drink and stares into the bottom of the glass. He's vaguely aware of Aissa down the bar, his brother at her side, the two of them watching him with cloying sympathy. Around quarter to midnight Blain finally comes over and he isn't as subtle as she is. No shake of his head, no annoyed sounds. Taking Trin's plate away, he simply dumps the uneaten pasta into the trashcan beneath the sink and says, "Go on up, kid." As Trin raises his cup to drink, Blain takes it from his hands, pours the mixed water down the drain. "Get to bed." "I'm not—" Trin starts. 58

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Blain holds up a hand to cut off his protest. "You have two trucks waiting for you out in the garage and I want you to go over that jalopy I bought back with me tomorrow. A full day, Trin. If you sit here and mope, you'll be no good under the hood. So go on, get some rest. If that bastard shows up here, I'll send him your way." Trin tries to think of something to say to that and can't. Turning, he gives the room a once-over but Gerrick hasn't magically appeared and no one interesting meets his gaze. Not that he'd have another, he tells himself as he slides off the stool. His knees buckle and his feet are heavy—he's not just tired, he's exhausted. Still, it'd be nice if the hands supporting him weren't his own brother's, or if the body he leans against as he trundles upstairs wasn't the soft, feminine curves of his best friend. At the door to his room, he mumbles, "He's coming back." "Of course he is," she says, an automatic reply. Trin knows she doesn't believe that herself. Leading him inside the room, she holds his shoulders as he steps out of his pants. He struggles to free himself from his shirt and she holds the sleeves up out of his way as the shirt slips off over his head. Like a broken toy, Trin falls down onto the rumpled sheets of his pallet and swats away Aissa's concerned hands that touch his arms and face. He doesn't like this sudden gentleness of hers. It makes him suspect that she knows something she doesn't want to share. As she tries to lay him back against the pillows, he resists. "Aissa, wait." "Trin, you're worn out." 59

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True, and at her words his body feels old. He lays down, the pillow bunched beneath his head. What all did she slip him? "I'll send him up," she's saying from a million miles away, "don't worry none. I won't let him have a different room even if he asks for it." "Where's he been?" It's a rhetorical question, one he doesn't expect her to answer. She doesn't. He scrunches his face up in consternation and feels the bite of tears in the corners of his eyes. In a whisper he adds, "All damn day. Tell me, Iss, am I an idiot to get all worked up like this? You yourself said he has to know how I ask after him. He has to know what he does to me, what I feel." He sighs, the weight of the day bearing down on him. Is it too much to ask someone to share his pallet? Not just anyone, Gerrick, is that too unreasonable a request? "Am I the fool here?" "He's a fool if he can't see what he means to you," she replies. There's venom in her low voice, a mean throb like the ache of a tooth that's been broken for awhile and only now begins to hurt. "The sooner you get that truck of his put back together, the sooner he'll be on his way and we'll have this mess behind us. I'd rather have you daydreaming over how he might be than this torn up when you see just what kind of an asshole he really is." "He's not," Trin starts, but it's a half-hearted attempt and the words are buried in his pillow. He's too tired to argue. With a sleepy yawn, he snuggles into his sheets. The blanket 60

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Aissa drapes over him feels like a heavy hand holding him down. "I just want him here with me." A cool hand smoothes the hair back from his brow. "I know," she whispers. Against his temple, her fingers curl into a frustrated fist. "I'll tear his balls off if he fucks you over." That makes Trin laugh, a quick bark, all he can manage this close to sleep. "Don't you dare. I like them where they are." Though I'd like them better if they were here with me. He thinks he says it out loud but Aissa's only reply is the soft latch of the door she closes behind her as she leaves. **** Sometime later the pallet shifts, stirring him awake. A warm hand slips between the sheets and over his hip, eager fingers fumbling for the front of his boxers. In the quiet of the room he hears ragged breathing, the tiny plink plink of his snaps opening, the rustle of the blankets as they're pulled back. Then his shorts are shoved down and someone crawls into the pallet behind him, a thickness pressing hard against the cleft of his buttocks. Hot breath harsh in Trin's ear, hands groping for his own stirring erection, an arm sliding beneath his thigh to hold his leg up out of the way. "Hey kid," Gerrick whispers, kissing his neck and ear and hair. The gunner's body presses Trin's into the pallet and kisses trail over his shoulder, down his spine. The fingers working at his hard dick squeeze until his pulse fills the night. From somewhere near his thigh, Gerrick murmurs, "Miss me?" 61

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Before Trin can answer, something wet and warm and impossibly soft licks into him. He grips the pillow with both hands and raises his hips in the air, driving the gunner's tongue deeper. "Yes," he whimpers, but the word dissolves into a guttural moan as Gerrick rims him, so he tries again, "please." It comes out in a series of little bleating noises, puh puh puh. He can't manage anything more. Then Gerrick is on him again, his body heavy like the summer sun where it covers Trin's own. That hardness is back between his buttocks, slick with spit and this time it eases into him, a knife through butter, he melts away before it. Large hands pull him back against the gunner's chest, thumbs rub over his nipples until he gasps. The room spins around him, dark. He's still disoriented from sleep. A distant voice in his mind whispers he might be dreaming. If so, he hopes he never wakes. He's ridden into the pallet, the gunner driving into him, his mouth on Trin's ear grunting each thrust. He hears his name and 'yes' and 'God' and 'fuck' all strung out like beads on a rosary, each one a prayer for more. Trin gets off twice and Gerrick smears Trin's belly and cock with the juices, until the sheet beneath him cools with his own cum. But the gunner is relentless, a force of nature, a dervish or sandstorm whirling through Trin until he can't even think. It's just the fucking, the hands on his body, the arms holding him down, and a voice like the desert moaning in his ear. Don't stop, he thinks, rising off the pallet to meet the gunner's thrusts. Don't let me go. 62

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Fire shoots through him when Gerrick finally comes. Flames coil in Trin's stomach, race along his veins, burning him up inside. He's sure he's going to die from it, from this— he can't feel so much and still go on, not in this life. Like a phoenix he'll burn in the gunner's hands, they're both consumed by this rage, they'll combust together and in the morning all Aissa will find are their bodies' outlines drawn in ashes on the sheets. His face is flushed, his brow hot. "You set me on fire," he sighs, turning in the gunner's arms. He wants to stare at Gerrick while he burns. The gunner's eyes are closed, his breathing already even. As Trin moves, Gerrick stirs and burrows closer against Trin's back, nuzzling his neck. "Hmm," he murmurs. When Trin starts to speak, Gerrick smoothes a hand over his shoulder, a sleepy gesture to quiet him. The cock that pierced him earlier has started to soften, though it's still deep within. With strong hands Gerrick repositions Trin easily, rolling him over onto his stomach again so the gunner can lie on him. "Get some sleep, kid." His words rumble through his chest and into Trin. Trin's leg is pressed into a damp spot on the pallet. The weight above him makes it hard to breathe. Already he's cooling off, the ardor passed, the lust curled back into him where it belongs. He closes his eyes and sees himself in the gunner's arms, the two of them aflame. "I'm glad you're finally here," he whispers. "Shh," Gerrick purrs. 63

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Trin stares at the window, the darkness out there a lighter shade than the black of his room and listens to the gunner's breath taper off into snores. **** A few hours later, when a cottony grey dawn presses against the window, Trin wakes up to the quiet latch of the door closing behind the gunner. He lies there for a moment, still feeling the ghost of Gerrick's body tight against his. He's decided he likes waking up with another. Though it's still early, he slips from between the sheets and stretches in the cool morning air. Before the sun rises, his room is almost chilly, the wasteland sun tempered by the night. Chilly enough to pimple his arms, at any rate, and he rubs the bumps away. Then he strips the pallet, using the sheets to wipe off the sticky cum that has dried to his belly and legs. A shower would be nice, but right now he wants to rush downstairs and sit with the gunner over breakfast, before either of them gets much farther along with the day. His pants lie in a heap on the floor where he dropped them before crawling into bed—looking at them he remembers Aissa, not so much her words but the gentle lilt of her voice, unusual for her. Maybe she knows where Gerrick was yesterday. Maybe she'll tell him if he hounds her long enough. Most likely she only suspects, he assures himself. How would Aissa know? She probably thinks the gunner was roving through the town, pants down and erection jutting out in front of him like a divining rod, searching for some hot hole to plunge into. Pulling on his pants, Trin thinks she's just 64

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jealous, despite the fact that he doesn't see what exactly there is to be jealous of. Him finally getting the man of his dreams? His nights spent in the gunner's embrace? She has Blain. Why can't she let him have Gerrick? Happily ever after and all that shit. He won't ask her then. It doesn't matter anyway. Gerrick just left here, didn't he? His bags are still here ... Trin glances at the worn and dusty packs to make sure they're right where the gunner left them and they are, so he won't bother to ask Aissa where she thinks his man is. He doesn't care to hear her 'watch out for him, Trini' spiel again today. The shirt he wore yesterday is still clean—he put it on after the shower and sniffs it now to make sure there's no booze on it, or whatever it was Aissa slipped into his drink last night, but it smells alright so he tugs it on, smoothes it down over his chest. A look over his shoulder at the disheveled pallet and he grins. Kisses waking him in the night, dream-like sex, falling asleep slathered with his own fecund cum ... yes, he's gotten used to this real quick. Outside his door, the waystation is silent. Trin takes the front staircase, the one that leads down to the common, his feet flitting over the steps as he just barely touches the railing. In his eagerness he would've rushed right out into the common if he didn't catch a glimpse of something out of the corner of his eye. He skids to a stop on the last step—from here he can see Gerrick's back in the mirrors that frame the door. Holding his breath, Trin watches him eat, a plate in front of him filled with 65

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eggs or pancakes or sausage, he can't see what because the gunner's body blocks his view but he can smell frying grease. His stomach rumbles and he covers it with one hand, pressing his palm flat against his belly to quiet it. In the kitchen, plates clink together with a distant sound that has nothing to do with him or the man he watches in the mirror. How long has he waited for this? Longed for it? Aissa once told him to take what he can get, meaning all the other gunners who rode through here, but Trin held out and now he's finally getting what he wanted all along. The gunner's name is on the tip of his tongue and Trin is just about to call out when he sees movement in the other mirror, the one on the other side of the door. As he turns his attention to that reflection, he sees a heavy hand rubbing a dry cloth over the top of the bar. A muscled forearm, sleeve pulled up to expose graying hair curled over tattoos blue with age, and then the rest of his brother steps into the mirror, the set of his face an all-too-familiar expression to Trin. Holding his breath, Trin comes off the last step slowly, careful not to set his full weight on the floor so the boards won't creak. There's something about the way Blain glares at Gerrick, who leans over his food and either ignores or doesn't notice the other man, something that cautions Trin not to go busting out there right this second. Just wait. The staircase comes out in a dim corridor, separated from the bar by a length of wall that runs to the public toilets in the back. On tiptoes Trin creeps over towards the wall. He sees the mirror behind the bar reflected in the mirrors framing the door, his brother's and Gerrick's glossy faces reflected back, 66

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the mirror behind the bar again, the mirrors by the door leading out to the street. A dozen common rooms echo in the tempered glass. A dozen Gerricks shovel eggs into a dozen mouths that are still imprinted on Trin's skin. A dozen Blains wipe down a dozen bars. Trin wants to run out in the midst of those reflections and shatter that scene. Blain's hand rubs over the bar again and again. Gerrick eats as if he doesn't know the other gunner is even there. "Gerrick," Blain says, his deep voice carrying into the hallway. Trin steps up to the wall, listening. Eavesdropping. The word sparks in his mind and is gone like a comet in the night. No, I'm just waiting for the right moment to come out. Nothing wrong with that, is there? The gunner grunts in reply. From where he's pressed flat against the wall, Trin can't see much of the mirrors now—just Gerrick's proud back, the ends of his hair that curl over his collar, the hem of his shirt pulled free from his jeans. The fabric stretches taut across his back as he takes another bite. Then, as if noticing Blain for the first time, he laughs. Hearing that rich sound weakens Trin's knees. "You son of a bitch," Gerrick says, amused. Trin imagines his brother's mouth tightening at the phrase, his lips bloodless lines in his face. The gunner's manner is friendly enough but there was nothing civil in Blain's voice. Gerrick has to be the only man Trin's ever known to blow off his brother's obvious anger—he does so with another laugh and the clatter of his fork against his plate. Trin dares to lean out from the wall enough so that he can see the second mirror. The gunner holds a hand out to Blain, who glares at it like 67

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road kill or something pecked to death by the preybirds in the wastes. Gerrick doesn't appear to notice. "Blain! Give it here, man. I was just asking about you, too. Your brother said—" "I thought I told you never to ride through here," Blain says. Each word is as final and as deadly as a gunshot and Gerrick's hand falls to the table, shot down. "I thought I said I didn't want to see you around." The gunner's laugh isn't so quick this time. "That was years ago." Awkward silence stretches out between them and Trin wonders how he can shrug off Blain's hateful stare so easily. The fork scrapes across the plate and when Gerrick speaks again, it's through a mouthful of food. "I like your brother." Trin flushes, suddenly hotter than the sun at high noon. I like ... Gerrick just said—I like your brother. His brain shorts out like an overheated engine and he's vaguely aware that he's grinning like a damned fool. I like your brother. See? Trin wants to crow. SEE? "You leave him out of this," Blain hisses. The grin slips from Trin's face and he strains to hear his brother's lowered voice. "I told you to stay the fuck away because I knew you'd pull this shit. It's like that kid in Danac all over again, isn't it?" Gerrick's voice explodes. "That has nothing to do with this!" But Blain ignores him. "You hear someone has the hots for you and you just have to go see for yourself. Roll into town like a fucking god and rock their world a bit. Does it make you feel good, Gerrick? The way he looks at you, the way he idolizes you?" 68

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That kid in Danac—Trin's mind stumbles over that but he tells himself it's cool. Of course the gunner's had lovers before. Trin knows he likes boys; that's part of his appeal. Danac's one of the inposts, a few days' worth of hard riding to the east and whoever this kid is, he isn't here now. But what happened with him? "I want you out," Blain is saying. "Today. I'll put your truck together myself if I have to but I want you gone by sunset." Trin shakes his head. "No," he whispers, then covers his mouth with one hand and bites into his palm so no one hears him. Tears prick his eyes, no. With an uneasy laugh, Gerrick starts, "Blain, really, I think you're overreacting here—" "My brother's not going to end up with a bullet in his head," Blain spits. Trin's pulse quickens ... a bullet? Sweet Jesus. He's never heard Blain so livid before. "You're nothing to him, do you hear me? I won't let you fuck him over the way you've always done before. He's not another one of your sluts, he's not some nameless boy you won't remember five minutes after you roll out. He's my brother. He's the reason I gave up gunning. You hurt him, Gerrick, and you'll answer to me." Silence. Trin feels his heart twist in his chest at his brother's spiel. No, he wants to shout, No! The gunner can't leave. Who cares about some strung out kid pining away at one of the inposts? Gerrick's staying with him, Blain can't threaten him away. He just can't. Quietly, so quietly that Trin has to strain to hear him, Gerrick whispers, "Don't fuck with me, Blain." 69

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Blain's reply is just as low, just as deadly. "Get out." The fork drops to Gerrick's plate, a loud clack that makes Trin jump. "I'm not here for you." Trin blinks back tears, hanging on every word. "You told me to stay away and I have, but you never told me why. Then I get wind of this boy who'll entertain a man just to hear him talk of me." His laugh is quick and dry. "You think I didn't have to come see him for myself? To taste him? He's sweet, Blain. Damn sweet, like sugar. Melts at my touch—" "Get out." Blain tries to keep his anger in check but the strain is in his voice, his control of the moment is slipping rapidly out of his grasp. Then what? Don't provoke him, please, Trin prays. God, don't fight over me. "He's more than you'll ever deserve. Just get the hell out of here, now, before I—" That damnable laugh again. "Before you what? Kill me? How will you ever explain that to your brother, hmm? You give up your whole way of life for him and then off me in a fit of rage, do you think he'll forgive you for that? He's damn near obsessive about me, that's thicker than blood and you know it." Blain doesn't answer but Trin can feel his frustration in what he doesn't say. "He's old enough to figure out who he wants to fuck on his own, Blain. You don't need to decide that for him. If he wants me out of that room, he can tell me himself." More silence, Blain's dangerous when he gets like this, Trin thinks wildly. Did Gerrick just say he's staying? That he'll defy Blain's anger for him? He doesn't hope to dare... 70

