Chapter Fifteen
“For fuck’s sake, Zev,” Shaw snapped. “Eat your own fucking dinner!”
“I like yours better,” Zev said.
“It’s the same fucking thing,” Shaw said.
“Yours seems a little more kosher,” Zev said.
“I’ve seen you eat lobster,” Shaw said, slapping his hand away. “I saw you eat lobster two nights ago.”
“Mmm,” Zev said. “That wasn’t me. That was someone else.”
They were bickering like kids, and the captain and his officers had no idea what to make of them. Neither did Lee, who was eating everything put in front of him quietly and politely.
“We can do kosher,” the captain said. He looked at the XO. “Can’t we?”
The XO shrugged her shoulders. “It’s never come up, sir.”
Shaw had an idea the captain would be very glad to see the back of the lot of them.
“Movie night tonight,” the captain said. “If you’re interested.”
“What’s on?” Zev asked.
“You Don’t Mess With the Zohan,” Shaw suggested.
Someone farther down the table almost choked.
Shaw glanced across at Lee and saw that he was smiling. Zev saw it too and bit back whatever acerbic reply he’d had ready. He reached across and filched Shaw’s chicken instead.
Zev could be a clown in public. He liked to be a clown. But when he worked, he was dangerous. He had a level of professionalism that Shaw both admired and feared. He killed men in cold blood, and, as far as Shaw could tell, he didn’t lose sleep over it. Shaw didn’t know if he aspired to be like that or not.
After dinner, Shaw saw Lee back to his cabin, and he and Zev headed up onto the deck. The crew who passed them in the narrow corridors looked at them curiously.
The crew gave all three of them a wide berth on the ship. They knew, Shaw supposed, that he was ASIO. They suspected Zev was Mossad. They had no idea where Lee fitted in. And what the three of them had been doing floating in the ocean off a Fijian island would remain a topic of speculation. Shaw had heard the lower ranks speculating since they’d been picked up.
The sea air was invigorating. Shaw and Zev headed over to the rails, where Zev lit a cigarette.
“What are you doing?” Zev asked him. His voice was low, serious. The joker was gone.
“What do you mean?” Shaw leaned on the rail.
“I mean with that American,” Zev said. “You threw away your mission. Fuck, you threw away mine as well, even if I’m glad the bastards are dead.”
“Thanks for backing me,” Shaw said. “I didn’t know if you would.”
Zev only shrugged.
“I mean that,” Shaw said. “Thanks.”
Zev inhaled, and his narrow face was illuminated by the ember of his cigarette. “Did you fuck him?”
“What?” Shaw felt guilt rise in his gut.
“On the island,” Zev said. “Did you fuck him?”
“No,” Shaw said, glad it was the truth. Glad Zev had clarified the question.
There’s the loophole, and there’s Shaw slipping through it.
“Good,” said Zev. “The Americans might not have liked that.”
“I’m not an idiot,” Shaw said.
Zev shrugged again. “I saw the way you looked at him. He’s been thinking with his cock, I told myself. I knew you wouldn’t let him die.”
“Would you have let him die?” Shaw asked curiously.
Zev didn’t answer that. “When my superiors ask why I’m not plotting atrocities with terrorists, I can just blame the whole fucking mess on you, of course.” He shrugged his narrow shoulders. “And I expect I will. I just wonder who you’re going to blame.”
Shaw didn’t know how to answer.
“But, for what it’s worth, I’m glad you did what you did,” Zev said.
“Are you really?”
“Of course,” Zev said. “You saved me from having to make the decision.”
Shaw smiled slightly and watched the black ocean.
* * * *
Shaw woke up when the door to his cabin opened.
“Are you awake?” Lee whispered.
Shaw sighed. “Yeah. What’s up?”
Lee crossed to the bunk. “Couldn’t sleep. Can I stay with you?”
I’m not your savior, Shaw wanted to say. You cried when we fucked, remember? But it was less than two days until Sydney, and he was the closest thing to a friend that Lee had. He needed someone, Shaw supposed, to tell him it was okay now.
“Yeah,” Shaw said, shifting across to make some room in the narrow bunk.
Lee slid in beside him with a sigh, his arms going around Shaw’s body. He rested his head on Shaw’s chest and sighed again. “Thanks.”
