9. Cym

Chapter 9

Cym

S ixty-six hours was a ridiculous length of time for a person to stay awake. Cym wasn't surprised the poor man dropped as soon as he mentioned the idea.

It was kind of abrupt, though. What would Fourteen have done if there wasn't a bed around? Dropped to the floor in a huddled mess?

Cym sat next to Fourteen, content to watch him sleep for the time being. Everything had been so hectic he hadn't had a chance to catch his breath or think.

He felt like an idiot for running away instead of talking to Fourteen. It was extremely naive and arrogant for him to think he could deal with his family alone, but he really hadn't wanted to involve anyone else in his affairs.

Unfortunately, it didn't look like Fourteen was likely to allow Cym to leave him out of it. Truth be told, Cym was relieved. If he hadn't landed in Fourteen's lap last night, Cym would be dead as dirt and he knew it.

Cym's family wanted him dead.

The concept continued to astound him, even though he'd had weeks to adjust to it. Sterling, his own brother, wanted him dead. Of everyone in his family, Sterling had been the one he was closest to.

As children they had been confidants and partners in crime—always escaping their nanny and having adventures together. After Cym had been confined, Sterling had come to him once and had spent the entire time crying. His brother never came back after that.

Cym assumed it had been too hard for Sterling to be around him, so Cym didn't blame him—or so he had tried to tell himself.

A sharp pain in his hand caused him to break from his gloomy reverie, and he looked down. It was clenched tightly around the material of Fourteen's jacket, and it was hurting him. He examined the leather closely, running his hands along the front, and discovered hard plates woven inside the material. When his fingers found a plate, they felt funny, almost as if he were touching something that wasn't there.

If he hadn't had such a disastrous object lesson in the cemetery from tinkering with his magic, he would have considered trying to play with the sensation. Instead, he decided to be smart and ask Fourteen about it when he woke up.

Cym should get up and leave the poor man alone to sleep instead of gawking at him and feeling him up in his sleep like a pervert, but he couldn't find the will to do so.

Cym's eyes caressed Fourteen's face, taking in the strong line of his stubble-covered jaw and his full mouth, relaxed in sleep. The faint lines at the corners of Fourteen's eyes didn't detract from his looks. Instead, they enhanced them. Cym thought they made him look competent and experienced, and he had firsthand knowledge that Fourteen was both.

A strand of glossy dark hair had drifted over one of Fourteen's eyes, and Cym brushed it away before he could stop himself. It was so soft that his fingers lingered for a moment, relishing the sensation. Fourteen's entire countenance was like a personal invitation for Cym to explore at his leisure.

He jerked himself out of his thoughts. What the heck was wrong with him? The last thing Fourteen needed was for Cym to be creeping on him in his sleep.

Carefully, Cym rolled away from him and sat up. Maybe he could take a walk inside the warehouse to clear his head.

The thoughts and feelings Fourteen evoked may have been new to him, but he knew enough to understand both parties needed to be awake and consenting. Fourteen had exhibited clear feelings about touching, and Cym didn't want to violate those feelings no matter what his own thoughts were on the matter.

Before Cym made it out of the bed, a hand grabbed his arm and held tight.

Cym startled and looked at Fourteen's face, but Fourteen was still asleep.

Cym tried to tug his arm free, but the more he tried, the closer Fourteen pulled him in. Cym felt like a fish getting reeled into a fisherman's boat. By the time he gave up, he was on top of Fourteen's body with his face pressed against a hard, well-muscled chest.

That was kind of like consent, wasn't it?

He stopped worrying about small things like morals and how a decent person should properly use them, because now that Cym had been made aware of it, the quiet nothingness Fourteen's jacket was giving off was loud and clear.

How could he not have noticed it back in the cemetery? Maybe it had something to do with being attacked by people who were supposed to love him.

The nothingness was a soothing hum against Cym's cheek and encouraged him to relax. Fourteen had no right to smell as good as he did—a mixture of sawdust and leather. It was exactly what Cym imagined sin would smell like.