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"I suggest you close your eyes if you don't like it. Keep that bitch of yours and let your brother open his pallet to me if he wants. I'll be moving on soon enough." Pushing away from the wall, Trin tiptoes towards the stairs. A quick glance at the mirrors shows Gerrick bent over his plate, intent on his food. Blain stands in front of him, hands clenched as white as the towel he uses to wipe down the bar. Without looking up, the gunner continues his meal as if he isn't even having this discussion. "That's the whole problem," Blain mutters, pissed. As Trin steps up on the first riser, the board creaks beneath his feet and his brother's gaze flickers to him. For a moment their eyes meet in the reflection of the mirror. Trin holds his breath, sure Blain will direct his anger toward him, but he turns back to Gerrick. "You move on and then what, huh? He wastes the rest of his life waiting for you to come back while you fuck your way through the outposts? You bastard." The gunner's laughter rings out through the common. "You've gone soft," he says, amused. "I'll fuck him as long as he wants me to." "And anyone else who drops their pants for you," Blain counters. In the mirror, Gerrick's shoulders rise and fall in a disinterested shrug. "You get what you can. Don't get all holy on me, Blain. Like you never played around. Anything to get off ... weren't those your words, once upon a time?" Trin grasps the railing in one hand and starts up the stairs. "Times change," his brother growls. 71

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"Well I don't," Gerrick shoots back. "I'll do what I want and right now that's your baby brother." He just said he wants me. He hurries up the steps and wishes he had stayed in bed. Why did he want to come down here anyway? To hear him say something, anything, outside the pallet and he did, didn't he? He said he likes me. He wants me. Me. And that's good, right? He's not sure. His mind hurts turning over all that he heard, everything the gunner implied and his brother hinted at but yeah, he thinks that's good. He likes me. That's damn good. **** When Gerrick comes into the room, Trin is sitting on the windowsill, staring out at the junkyard below. Chrome and metal gleam in the morning sun and above the palisade, the sky is already the washed out color of the gunner's jeans. Trin's been thinking about what he overheard downstairs. One word stands stark in his mind: bullet. Out in the wastelands, Gerrick wears a pair of revolvers slung low on his hips ... Trin saw them when he rode in. His saddlebags are filled with gunpowder, wrapped in little twists of paper like party favors. He's the fastest draw in all the outposts, shoots with a deadly aim, both hands equally sharp. He's a gunner, for Christ's sake. He makes a living from bullets and pistols. He kills. Devlars, Trin assures himself. He looks up as Gerrick enters, a little surprised the gunner came back. Preybirds. Not people. 72

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The corner of Gerrick's mouth pulls into a wane attempt at a smile. "Thought you'd still be in bed," he says. He kneels by his bags and starts to root through them, but when Trin doesn't answer, he glances at him again. "You okay?" Fine, Trin wants to say, only what comes out is, "What happened to the kid in Danac?" As soon as the words are free, he wishes he could take them back. "The kid..." Gerrick raises an eyebrow and sits back on his heels, the bag in his hands forgotten. The look he gives Trin is unnerving. "Listening in when you ain't invited is bad form, boy." "I was coming to sit with you," Trin whispers. He doesn't like the glint in Gerrick's eyes, it's hard and uncompromising and suggests that tonight he might sleep alone. "I didn't see you all yesterday, and last night you came in so late. I just wanted to maybe spend some time together before you left again today." With a grunt, Gerrick turns back to his bag. "I'm a busy man." He digs into the bottom of his bag and starts to pull out the twisted paper pieces that hold his gunpowder. "I didn't come here for a visit. My shocks are about gone, I'm low on ammo, my knife's dull, I need food for the run, whole lot of shit I need to get done here. I can't afford quality time. Trin, isn't it?" He glances up to confirm the name and Trin nods. "The only time I get to myself is at the end of the day. I would think you'd appreciate that I came all the way back here to spend that with you." "I do," Trin assures him. "Gerrick, I know—" 73

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The gunner interrupts him. "What happened wasn't my fault. No matter what Blain tries to tell you otherwise, you got me? I had nothing to do with it." Frowning, Trin asks, "Is this about Danac?" Gerrick claws through his bag, his anger like his guns or his knife, deadly despite it silence. Still, Trin wants to know, has to, and if he asks Blain then his brother will be more than a little upset that he was in the hall listening to their conversation. He'll be fucking insane if he thinks Trin's sneaking around him because Blain's not the secretive type. If someone were talking about him, he'd walk right up to the person, ask them what the hell they were saying. He's blunt like that. Aissa too, she doesn't linger in doorways to overhear gossip. If Trin dares to ask her did she know about a kid in Danac who took a bullet in Gerrick's name, she'd drag him with her to find out from the gunner himself. Gerrick's the only one who can tell him straight. He just said Blain would lay the blame on him. As the gunner spills clothes and toiletries from his bag, Trin asks, "Who was this kid?" "I don't even remember." Gerrick's voice is surly like a sullen child's. "About your age maybe, but this was years back, when Blain was still gunning. Someone who heard about me and thought I was the best. I am the best, but this kid took it over the top." He gives Trin a look that says, same as you, just as sure as if he spoke the words out loud. "I'm out on the run for a month or more straight and you can imagine what it's like— 74

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hot and sandy and mean and I'm all too ready to find a soft place to crawl into for a couple of days, you know? And all I keep hearing from the gunners coming out of Danac is look, this kid has the hots for you, ride in there and see for yourself. So I did." Trin wants to ask if he was riding with Blain at the time, but he keeps quiet. Now that Gerrick is finally talking to him, more than moans in the pallet or whispered lines to get him hard, he doesn't want to say anything to stop the story. He loves the man's voice, an octave or two lower than his own and gravelly, as if he's been in the wastelands so much that the sand and sun are now a part of him. It's how the dunes would sound if they could speak. Trin could listen to the gunner all day, hearing only the voice beneath the words, the cadence and rhythm of hot days and lonesome, chilly nights. Emptying his bag, Gerrick begins to sort through the things he's laid out in front of him. His fingers dance nimbly over short rounds of bullets tied side by side on strips of rawhide, his lips moving as he counts the ammunition. Trin bites his lower lip and waits. Finally the bullets are set aside and satisfied, the gunner pulls his gun belt out from between the folds of a shirt. It's made of worn leather, etched with a design so faded that Trin can't decipher it, the guns in holsters stained dark with years of sweat. With reverent hands Gerrick extracts the guns, touching their pearlized grips and steel barrels the way he touches Trin at night. Sitting down, he sets one gun in his lap and empties the rounds from the other. From among the items on the floor he finds a chamois cloth and a small vial of oil. Trin wonders if 75

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he's through with his story and is debating whether or not to ask him what happened next when the gunner speaks. "He was something else," he says, his voice carrying to where Trin sits in the window. "Great boy, really, and all tied up in me it wasn't even funny. I had no idea one person could know so much about another, could want so much from him, when we'd never met." He starts to clean the gun in his hands. The oil darkens the chamois and leaves dark streaks on the metal. Gerrick watches his hands work as if they belong to someone else, his mind in the past. In Danac. "Lovely boy," he sighs. "Soulful eyes, you know the kind I mean. Dark, too. Damn, I'd never seen eyes so dark. You'd drown in him, I swear." Trin thinks maybe he doesn't want to hear this after all. The man's had lovers before.. He's twice my age and too good in the sack. I know I'm a far cry from his first. Still, he doesn't want to think about anyone else with the gunner and he surely doesn't like the wistful way Gerrick recalls the kid. That boy is dead. No contender for his attentions, not anymore. "I did that," Gerrick whispers. "Got completely lost in him for a few days. He was too good to be true. I'm sure you don't know how heady it is, having someone cast you in that role. I should've stopped it maybe, put an end to the charade, but I'd be lying if I didn't tell you now that I loved every damn minute of it." That glance again, the one that says Trin reminds him a lot of the boy. Too much perhaps, or maybe not enough. 76

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"So what went wrong?" Trin asks. He talks low, keeping this between them. He likes any intimacy he can get. With a bitter laugh, Gerrick tells him, "He didn't want me to leave but I'm a gunner, it's in my blood. Later someone said I should've discussed it with him, let him down easy, but you know what? He knew what he was buying into. He knew damn well who I was. I didn't have to tell him shit." He throws Trin a hard look while his hands continue cleaning the gun, motions he's performed so often that he doesn't need to look them over. "I'll tell you what happened, Trin. Straight up, no lies. I was out of the room most of my final day in Danac, checking on the truck and buying supplies, shit like that. I wasn't even there with him, so how could it have been my fault? Tell me that, how could it have been me?" "What happened?" Trin isn't sure he wants to know. "Fucker took my gun's what happened." Gerrick nods at the gun he holds, the other in his lap. "Right out of my bag. These things ain't toys, kid. I don't ride with unloaded pistols." One hand smoothes over the gun barrel, wiping away the oil. The metal shines dully in the morning light. When Gerrick moves, the sheen winks at Trin, inviting. "Put it in his mouth, I guess. I don't know, I didn't find him. I was at the trump store down the street when I heard the shot. I knew it came from my gun, same way a mother knows the cry of her child in a roomful of kids. He pulled the trigger, though. Not me." 77

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For a moment he sits there, silent, staring at the gun. Was it the one the boy used? Or was that the one in Gerrick's lap? Before he can think through what it is he means to do, he slips from the windowsill and crosses the room, his bare feet imperceptible on the hardwood floor. At Gerrick's side he falls to his knees, the gunner's clothing beneath him. "Gerrick," he sighs. The gunner looks at him. The gun drops from his hands and then Trin's in his arms, strong arms like a tourniquet wrapped tightly around him. "I'm not like him," Trin whispers into the gunner's shoulder. His own arms snake around Gerrick's waist as large hands cup his face, forcing him to look into Gerrick's eyes. Light eyes, like the sand. "I'm not," Trin swears, "I promise. I know you have to leave, you'll move on, I know that. But I just want you now, alright?" His chin crumbles, his eyes sting. His hands come up the gunner's arms, feeling muscle beneath skin covered with downy hair, until they tighten around Gerrick's wrists. "Maybe you'll think of me out there, and who knows, one day? Maybe you'll come back. Back here, to me." Gerrick's moustache tugs one corner of his mouth up in that smirk he has, the one that makes Trin's heart flutter like a caged bird. Rough fingers rub the soft skin just below his jaw. "Maybe," the gunner murmurs. Then he leans down to claim a kiss. Trin fists his hands in the gunner's shirt as their lips meet. The hands hold him in place as an eager tongue licks into him, sealing the promise. Maybe. **** 78

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If Trin hoped their morning talk would charm Gerrick into stopping by the garage to see him at work, he was wrong. By mid-morning the only visitors Trin has are fat flies that buzz lazily around the trashcan beside his desk. The noise is enough to drive a person mad, a constant drone that penetrates everything. Despite the heat outside, Trin rolls the bay doors up, letting the sun slant into the garage to paint squares of bright yellow light on the concrete floor. He moves the trashcan just outside one of the doors and goes back to work on the trucks, but even beneath the hood he swears he can still hear the damn sound. He'd kill the flies if he thought it'd do any good but they're like the undead. One falls and two more spring up in its place. Just in case the gunner's watching, Trin works with his shirt off and his pants hanging down low on his hips. He imagines he feels fevered eyes on his back and ass when he leans into the engine cavity of Gerrick's truck. As the day wears on, minutes counted with the tick of the flies, he slips into daydreams where warm arms encircle his waist and he steps back against a hard cock straining the front of the gunner's pants. In his mind he sees Gerrick touch him, the sweat trickling down his back following the path of the man's fingers along his spine. The higher the sun rises, the hotter he gets, until his pants chafe his erection with every move he makes. Vaguely he thinks of the cab of the truck, which must smell of the gunner's musky scent, the windows rolled shut in this heat. What would it hurt to climb up behind the driver's seat, unzip 79

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his jeans, let his hand take care of the ache that's settled behind his balls and beats in time with his pulse? He's reattaching the brake cables, already swinging up onto the running boards in his mind, when someone grabs the waistband of his pants and yanks it up. Pain shoots through his groin, his knees buckle from it, the bite of fabric in his crotch excruciating in the heat. As he twists free from those evil hands, he already knows who it is. "Aissa!" he cries. Giggles erupt around him like hot steam released from a geyser. "What the fuck—" She leans against the open hood of the truck. "You like it," she says. She starts to hop up on the bumper but Trin punches her arm, knocking her off. "Don't hit me. It didn't hurt and you know it." "I've got bruises now," Trin replies. "Didn't hurt you maybe, but I've got cargo down there." To emphasize his point, he cups his sore dick, already limp. Any amorous thoughts he was mulling over before have evaporated like rain in the desert. Kicking at her, he pouts. "I'll be sore all night." "Oooh, sorry," she laughs, sounding anything but. "There goes your fuck fest. Last time you'd get him, too, from what I'm hearing. They're moving out tomorrow, did you know?" Actually no, he didn't, but he won't give her the satisfaction of being the one to break the news to him. "I know," he mutters, pushing her away again. "Get the hell off the truck, Iss. How am I supposed to put it back together if you're climbing all over it?" 80

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"Did he tell you he's leaving?" she wants to know. Trin ignores her and turns towards the engine. "He didn't, did he? Jeez, what is it you see in him anyway? So he's hot as shit, big whoop. Blain says he's a rover, Trin. He says the guy jumps from boy to boy like genital warts. He says—" "I know damn well what Blain says," Trin interrupts, "thank you very much. Now if you're about through with your little tirade, maybe you can—" "Trin." His brother's voice catches the words in his throat. He looks past Aissa and she turns as Blain ducks through the back door into the garage. In one hand he carries a small paper bag, the top rolled down tight under his fist. For a moment he fills the doorway, blocking out the world behind him, then he starts down the short run of stairs, each step making him smaller and more mortal. As he crosses the garage, his gaze flickers from Trin to Aissa. When he reaches them, a frown already on his face, he asks her, "What are you doing out here?" "Bothering Trini," she teases. One foot kicks out at him, connecting with his shin. Without thinking Trin punches her arm, a solid thock that makes his hand hurt. Aissa doesn't even flinch. "I've done all my work." "Then leave him to do his." Blain jerks a thumb over his shoulder, indicating that she should leave. "Go on." She begins, "I'm not—" "You heard him," Trin says. He picks up a nearby cloth and concentrates on wiping the grease off his hands so neither of them will see his grin. "Get out of here." 81

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Aissa growls, "He's talking to me." "And I said, go on." There's only the slightest waver in Blain's calm voice to hint at his growing irritation, but Aissa hears it and her mouth snaps shut like the clasp of a coin purse. From the corner of his eye, Trin sees her lower lip pooch out. Blain touches her elbow and she blinks quickly, pushes away from the truck, wipes at her eyes. His voice is softer when he says, "Let us alone a minute, won't you?" She takes a deep breath and releases it in a sigh. "Sure." Trin stares at the floor when she glances at him because he knows she's looking for an excuse to hit him again. "I'll be in the kitchens, I guess." Trin waits until her footsteps ring on the stairs before he looks up. His brother is watching him, his face carefully neutral. Some tiny voice inside screams that Blain's going to say something about that whole Danac business; he knows Trin was listening in this morning and he'll want to know exactly what Gerrick told him about it. The truth, Trin thinks. He glances at his brother's eyes, the bag in his hand, his face again. The kid killed himself because he didn't want to lose his man and I understand that but he's here now and I'm not that weak. I'm not going to let him just disappear into the wastelands without more than maybe from him. Aissa slams the door shut behind her as she leaves and Blain still doesn't speak. Finally Trin tries on Gerrick's smirk, leaning his hip against the front of the truck and turning the dirty cloth over between his hands. "Is she that obedient in the sack?" he jokes. 82