“It’s okay,” Shaw said. His fingers found the scars and welts on Lee’s back and brushed over them gently. “Just try and get some sleep, okay?”
“Okay,” Lee whispered.
Shaw thought about what Zev had said earlier on deck. He was wrong. Shaw hadn’t been thinking with his cock. It had always been more than that. From the moment he’d seen Lee, Shaw had wanted to rescue him. He’d fought the instinct as far as he could, but in the end, it hadn’t made any difference. He’d fucked everything up, but he was relieved as well. He’d spent so long pretending to be somebody else, somebody ruthless and cold, that he was afraid he’d forgotten how to be anything else. Lee had shown him there was still a scrap of human decency left in him after all. It wouldn’t save his career, but it was good to know.
“I had an iPod,” Lee said.
Shaw frowned slightly in the darkness. “What?”
“I had an iPod in my pack,” Lee said. “Vornis took it. I thought of it a lot, you know. I really wanted it back. Out of everything, I thought that was the worst thing he could do—take my fucking iPod. Do you think that’s weird?”
“I don’t know,” Shaw said. He stroked the soft hair at the nape of Lee’s neck. It would be curls soon, Shaw thought. What a shame he’d never see that. “What sort of music do you like?”
“Everything,” Lee murmured. “I just missed it. I thought it would be better if I had somewhere to go in my head. I needed it, yeah? I needed to go somewhere apart from the sedatives, I mean. I think they were sedatives. I never saw them prepare the syringe.”
Shaw stroked his hair.
“What if it was something else?” Lee asked. “What if it was something worse? What if it was heroin?”
“Heroin isn’t all it’s cracked up to be,” Shaw said, which might have been the wrong track to take with a DEA agent. “I mean, if they made you an addict, Lee, you’d know by now, wouldn’t you? Come on, you know you would.”
“I guess,” Lee said.
“Anyway,” Shaw said, “I’ll bet the DEA has access to the best rehab programs in the world, if it comes to that. Right? I mean, given the undercover work you guys do.”
“I guess,” Lee murmured.
“Of course they do,” Shaw said. Lee should have been more worried about disease than addiction, Shaw thought. And maybe that was something Shaw should have given some thought to before fucking him, protection or not. But it had been an act of trust in the good people at Durex, and Shaw had put his trust in a lot less before. It was meant to have been an act of trust between him and Lee as well, but so much for that.
Shaw couldn’t resent it. What had he expected, exactly? That he’d magic Lee off the island and ta-da, he’d be a real boy? Shaw was too old and too clever to believe in fairy tales. The real miracle was that they were both still alive. Shaw had no right to hope for anything more than that.
He knew it would hurt when he had to let Lee go.
Lee exhaled slowly. “Thanks for looking after me.”
“That’s okay.” Shaw tried to disguise the waver in his voice. “You just sleep now, okay?”
“Okay.” Lee sighed.
The sound of Lee’s breathing, the drone of the engines, the swell of the ocean; it all conspired against Shaw in the end. He slept.
* * * *
Shaw woke up with Lee’s mouth around his cock.
“Fuck!” It was still the middle of the night. Shaw reached out, searching for the light switch. “What are you doing, Lee?”
Lee didn’t answer. Shaw had forgotten how good that hot mouth felt around his cock. That tongue that knew all the tricks. Those clever fingers that teased his balls.
Shaw pushed him away with one hand at the same moment his other one found the switch. “No,” he said firmly. “No, we’re not doing this again.”
Lee blinked in the sudden light. “Why not?”
Holy shit! When had Lee slipped out of his clothes? The light gleamed on his naked body.
“Jesus, Lee, because you cried!” Shaw hitched his sweatpants up again. “You’re not ready for this.”
“Will you hold me, then?” Lee asked him. “Will you please just hold me?”
“Yeah, okay,” Shaw said. There wasn’t much room to maneuver in the narrow bunk, but he ended up on his back with Lee lying in the crook of his arm. And, unless he was imagining it, Lee’s cock poking into his hip.
Shaw closed his eyes and tried to ignore it. He could feel Lee’s breath against his throat. The closeness felt good. It felt comfortable. He hoped Lee would fall asleep again.
“I got scared last time,” Lee said quietly in the darkness.
“That’s normal,” Shaw told him, even if he had no idea.