He gave in and buried his face in Fourteen's jacket to breathe in his unique scent. Fourteen's smell and the gentle hum of his jacket encouraged Cym to sleep too. Hopefully Fourteen wouldn't react too badly to waking up with Cym in his arms.

Things skittered and writhed at the edges of Cym's vision as he walked down a dimly lit hallway. He kept jerking around to try and catch whatever was there, but the hall behind him was always empty. Eventually he forced himself to stop reacting because he didn't want to give the whatever the satisfaction of seeing him jump.

As Cym continued down the hall, the way got brighter, but the scrabbling at his periphery intensified. Before long, he came to a plain, white door that stood out in the dingy hall. Dream logic dictated he open it, so he did, noting that the whatever fell behind as he passed through and didn't follow him.

On the other side of the door was a stark, white room with three men gathered around a large, black sphere that dwarfed the room.

One of the men—a short, balding man in glasses and a lab coat—was speaking to a tall, powerfully built man in uniform. "I don't know why the adjustments aren't taking hold, Colonel. It usually only takes one treatment to permanently delete a subject's memory—two at the very most." The short man pulled off his glasses and cleaned them nervously.

The Colonel glared at the sphere then turned to face the short man. "I seem to recall you telling me you had perfected this method. Called it foolproof, if I'm not mistaken." The glint in his eye told Cym he didn't feel mistaken.

None of the men paid any attention to Cym's arrival, so he cautiously ventured closer to the sphere.

"It is!" The other man in the room also wore a lab coat and was tall and painfully thin. He twitched as he spoke and made Cym think of a praying mantis. "We've never had results like these. It's fascinating, really. Just fascinating."

Unlike his associate, the short man sensed the danger exuding from the Colonel and rushed to appease him. "Up to now our method has been one hundred percent effective. If there is a fault, it's with the subject, not us. He must be defective in some way." He put his glasses back on and valiantly pretended he wasn't shaking in fear and drenched in sweat.

The Colonel gazed at the short man with the intensity of a raptor, as if savoring his fear. Finally he sneered and said, "He's just stubborn. Hit him again. It'll take eventually. We just have to keep at it."

"With all due respect, sir, if the subject has any more treatments, we run the risk of damaging him permanently." The tall man pointed to the readings on the screen beside him. "Why not just scrap him and start with a new subject?"

"Because he's mine." A grown man saying such a childish thing should have been amusing, but his harsh tone sent chills down Cym's spine.

Cym walked around the sphere and saw a small, round window on one side with a panel next to it. Inside lay an eerily familiar-looking teenage boy strapped to a metal frame, with enough wires sticking out of his body to make him look like a porcupine. Cym turned to look at the trio behind him. How could they talk about the boy so callously?

The Colonel stalked over to where Cym stood and used his fist to smash a button next to a speaker on the black sphere. "Do you hear that, boy? You'll stay in there until you know who you belong to!"

The boy's eyes cracked open slightly. They were ringed with dark circles, and the corners were lined with pain, but he shakily held up a hand as far as his restraints would allow and gave the man a one-fingered salute.

Cym recognized his storm-gray eyes and gasped. Horror stole over him, leeching strength from his body. How dare they?

A wordless growl escaped the Colonel. "Do it."

"But… sir!"

"Do it now!"

"Yes sir. Prep Subject Fourteen, maximum dose this time."

After snapping the ominous order to his partner, the short one bustled around the room, poking at keyboards and squinting at computer monitors. The tall one took a large vial of clear liquid and inserted it into a compartment near the window.

The horror unfolding in front of him snapped Cym out of observer mode. He couldn't just stand there and let it happen—even if he was fairly certain he was only in a dream.

But if what was happening wasn't real, what could he do?

Cym didn't know shit about magic, especially dream magic. His experience was too horribly lacking for him to do anything without explosive results, which meant he was left with mundane methods. When ear-piercing screams began to emerge from the sphere, Cym's mind kicked into overdrive, forcing him into hyperfocus mode, and it only took seconds to spit out the answer.

