Chapter 32

Thirty-Two

They made the next rip through into the barracks that Theo had called home for six long weeks, and they did it with the inter-dimensional device now strapped on Theo's wrist. It was very silver against his violet skin, and he marvelled at it as he pressed the buttons that took him back to a home he had never wanted. It wasn't anything like when the queen was eating through the dimensions, no fireworks, no twisting and turning of worlds. This was a clean cut, a slicing of dimensions, and it would close again as soon as Theo made it.

Theo walked through and across to the bunk he had slept in, opened the door next to his cupboard, and pulled his backpack free. All his personal possessions were in there, and few they might be, but Theo wanted them. He gave his bed a pat. It was right next to a bed that had once been occupied by a devastatingly attractive guy called Carl who had disappeared one night never to return. They had all assumed he was a deserter but who knew now. It was entirely possible a monster had snatched him.

Opposite his and Carl's bunk had been Simon and Liam's, and a little way down from them was Dimitri. Theo was really pleased they were okay. Joel slept in the same barracks as the other team leaders and Theo chose to imagine him somewhere safe, maybe taking a well-deserved break…unlikely though that might be!

He walked back over to Baku, giving the barracks one last look. He had hated the whole place, hated every minute of the six weeks spent there. He closed his eyes, remembering the day he had arrived, how angry he had been at being conscripted, being forced into a fight he wanted no part of. It was so odd now to know that Baku had been there too. He had spotted Theo early on, had taken his vibrations, and had known that Theo was going to be his partner in the battle to come.

Their attraction, their desire, that had come later. But perhaps it had been determined from the very moment Theo had received his conscription papers, from the very moment Baku had volunteered for the serum trials. All their moments bringing them to this point, bringing them to each other.

"Have you seen what you need to see, Theo?" Baku asked.

Theo nodded and held out his hand to his monster. "I have."

"Then let us go home," Baku said, and he gestured to the rip Theo had made, which was just behind them.

"That is your home," Theo said. "Your dimension."

"And yours also for now," the monster replied, and he took Theo's purple hand in his purple one, where they both glowed slightly with the long lost shimmer of another world, and for Baku the shimmer of Theo's.

"For how long?" Theo wondered aloud.

"For as long as you desire," the monster replied.

"At least until we remove the infestations," Theo said. "And that will take some years." He paused before taking a deep breath. "And then maybe, maybe you could show me where your people live. And I could show you my flat. The plants will be dead, and my parents would be weird about the whole thing, but you could meet them and?—"

"And we would live between both worlds? Both homes?" Baku said quickly, his chest rumbling but not because he was saying something that Theo didn't want to hear but because he was nervous, Theo realised. Theo was asking the questions he also wanted answers to.

"Yes," Theo said.

Baku pulled him into his arms. On the other side of the rip Theo could hear a flock of rainbow-eyed beetles flying overhead. Somewhere in the distance something shrieked and something cooed. On his side a siren sounded, the call to training, and before long boots could be heard running to answer that call, as there were still hundreds of infestations to deal with after all.

"It is entirely possible you want to do that because I want it, Theo," Baku said after a moment and Theo realised this was why he was nervous. "And I have made it so for you."

"Yeah," Theo agreed. "I realise that."

"But you embrace it anyway?" he demanded.

"I feel it, Baku," Theo said. "I've felt it since the moment we tumbled down the hill towards the forest and you held me in your arms to break my fall."

"I wanted you even then," Baku said.

"And I you," Theo admitted. "I thought it was because you were just absolutely my type. All muscles and growls."

"I am your preferred type," Baku said, and Theo laughed.

"Yes, and I guess I am yours."

"You are my only type now, Theo," the monster said. He paused for just a moment before demanding. "And I am only yours?"

"I guess it is all a matter of perception," Theo said slowly, finally finding the words to explain exactly what he felt. "We feel it because of your essence influencing me, and maybe some of mine influencing you, and even then, because of the serum, and the essence of the nightmares locking us together." He shook his head. "And in my world, I would feel it for someone because the pheromones matched, or there was some long distant genetic call, or something like that. Which of that is right and which is wrong? The answer is whatever we perceive to be."

"And you perceive that I am yours?" Baku demanded.

"Yes."

Baku shuddered out a breath. He leaned in so that he could breathe Theo into him, his essence perhaps, and Theo smiled as it happened. Their hands remained interlocked as they stepped forwards and the space between the dimensions parted for them. They walked through it and into the other world. Theo looked down at their hands again. They both glowed still but his was the one that shimmered now.

Baku smiled as he noticed that and lifted it for a kiss. "You are my human, are you not?" he whispered.

"Just as you are my monster," Theo replied because it was so, and though neither said it then, they both knew that they had many years to figure out just what that meant, years and years they were destined to spend together as they battled to save the worlds.

The human hero and his monster.

And their very monstrous desire.