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Not that he cares—he just wants to lighten the mood. Suddenly more than anything he wants to see his brother smile. But Blain doesn't. "I'm not going to discuss that with you," he says in that no-nonsense manner of his. "You're the last person who should be critical about who someone beds down with at night." Trin lowers his head, chagrinned. "I'm sorry," he mumbles. He makes sure it's loud enough for Blain to hear so he won't have to say it again. "I didn't mean—" "Then let's drop it." Trin nods at his feet. With his chin, Blain points at the truck. "How's it coming along?" Crossing his arms in front of his chest, Trin shrugs. "Alright. What's in the bag?" His brother sets the paper bag beside him. "Shocks," he says. Trin looks up, surprised, and the way his brother looks back almost makes him want to admit he threw the others away. "She said you might need some to get this thing rolling. You'll have it done tonight?" Trin admits, "Tomorrow maybe." Blain's lips tighten into a flat line. Trin readies himself for some kind of remark, why's it taking so damn long this time or how about he starts to focus on his work, but Blain doesn't get into that. Instead he frowns at the day beyond the bay doors and when he speaks, his voice is softer than Trin's ever heard it before, even when addressing Aissa. "This can't last," Blain tells him. His eyes hint at pain twisting him up inside and his frown deepens. "You know that, kid. You're old enough. So don't let so much ride on him, he's not worth it." 83

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"I love him." Blain shakes his head. "You don't know him. You're infatuated with the myth and that's not who he is, trust me. I know. I've ridden with him." Trin clenches his hands into fists, tightens his arms around his chest. His fingernails bite into his palms. "I know him, too, Blain. You're the one who has it wrong. You can't see what I can when we're alone. You can't see—" "I see well enough." Blain whirls on him and Trin has to take a step back to be able to look up into his brother's face, blotchy with anger. "In case you haven't noticed, he's not here. He pulls this shit all the time. Can't you get that into your brain?" Trin shrinks from the hand he raises but Blain reaches out and rests his heavy palm on top of Trin's head. The fingers close on a hank of sweaty hair before sliding off to settle on the back of his neck. A shuffled step closes the distance between them. The hand on his neck is uncompromising and he can't move away. "I'm not going to hit you, Trini," Blain whispers, his voice like the roar of the wind through the wastelands. His brother leans towards him, pressing his forehead to Trin's, his skin cool against Trin's fevered brow. This close his eyes are the world and Trin has to squeeze his shut. Blain's breath tickles his chin when he speaks. "Much as I want to, just knock some goddamn sense into you, that's not me and you know it." "I know," Trin sighs. He keeps his eyes shut because he doesn't want Blain to see the contradiction inside him. You're 84

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wrong. He's not how you say he is when we're together and that's what matters here, isn't it? I'm all that counts. Blain's voice is like velvet. "Trin." Gentle but cloying in the heat of the day. "Look at me, kid." Slowly, Trin obeys. How can he not? Tiny droplets of sweat bead on Blain's upper lip—he stares at these instead of into his brother's eyes. It's too hot this close together but he can't seem to find the words to ask if Blain will move away. Trin thinks he'll push it, say 'in my eyes' or 'you're not listening' but he is—listening with his whole body. Blain rarely touches him and this hand on his neck, this cool forehead against his own, this is more than he's ever had. Did his father ever do this? Did his mother? He doesn't think so. He's never felt this ... this safety ... this love. What's Blain going on about? Whatever it is, I'll do it, Trin promises silently. Whatever you want, tell me and it's yours. Please ... his gaze flickers and he sees Blain's eyes like a sphinx's. He can't stare into them for long. "You want a man in your pallet?" Blain asks. Trin doesn't hear the words so much as feels them vibrate through him. "You pick anyone else, anyone at all, but Gerrick is only going to tear you apart. The longer he stays here, the worse it'll get. He's like a bee, kid, and he stings you 'til you can't see straight. Look at me." Trin does, briefly, then focuses on the large coarse hairs in Blain's eyebrows. "If you don't get him out when you can, he'll dig in deep, where it hurts, and he'll leave you all torn up inside when he 85

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finally moves on. I know. I've seen it before. Don't try to tell me he's different now because men like him never change." Trin's chin trembles but he doesn't dare speak. Blain waits, though, willing to hear him out, and when he doesn't say anything, his brother steps away. The spell is broken, the hand drops from his neck, he's free. Turning, Blain unrolls the top of the paper bag and dumps the shocks out into his hand. The usual gruffness is back in his voice. "So let's get these trucks together, what do you say? Once he's hit the run, he won't be back, I reckon." Because you keep him away. Now that his brother doesn't have him in his sights, Trin can glare at him, his own anger simmering. "I don't want just any man," he mumbles. Blain stops and looks at him, amused. That only fuels him on. "I won't settle for anyone else, I want him. So he's fooled around in the past, what's the big deal? I'm sure you fucked your fair share before Aissa." Blain's face darkens at that, but Trin hurries on. "I don't care about all those other guys. I don't care what happened before, because he's spent the past two nights with me. Don't you get it, Blain? With me." His breath is harsh and ragged and for a moment the expression on his brother's face makes him wonder if he's gone too far and now he'll get one of those big hands smacked across his face. But he's had it with everyone else knowing what's good for him—what about what he wants? Blain keeps saying he's old enough so why won't his brother stay the hell out of this? Because I know the man, he'd say. That's not good enough for Trin. 86

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When Blain does speak, though, there's no malice in his words. "Two nights." Trin nods, petulant. Two nights is long enough. In this world it's an eternity. Holding out his hand, Blain offers Trin the shocks. He takes them gingerly. When he starts to pull away, Blain's fingers close around his wrist like a flytrap. He holds Trin firm in his grip, until he looks up. Blain's eyes are terrible, like blueblack storm clouds gathering on the horizon. "But who has his days?" Trin has no answer to that. **** The day wears on. Trin refuses to think about where it is Gerrick might be at this particular moment, because then Blain wins. His brother wants to fill him with doubt and it's just not going to work. The gunner may very well have a boy in every damn outpost between here and the coast but in Arens? Trin is sure that boy is him. All he has to do is be more than all the others, no problem. Fuck better, let Gerrick have his space, keep the door unlocked no matter how late he comes to him and he'll win out in the end. What will Blain and Aissa say then? When the gunner is eating out of his hand and practically flying over the runs to get back to him? He won't admit that the gunner's disappearance bothers him. The man is busy, is all, has a hundred things to take care of before he rolls out. Tomorrow, though? So soon? Trin hoped to deter him at least a week or more—maybe the 87

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longer he stayed, the less he'd want to move on-but Blain changed all that. Damn him and his shocks. And while you're at it ... Trin secures the last bolt that holds the engine in place beneath the hood ... damn Aissa for telling on me in the first place. But at least the trucks are done. Both of them, much as he wishes Gerrick's was still in pieces strewn about the floor. If Aissa's right and Blain gets his way, the gunner will be heading out sometime tomorrow. Trin doesn't want to dwell on that. He won't let his thoughts drift past tonight and the two of them in his pallet again. Since he closed the door to his room behind him this morning he's wanted nothing more than to get back into Gerrick's arms. As the light outside fades, Trin closes the bay doors and locks them shut. The trashcan he leaves to the flies, still tracing lazy circles in the late afternoon sun. His shirt hangs from one of the side mirrors of Gerrick's truck where he tied it to keep it from getting dirty, but now he uses the clean material to wipe the sweat and grease from his chest. On his way towards the back door he glances at the pump and almost stops. Blain put the pump there specifically so he wouldn't clog the drains in the waystation with filth from the garage. But Trin's blood hums with the thought of hot water beating down on him and what if Gerrick's back? It's later than when he finished up yesterday ... he can imagine the gunner sidling up behind him in the shower, hair and moustache slicked down, hands lathering soap onto Trin's body. "I'll wash up in the shower," he says to no one in 88

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particular. In the empty garage, his voice has a hollow ring that makes him wish he hadn't spoken out loud. He hurries from the garage, across the yard, to the back door of the waystation. One of the chore girls stands on the stoop, a large metal tub in her hands as she pours warm, sudsy water onto the stunted grass. She holds the screen open with the heel of her foot and Trin folds himself easily inside. "Thanks," he says, ducking under her arms and into the kitchen. When he passes under the tub, he can feel steam rising from the water cascading beside him. Looking around to make sure Blain's not in sight, Trin heads for the back stairs. Aissa sits on a stool by the sink chopping onions and she glances up at him with red-rimmed eyes. "Trini," she says, her voice full of tears. "Wait." "I've got to shower," he tells her. He's not in the mood to put up with her right now. But she slips off the stool and catches his arm. "Trin—" Her skin is cool and damp on his, the strong scent of onions wafting up from her like a cloud. The smell waters his eyes and he pulls away. "Later," he says. When she starts to protest, he holds out his arms so she can see the oil and sweat streaked across his chest. "Aissa, I'm a mess." She edges around him until she blocks the stairs. "Why didn't you wash up at the pump? There's one down here. I'll prime it for you." He laughs. "I want a shower," he says carefully, as if she's a child who might not understand. She places her hands on her hips and gives him a defiant stare that makes his bones 89

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feel hollow and weary. "Come on. Do I have to use the other stairs? Because I will, you know." "Trin, listen," she begins, then frowns at him as if she doesn't know what else to say. That's a first, Trin thinks. Aissa always has something to say on everything. If she doesn't, she makes it up. With a dramatic sigh, Trin turns and takes a step or two away from the staircase. "Fine," he pouts. Aissa watches him, that frown worried into her face. "You'll prime the pump? You're not going to splash me, are you?" She gives him a bright smile, relieved. Leading the way, she promises, "Not this time—hey!" The moment she moves, Trin's on the stairs, clambering to get up before she recovers enough to pull him back. "Trini!" she shrieks as she claws after him. Blunt nails scrape his elbow, his waist, catching a belt loop on his pants. "Dickweed, listen to me." He jerks forward, up the stairs, one hand on the railing and the other flat against the wall. "Get off," he cries, kicking out behind him. "Jesus, what the hell's gotten into you? I'll call Blain." The threat doesn't phase her. "You're not listening," she says through clenched teeth. "You're not talking." He falls to his hands and knees, damn. All this for a shower? If he knew she'd go ballistic, he would've skirted the kitchen entirely and gone through the front. "Let me go." 90

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Despite her hands tugging at his pants and legs, Trin gets to the top step. Rolling onto his back, he kicks at her, his bare foot connecting with her collarbone. "You are an ass," she declares, climbing up after him. "I'm your friend, Trini." He laughs, his breath short and hot in his throat. "Could've fooled me." He scrambles to his feet and she does the same, wiping her hands on the apron she wears. Here in the close darkness of the corridor, the pungent stench of onions is overpowering. The neon sign that flickers outside the window down the hall burns her eyes red like a bad photo. Her face pools with shadow. "Trin, stop." Brushing off the seat of his pants, he looks at her suspiciously. "What?" he asks. He uses the same deadpan voice she does. His eyes sting from her scent. Her lips twist with uncertainty. "Don't," she says simply. For a moment he stands there and waits, sure she'll add to that. Something along the lines of 'don't what' might be nice. But she doesn't, just meets his gaze and waits for him to take up the scuffle where she left off. He doesn't want to ask what she means, that would concede too much and he surely doesn't want to brush off this conversation altogether—if he walks away now she'll get pissed, and probably tackle him halfway down the hall. Finally he decides to ignore the whole situation, pretend she didn't just try to drag him back downstairs and start fresh. Rubbing at his elbow, sore where he must've knocked it on the steps, he asks, "Have you seen Gerrick?" 91

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"You don't want to go there." She must mean the shower and when Trin takes a step in that direction, she grabs his elbow again. Unexpected fear leaps in his chest. "Are you listening to me? I said you don't— " He shrugs her off. "Is he here?" He walks quickly now—the door to the bathroom is just ahead. He can already hear the gurgle of drains and the rush of water like rain in the distance. If Gerrick's already in the shower and she's been trying to keep him out, then why... When he opens the door, hot moist air smacks him in the face. "Trini," Aissa whispers, her hand falling away from his arm. Where she touched, his skin feels clammy and cold. He hears the wet slap of water on tile, the sigh of a shower and beneath them he hears another sound, guttural, hungry. The sound of a man finding release, in a voice he knows too well. Through a drawn shower curtain he sees the vague shape of a man—Gerrick, the name flits through his head and is gone. Some part of Trin still grasps onto the legend he's woven into fantasy, the gunner he wants to hold him, want him, need him the way he wants to be loved. Guys jack off in the shower. He watches the water bead on the curtain that separates them. I do it all the time. Then why do his fingers tremble as he takes the edge of the curtain? Why does his heart pound like a drum in his chest? Cool air from the hall swirls around his legs and he can hear Aissa in the doorway, hissing his name. "You don't—" 92

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He yanks hard on the curtain, the hooks that hold it in place popping off the rod with a tiny plinking noise, like coins dropped in a fountain. Make a wish, he thinks wildly, and suddenly wishes Aissa had been strong enough to hold him back. **** He pushes past her as he races down the hall. The image burns in his mind—he closes his eyes and still sees the gunner's slack cheeks and open mouth, his eyelids half-shut in lust. A hand stroked Gerrick's thigh, another curved around his flat ass, a man knelt before him with the gunner's fingers plunged deep into his thick hair. The hard length suckled between red lips, Gerrick in him, fucking the bounder's hot pink mouth as the shower poured down around them. The bounder, Trin recognized his eyes when he turned to see why it was all of a sudden cold behind him. Gerrick's eyes widened slightly and the gunner sighed his name, "Trin." No explanations, no hurried excuses—he didn't even push the bounder away, just kept thrusting into the softness between his lips and uttered his name. Trin. For the first time when he was getting off he said Trin's name, and it wasn't even on him. Behind him Gerrick calls out but Trin's beyond hearing. He runs down the hall, head tucked between shaking shoulders, chin pressed to his chest. He tells himself he won't cry, even as the first hot tears cut through the sweat on his cheeks. 93

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"You bastard!" Aissa shrieks. "Out of my way, bitch." Trin feels as if he's running in place, the air thick around him like water; never before did the corridor seem so long. Please, he prays. He closes his eyes and sees those hands that touched him so tenderly now holding the bounder's head against his crotch. He can't seem to outrun that image. Please. Aissa's voice takes on a desperate squeal, panicky, the voice of fear. "Blain!. Trin, wait—Blaiiin!" Finally he reaches the stairs. He doesn't chance a look back, he doesn't want to see Gerrick and that bounder, naked, hair dripping wet and erections still hard beneath towels wrapped around their waists. He doesn't want to hear any reasons why. They knew, Blain and Aissa, they knew all along ... and they tried to tell me, that's what hurt the most. They tried to tell him and he wouldn't listen. I thought I knew him. Trin stumbles down the steps. I thought he could be different with me. What the fuck do I know? What the hell— His feet tangle together and he's thrown down the last few steps. Strong hands catch him beneath his armpits, the impact pulling muscles in his shoulders and back. His brother's voice tears through the spiral of thoughts in his head like a chainsaw. "Hey, slow down." Trin shrugs out of Blain's grip. He keeps his head low so his brother won't see his face, streaked and grimy from struggling to keep it all inside. But gentle fingers cradle his 94