“It felt good,” Lee said. “That’s what scared me.”
Shaw stroked the back of his head. “You’ll be okay.”
He wondered how long it would take before Lee was healed. He wondered if it was even possible. Even once the fear was gone, what then? Would he feel sick every time sex felt good? A part of him would always be the victim, terrified of the pain and afraid that accepting pleasure meant he’d asked for it. And he had the physical scars as well. Would every potential new partner ask him about them? And what could he say?
Shaw wished he’d been the one to cut Vornis’s throat instead of leaving it for Zev. He wished Vornis had been conscious. He could have really made it hurt. He could have made it last for hours. And he would have told him that painting was a forgery as well, just to see the look on the bastard’s face.
Maybe he was a monster after all.
Lee drew his hand down Shaw’s chest gently, spreading his fingers wide.
“Don’t,” Shaw murmured. “Just sleep. Can you reach the light?”
Lee didn’t move.
“When you got stung by the jellyfish, how long before you got back in the ocean?” Lee asked him quietly.
Shaw tried to remember. “It was a long time ago. I was in hospital for two days. Maybe a week?”
“That’s brave,” Lee said. “Will you help me do that?”
“It’s different,” Shaw said, closing his eyes as Lee’s fingers caught his nipple gently. The jolt of pleasure shot straight to his balls, and he hissed. Now, now was the time to get some space between them. Right now, before it went further, but Shaw didn’t move.
“Did you like it the first time you went back in?” Lee asked him. His mouth was close to Shaw’s ear now. Shaw could feel his hot breath.
“I was terrified.” Shaw remembered.
“Did it still feel good?” Lee asked him.
“I don’t know,” Shaw said. “It probably did, but I was too scared to realize. I kept thinking it would happen again, any second now. I had to force myself to stay in the water.” He felt Lee’s tongue against his ear and jerked his head away. “But it’s different.”
“I think it would be okay,” Lee said, “if you were on top. I think I like it when you’re in charge. You know what’s right for me. I got scared when I had to be in control before.”
“That’s why it’s wrong,” Shaw said.
Lee slid his hand farther down, tracing his fingertips over Shaw’s abdomen. “I trust you. When’s that going to happen for me again?”
“I don’t want to hurt you,” Shaw said. He should have kicked him out when he’d first turned up, but Lee had needed this closeness. Why couldn’t they just leave it at that? Why couldn’t Lee just sleep?
“Can’t we pretend there’s a camera?” Lee asked. “Can’t we pretend someone’s watching? I liked it when I got to look up at you. It made me feel safe.”
“You are safe,” Shaw told him. “We don’t have to pretend anymore.”
Lee shifted suddenly, rolling onto his back and pulling Shaw on top of him. “Please. Just jerk off if you want.” He drew his legs up and spread his knees.
Shaw pushed off him and straightened up, and then he was in exactly the same position that had become so familiar to them both: on his knees between Lee’s spread thighs, looking down at Lee’s erect cock. He felt the same hunger he always had, and none of the caution. He didn’t have to pretend here. And he didn’t have to resist.
And he didn’t even care that Lee had manipulated him into it.
Shaw shifted back, looked Lee in the eye, and bent forward. Lee squirmed as he felt Shaw’s warm breath on his cock. His whole body undulated in need before Shaw even flicked out his tongue to claim the droplet of clear fluid already glistening on the head.
“Oh, Jesus,” Lee whispered. His hands clenched into fists at his sides.
Shaw licked him again. He tasted good. He drew the head slowly into his mouth, loving the small sounds of pleasure that Lee made. There was no pain in this and no fear yet. This was good. Lee’s cock was so smooth, so hard. It felt almost velvety under Shaw’s tongue. The skin was so soft and sensitive, but the flesh was rigid and straining underneath.
And this, Shaw knew, was something Vornis would never have done for Lee. Jerked him off, maybe, just to make him hate himself for coming, but Vornis would never have taken Lee’s cock gently into his mouth.
Shaw circled his fingers around Lee’s shaft, feeling it twitch under his touch. He slowly fed it into his mouth. He’d owed Lee this since the blowjob in the shower, but it wasn’t just about reciprocity. Shaw wanted this as much as Lee did. He wanted to give Lee this. He needed to. Needed to give Lee something that nobody else on the island had. Needed not to be a monster.