If this was dream, what couldn't he do?

Cym spotted a heavy-looking microscope, picked it up and swung it at the head of the Colonel, who collapsed to the ground like a bag of ground meat. Neither of the scientists reacted, so he gave them the same treatment. Both fell to the ground without uttering a sound. It was so ridiculously easy, Cym was disgusted it had taken him so long to figure it out.

The second the room was full of unconscious assholes instead of conscious ones, Cym turned his attention to the black sphere. Distress was fucking with his concentration and it was amplifying with each of Fourteen's heart-wrenching screams.

Cym smacked himself repeatedly trying to bring himself back to the task at hand. He couldn't get Fourteen out if he collapsed under pressure, and Fourteen had helped Cym so many times already. Even if this was only a dream, Cym couldn't stand by and let the man be tortured right in front of him.

Cym tried to open the sphere, but it had no visible latch on the outside, so he abandoned the idea. He tried to read the screens to get some idea of how to stop the machine, but the words swam in front of him and refused to take any kind of recognizable shape.

Fuck. Stupid dream bullshit.

The stress of the situation was causing Cym's higher mental functions to go haywire, and he became increasingly frantic. Smashing random buttons on the machine did nothing, neither did pounding on the window of the sphere helplessly. His knowledge of computers was limited to what he had learned from a bristly librarian a few weeks ago, and it hadn't prepared him for this.

He had to do something. The boy's screams were getting weaker, and they kept getting cut off by choking sounds.

Cym slapped himself again. He had to stop reacting and think. He tried to remember what the short man had been doing right before Fourteen started screaming, but all he knew for certain was that he had been poking at one of the computers. With no other options, Cym ran over and began to trash the computer station, hurling the monitors to the floor, ripping out chords and smashing hard drives.

His systematic destruction of the lab was so noisy that it took a moment for him to realize the screaming had stopped. The monitor he was using to beat against a tower fell to the ground with a loud crash and he raced back to the sphere, fearful of what he would find.

It was dark inside now, but it was still sealed tight. Cym could neither see nor sense any movement inside.

A scream of frustration tore from his throat, and he kicked the sphere as hard as he could. There was a hiss, and a crack appeared in the smooth surface of the sphere, revealing a tiny opening.

Huh.

Sometimes violence was the answer. Stupid teen self-help magazines weren't so helpy after all.

Cym wedged shaking fingers into the crack and heaved, expecting to encounter resistance, but it slid open smoothly.

Small as he was, there wasn't enough room in the sphere for Cym to fit inside too, but he was able to sit on the rim of the opening and inspect the boy. In the dim light of the pod, Cym could make out Fourteen's closed eyes and the shallow rise and fall of his chest. Tremors racked his entire body and caused the wires attached to him to tear at his flesh. Cym knew very little about first aid, but he knew leaving Fourteen in the machine was a bad idea. He needed to get him someplace safe.

The wires were the first things that had to go, so he removed them as gently as he could. Some were taped to Fourteen's skin like electrodes, while others were buried in his flesh. Cym's stomach rolled as he took them out. Medical stuff was not his strong suit.

When he finally finished—no thanks to his useless, scaredy-cat stomach—Cym pulled Fourteen's young, lanky body out of the sphere into his lap and held him close. It was good this was a younger version of Fourteen, otherwise Cym wouldn't have a prayer of moving him. Grown up Fourteen was a wall of densely packed muscle.

"What do I do with you now? How can I keep you safe?" Cym looked at Fourteen's poor, battered face and stroked his brow.

It was becoming increasingly difficult to remember Cym was in a dream and that the real Fourteen was sleeping safely beside him, especially when his heart was telling him the boy needed him now. Cym had no intention of allowing further harm to come to him, dream or no.

Cym leaned down to press a kiss into Fourteen's dark hair and whispered, "I will keep you safe. I promise."

When Cym pulled away, storm-gray eyes opened and looked into his. The room glowed brightly as the walls melted away, and the contents of the room shifted and bent in a dizzying array of colors. Once again, Cym's stomach decided to be an asshole and let him know how it felt about the situation.