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chin, turn his face up and Blain's eyes harden with instant concern. "What's wrong?" he asks sharply. Twisting away, Trin tries to step around his brother but Blain stops him. "Hold up—" "No." Heavy footfalls on the stairs tell him the gunner is close— he doesn't want to see that man again, he can't. His mind replays the scene, pulling back the curtain, Gerrick's hooded eyes, Trin's name moaned as someone else sucks him down. He moves the other way, and Blain's other arm blocks his retreat. "Blain, let me go." In a quiet voice, his brother wants to know, "What'd he do to you?" The words break the dam he was building so carefully around his emotions. He blinks and the world blurs, tears blinding him—he shoves his brother aside, too torn up to realize he's twice Trin's size. But this time Blain steps out of his way. Trin blunders to the screen door and pushes through it, lets it slap shut behind him as the cool evening air hits him in the face. He rubs his eyes and weaves through the junkyard, bumping one hip into a stack of tires, knocking his hand on the fender of a burnt-out husk that was at one time a classy convertible. Without thinking, he returns to the garage. **** He locks the door behind him, then pushes a half-empty drum of oil in front of it to bar the path. Blain has a key and the last thing Trin wants is someone else with him. As he 95

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moves the drum, he has to stop twice because he's crying so hard. No use pretending now. Both times his lungs hitch and he can't seem to breathe through tears that clog his throat. Each breath is painful, each tear like hot wax burning his face. Every single part of him hurts in ways he never imagined possible. And his damned mind won't stop the playback, like a disc stuck on repeat. The images shuffle over and over, sometimes out of sequence and sometimes all at once. Opening the curtain. Gerrick's eyes. The perfect 'O' of his mouth. The red lips encircling his dick. Trin almost thinks he could count every drop of water beaded in the gunner's eyelashes, every freckle dotting the bounder's bare back. The thought sears through him and he screams out, a mingled cry of helpless rage and frustrated pain. In his anger he tips over the barrel and oil splashes like blood across the steps. "Trin?" he hears through the heavy door—Blain's voice, concern as bright as the sun shining through his words. Trin watches the door knob turn back and forth but it's locked. "Trini, open up." "Go away," he mutters. He doesn't like his voice. It sounds dead. He can almost hear his brother breathing. Blain must have his face pressed against the door jamb. When he speaks again, his voice is closer now, stronger. "Listen to me, Trin? Let me in. Please kid, you don't need to be alone right now. I know you're hurting—" 96

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"You don't know shit." Trin punches the door, rattling it in the frame. "I don't need you telling me how fucking wrong I was, okay? I know that, are you happy? I don't need you to rub it in." Silence. Dimly he wonders if Blain would race around to the front of the garage to find entry. The bay doors are padlocked, though, he won't get in. "Just go away," he sobs in that dying voice that's become his own. "Just leave me alone and go the hell away already, won't you please?" The last word cracks and splinters into a whine. Please, he prays. Please... "Alright," Blain sighs, defeated. The door knob turns once, slowly, and then snaps back to its original position. When his brother calls out for Aissa, he sounds like he's halfway across the junkyard and heading for the kitchen door. Trin turns and almost slips in the oil he spilled, black sludge oozing down the steps to puddle on the floor of the garage. He splashes through the slimy liquid, bare feet leaving oily footprints behind. At his workbench, he sweeps everything to the floor, nails and struts, balled up papers and mech books, pencils, magazines, a broken CB he'd been working on whenever he felt like a challenge. Then he knocks down his stool, a handtruck, toolboxes, anything that falls with a noise loud enough to deaden the pain. Wrenches clatter to the floor, hoses unroll, cans full of paint and grease and gasoline overturn and splatter the concrete with a myriad of color, like a canvas ruined in a storm. Had he actually believed he might be something more than an outpost fuck to that man? Had he truly dreamed of being 97

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someone special? Those lips on his skin, those hands on his body—his stomach churns at the memories. He'd never wanted anything in this world but who he imagined the gunner to be and those fantasies shattered when he pulled back that curtain. Fragments rattle inside him, their edges cutting his mind and heart. They pierce his lungs, choke his breath, stab him from within. How stupid could he have been? How fucking blind? I had no clue, but that's no excuse. Like a broken puppet he staggers to where the run-gun trucks gleam wetly, newly polished, in the center of the garage. Not the first inkling of this ... this betrayal. He knew about the gunner's roving eye, sure, but what's looking? Trin leans against the first truck, the one not Gerrick's, the hood still open in a crocodile grin. His fingers blanch where they dig into the bumper. Gerrick's hot stares the other night, his flirting with the chore girl—but he slept with me. Trin can't get over that part of it, no matter how he turns it over in his head. He slept with me. But at least Blain's question is answered now. Trin balls his hands into fists and strikes out at the truck, pounding into the shiny finish. Gerrick spent his days with the bounder no doubt ... and just how the hell could Trin have known? Why should he even suspect? "I should've been enough," he growls, his voice animalistic, raw. He barely recognizes it as his own. Was this all his fault, then? Could he have possibly been more to Gerrick? 98

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His soul cries in frustration, I gave him everything I had. Since he was old enough to look at another and want him, he's loved the gunner. How many years has it been? Wasted now, on a lecherous old man. How many other boys are there scattered like dandelion spores on the wind, blown across the outposts and waiting for Gerrick to return? Believing in the magic of his hands, the deceit in his voice. Believing they're the only ones. Believing he's changed for them. The kid in Danac was lucky. He's not in the game anymore. He saw the way Gerrick played and forfeited. "Damn him," he mutters, meaning the gunner. In the low light of the garage, the truck in front of him promises escape. It's tempting. Take one of those beauties and barrel through the palisade gate, maybe then he could outrace the hatred building in him. Choking back fresh tears, Trin wipes his nose with the back of his hand. He breathes in deep, as if hoping to suck back in all the emotion he has allowed to leak out. The sharp tinge of gasoline and his own sour sweat wash over him, a bitter scent that drives a dull nail of pain above his left eye, one of the many fragrances of spurned obsession, cloying like a fever. In an effort to calm down, he takes another deep breath. This one doesn't leave him as woozy as the first and he tries it again, sniffling as he breathes. The kid in Danac missed. He should've shot Gerrick dead between the eyes. Then I wouldn't have this...

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Or last night, or the night before. Or this morning, that was amazing, just the two of them talking like seasoned lovers. Why can't they get back to that? He rubs a hand over the bumper, smudged with his prints but otherwise undamaged. His little fit left no lasting harm. Could they get back to it? Tonight maybe, Gerrick will come to him, Trin knows it, and maybe they could talk— About what? A voice whips through his mind, Aissa's voice, strengthening him. About how he got off on seeing you there behind the bounder? About how your sudden appearance startled him into orgasm? How he came so hard, it was like a stick of dynamite went off in the bounder's mouth, is that what you want to talk about here? Part of him can't believe he'd even think such a thing. This is over, isn't that painfully clear? Whatever he thought he'd found in that man is gone, no matter how he tries to work it out. It's done. Absently he traces the curved bumper with one hand, his feet shuffling over the floor with a sound that reminds him of death. At his parents' burial, he walked this same way, Blain's hand on his shoulder to hold him up. He almost wishes his brother were here now. Blain's worried, is all. He's probably thinking about that kid in Danac and going over the layout of the garage in his mind, trying to remember if there's anything lethal in here. Gasoline, paint thinner, wire cutters, rope, knives ... take your pick. Trin crosses the empty space between the two trucks. This place is a smorgasbord for a suicide. 100

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Despite the ache in his chest, the thought makes him grin and in Gerrick's chrome bumper he catches a glimpse of himself, the distorted reflection buckles and looms larger as he approaches. Don't worry, Blain, I'm not killing myself. Him either. I still want him too badly. Feelings don't just disappear—Trin's discovering. In the wake of his anger, he's left with a hollow gap in his chest and a litany flowing like an undertow through his mind, a small stream of what he might can do to get the man back. But he's not a pretty boy, he isn't rich, he isn't exotic or quick-witted or even very bright some days, to hear Aissa tell it. If only everyone else would disappear. His reflection frowns at him as if disagreeing. When it's just the two of us, things are amazing. Take everyone else out of the picture and who's he going to want then but me? He imagines sneaking upstairs, into Blain's room this time—he knows where his brother's guns are kept. He may have stopped running years ago but Blain cleans the pistols faithfully, once a week, same as Gerrick did this morning. Trin sees himself taking one of the guns, the handle awkward in his hand, and then what? Find the bounder, shoot him down, the chore girl next— you've never fired a gun in your life, says that derisive voice in his head that sounds too much like Aissa to be healthy. The recoil from the first shot alone would tear your arm off and then what? You'll have to masturbate with your left hand instead of your right. A crazy laugh bubbles up in him but he tamps it down quickly. With unseeing eyes he stares into the maw under the 101

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hood of Gerrick's truck ... kill the bounder indeed. And every single other person in the world, is that what it'll take? To make sure he stays true to me. To make sure he's mine. Trin knows that isn't a viable answer. Blain would stop him, if no one else. The disappointment in his brother's face would make him turn the gun on himself. What a mess. Gerrick's fault, all of this. If he'd only played straight these few days, was that asking too much? Trin doesn't think so. The gunner shared his pallet at night. Why couldn't that be enough? And he had to do it in the waystation, of all places. Like he wanted to get caught. Like that was part of the thrill. How dare he? Desperate anger fills him again. With Aissa downstairs, who must have seen Gerrick head up and knew what was coming, she tried to protect Trin from the truth; with Blain behind the bar—,who's even now probably kicking the shit out of the gunner; with himself in the garage ... and he knew I was closing down out here. He hates to admit it but Gerrick must've known what time it was and that Trin would be upstairs soon enough to shower. Did he want to be found? Or was he planning to get off again on Trin with the other man's spit still hot on his dick? He starts to shake, rage coursing through him like the blood in his veins. He reaches out for the first thing he can grab—one of the cables attached to the truck battery, and yanks hard until it snaps off. It's like a chain falling from his heart and tears blur his vision as he cries out, pouring all of himself into the sound. His hands slash at the cables, the belts, the hoses beneath the hood, ripping into the truck's 102

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viscera, tearing apart all his hard work from the past two days. **** Fuck him. Trin sits curled under the workbench, squeezed into the recess with his legs hugged tight to his chest as he stares balefully at the run-gun trucks. Gerrick's hood is still open, exposing torn wires and shredded hoses. A steady plink is the only sound in the garage, antifreeze leaking from the sliced reservoir into an iridescent puddle on the floor. He did that, and ripped the cables out, stabbed at the radiator with a pocketknife until the blade snapped in half, gouged long furrows into the air filter. Poured everything he felt out onto the truck so that he's empty now, wasted. Yet the memory's still there, seared into his mind like the afterimage of a bright flash of light—the bounder on his knees in the midst of warm water showering down, Gerrick's length fucking his mouth, his hips thrusting even as he saw the curtain pull back. Trin never wants to see the gunner again. Fuck that man. Ten minutes later he's convinced himself he should give Gerrick a second chance. Just go on up to his pallet, listen to the gunner's apology, and go from there. At least hear his side of things... Fuck him. His mind cycles like a choppy engine, he can almost hear it running in circles, threatening to stall. He hates the man, he doesn't, he can't, he should. That's the kicker there, he 103

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should hate him, should never want to see him again, and yet he does. More than anything else, he wants those leonine eyes studying him, he wants that moustache tickling his lips, he wants to feel the apology in the gunner's hands and mouth. He should head upstairs now. What if he isn't sorry? Aissa's voice again, he's getting sick of it. Bad enough she has to terrorize him in person, now she haunts his head, too. Trin suspects he could tune her out if it wasn't for the unfortunate fact that she's right. Dammit to hell, but she is. What if he's not waiting for you, then what? You hunt him down? How fucking desperate is that? He should leave the truck as it is, torn open and wounded and when the gunners gather to leave in the morning, Gerrick will have to stay behind. With me, Trin thinks. The idea has merit. If he could only convince the man to love him, to love only him. But Blain won't like it. His brother stopped by the garage this afternoon specifically to make sure the trucks would be ready to roll tomorrow. If he sees the damage Trin's caused, the gunner's indiscretion will be the least of his troubles. Much as he wants to say fuck it and blow off the repairs, to force Gerrick to stay, he can't. He won't. Blain won't let him. With a weary sigh, Trin crawls out from under the workbench and hauls himself to his feet. He rubs his eyes with grimy hands and glances at the clock that hangs above the bay doors. An ancient beer ad lit in neon buzzes intermittently above red digital numbers. He's surprised to see it's late—later than he thought, almost midnight. He's been here for hours. Suddenly his legs cramp from being 104

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folded under the workbench, his arms ache, as if just knowing how long he's been sitting makes his body hurt. No matter. He's not going to his room, not tonight. Let him sleep alone. A small defiance, but all he has. He wants desperately to believe that one night apart will be enough to make the gunner come running to him tomorrow. Tonight, the truck. Already he's regretting his little fit. He doesn't have half the shit he needs to repair the hoses and cables he destroyed. Friction tape and luck, that's all he has to rebuild with and it's going to take all night. The thought exhausts him. This is Gerrick's fault, too. A splinter of anguish shoots through him, pricking here and there before it's gone. He can't even get upset anymore, he's cried out. He tries to poke at the wound the gunner tore into him and this time feels nothing but the faintest glimmer of hurt. Somehow that scares him more, like he's dead inside. At least before the pain made him know he was still alive. Now he thinks there's a very real chance that he isn't, and his body is simply going through the motions until it realizes the truth. I should say screw the truck, rush upstairs and forgive him. He's in my pallet, I know he is. Let his hands prove to me that I'm still here. Let his kisses bring me life. But what if the gunner isn't the only one in the pallet? What if the bounder's there, too? What if— No. His breath catches in his chest as if he's mortally wounded and there it is—his heartbeat. No matter how broken, at least it's still there. And it'll quicken tomorrow, if Blain sees what I've done. 105

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Despite the sorrow filling him, the anger still puckering his soul, Trin has no desire to hear whatever it is his brother will have to say about the truck. Better to get it together tonight, even though he's drained and listless, than to face that firing squad in the morning. His emotions have worn him out. He snags a roll of tape from where it rests on a peg above the back of his workbench, then shuffles over to the truck, already weary at the thought of working all night to fix the damage he's inflicted. Why couldn't he have settled for throwing tools around the place, or tearing through the junkyard? Why did he have to fuck up the truck? Staring beneath the hood, he blinks slowly, his eyes burning from all his tears earlier. With the back of his hand he stifles a yawn, and then tears a length of tape free from the roll. The scritch it makes as it pulls free echoes in the empty garage and he shakes his head to clear it. Cables snake over each other, wires fray at the ends, hoses drip fluid to the floor like blood. Trin doesn't even know where to begin to put this back together again. **** It takes all night and when the Christ bells ring in the dawn, Trin's still bent over beneath the hood of Gerrick's truck, doctoring the hose that runs into the water pump. For the past six hours he's known nothing but wires and cables, filters, pistons, clamps. His hands are so sore that the slightest touch jars the raw nerves in his fingertips. Where the tape sticks to him, he swears the skin tears off when he 106

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pulls it away. Each wire feels electrified, the way it sizzles in his over-worked hands. Six hours without rest, without food, without sleep—tack on the six hours before that, too, and did he stop to eat lunch this afternoon? Or yesterday afternoon, really, he can't remember. The world keeps blurring and he has to blink it back into focus, but this time it isn't tears softening the edges of his reality, it's exhaustion. Last night is a dream that may have never happened, the shower, the bounder ... did he really see that? Could've been anyone in the shower, anyone at all. Gerrick's probably asleep in his pallet, wondering where the hell he is, and Trin's beginning to wonder the same thing—his head dips and he shakes himself awake. "Alright," he mutters, his voice gritty and unused. Inch by inch he straightens up, stretching, his back creaking as he stands. His eyes slip closed and he wavers like a reed in the wind. He could fall here, sleep on the floor in the grease and filth, he doesn't care. As it is he doesn't think he's ever going to be able to open his eyes again. One of the bay doors rattles, jarring him. Did the bells ring already? Why aren't the doors open yet? It's not until he's halfway across the garage that he remembers he locked everyone else out. Last night he was upset, to put it mildly. Right now he doesn't have the energy to work up that kind of mood. The padlock opens on the second try. As the door rattles up, Aissa ducks inside. "Trini, God," she sighs in relief. The red curls that usually frame her face are pulled into a tight bun at the back of her head, secured with 107

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what look like chopsticks or pencils. Beneath it, the rest of her hair hangs in long, wet waves like seaweed. All along her hairline, her strawberry birthmark is white from the severity of the bun. She gives his oily hair and dirty, naked chest a distasteful scowl and declares, "Look at you! Shit, if Blain sees you like this, he'll kill that gunner for sure. Do you know he almost had a coronary when he checked your room this morning and found that fuckface in your pallet like it was his? Everloving hell, but he tore that ass a new one." She brushes past him and Trin stands aside, confused. "I should mention I haven't had any sleep," he tells her. His voice is still grizzly. "What are you talking about?" "Gerrick?" Aissa flicks her hair over one shoulder and gives him a look that asks how could he possibly forget. Oh yes, him. When he doesn't respond, Aissa touches his arm, concerned. "How are you holding up, Trini? Are you alright?" He laughs, a crazed sound that he bites off before it can get away from him. "Fine," he tells her. Can't she see that? No sleep, no food, covered in oil and sweat, dizzy, upset ... the injustice of it all crowds around him, he swoons despite the morning chill, and she has the gall to ask if he's alright? Oh sweet Mary above, the first coherent thought he's had in hours. He tries another laugh, this one nothing more than a low chuckle that threatens to escape into giggles if he lets it. He doesn't. "Don't I look fine to you?" She frowns at him. "You look like shit."