Stop it. It’s not about you. Focus.
Shaw worked his tongue around the head of Lee’s cock.
“Oh, oh Jesus,” Lee whispered again, his hips trembling. “I’m gonna come!”
Shaw lifted his head quickly, and Lee squirmed with disappointment. “Not yet.”
“Please,” Lee whispered, still holding his fists at his sides.
That was interesting, Shaw thought as he drew Lee’s cock into his mouth again. He really had given Shaw all the control. Shaw circled the base of Lee’s cock with his fingers to prevent him from coming and ran his tongue along the thick vein on the underside of Lee’s shaft. Lee trembled and writhed.
“Please,” he whispered again.
Shaw moved away again. He leaned forward and ran his tongue along Lee’s bottom lip. Lee jerked forward, opening his mouth and trying to follow Shaw’s face as he moved back again. He was panting.
“Do you still want me to fuck you, Lee?” Shaw asked him. He rolled his hips, bringing his cock into contact with Lee’s through the thin material of his sweatpants.
“Yes,” Lee breathed. “Please, yes.”
Shaw shucked his sweatpants off and reached for a condom. This time he wouldn’t let Lee prepare himself. He was in charge here, and not because he was stronger but because Lee wanted it that way, and that was reason enough. They could both worry about the psychology later.
“Lie back,” Shaw said. He squirted lube onto his fingers and reached down between Lee’s buttocks.
And there was that look again. Fear flashed in Lee’s eyes as Shaw’s fingers found his anus and pressed gently against the entrance.
“We’re going to do this,” Shaw said firmly. He hoped it wasn’t the wrong path to take and was relieved when Lee clenched his jaw and nodded.
Lee drew a shaking breath as Shaw slipped a finger inside him.
“You’re okay,” Shaw said, and it wasn’t a question.
Lee nodded.
Shaw withdrew his finger and then pushed back inside with two. He twisted them slowly in the tight heat, looking for that sweet spot. Lee shuddered as he found it, rocking his hips.
Shaw scissored his fingers, stretching Lee slowly as he watched his face. The fear was still there, but it was only weak. There was discomfort now, but pleasure as well. And there was trust. Lee hadn’t been kidding about that. Shaw bet it was the only thing keeping him from panicking.
Shaw withdrew his fingers and notched his cock against Lee’s tight hole. Lee’s cock was still hard. He still wanted this. Shaw hesitated for a moment. He opened his mouth to speak, and nothing came. Relax? Let it happen? You can handle it? There was nothing he could say that didn’t sound like coercion or, worse, that wouldn’t sound like an echo of a hundred different things Lee had been told on the island, so Shaw held Lee’s gaze and didn’t say anything.
Lee gasped as Shaw entered him, and his fists unclenched as his hands fluttered anxiously.
“You’re okay,” Shaw told him again. He withdrew slightly and pushed again, feeling Lee open up underneath him.
Shaw hoped he was doing the right thing. Jesus, it was too late now for regrets, they were already fucking. Shaw had trained his conscience well. It didn’t make itself heard until he was already on the home stretch. He wasn’t the good guy Lee believed he was.
He heard Lee’s shaky intake of breath.
“You’re okay,” Shaw told him, willing him to believe it. He pushed forward again, and then he was all the way in. “Look at me, Lee.”
Lee opened his eyes. There were no tears yet, but Lee blinked rapidly as though he was trying to hold them at bay.
Shaw leaned forward and kissed him. Lee’s mouth opened slightly. Too fucking passive, Shaw thought. He tilted his hips. Lee gasped, and Shaw pushed his tongue into his mouth. He found Lee’s tongue and teased it until Lee was groaning underneath him. He wriggled, and Shaw moved his mouth to his throat. He mapped Lee’s skin with his lips and his teeth, gently sucking and nipping until every one of Lee’s breaths was a tiny gasp instead, and Lee was arching his back toward him.
Shaw wanted more. He flicked his tongue against Lee’s nipple and, half afraid of the consequences, bit down quickly.
Lee cried out and arched farther against him. Surprise flashed through his eyes.
“You like that,” Shaw said before Lee’s brain jumped to unpleasant associations. “Feels good.”
Lee dropped back, trembling. “Fuck me, Shaw, please.”