You are a dream stomach, jerkface. You do not get a say in things!

He closed his eyes and held onto Fourteen as tightly as possible. Cym couldn't keep Fourteen safe if he lost him in the Dreamscape.

When he was able to make out his surroundings again, he was sitting in a field holding a very awake and very adult Fourteen in his lap.

Cym's first coherent thought was surprise that Fourteen's sheer mass wasn't crushing him, and before he was able to finish pondering the concept, he was instantly overwhelmed by the weight of the man on top of him.

Cym squeaked in alarm and began to flail.

Laughing, Fourteen rolled off of him, grabbed Cym by both arms, and hauled him on top of his chest.

Laughing.

What the hell? When Fourteen laughed at Cym's terrible joke earlier it wasn't close to what he was doing now. Before, it was like listening to a tin soldier trying to laugh for the first time. This was joyful and unrestrained.

There was no ice in Fourteen's eyes. The man below him was fully alive and so much more than the man Cym had known so far. His eyes were filled with a mixture of laughter and mischief and Cym couldn't look away.

What the hell? Cym was still reeling from the traumatic scene they had been whisked away from. How could Fourteen be laughing?

Cym propped himself up on his elbows to give him enough room to see Fourteen's face. "Are… are you okay?"

"I feel unbelievable right now." Fourteen stroked the sensitive skin on the inside of Cym's arms, drawing lazy circles with his fingertips.

Cym's bare skin tingled with each stroke. It felt like the shapes were sinking into his skin and becoming a part of him. A heady rush of exhilaration ran through him, taking with it the horror of what he'd just witnessed. All he wanted to do now was wallow in the man.

Wow. Did Fourteen know he was the human equivalent to catnip?

Cym didn't rub all over Fourteen like a cat, but he couldn't stop the goofy smile from spreading across his face. That was weird… right? Was Cym allowed to be that happy?

People like him weren't supposed to have good things happen to them. Not that good, anyway.

Ugh. Stupid toxic upbringing. Cym could have good things. Cym deserved all of the good things. In fact, he was going to go find even more good things, gather them up into a big pile, take a picture, and mail it to his stupid family so they'd know what they were missing out on.

Okay, so maybe those teen self-help magazines were a little useful.

Cym laughed softly and shook his head. What was he doing again? Oh right. Sitting on a very good thing. He wiggled experimentally and got a fascinating sound from Fourteen in response.

Yeah… Cym was definitely gay. It only took being on the run from his family and grinding against a super soldier to find out.

Slow down, Cym. Slow down. No humping your soldier to victory until you figure out what's going on.

Cym took a shaky breath, trying to ignore the sexy, disheveled man underneath him and looked around. "Where are we, do you think? It looks like heaven."

They were lying on a wide expanse of grass at the top of a cliff overlooking the ocean. The sky was clear, and he could see seagulls flying in a wide circuit near the shore, looking for a meal.

"Home." Fourteen reached out and stroked Cym's cheek, his touch gentle but sure. Embers flared in Cym's belly and his cock stirred, but before he had a chance to react, Fourteen continued speaking. "This was my home a long time ago. I can actually remember some of that time now." He smiled, and it transformed his face into a work of art.

Cym had never seen anything more beautiful than Fourteen's smile. It stoked the embers in his belly and caused small flames to lick at his insides. The sensation was marvelous. "Do you know where it is?"

"Massachusetts, near Rockport, I think." His voice was lazy, and he stretched underneath Cym like a cat in the sun.

The motion snapped Cym's attention away from Fourteen's face and back to his sinful body. Gone were his leather jacket and black combat pants, and in their place was a thin, gray T-shirt and an old pair of jeans so worn they felt soft and pliant under Cym's fingers.

When the muscles in Fourteen's thigh shifted, Cym realized he had been feeling him up. Again.