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Yes, well, he supposes he does. Still, she doesn't have to be so eager to point it out. "So do you," he growls, pushing her away. "What'd Blain say this morning?" She follows him to the trucks. "I don't know. I wasn't privy to it. He closed the door—" "And you stood on the other side, I'm sure." Trin tries to look amused and fails miserably. He's too empty for much emotion at the moment. "I know you too well. Did they fight?" "He's not worth it," she says suddenly. Anger flashes in her eyes. "He dicked you over, Trin. Don't tell me you're still interested in him after that! Blain's right, just let him go. The trucks are done, right? The gunners can roll. Get over him already, won't you, and just let him go." As if it's that simple. Trin goes back to work under the open hood and ignores her outburst. Maybe if he pretends she didn't speak, she'll stop talking. It's never worked before, but there's always a first time. Frustrated, Aissa leans down beside him, her arm pressing against his. "I thought you were done with these." "I am," Trin replies, defensive. Or will be soon enough, he amends silently. It's taken all night but he thinks he's finally managed to fix the damage he inflicted in his rage, though he should really go over the truck one last time, make sure the job's done right. The last thing he needs is the gunner coming back pissed because he took a look under the hood and saw the flash of silver tape holding the hoses and cables in place the same way nickel fillings plug cavities. He shrugs her arm 109

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off of his. "Hey here's a concept, get out of here, alright? I'm not in the mood for you today." She shoves back, hard enough to shift his balance, but he catches himself on the metal rod holding up the trunk and doesn't fall. He has a feeling if he made it to the ground, he'd never get back up. "Fuck you," she mutters, turning away. "I'm just trying to be nice..." Trin realizes he's upset her and sighs. I'm not up for this, he prays to whoever might be listening in. "Iss, look—" "Forget it." Her hair swings down her back with the motion of her hips as she stalks off. She heads for the back door this time, holding onto the rail and stepping gingerly around the puddles of dried oil congealing on the stairs. "You'll want to clean this mess up," she calls out, still pissed, "before Blain sees it. And hose yourself off, while you're at it. You stink, Trini, God knows. Your brother thinks you're mental enough over that damn gunner as it is. You don't have to prove him right." With her leg, she nudges the empty oil barrel aside. Then she opens the door, shaking her hair back from her face as she steps outside like she's shaking herself free from the stale air of the garage. Slowly Trin closes the hood of the truck, sits back on it, rubbing an already soiled cloth between his grimy fingers as he stares after her. She leaves the door open and he listens to the crunch of her feet over the gravel path between here and the waystation. 110

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He watches the cloth streak grease along his hands and knows he'll have to apologize to get her to talk to him again. Can't you cut me some slack here? I'm the one who's supposed to be upset. I'm the one who's been wronged. How does she turn it around so easily? How can she even imagine she's the one hurt here? You didn't catch Blain with one of the chore girls in the shower, did you? He should've thrown that at her before she stormed off, give her something to think about if she wants to get all righteous and shit with him. Amid the sounds of the quiet morning he listens for the slap of the screen door that leads into the kitchen. He hears it squeal open on rusted hinges, hears her curse lividly at whoever is unfortunate enough to hold it for her, then winces when she slams it shut with so much force, the hinges cry out as it opens again. "Fucking ass," she swears to no one in particular, but loud enough that her strident voice carries across the junkyard and into the garage. The ferocity of her anger brings the ghost of a smile to Trin's face. Must mean me. Footsteps on the gravel again, this time sure and fast. Trin rolls his eyes and throws the rag at the tires stacked high along the far wall. Just what I need, he thinks as the rag falls to the floor, landing pitifully short of its goal. Can't we take a breather here, Iss? Stop tearing at me for two minutes, please, just until I manage to get all the pieces back together again. In the morning light, the stained rag is only a shade or two lighter than the concrete floor. 111

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He's about to pick it up—pushes off of the truck and bends at the waist, one arm stretching out for it when a shadow darkens the morning sunlight. He looks up, ready to tell Aissa to take it somewhere else, he's not fighting her today, only it isn't her in the doorway. It's Gerrick. The gunner is dressed in the same clothes he wore when Trin first saw him. Battered jeans hug his legs, gun belt around his waist, a button-down shirt unfastened halfway down his chest to expose sandy hair just beginning to grey. With the sun behind him, his eyes are dark holes in his face. Trin can't read them. His face is draped in shadow. Trin's mind flickers and for an instant he sees the man stripped naked, hair and skin wet with spray, the bounder between his legs to suck him down. Then he blinks and it's only Gerrick, hands on his hips just inches above the barrels of his guns. His voice is like sour honey when he whispers, "Hey there, boy." "My name is Trin," he answers. He doesn't speak loud because he doesn't want to hear the quiver in his words, but they carry easily enough in the empty garage. "What are you doing here?" As if that's an invitation, Gerrick steps into the garage, closing the door behind him. "Come to talk to you." He takes the stairs with a measured pace, boots sticking in the oil and leaving prints beside Trin's own, barefoot and dried. Vaguely Trin thinks he should be mad at this man, shouldn't listen to his lies, but the gunner is stealthy and Trin grows torpid from his nearness. With each step he takes, 112

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Trin's control slips away, until he stands defenseless before him. This close, the gunner smells fresh and clean, a scent like new sheets on his pallet that makes Trin feel soiled and used. One of Gerrick's eyes is swollen, red and tender. Blain's handiwork no doubt. It'll bruise soon enough. There's another welt on his cheek, a thin line of blood beading across his brow and a pink blush in one corner of his mouth where he must've wiped at a freshly bloodied lip. But his eyes are steady and clear and that moustache of his tangos into a slow, selfeffacing grin. "If you'll listen," he says softly. "I waited up for you last night." Trin tries to speak and can't. Clearing his throat, he looks at the open vee of Gerrick's shirt and tries again. "I was..." He motions to the truck behind him, his hand falling to scratch at his elbow as he shrugs. "Busy. I was busy. Fixing your truck so you can go." And there's that amused smirk, peeking from beneath the trim hairs on the gunner's upper lip. "You want me to go?" he asks. "We were just getting on a bit, you and me. Have I told you yet I like your eyes?" My eyes ... Trin shakes his head, trying to cast off this dream. The bounder's between them, as real as if he squatted on the ground at their feet. "Why?" Trin asks. His voice croaks with tears he thought were over with by now. "Why him—because you could? Because he offered?" Gerrick touches his shoulder and Trin twists out of his grip. "First tell me why." 113

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"Look, it was just one of those things, you know?" The gunner takes his arm, his fingers encircling the sinewy bicep easily enough, and this time Trin can't pull away. "He said hey and I liked what I saw, what could it hurt?" Me! Trin stares up into Gerrick's face and tries to hold onto his anger. It's hard, with those pale eyes staring back, to remember what it is he's so torn up about in the first place. Whatever this man does can only be right, that's what the hand on his arm promises, what the slow smile confirms. Let him touch you and he'll make it right. "I didn't know you'd get so upset," the gunner purrs as he loosens his grip on Trin's arm. His hand rubs up over Trin's shoulder and waits, unsure if it will be shrugged off. It isn't. Encouraged, Gerrick takes a step closer, ducks his head a little, lowers his voice. "You didn't even give me a chance to explain—" "Do you love him?" Trin asks. That's the most important thing, he decides, because if Gerrick feels for the bounder even one sliver of what Trin himself feels for the gunner, then he's lost. But Gerrick shakes his head, confused. Relief floods Trin's heart. "What?" the gunner asks. "No. Jesus, boy, I don't know the guy. Love had nothing to do with it. Seizing the moment, Trin wants to know, "Then do you love me?" The gunner's hesitance is answer enough. His eyes flicker indecisively. Suddenly Trin can't breathe. There's a weight on his chest pressing down on him; he can't draw in air. It was a stupid question. God it was. He wishes he could take it back. 114

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If the answer's no, don't say a word, please. He'd rather not know. The hand on his shoulder squeezes in what's meant to be a comforting gesture. Staring at him, deep into his eyes, into his very soul, Gerrick whispers, "I could learn to, Trin. You're sweet as dew and I can't deny the way you feel about me, Lord knows I could fall for it. But this is a hard world, kid. Your brother'll tell you as much. My life is out in the wastelands, the devlars and these guns. I can't stay here any more than you could take to riding the runs." With a sad smile, he presses his lips to Trin's forehead in a rough, quick kiss. "I'd love to love you, boy, but I can't. Another time and place maybe, another life, but not this one. Your girlfriend is right, you deserve a better man than me." Trin closes his eyes against bitter tears. Gerrick's next kiss brushes the dampness from his lashes. A third nuzzles his cheek. But when the gunner tries to touch his mouth, Trin pulls away. "Go," he sighs. Gerrick's hand slips up to cradle the back of his neck, his fingers kneading into muscles tensed all night. It feels wonderful, energy flowing from the gunner into him, warmth spreading across his shoulders and down his back. Though he knows he shouldn't, his body responds to Gerrick's nearness and his voice has no strength when he says, "Go on. I mean it. Please..." If the gunner tries to kiss him again, Trin doesn't think he'll be able to keep him at bay. Somewhere far away rusty hinges scream out in shocked irritation, and then furious footsteps crunch on the gravel 115

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path heading this way. Gerrick's breath licks over Trin's lips when he sighs. "I never meant to hurt you," he whispers. "You know that." Trin stares at his moustache, each individual hair stark this close, as thick as copper wire. If the gunner kisses him now, it negates the anger and rage that caused him to tear into the truck behind him, the feelings he's trying desperately to hang onto right now. The fire in him is guttering low and one kiss is all he needs to put it out. Heavy shoes scuff in the doorway, breaking the spell Gerrick holds over him. As Blain enters the garage, he growls, "Get the hell away from my brother." His boots ring out like judgment, and Trin sees fear flicker in the gunner's eyes the instant before he turns away. "I thought you were leaving." "Blain," Gerrick starts. That's as far as he gets before Blain's fist connects with his jaw, throwing him against the hood of his truck. "No!" Trin cries out. He grabs his brother's elbow in a vain attempt to hold him back. "Blain, stop this—" His brother shakes him off. "Get out," he snarls at Gerrick. In one hand he has the gunner's packs and he flings them at the truck, the contents tumbling out. Toiletries clatter to the floor, packets of gunpowder tear open, clothes land in the oil and grease. Trin falls to scoop them up but Blain's hand drops to his shoulder and hauls him to his feet. He doesn't look at Trin, doesn't dare take his gaze off the gunner splayed against the hood of his truck. 116

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For a moment no one moves. Trin feels trapped, pinned by his brother like a captured moth. His heart flutters to get free. The cut on Gerrick's lip has opened again and blood trickles from the corner of his mouth as he glares at Blain. Then his hard eyes shift to Trin, focusing on him, on him, until he's all that exists. Finally Gerrick concedes. "Alright." Trin's chest tightens. "No," he whispers. Warily Gerrick starts to retrieve his items, shoving them in his bags as his gaze darts from Blain to Trin and back again. Leaving... "No," Trin says again, louder this time. He turns to his brother, pleading. "Blain—" But he finds no sympathy there. "Trin, stay out of this." Grasping at any excuse, he tries, "The truck. I'm not quite finished with the repairs." He turns to Gerrick, who looks at him with an unreadable expression on his face. "We were talking here—" "You're through," his brother says. A small twist of paper rests near Trin's feet, full of gunpowder. When Gerrick reaches for it, Blain pulls Trin back as if afraid the gunner will try to snatch him away. With a wry smirk the gunner mutters, "I'm sorry, boy. Like I told you, another time, another place. You could've been enough." "Don't you dare speak to him," Blain warns. Trin doesn't know if his brother's forbidding him to respond or warning the gunner into silence. The truck, he thinks, his mind flashing to the tape that holds the cables together under the hood. He feels like a doctor who has been forced to operate in the 117

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trenches with whatever supplies are at hand and now waits for the patient to come around. There's a very good chance the damn truck won't even start and then what? He doesn't have long to find out. With his personals held to his chest, Gerrick swings into the cab, tosses his shit into the passenger's seat and starts the truck. The engine stutters once before it turns over. The gunner gives him a long, last look, his eyes dark in the shadows of the cab, his mouth set in a humorless grin. His hand rests on the top of the steering wheel and as he backs out of the garage, he raises his fingers in farewell. You could've been enough. The truck eases through the open bay door and out into the street. Trin wants to race after to watch it leave but Blain holds him in place. When Gerrick shifts gears, the engine threatens to stall but it holds steady. Out in the early morning stillness, Gerrick guns the motor and the truck backfires once, a hard pop that tells Trin that one of the pistons is loose. But then he peals out, tires spinning in the gravel drive before tearing down the street and back out of his life. Beneath Blain's hand, Trin reels as fresh waves of pain wash over him. Gone, he thinks. Gone. **** If it wasn't for his brother, Trin would probably stay in the same spot until nightfall came, staring out into the empty street and wishing fervently he hadn't turned away that last kiss. Now he has nothing to show that the gunner was even 118

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his for those two brief nights, nothing except the sore spot in his chest where his heart has shriveled like a dried prune. If it wasn't for Blain, he might never move again. But his brother takes him by the arm, leads him across the bright junkyard to the kitchen where busy chore girls throw furtive glances their way. His hand is steady on Trin's back as they climb the stairs. When Trin pauses outside the closed door to his room, Blain shakes his head. "Let's get you washed up first, what do you say?" Washed up, yes, good. He nods and lets Blain guide him to the shower. As his brother runs water in the first stall, Trin stares at the floor and doesn't think of anything at all. He doesn't look around—he doesn't want to see something that might remind him of what he saw yesterday evening. The bounder. The gunner. Gone. "Come on, kid." Blain holds the curtain back for Trin to step into the shower. The splash of water on tile makes his hands shake and he can't move. "Trini," his brother sighs softly. "Come on. The sooner we're done here, the sooner we can all get past this." He takes a step towards the stall but Blain stops him. "Trin, your clothes." He stops and simply stands still, his gaze fixed on the floor. "Your pants," his brother offers. Trin doesn't respond. With another sigh, Blain lets the curtain close. He looks around the shower as if hoping maybe someone else can help, but they're alone. When he speaks again, softly this time, his deep voice is unusually gruff. "Hands up," he murmurs, raising Trin's arms out at his sides. Trin leaves 119