There it was. A breathy demand. Lee wanted, and it was beautiful.
Shaw licked Lee’s throat and nipped at the muscle between his neck and shoulder. This time Lee’s gasp was all pleasure, and at last his hands knew where they were supposed to be. They slipped around Shaw, his fingers digging so hard into his back that Shaw knew he’d have bruises in the morning. And it would be totally fucking worth it.
Shaw felt the moment that Lee gave himself fully. His body pushed against Shaw’s, desperate for skin-on-skin contact. His legs hooked around Shaw. He began to raise himself up to meet each thrust. And he pulled Shaw’s head down and gasped into his ear: “Fuck. Oh, Shaw. Fuck.”
Shaw knew he wouldn’t last much longer. He reached between them and gripped Lee’s cock. It pulsed as soon as he touched it, and Shaw felt Lee shudder as he came. He threw his head back, clenched convulsively around Shaw’s cock, and Shaw laved his throat with his tongue. Lee’s whole body shook, but he didn’t let go.
Shaw thrust again and felt his balls contract. His muscles tensed, froze, and then he came as well. He sagged down onto Lee, and their sweaty bodies slid against one another as they carefully disengaged.
Shaw lay on his side and pulled Lee into his embrace. Lee was slippery with sweat and cum, and his skin was flushed. Shaw slipped his arms around his back and kissed him gently.
“That was good,” Lee murmured.
Shaw ran his tongue across Lee’s bottom lip. “It was.”
“Thank you,” Lee said.
Shaw smiled slightly, thinking of that time in the shower. “Should be me thanking you.”
Lee tilted his chin and kissed Shaw’s jawline. “Can we do that again?”
“Give me a minute,” Shaw murmured.
Lee laughed softly and poked him in the ribs. “I mean before we get to Sydney?”
Try and stop me, Shaw wanted to say but couldn’t. There was too much off limits with Lee, and most of it was Shaw’s favorite dirty talk: I want to fuck you senseless. I can make you beg. I can make you scream.
He squeezed Lee’s hand as regret spread through him. “That’s probably not a great idea, Lee, is it?”
Lee’s face was unreadable in the darkness. “Oh. Okay.”
Shaw held Lee as he drifted off to sleep at last, and wondered what the hell he was thinking.
* * * *
One step forward and two steps back. Lee was never far from breaking.
Lee winced as the doctor unwound the bandages around his wrists, and clamped his mouth tightly shut.
Shaw, leaning in the doorway, wondered how long it would take until Lee unlearned what Vornis had taught him. How long until he stopped forcing down his pain responses? How long until he realized that allowing himself to show weakness didn’t mean inviting more pain?
You’re an asshole, Shaw. You shouldn’t have touched him. Not when he’s still a broken thing.
Shaw thought of Molly. Kind words, gentle touches, and whispered endearments were all very good, but just because it had worked on a Labrador didn’t mean it would work on a human being. It just meant that he was as bad as Vornis. It just meant he thought of Lee as a dumb animal as well.
But then Lee looked up at him, and his eyes shone with the same helpless trust that Shaw had seen so many times back on the island. He was submitting to the doctor’s examination because Shaw had told him he had to, just as he’d gone quietly up to the main house on that last night. Shaw hated himself for that. It wasn’t Lee’s fault that he needed someone to trust, but it was Shaw’s fault for being a monster after all. He’d exploited Lee, just like everyone else.
I didn’t let him die. He’s grateful for that, but how long until he realizes I could have saved him at any time? I just chose not to.
“This is healing well,” the doctor said, turning Lee’s left wrist. “It’s still infected, so we’ll put some antiseptic cream on it and bind it up again. Have you been taking your antibiotics?”
Lee looked at Shaw before he answered. “Yes, sir.”
The doctor raised his eyebrows. “Now, we’ve talked about that, son.”
Lee flushed. “Sorry. Yes, doc.”
Shaw liked the doc. He had a good bedside manner, and not just with Lee. None of the crew addressed him by his rank inside the medical bay. He was just the doc. And Lee, whether he realized it or not, responded well to the man.
“Okay,” the doc said. “Take your shirt off please, Lee.”
Lee’s fingers fumbled along the hemline of his shirt for a moment, before he drew it over his head. He hunched over slightly on the examination table, swinging his legs restlessly. He squeezed his eyes shut as the doc began to inspect the marks and bruises on his torso.