Cym jerked his eyes to Fourteen's face, an apology on his lips, but stopped when he saw a glint of hunger in his eyes. His irises were thin bands of gray now, lost to the black of his pupils. The smile was gone from his face, replaced by something more predatory. The hard line of his cock stiffening against Cym was unmistakable. It was also impossible not to rock against.

Fuck.

It was starting to occur to Cym that their magical surroundings might be causing their social barriers to fuck off. Because at that exact moment, Cym wanted nothing more than to roll around on the ground and get dirty with Fourteen for the rest of the day.

He managed to resist reaching out to run a finger over the six pack peeking out from a gap between Fourteen's shirt and pants, but when Fourteen pushed Cym over like a toy and reversed their position, pressing that well-muscled body against him, he couldn't remember why he'd been trying to resist.

Without thinking, Cym wrapped his arms around Fourteen's neck, intending to claim every inch of the man he could gain access to, when he caught sight of a patch of scars on Fourteen's arm.

It was enough to break through the sexy fog clouding his brain. The reminder of what Fourteen had suffered cleared Cym's head enough for his mind to present what he had been so desperate to ignore.

"Fourteen." Cym's arms dropped to his sides, but his cock pulsed because it didn't care about things like morals or communication.

"Mm?" Fourteen's voice was thick, and he closed the distance between them, touching his forehead to Cym's.

It took all the willpower Cym possessed not to move the micromillimeters necessary to press his lips to Fourteen's. "What did you mean earlier when you said you weren't unaffected by me?"

Fourteen nuzzled Cym's cheek with his nose, breathing in his scent. "You want to talk about that right now? Because"—his thumb brushed across Cym's lower lip—"I think it could wait a little longer."

"I—" Cym's throat went dry. He cleared it and tried again. "I think it might be important." Cym considered getting that sentence out one of the major achievements of his life.

Fourteen took a deep breath and sat back, keeping the majority of his weight off Cym but still keeping him pinned to the ground.

The sunny day began to dim as clouds formed overhead. Fourteen frowned down at Cym as if to say, And this isn't important? But he didn't protest.

"Please?" Cym should get a freaking medal for his persistence because his cock was officially protesting.

Fourteen huffed, and his frown transformed into something very akin to a pout. Finally, he climbed off Cym's body, but not before planting a scorching kiss on his mouth.

Thunder rumbled in the distance as Fourteen sat down beside him with a painstaking deliberation. It left Cym wondering if he had an actual unit of measurement to go by for the proper distance to establish for a serious conversation.

Once Fourteen had achieved a position that made him happy he gazed at Cym with calm eyes, completely free of the cold emptiness Cym had become accustomed to.

Fourteen waited until Cym sat up before speaking. "When I carried you to the car back at the cemetery, I saw firsthand how you affect people. You don't do that to me."

"Then why—" Cym began and stopped when Fourteen held up a hand.

"You do something different. It's hard to explain because I don't understand any of it, so just let me talk. When I'm done, you can tell me if you can make any sense of it." Fourteen paused and stroked his thumb across his lower lip. Cym's mind went a bit fuzzy, but Fourteen's next words sobered him up in a flash. "The room you pulled me from, it was real, not just whatever magic hoodoo is happening right now."

"I'm pretty sure this is a dream—" Cym offered and was quelled by a sharp glance from Fourteen.

"The point is that it was a real place, but I didn't remember it before I met you. I didn't remember any of it before I met you. The man in the uniform—the Colonel—is the one who did this to me. He killed my father, took me, and turned me into his puppet." Fourteen clench his fists and shot to his feet with jungle cat grace. When he began to pace, Cym scrambled to his feet to avoid getting stepped on.

Out to sea, dark storm clouds filled the sky, and thunder rumbled continuously, coming closer and closer toward land.

"I did his jobs and remembered nothing—nothing! He took it all away from me and had me at his heel like a trained attack dog."

Streaks of lightning sparked through the clouds like a network of veins in the sky. Suddenly the storm doubled, then tripled, and Cym had the eerie impression it was as aware of him as he was of it. The thunder shook the sky and Cym felt the ground tremble in response.