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them there like a child about to be undressed. Blain hooks his thumbs into the waistband of Trin's pants, takes a steadying breath and tugs them down with one good yank. Stepping on the pants as they pool around Trin's ankles, he nods at the stall, where water hits the curtain like rain on a tin roof. "You take it from here, kid. I'll wait for you. Go on." Trin steps out of the pants and into the shower. The spray feels like the sun, warm and hard as it pounds onto his body. Remembering his shorts, he strips them off and tosses them in a corner of the stall, the white fabric already damp and grey. Every move he makes feels stilted, wrong. The washcloth is abrasive, the soap stings. Grease and oil sluice off his body, swirl together down the drain. He closes his eyes and sees Gerrick's face inches from his, feels lips pressed to his temple, hears the words again, You could've been enough. From the other side of the curtain, Blain calls out, "Trin? You alright in there?" "Fine," he mumbles. He scrubs at his chest and arms until the skin pinks beneath the suds, then he stands beneath the showerhead and lets the water beat down around him, a driving rhythm. Why didn't Gerrick ever join him in here? Talking into the spray, he confesses, "I messed up the truck." "What truck?" Trin shakes his head, flinging water from his hair, and waits for his brother to figure out what he means. "Gerrick's?" "Last night," Trin admits as he wipes water from his eyes. "I was mad." 120

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He expects his brother to get angry now, tell him he shouldn't have done it—what happens when another mech takes a look under the hood and sees the tape holding the cables in place? The waystation at Arens gets a bad name, that's what, labeled a hackjob garage and there goes business. Blain only sighs. "You didn't do a good enough job of it," he says. "He drove out of here, didn't he?" Trin turns his face up into the spray, savoring the heat pelting his cold cheeks. "I fixed it back." Water smacks his mouth, his closed eyelids. It tastes clean on his tongue and he licks it off his lips. He wonders what happens now. The gunner's moved on, that's Aissa's voice in his head again. You should too. He doesn't want to. When the water at his feet runs clear, he turns off the shower. The curtain screeches back and strong arms wrap a thick towel around his shoulders, warding off the chill that prickles his skin into goosebumps. "Fixed it?" It takes Trin a second to remember what it is they're talking about, the truck. He hugs the towel close around his body but still begins to shiver. "You had the parts?" Trin whispers, "Mostly." Not really, he amends, keeping the thought to himself. If something happens to the truck, it burns out on a run or dies altogether, he'll be the reason for it. 121

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Blain doesn't need to know that. He'll think Trin rigged the damn thing to conk out just so Gerrick would return. And I'd get that kiss. Maybe I'd even get to ask him just what it is I need to do to be enough for him, if he comes back. Secretly? Trin hopes the gunner didn't even make it through the palisade, though he knows different. The way the truck sounded starting up was a little unsteady but a few miles beneath the wheels and it'll straighten out. Straighten or blow out, one of the two. The gunner gone or killed—either way leaves Trin dead inside. With brisk motions, Blain rubs his shoulders and back, drying him off. "Well," he huffs, "you got it running again, that's the main thing. You just put him out of your mind, you hear me, kid? I'm sorry he ever showed the fuck up around here. I told him years ago to keep away." Trin lets him rub warmth into his arms. "Because of me?" Across from them in the mirror above the sink, he sees Blain's brow crease in worry. "He's just not the sort I want around here, is all." "Are you mad at me?" Instead of answering, Blain pulls the end of the towel up over Trin's head and ruffles his hair to dry it. In the humid room, the only sounds are water dripping from the faucet and the towel around his ears. His ass and legs are cold now. He's just about to tell his brother that he doesn't have to answer when the towel drops back to his shoulders, covering his nakedness, and Blain runs a hand through Trin's disheveled hair to set it right. 122

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"Not mad," he says. He watches his hand on Trin's head and doesn't look him in the eye. Trin sniffles into the towel. "Not at you." "I won't forget him," Trin murmurs. He wipes water from his face, his eyes, his ears. Now that he's clean, the night is catching up with him and his arms feel leaden, his legs weak. His eyes burn with each blink, from shampoo or sleepiness he's not sure. Taking his arm through the towel, Blain leads him out into the hall, where cool morning air blasts his bare wet legs. They're alone in the hall, though the low rattle of dishes drifts up from the kitchen and Trin can hear indistinct voices from the common. The other gunners probably, finishing up their breakfast before they roll out after Gerrick. At his room, he stops and waits for Blain to open the door. For a moment he sees the rumpled sheets on his pallet and thinks the gunner's still in them, waiting. He remembers the way Gerrick sat on the pallet that first night, his nude body glorious and cocky, a god in this room. Even then he'd been barking after the bounder, that night. Trin lost before he even got a chance to get things started. As Blain steps aside, Trin enters the room. "Did they stay here?" he wants to know. The gunner's musk still hangs in the air, sweat-laced, it stirs his groin and he pulls the towel closer to his body so his brother won't see his arousal. "Aissa said you came in this morning—" "He was alone." Trin nods. He didn't want to lie down and smell a strange scent, the bounder in his sheets. With the towel he rubs 123

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down, his stomach, his legs, while his brother looks studiously away. "I threw the other one out last night. Should've thrown his ass out too you know, but he is a gunner. I've run with those guys. I couldn't—" Trin nods. "I know." Kicking Gerrick into the streets would've pissed off the other gunners, word would've gotten out about Blain going soft, another bad bit for business. You should be mad at me. He drops the towel to the floor and crawls between the sheets. They glide over his skin like silk. When he lies back against the pillow, Gerrick's sexy scent wafts up around him. He can't breathe. His chest hurts and his head swims, he has to close his eyes against nausea and dizziness that sets the room spinning. Fresh tears squeeze between his lashes. "I'm sorry, Blain," he whispers, turning his face into the pillow. He takes in the gunner's smell and almost chokes on it. "I'm so sorry." "It's alright." An awkward hand pats his arm, then pulls away. Quiet footsteps cross the room. The door sighs open. "Just get some rest, kid. I'll keep Aissa out. It'll be alright now." Trin buries his face deeper into the pillow, chasing Gerrick's scent. **** He sleeps without dreaming and wakes to the golden light of late afternoon. While he was out, he burrowed beneath the sheets, pulling the thin blanket up over his head. Now when 124

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he opens his eyes, the blanket filters the light into gauze. Without moving, Trin lies curled into himself and watches the shapes made on the sheet by the clouds passing outside his window. He tries hard not to think. But images flash through his mind like the glint of light off coins tumbling to the floor. A jackpot, each memory backed by another. The gunner strong and sure above him in the night and on the other side of that, the slashed wires leading into the fuel pump. Another, the bounder bending in front of the jukebox, his pants taut across his ass. On the flipside, the punctured radiator bleeding steam. A third, two men crammed into the shower together, Gerrick fucking into the bounder's mouth ... and another glimpse of the truck, silver tape strapped around cables to keep them in place. If the truck dies, it's my fault. Trin shakes the thought away. It started, didn't it? Surprised the hell out of him but the damn thing started and now Gerrick's gone. No more apologies, no time to set things right. Not even a chance to say that he could perhaps forgive the gunner, if given time. In another world maybe, where he doesn't have to rove around. How did he put it? Where I'm enough. When the sunlight from his window starts to fade, Trin throws the sheets back and climbs out of the pallet. His legs are unsteady as he stands and dull pain rips through his head—he has to hold onto his temples to keep them from splitting apart. A fresh wave of nausea washes over him, he reels beneath it, but a few deep breaths strengthen his legs, calm his stomach, and the room snaps back into focus. Slowly he straightens, inch by inch, moving like a man three times 125

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his age to keep the pain in check. When he makes it upright, he leans against the wall, eyes closed, head back. He counts each breath, concentrating on the intake of air, the exhalation purged from his body. The smooth wood is cool against his skin, a reminder that he's in the nude. What if someone comes in on him? Blain, or even Aissa? He should get dressed. Trin opens his eyes and surveys the room before making any sudden moves. At his feet, the pallet is a mess of sheets, strewn out onto the floor. His dirty clothes and the wet towel are gone, the pants he wore earlier folded neatly on the windowsill. Aissa's doing, more than likely. Blain probably had her do the wash and she brought them up once they were dry, hoping Trin would be awake to tell her what had happened with the gunner. With slow steps he crosses to the window and shakes the pants before stepping into them. The stains are faded but not entirely washed out. Aissa didn't scrub them clean, just dunked the pants in soapy water perhaps, eager to rush up here to pester him. She's a nosy sort. He's surprised she didn't kick the pallet on her way as she crossed the room, or pinch his nose until he sputtered awake. Sudden suspicion makes him look around again, sure she's hiding in a corner somewhere, waiting... But he's alone. He buttons the fly of his pants, glancing warily at the closed door as if he expects it to burst open any minute. That's when he notices a shirt balled up on the floor, scrunched against the wall. If the door were open, it'd be pushed out of sight. Stepping over his pallet, he scoops up 126

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the shirt. It isn't his and when he picks it up a tiny twist of paper falls to the floor. A packet of gunpowder. Gerrick's. Without thinking Trin puts on the shirt, his arms sliding easily into the oversized sleeves. The gunner's smell envelops him, the fabric on his body like the arms that held him close the past two nights. If the truck dies, he prays it happens soon because God knows he doesn't want go back to sleeping alone again. I can forgive him, he adds as he buttons the shirt. I can be more next time, I will be enough. I've just never wanted another man as much as I do that one so if it's not asking too much, how about working that tape under his hood loose in a spot or two, eh? Or some sand in his gas tank, maybe a broken windshield, something small like that to get him to turn around and head back this way? What do you say? The paper he opens to make sure it's what he thinks it is— gunpowder, Gerrick carries little bursts of fire twirled up like this—then he twists it tight, shoves it down deep into his pocket. Any remembrance, he thinks. If Blain has his way and the gunner never comes through again, at least this proves he was truly here in the first place. His stomach growls, hungry. Buttoning the shirt over his naked chest, he leaves the room and hurries down the back stairs. It must be nearing on the evening meal, as far as he can tell, from the bustle in the kitchen. Beck mans her post at the grill, another girl works the ovens, two stand side by side at the counter in front of the sandwich bar as they dress hoagies and garnish plates. Someone washes dishes, someone else sweeps lettuce and crumbs from the floor, a 127

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third girl balances a tray in both hands as she pushes through the swinging door into the common room, careful not to spill the bowls of soup she carries. A few of the chore girls glance at him as he comes downstairs, then quickly look away. Trin pretends he doesn't notice. Aissa isn't as subtle. On the heels of the waitress, she ducks through the door as it swings into the kitchen and sees him at the foot of the stairs. "Trin!" she cries, worry and amusement mingled on her face. The empty pitchers she carries are foisted onto the girl at the sink, who juggles them into the soapy water before they can fall to the floor. Stray curls have worked themselves free from Aissa's bun and she blows them out of her eyes as she comes up to him. Anyone in her path gets shoved aside. "Don't tell me you've been knocked out this whole time," she says. "Ten fucking hours—" "Hello to you, too." He wonders if he really slept that long without realizing it or if Aissa's exaggerating. If he asks, she'll tell him to shut up, she doesn't talk up the truth, he was in that pallet eleven damn hours, anyone else will tell him the same. With a sigh, he swats her hand away as she starts to pick at his shirt. "Didn't Blain tell you to leave me alone, or something?" She ignores him. "This his?" Her fingers pluck at the shirt buttons until Trin slaps her wrist. He steps around her but she follows close behind, touching the hem of the shirt like he's the Christ come to heal her or something. "Did he give it to you like to keep? Or did he just leave it behind? It's way too big. Did he—" 128

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"Aissa, stop." Over his shoulder Trin shoots her what he hopes is a withering look but when he turns around, she's picking at the shirt again. He has to gather the excess material in his hands and pull it taut around his narrow hips to keep her off. "It's only a shirt." Squeezing between the two girls at the sandwich bar, Trin grabs a handful of sliced tomatoes to snack on. He feels lightheaded and woozy, from lack of food most likely, and the overripe slices are cool sliding down his throat. "Well?" Aissa watches him eat. "What happened between you guys? What'd he say?" Trin shrugs. "Nothing much." There are too many others around at the moment to tell her more. Whatever he says will race through the outpost like a virus, jumping from the chore girls to the customers to the streets. It'd probably even get back to Gerrick eventually, distorted and full of lies, and he doesn't want that. But she doesn't get it. "Like hell," she says, angry. "Don't hold out on me, Trini. You know I'll ask Blain if I have to but I'd rather hear it from you first." Trin grabs another handful of the tomato slices. "Blain won't tell you." His brother is a private person who doesn't believe in rumors or gossip and Aissa knows it. If she asked, he'd say it's none of her concern. And he'd forbid her to ask Trin about it, either. Backing away from the counter, Trin looks for bread or a roll, something to make into a sandwich. Something to distract him, so she won't see just how much this particular 129

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wound still hurts. Absently, he says, "Don't crowd me, Iss. You don't have to know." "I want to," she corrects. She sighs, pooching out her lower lip to blow the curls from her face and tries a different approach. "I heard the truck barely made it through the palisade. Blain said you fucked it up good." That his brother might have said. It makes Trin sound stronger than he really is, doesn't it? It justifies his anger. Fucking up the truck after finding Gerrick in the shower with the bounder takes some of the hurt away and makes him sound like more than just a jilted lover. With an embarrassed grin, Trin shrugs. Color creep into his cheeks, and then Aissa laughs. "I didn't fuck it up," he tells her, but his grin says otherwise. Her eyes light up and for a moment he can see exactly what it is his brother must see when he looks at her. "I put it back together when I was through so that doesn't count." Outside the Christ bells begin to ring. So it is late, Trin thinks. "You weren't lying," he jokes. Aissa's smile is gone in an instant, replaced with a look of distrust. "What do you mean?" "About the hour—" he starts. The bells cut him off. No longer simply ringing in the dusk, they begin to peal earnestly, their tinkling sound taking on a jangled edge. Trin frowns at Aissa only to find her already glaring back. "What the hell?" she asks, as if he knows. 130

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"Maybe..." He has no suggestions. The bells continue to ring, an alarm that sets his blood racing. Horrible images crowd his mind: devlars swarming the palisade walls; or fire ravaging the town; or preybirds boldly diving at children in the streets. "Oh God," he moans. The bells always ring twice a day, once in the morning to usher in the sun and once in the evening when the light fades. A tug or two on a weathered rope in the belfry, nothing much. But this, this ... the bells are still tolling outside and whatever they mean, Trin suddenly doesn't want to know. Grabbing his arm, Aissa steers him towards the door and out into the common. Blain stands behind the bar, a halfempty bottle of amber whiskey in one hand, a shot glass in the other. He looks like a sentinel on alert, his head cocked as he listens to the bells. Without watching his hands, he pours alcohol from the bottle into the glass and stops a centimeter or two from the rim. In control, as always. Just seeing him calms Trin. "Blain—" "Shh." His brother shakes his head and Trin falls silent. Behind him Aissa presses against his back, her hands knots of worry in his shirt. Concentrating on the bells, Blain sets the glass down in front of an older man at the bar who looks around wildly at the other patrons scattered in the common. Every face that looks back is full of fear. Trin closes the distance between them until he stands at Blain's side. When his brother bends down to put the bottle away beneath the bar, his elbow brushes Trin's stomach. "Did you lock down the garage?" he asks in a quiet tone. He could be discussing the weather or what Trin should have 131