The harsh fluorescent light did him no favors. Shaw remembered the first time he’d seen Lee, his skin shining in the rain. He hadn’t noticed the bruises then, and now they were all he could see. He watched as the doc’s gloved fingers moved gently across Lee’s skin.
Shaw saw the raised puncture marks left by the wait-a-while. He saw the tiny burns from the cattle prod. He saw a scar the shape of a cigarette burn on the side of Lee’s rib cage. And he saw the mottled bruises that had faded to yellow all over him. As though he’d been a blank canvas to Vornis and the rest, and they couldn’t bear to leave a square inch of his skin unblemished. Up close, his multitude of bruises were yellow, brown, gray, and red. They were messy and random, but from a distance, they coalesced into a patina of light and shadow that defined the planes of his body. Like a postimpressionist painting. Like The Boy in the Red Vest.
There was a sort of sick artistry in it, Shaw thought.
Lee opened his eyes, and Shaw shot him a quick smile. You’re okay. Lee’s own lips quirked up gratefully, and then he squeezed his eyes shut again.
“Okay,” the doc said. “Lie down on your stomach for me, please.”
Everything was okay and please with Lee. It had to be.
Shaw watched as Lee shifted awkwardly onto his stomach. A shiver ran through his thin body. Too thin, Shaw thought; too thin and too broken.
“Good,” said the doc. He patted Lee’s shoulder gently. “Okay.”
Lee was holding himself tensely. Shaw could see him trying to force himself to relax under the doc’s hand, but he couldn’t. The muscles moving under his skin were tight. His breathing was shallow. And his hands were fisted.
Lee hissed through his teeth as the doc’s fingers touched a burn. “Shaw?”
Shaw moved forward. “It’s okay, Lee.”
Lee reached out his hand, and Shaw took it. Lee was trembling, but he gripped Shaw’s hand tightly and closed his eyes again. He frowned, and clenched his jaw.
Shaw exchanged a look with the doc and wondered if he imagined something censorious in the older man’s expression. Maybe the doc was just reading Shaw’s guilt. I could have saved him at any time. I just chose not to. Shaw looked down at Lee’s hand in his own.
If I’d known you, he thought. I want to know you, but not the way you are now. You deserve better.
Shaw wasn’t a human being. Not when he was working. He was something different then. He was a machine, programmed to do a task. He reduced everything to a simple calculation: risk versus reward. And he’d seen some god-awful things in his work as well, things that the machine could witness, the machine could process, but the man couldn’t. Shaw had learned to compartmentalize everything. He had learned that there was a time and a place to feel, and it was always later, always at home, either in the debriefing or in the nearest bar with Callie. And it wasn’t the fact that Lee had got under his defenses that bothered Shaw the most. It was the fact that nothing else ever had. What the hell did that make him?
A rhetorical question. Shaw knew the answer.
“You lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas,” his mother used to say.
Shaw looked away from Lee and fixed his gaze on the eye chart on the wall.
His parents knew he worked for ASIO, but Shaw told them he was an analyst in the Sydney office. Something with computers, they assumed, and Shaw had never corrected them. They didn’t know about the work he really did in the field, the people he associated with—befriended and then betrayed because he was such a clever monster—and Shaw discovered that he shed it all like a second skin the moment he was home again. It was surprisingly easy to do. That had worried Shaw at first. He’d wondered if it made him a sociopath, but then he’d learned not to look that gift horse in the mouth. He only knew it was a very thin line that separated him from men like Vornis, and it had become increasingly blurred. But he was good at his job. That was what he clung to when he couldn’t see for all the gray areas: he was good at his job. That was all that mattered.
Somehow, Lee had changed that. Shaw had thrown away his assignment. He’d made a moral decision, and it bothered him. It bothered him that he’d made it at all—the machine knew Lee’s life wasn’t worth the intel Guterman could have provided—and it bothered him that he’d made it so late. He should have found a boat and got Lee off the island the first time it had occurred to him, the first time he’d allowed the human being to override the machine’s programming. All he’d done, in the end, was prolong Lee’s suffering.
I’m so fucking sorry, Lee. He squeezed Lee’s hand. I am so fucking sorry.
Lee flinched under the doc’s examination and turned his face away.