When Fourteen's pacing brought him within reach, Cym's hand shot out to grab his arm. He didn't know what he hoped to accomplish, but he couldn't stand there like a dumbass while Fourteen bared his soul.

Fourteen stilled at the touch. "But then I met you." He took Cym's small hand in his and pulled Cym against his chest. "I felt no effect from simply being around you, but when I touched your skin, something broke free inside of me. I began remembering things. The memories would go away once I stopped touching you, but after the fight in the cemetery I was able to hold onto them."

Rage. Joy. Relief. Disappointment. Cym flashed through so many emotions he could barely breathe.

The rage was toward the Colonel for all he had done, but the rest was all due to Cym's own selfishness. He was happy Fourteen wasn't being driven mad by his wild magic. It was more of a gift than Cym could have hoped for, but…

Cym stumbled backward out of Fourteen's arms.

Maybe Cym had read too many romance novels, but he'd started to believe Fourteen was interested in him—he had busted in to save Cym from his shitty aunt after all. Now it seemed the situation was more complicated. Had Fourteen done it out of gratitude? Or worse, obligation?

"Is that why you stayed? To find out more about yourself?" Cym hated himself for asking, but he refused to nurse a crush on someone who might be using him.

The muscles in Fourteen's jaw flexed. "Have you seen your life? Everyone you know is trying to kill you. Of course I stayed. You're just as lucky to have run into me, you know."

"Are you sure that's the only reason? Maybe you wanted to find out what your real name was or what kind of dog you had when you were three!" Cym rubbed furiously at his stinging eyes.

"It's Dane."

"What?" Cym's hands stilled, and he peeked at Fourteen between his fingers.

"My name is Dane. My mother called me her little Viking warrior. And I didn't have a dog. I had a cat named Charlie. He was a massive Russian blue I used as a pillow every night as I went to sleep." Fourteen's eyes flashed as he pushed into Cym's personal space, closing in the gap Cym had created and forcing him to stumble backward. "I got it all back at the cemetery. I was planning on telling you everything then, but you took off like—" Fourteen stopped, looking like he had bitten into something rotten.

The storm had reached the shore and was sending flashes of lightning from the sky to hit the water. Cym put his arms around himself, huddling against the storm and Fourteen's fury.

He stood before Cym, emotions bared, standing tall and proud in his righteous anger. Everything The Company had done to him had been stripped away, allowing Cym to see who he truly was. It was magnificent—and terrifying.

"I'm sorry," Cym whispered.

The storm paused at the edge of the shore. Fourteen tucked his hands into his back pockets and cocked an eyebrow, listening.

Cym stared at a patch of mud on his sneaker. "I shouldn't have left like that. I—I scared the hell out of myself back at the cemetery. I knew if I stayed with you, I was going to get you killed!" His eyes shot up to meet Fourteen's. "How could I live with that?"

Fourteen's eyes softened. "You know, when I first met you, all I wanted to do was throw you on the first bus I could find, but I couldn't. Even before I touched you, there was something about you I couldn't walk away from." He reached out and took Cym's hand in his. "You're so much more alive than anyone I've ever met."

"So back at the cemetery when you yelled at me not to touch you?" Cym's voice was small.

Fourteen let out a short laugh and rubbed his free hand against the back of his neck. "I was stoned out of my mind. I wasn't thinking when I knocked you down and accidentally touched your skin because all I cared about was keeping you safe. Your magic packs one hell of a punch if I'm not expecting it. Every time I got my bearings, you just rolled me under again and made me as useful as a rock. We're going to have to be careful about that in the future."

Future. Fourteen wanted a future with Cym .

Cym didn't have to worry about driving Fourteen insane because, impossibly, he wasn't affected negatively by Cym's magic. A smile touched Cym's lips.

Cym could have good things.

He could have this .

"I guess we will." Sunshine broke through the clouds and warmed Cym's face. The world around them grew brighter until the edges of reality softened and blurred into nothing.