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for dinner, the way he speaks. There's no fear in his deep voice, no concern about the unusual carol of bells that fills the air. Not yet, anyway. "The garage?" Trin asks. He tries to keep his voice steady like Blain's but can't. The bells make him nervous and now he hears other sounds outside, sounds that scare him; the roar of an engine, a throttle choking with the shift of gears, gunfire and angry shouts. "Trin?" Blain turns, spearing him with the full force of his gaze. Trin's attention snaps to his brother's dark eyes. "Did you lock down the doors out there this morning?" With a nervous shake of his head, Trin whispers, "No. I don't think so. At least, I don't remember—" Annoyance flickers across Blain's face and is gone. "Get to it then. Be quick." Trin hesitates. Outside the tinted windows, the streets are coming alive and the tension inside the waystation winds tighter with each toll of the bells. "Blain, I—" "Go on, Trini." His brother nudges him gently but Aissa's behind him and doesn't budge. Her hands are like claws in the small of his back. Blain looks from Aissa to Trin and his eyes soften. "It's not an attack, I can tell you that much. Any devlar worth its weight would've put a stop to that infernal racket the moment it cleared the palisade." The corner of his mouth twitches and it takes Trin a moment to figure out that his brother's teasing. "Go lock down the garage and get back here double-time, what do you say? I should've done it 132

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myself earlier but it slipped my mind. Don't worry none— you'll be fine." Trin nods, but it takes another nudge to get him moving. Aissa follows, her hands caught fast in his shirt. The door to the kitchen stands propped open by chore girls, some wringing their hands in dishtowels as they murmur about the bells. "Can't someone knock it off already?" one of them says, her words punctuated with the crack of gum. Another nods in agreement. "Jesus but that's bothersome. What's it all about anyway?" The girls still inside the kitchen are gathered around Beck, who stands at the sink with her spatula held like a sword in front of her. "Where are you going?" she wants to know as Trin and Aissa skirt the island in the center of the room. Through the screen door, the air is red, the sky like lava, casting the junked vehicles and stacks of tires with a bronze glow. When she realizes they're heading for the door, her voice takes on a desperate plea. "You can't go out there. The bells—" "Blain said," Aissa replies. Beck clamps her mouth shut, cutting off any further argument. Trin pushes through the screen door and almost gags on the heat. Dust and exhaust hang thick in the air. Out here the bells are louder, strident. The rapid fire of guns reverberates through the outpost, sounding for all the world like the cap pistols Trin used to play with as a boy. An engine growls within the palisade walls and a crowd rages somewhere nearby, noise rising from the people like static. Someone 133

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screams, a bright ribbon of pain in the falling dusk. On the path around the junkyard, Trin barely feels the gravel bite into his bare feet. The garage has never looked so far away. As he steps up to the door, the bells stop abruptly. The last peal hangs in the air, suspended, like a meniscus over the outpost, threatening to burst. "What did Blain say?" Aissa whispers. Her nails scratch into his back as she grasps at him in fear. "As long as the bells ring, it's not a devlar attack—" Trin cuts her off. "He didn't say that," he mutters, taking the door knob in both hands. He expects it to be locked but it isn't. Apparently his brother didn't bother to close up the garage at all after they left this morning. Which is why I'm out here now. Nevermind the engines gunning down through the streets or the riot that seems to be building. Blain didn't lock down the garage and Trin surely wasn't in the mood earlier to do it, but of course since he's the mech, he's the one who has to trudge out here now. Nevermind that Blain's the one with guns and should be here instead. Inside the garage it's dark and though the steps leading to the floor are steeped in shadow, Trin is careful not to slip in the oil he spilled last night, but it seems someone has covered the stains with sand. He steps gingerly on the gritty floor, the sand already soaking up the excess oil. Aissa tells him, "Blain said go out and put down dirt so I did, but I swear I totally forgot about the doors. If he had reminded me—"

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"If you hadn't come through the front in the first place," Trin argues. He jumps over the last step and crosses the garage, trying to put some distance between them. Outside the engines are louder. Run-gun trucks from the sounds and ridden hard. For a second he wonders if he shouldn't leave the bay door up anyway, as it's his job to tinker on the trucks. But Blain said lock down, he reminded himself. Everyone else be damned. He jumps up for the length of chain hanging from the open door and pulls hard. As the door comes shuddering down, Aissa ducks beneath it for a quick glance out into the street. The trucks are nearer now, the crowds close enough that Trin can make out individual voices in the rush, crying and shouts for a doctor, and a low keening that hurts his ears. "Get back in here, Iss," he says. "I'll lock you out." "No, wait." With an exasperated sigh, he leans forward until his forehead rests on his hands, folded together over the bolt at the bottom of the door. "For what?" he wants to know. "Blain said—" But she talks over him. "It's the same truck that just rolled out of here this morning." Hope surges through him. "Gerrick's?" He pushes the door up a little, just enough to step outside. "The one with him," she corrects. Hands on her hips, she stares down the length of the street that runs in front of the garage. "Not his. Look." Smoke clogs the air and in the dying sun, flecks of quartz swirl through the reddening sky like tiny stars. Trin catches a 135

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glimpse of a convoy: a familiar truck bearing down through the street, the engine like a swarm of angry wasps. Behind it are the same people who ran out a few days ago to welcome the gunners into Arens, their eyes now vacant or pained, their faces streaked with sweat and dust. Dark shadows cling to their clothes. As they draw nearer, a few run ahead, towards the garage. But instead of stopping to talk to him or gather around the bay doors, they keep going, headed for the waystation. One man turns to look at them as he passes and Trin sees what he thinks is blood smeared across the front of his shirt. "Hey!" Aissa calls out. "What's going on?" "An accident," the man says without stopping. "Sweet God." Aissa gives Trin a troubled look. "An accident," she repeats. The truck is closer now, only that one. Gerrick's isn't rolling through the dust behind it, and that scares him. Through the windshield he can see the driver's rugged face, harsh mouth drawn down in an ugly scowl and it isn't Gerrick. Trin's heart quickens. Shielding her eyes with one hand, Aissa starts, "You don't think..." Seeing them for the first time, the driver guns the truck and it leaps forward with a jackrabbit start. People scatter as it jumps up onto the broken concrete curb, the front bumper taking out a thorny bush. With a hard turn of the wheel, the driver angles towards the garage, aiming for them. "Where's Gerrick?" Trin asks. 136

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There is no one else in the cab, and he isn't with the other gunners standing in the bed of the truck, jostled together with each bump. This isn't his truck. An image flashes through Trin's mind, the hoses and cables under Gerrick's hood tenuously taped into place and he thinks of the blood on the man's shirt. No. Aissa shoves him out of the way as the truck jumps the curb again. Brakes squeal and the huge vehicle fishtails, the bed away from them and the hood pointed their way. It spins in a slow circle, impossibly slow. Trin thinks it'll never stop completely, just keep pulling back, it's almost turned around now and the gunners in the back have to duck beneath the half-closed bay door as the bed slides inside the garage. No. The side of the truck hits the doorframe with a sickening crunch of metal. The garage's corrugated steel siding gives way with a painful squeal, crumpling like tissue paper beneath the truck's weight. As the truck stalls out Trin pushes Aissa away from him. No. Where's Gerrick? "Where..." He throws himself at the front of the truck, the metal hot beneath his hands. He holds onto the sensation to stay grounded, no. The word is a breathless cry, he has to swallow hard to find his voice. "Where's Gerrick?" Hysteria edges his voice as he shouts over the roar of the engine. "Where's—" The driver jerks a thumb at the bed of the truck. Opening the door, he tumbles out, stands on unsteady feet—his pants are soaked with fresh blood. No.

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"Devlars," he whispers, his words scratchy and raw. "Whole horde of them, damn things. Overtook us just north of here." Pushing past him, Trin grabs the side of the truck bed and jumps up onto the rear wheel housing but he can't see, the other gunners crowd together. He swings one leg over the side, jumps into the truck, pushes one of the men aside. Blood. Dark as death, lifeblood, splashed on the metal flooring like paint. He steps in it and slips, his arms pinwheeling at his sides to find balance. One of the gunners grabs his shoulder but Trin almost goes down anyway, his knees weak. Blood squishes between his toes, splatters his ankles, no. His mind refuses to believe what he sees. A man stretched out along the length of the truck bed. Clothes drenched black with blood, shirt ripped, face hidden. Trin recognizes the pale chest hair, one tip of a blonde moustache, and little else. A sob rises in his throat and he chokes it back. "Is he—" Someone speaks. "Not yet. Terrible accident. Shooting with one hand on the wheel, the same as he always does, but the truck began to buck beneath him." My fault. In his anger, he tore the shocks out and broke one while replacing it. "Didn't even see the culvert," another gunner offers. "Axle snapped when he hit it, threw him out of the seat. Caught the steering wheel in his balls, just about tore 'em off, I'd imagine." Falling to his knees, Trin takes one cold, bloody hand in both of his. "Gerrick," he sighs. His fault. His. 138

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The truck shakes beneath him and then Blain is there, pulling him away. "Medic's here, Trini," his brother says. Trin nods, numb. He can't take his eyes from the prone man at his feet, his weekend lover, Gerrick. Blood masks his face. The only sign of life is the way it bubbles around his nose with each shattered breath. Stepping in front of Trin, Blain tries to block his view but it's already too late. Still, his brother murmurs, "He'll be alright." How can you promise that? Trin wonders, but he just nods again. He should've never torn into the truck or let Gerrick leave when it wasn't ready to drive. He should've told Blain he fucked with it before his brother chased the gunner out. He should've... Too late. He wipes sweat or tears from his face, he's not sure which. His hand leaves a smear on his cheek in Gerrick's blood. **** It's a few months down the road before any of the gunners will ride through Arens. Mostly it's because of what happened; these men are a superstitious lot. In the aftermath of Gerrick's accident, rumors settled like dust over the outposts. Broken now, riddled with pain, a shadow of the man he used to be—that's what the other gunners say. They talk about how his truck gave out during a devlar attack. How his brakes died as he flew down one of the runs. How his windshield shattered his face into a network of scars when he hit a ravine and was thrown from the cab. The men who found him 139

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say they barely managed to pull him away from the wreckage before it went up in flames. Every gunner knows trucks don't just blow up. When Gerrick drove into the outpost, he needed a few shocks, new brake shoes, a good hosing off. But by the time he left his truck was running ragged, like an old horse laboring to breathe its last. In common rooms around the wastelands, gunners look at one another over mugs of icy beer and don't have to put into so many words what's on their minds. The mech in Arens might be Blain's baby brother and gunners take up for their own, but they agreed to stay away from the outpost just the same. Trin doesn't let their talk bother him. Worse than chore girls, gunners are, his brother's always said as much. But he notices the waystation isn't as lively as it's been in the past, and there's a deep furrow across his brother's forehead that wasn't there before. Most of the time the books don't balance, and it's not just because Blain's bad with numbers. The gunners are their business. If the men would rather ride around the outpost instead of bunking down for a few nights, there isn't really much point in carrying on. Late one evening, when the only person at the bar is Blain himself, Trin wrings his hands in a dishtowel and starts, "I want you to know that I'm sorry—" "Don't be," his brother says, waving away the apology. His eyes flash in warning but his voice stays level and low. "Don't go taking the blame on this, Trin, on none of it. You had nothing to do with what happened to that bastard, you got that? Nothing at all." 140

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Despite the days and weeks that melted away behind them like ice in the blistering sun, Blain still refuses to call Gerrick by name. It's always the gunner or that bastard or, if he's in a particularly foul mood, that fucking goddamn son of a bitch. "But I—" "But nothing." Blain stares at him until Trin has to drop his gaze. His brother's eyes are hard and unyielding, unforgiving. "How many people know what you did to that truck? You told me, Aissa, who else?" "No one," Trin whispers. Blain frowns at him, waiting. Trin glances up at his brother, sees that frown and ducks his head again quickly. "I swear it. No one else knows." For a long moment, silence. Then, in a gruff voice, Blain says, "Don't tell anyone, you hear?" Trin nods. "He got what he deserved. Let people say what they will about it, kid. You can't stop that. But Lord knows you don't have to encourage it, either." Aissa tells him the same thing. Leaning over under the open hood of one of Blain's jalopies, she peers through the cables at Trin while he's on his back beneath the truck and says, "Stop dwelling on it, Trini. It's not like he died or anything. So you messed him up good, so what?" "So what?" Trin echoes. Her attitude doesn't surprise him—she doesn't like Gerrick, never has. He frowns at the bottom of the oil tank he's working on and tries not to look at her. The tank leaks something fierce from a knot it in like a bullet hole where a stone knocked through. He was hoping to caulk it shut but now that he's under here face to face with 141

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the problem, he sees that the entire bottom of the tank is encrusted with lacy rust. He doesn't know whether he should simply patch the hole or replace the whole damn thing. What if the patch doesn't hold? his mind whispers, a voice that's grown stronger since the accident. It questions everything he does now, every repair he makes, every part he installs. He thought he had put Gerrick's truck mostly back together after he tore it up and he hadn't. What if he makes the same mistake again? Aissa starts, "Don't worry about it—" Trin drops the wrench he's holding and it clatters to the concrete floor, cutting her off. "I'm not talking about this anymore," he says. His fingers fumble over the floor, feeling for the wrench. To be on the safe side, he'll replace the tank entirely, unbolt this one and drop in a new one, so there are no doubts. Unless you don't secure it right, or the hose splits off. He pushes those damning thoughts away. Finding the wrench, he tries to loosen the bolt that holds the tank to the undercarriage. But it's in there good and when the wrench slips off, it hits the tank with a hollow thunk that showers him with rust. "Aissa!" he cries, spitting out dry flecks of coppery rust. "Just go away already, why don't you? You sure as hell aren't helping me here." She tosses her hair back over her shoulder and rolls her eyes. "All I'm saying is ignore them—" "I'm ignoring you." In frustration she shoves the dropcloth that covers the front of the truck, showering bolts and tools down into the 142

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engine cavity. Trin twists away as the smaller items clink down through the gaps to pelt the floor by his head. "Oh, you're dead," he promises, scrambling out from under the truck. With a contemptuous laugh, she kicks over the pan he drained the tank into earlier and dirty oil splashes the floor, under the truck, through the towel he's lying on. Cold wetness seeps through his jeans and he hits his head on the bottom of the tank when he tries to pull away. "Iss! Jesus!" By the time he gets to his feet, his pants are drenched. The heavy denim clings to his ass and thigh like a second skin, greased with oil. "Look what the fuck you've done!" he yells, gesturing to his leg. Aissa giggles and takes a step back as he advances. Her hand hits a small cardboard box that sits on the far edge of the truck's bumper, knocking the spark plugs inside to the floor. Anger swirls through Trin. "Get out of here!" A low rumble fills the air. Blain, he prays, let it be Blain. Earlier his brother took one of the rebuilt trucks out to feel how the shocks were holding up, even though Trin had wanted to go instead. That way if the truck died or exploded, Blain wouldn't be the one to get hurt. But his brother shook his head as he climbed into the cab. "Trust yourself, kid," he told him, swinging the door shut. He leaned out the window and gave Trin a wink, a rare gesture of affection that made him choke on sudden emotion. "I do." 143

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Since then, Aissa's been hanging around the garage, pestering him. Trin hopes it's his brother's truck heading this way. Pointing behind him at the open bay doors, he warns, "If that's Blain..." He lets the sentence trail off, unfinished. She laughs again but there's little humor in the sound. If that's Blain, he'll tell Aissa to find something else to do and she'll listen, she'll have to. "He wouldn't be back so soon," she says. She doesn't sound too convinced, though. Her eyes dart from Trin to the bay doors as the sound of an engine winds closer in the still afternoon heat. Another step back and her shoe crunches on the spark plugs she just tipped over. "C'mon, Trini. I'm not bothering you much." Now he has to laugh. "Bullshit," he mutters, setting his wrench on the hood of the truck. When he picks at the side of his pants, the fabric pulls away from his leg with a sucking sound and he can feel oil running around his knee. "Look at this!" Her eyes flash with mirth. Trin is glad someone's enjoying this because he isn't, not one bit. "I'll wash it out—" she starts, then cuts off as the engine dies in a pneumatic chortle. The squeal of hinges drifts on the hot air, followed by boot heels clicking on the pavement outside. Lowering her voice, Aissa murmurs, "That's not Blain." Trin turns to see a gunner standing beside the truck. He's younger than Blain by a good ten, fifteen years, but still older than Trin. Black curls peek out beneath a dusty strip of burlap 144

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tied around his head like a pirate's bandanna and his tanned face is lined where he squints in the sun. He shuts the door to his truck with a hollow clap then looks around, grimacing. When he sees Trin and Aissa, he straightens the guns on his hips to make sure they notice them, large pistols crossed low over the front of his jeans. "It's a gunner," Trin whispers as the stranger steps into the shade of the garage. Out of the sun he seems to diminish slightly, shrink a little, become real. A gunner. "Go tell the others." "Trin..." Aissa trails off, doubtful. "He'll want to eat," he explains. Closer now, the gunner flashes them a bright smile that Trin feels in the pit of his belly, a cocky, sexy, grin. Not taking his gaze off the man, he says, "There'll be others right behind him. Go." She hesitates. The gunner's eyes flicker over Trin's shoulder, register her presence without really seeing her, then find Trin's face again. One hand comes out in welcome. "Hey," he drawls, that grin never slipping. Trin finds himself clasping the man's hand in greeting. A strong hand, sure and steady. Hands that would feel right on his body. As if thinking the same thing, the gunner's smile widens. "You the mech here?" "Yeah." Behind him, footsteps race away and Trin chances a look over his shoulder to see Aissa disappear out the back door, running for the kitchen. With a nod at the truck beyond the bay doors, he asks, "What can I do for you today?" 145

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This close, Trin can see the gunner's eyes are a bold blue, bright, like the morning sky before the sun burns the color away. Their sharpness remind him of Gerrick's eyes, or rather how Gerrick's used to be. Trin is vaguely aware that the gunner hasn't let go of his hand yet. Where their skin touches, his palm has grown sweaty. "Sir?" The stranger takes a step towards him, creating an intimate air between them. "I've heard tell you like gunners, boy," he purrs. "Quick to service them, so they say." Trin thinks he knows where this is headed and laughs, hoping he sounds amused. "I'm talking about your truck." Those eyes harden. "I'm talking about tonight," the gunner says, his voice low. He searches Trin's face for understanding. "I could fill your pallet." Disgust roils through Trin with a sickening lurch. Taking a step back, he tries to free his hand from the gunner's and can't. "My pallet is already taken, sir." He emphasizes the sir. He wants to keep this formal. "If your truck needs work—" "I've heard the things you'll do," the gunner interrupts. Another step presses him against the side of the truck he's been working on, and the gunner's knee eases between his thighs to rub against his crotch. Despite his resolve, he feels the beginnings of an erection filling his jeans. "Gunners talk, boy, and they say you're hot and tight and willing. They say— " Trin shoves him away. "I don't care what they say," he growls. Another minute or two and he won't even look at the damn truck, just tell the man to get the hell out of here no 146

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matter what Blain would say. Haven't had a gunner come through here in ages, he thinks, glaring at the stranger in front of him, and the first one to ride in is just looking for a fuck. Christ almighty. "Look," he tries, "let's start again, shall we? I don't care what you've heard but I'm with someone at the moment. As in I'm not going to screw around on him. As in—" The gunner interrupts him again. "I could take you now," he threatens. He runs a finger down the center of Trin's chest, a chilly touch that raises goosebumps on his arms. Trin slides a little further down the truck and slaps the hand away. "Bend you over here, boy. You couldn't stop me. You wouldn't want to. I saw it when I came in, you'd like it if I fucked you raw." He touches one of the guns, his fingers caressing the handle lazily. "Blain," Trin croaks. Suddenly he's very much aware of the fact that he might find himself held over the side of the truck, bare ass in the air as this man forces his way inside of him. I don't mess with gunners anymore, he thinks wildly. Fear makes him promise, "Do it and my brother will find you. He'll gun you down like a dog in the street and you know it." Thunder rolls in the distance, storm clouds drawing near with the coming evening. For a moment the gunner stares, gauging the fight in him. The thunder churns again, louder this time, and beneath it Trin hears a sound as glorious as an angel's song: the rumble of an engine, heading this way. Blain. 147

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As if he hears it too, the gunner's grin disappears into a bitter scowl. Taking a deep breath to steady himself, Trin starts, "Now if you want me to look at your truck—" With a cruel laugh, the gunner shakes his head. "You kidding? I'm not letting you near my truck, boy. You got that? I've heard the shit you pulled a while back—who was it? Gerrick?" Trin winces at the name. He doesn't care that this is the only gunner to ride through Arens all summer, or that the waystation is hurting for some of the coins in the man's purse. This stranger is the first person to put his own guilty thoughts into words and even though Trin's apologized for what happened, even though Blain says it's not his fault, the truth stings nonetheless. "Get out." "You tried to kill him, didn't you?" the gunner asks with a smirk. Trin's hand closes over the wrench he set aside earlier. Tightening his fingers around the cool metal, he measures the distance between them. Had there actually been a brief moment when he thought of this man touching him? Those blue eyes are hard and icy now, those large hands frightening. Trin hefts the wrench so the gunner sees it. "Going after me next, is that it?" he taunts. "You're not worth the trouble, boy. You couldn't pay me to get with you." "Get out," Trin says again. He wishes he were taller, like Blain, with wider shoulders, a heavier swing. Intimidating, that's what he wants to be, without the wrench in his hand. But when the gunner steps back, it's because the engine's growl has grown louder and Blain is almost upon them. Still, 148

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he can't resist a final jab. "You know what they say about you?" he hollers as he walks backward, not taking his eyes off Trin. His voice echoes in the hot garage. "Fuck 'em and kill 'em, like you did Gerrick." Trin lunges forward. "He's not dead!" The gunner skips away, his eyes wide like he thinks Trin will peg the wrench at him from across the room. "Get out of here!" he cries. His breath hitches in his chest and his fingers whiten in anger around the wrench as he raises it above his head. Maybe he will throw it, he doesn't know. It wouldn't hit his target if he did. The gunner's already clambering up into the cab of his truck, the engine roaring to life. Raising his voice to be heard over the racket, Trin shouts, "I didn't try to kill him! It was an accident!" The gunner shakes his head, unconvinced. Trin sees his lips form a single word that drives straight through him, a spike through the very core of his soul. Killer, the stranger labels him, killer. Trin's face crumples as the truck pulls out of sight. "An accident," he sighs in the empty garage. The very walls seem to agree with the gunner. They echo the fading sounds his truck makes as he drives away. Trin doesn't even hear Blain anymore and Aissa hasn't returned. He's never felt more alone, and his own words sound like lies. "I didn't mean it." **** Aissa tells Blain about the gunner, in hushed tones by the sink so Trin doesn't overhear. He does anyway but concentrates on chopping an onion and tries to convince 149

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himself that the stinging in his eyes is from the pungent smell, nothing more. He wants to believe this afternoon didn't happen; Aissa bothering him, the gunner's proposition, his own anger, none of it seems real. Every now and then Blain looks over, tries to catch his eye, but Trin keeps his head down. He doesn't want to meet his brother's gaze. After the onion is reduced to a small stack of rings, he slathers mayonnaise on a few slices of bread. Adds tomatoes, lettuce, some kind of white meat that might be chicken, might not. Adds the onions, his eyes watering. Not from tears, though. He's not crying over this. He makes two sandwiches and cuts them both in half diagonally. When he reaches for a plate, though, his brother is there beside him, blocking his way. Blain gives him an unreadable look. "So where's this gunner now?" he wants to know. The first thing that pops into Trin's mind is 'he's upstairs.' Between his sheets or at the window maybe, waiting for dinner. But that's a different man and he bites back the reply before he can let it slip. "He left," he says simply. He doesn't look at Blain. His brother waits. Trin promises himself he isn't going to say anything else unless Blain asks for more, but it's hard to ignore the steady gaze bearing down on him. Sniffling against tears he isn't crying, he mumbles, "Let's just drop it, okay?" "What happened?" Blain asks patiently. With a shake of his head, Trin sets each sandwich on a plate, then stacks the plates one on top the other. "Trini?" Blain prompts. 150

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"I'm fine, alright?" Trin scoops a generous helping of potato salad from the sandwich bar onto the top plate. "Nothing happened. A few things were said—" Blain touches his arm. "What kind of things?" Trin shrugs him off and steadies the plates in his hands. "What did he say to you? Was it something about Gerrick?" "He's hungry," Trin murmurs. "Can we talk about this later? I haven't seen him all day." Without waiting for an answer, he edges around his brother and takes the back steps two at a time. He doesn't have to look at Blain to know he disapproves. Upstairs the hall is dark and hot, the heat of the day stifling despite the open window at the far end. Outside the sky has darkened to a deep indigo, but there's enough fading light to drape the hall in shade. Trin moves quietly, his bare feet silent over the worn wooden floor. Here in the closeness of the hall he can smell himself, a stench of sweat and grease and the oil Aissa spilled into his pants a little while ago. He'll shower after they eat. At the door to his room, he juggles both plates in one hand to knock. No answer, but then again, he doesn't expect one. After a moment's hesitation, he turns the knob, pushes the door open slowly, and steps into the room. "Hey," he sighs. The room is dark. What scant light there is comes from the halogens stuttering to life in the growing dusk beyond the open window. Trin's pallet is empty, the sheets turned down. The candle he left lit beside the pallet this morning has burned out. 151

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In front of the window is an old weathered rocker, and in the rocker sits the shadow of a man. Closing the door behind him with one foot, Trin smiles at the silhouette backlit against the sprawling junkyard below. "Brought you something," he says as he crosses the room. Only when Trin stands beside him at the window does Gerrick look up. "You hungry?" Trin asks. His gaze wanders over the gunner's face—the network of scars crisscrossing his cheeks and nose stands out fierce and red in the dying sunlight. One eye is milky, unseeing, the other still rimmed with bruised flesh. Healing stitches slice one side of his moustache in half, the hairs there not yet willing to grow back. His hands, curled in pain, lie forgotten in his lap. Motioning to the plates he carries, Trin says, "Thought you might be up for a bite. Chicken, I think. How are you doing today?" Gerrick turns back to stare out the window and doesn't answer. An uncomfortable silence stretches between them, sullen, bitter. Leaning back against the windowsill, Trin sets one of the plates down beside him and toys with the sandwich on the other as he searches for something to say. "I brought you some of Clay's potato salad," he offers, talking to the plate in his hands. "I know you said you liked it last time she made it—" With difficulty, Gerrick clears his throat. The hands in his lap clench into fists. "I heard a truck," he says. His voice, once melodic and strong, is now barely a whisper. His good eye glances at Trin, then looks away again. 152

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"A gunner." The sandwich's crust crumbles beneath his anxious fingers. "First one through here all summer, but he didn't stay." Gerrick clears his throat again, an old man sound that makes Trin sad to hear it. Cautiously, he holds out half of the sandwich like a peace offering. "You need to eat." But Gerrick doesn't move, doesn't take the sandwich. Switching tactics, Trin asks, "Please? For me?" That does it. Now one of those gnarled hands comes up to take the sandwich from him. Trin wipes the crumbs off his palm onto his pants, then brushes away the hair that's fallen across Gerrick's brow. The hand falls back to the gunner's lap, the sandwich still held tight, uneatened. "Did he..." Gerrick starts, his eyes slipping closed as Trin runs his fingers through the thinning hair. "He didn't make you an offer. Did he?" "I told him no," Trin says. Gerrick's face scrunches up in pain and he doesn't bother to add that the gunner threatened to fuck him anyway. "Eat up. You'll never heal—" "Did you want to?" His eyes open and he stares at Trin, his gaze brutal. "Tell me that, kid. You wanted to, didn't you?" For a long moment Trin studies him, this ghost of the man he's wanted for so long. The tanned skin has faded to a pale peach now, the hair darker than the sunny blonde it used to be, the body broken and scarred like a battered, discarded toy. More often than not, now it's Trin's arms that hold Gerrick close in the night and not the other way around. There's no strength left in the gunner's body to hold him 153

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anymore and when those hands smooth over his flesh, it's with a fragile touch. The memory of their passion haunts Trin. That was another life, another world, one where he was left aching and alone. But this morning when he woke? Gerrick lay between their sheets, watching him dress. In his papery-thin voice, he admitted, "You're all I have left, boy. You're the only one who stood by me through this, despite everything, and you're the only one who'll still have me. I suspect I have to love you for that." "I didn't want him," Trin whispers, and it's the truth. Even if the stranger had been coy about it, there's nothing he could've said or done to get with him. Frowning at the half a sandwich still on his plate, he tells Gerrick, "At night, when we're alone? Just before we fall asleep. It's like nothing ever happened. I mean with the accident and all. You're still the same man to me." Gerrick doesn't speak. He looks at the sandwich in his hand with a bemused expression on his face, like he just discovered he's holding something. "I didn't want him," Trin says again. "I've been by your side every day, Gerrick, and you know it. I've fed you, and bathed you, and dressed you when you couldn't do those things yourself. I share my pallet with you, and my room, and my body. You think some stranger can just walk up in the middle of that? You think I gawk at other men? I'm not like you—" "I'm not that way," Gerrick mutters. Raising his hand to his mouth, he takes a savage bite out of the sandwich, and bread crumbs fall to his lap. "Not anymore." 154

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Trin nods. "You're all I ever wanted." More silence. Trin has grown accustomed to so much of it since the accident. Breaking off tiny chunks of his sandwich, he eats it piece by piece, wordless while Gerrick thinks. Sometimes it takes him a little longer now to mull things over in his mind. That's one thing about him that has changed and no matter how tight Trin shuts his eyes, he can't pretend this hesitation away. It's in the way Gerrick talks, the way he moves, the way he thinks. When the pain isn't so bad and they make love, it's slow now, not the hurried rush sex used to be. A slow, repetitious rhythm that still manages to burn Trin up inside. It seems to take hours, Gerrick moving steadily above him, riding him into the mattress, stopping every few minutes or so to catch his breath. The lull of their bodies swaying together has put Trin to sleep before and at those times he wakes when the rush of orgasm flares through him. They don't do it every night—hell, not even every week—but it's enough. This is still the only man he wants. Trin starts fishing around for something else to talk about, uneasy in the quiet dusk. Just as he's about to tell Gerrick about the way Aissa kicked over the drop pan and the oil stain on his leg, the gunner rests a hand on his knee. The soft weight is warm, heavy, through Trin's jeans. When he looks up, Gerrick's chewing the last of his sandwich thoughtfully. "Maybe tonight," he offers. "It's been a little while, hasn't it? Since we've done more than sleep in that pallet." "A couple days," Trin hedges. Ten to be exact. The past few nights Trin slept on his stomach to keep himself pressed flat against the mattress so Gerrick's closeness between the 155

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sheets didn't get him hard. The brief flicker of lust he felt this afternoon stemmed not from the stranger's attractiveness or strength but more from the mere fact that he hasn't felt a loving touch in almost two weeks. Sleeping next to Gerrick isn't enough. Sometimes he wants to feel the man inside of him, deep inside, where he feels stronger and more alive than he appears to be. "This is about that gunner, isn't it? You don't have to prove yourself, Gerrick, not to me or anyone else. If you're not up for it—" But Gerrick nods, his hand on Trin's knee sending shivers of anticipation up his thigh and into his groin. "I am," he promises. A phantom smile tickles his lips and is gone. "I will be. Anything to keep you happy, boy. You're all I have left." After all that's happened, it's going to have to be enough. THE END

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