Hobbestown Pt. 5
title Hobbstown
verse Honest-to-god Harsh Realm
rating R
summary Five years post canon, Tom Hobbes and Mike Pinocchio have a refugee camp and a real resistance settled in the anonymity of the American midlands. Their world and their cause have grown bigger than themselves, however, and has come to affect the lives of hundreds, if not thousands. Two of those thousands cross paths in Hobbstown during the days leading up to one of the resistance’s greatest accomplishments. But even in the relative sanctuary of the camp, nothing is certain or permanent. Rated for cussing and bad decision making.

(Pt 1: little ripples) (Pt 2: day to day) (Pt 3: the particulars) (Pt 4: the outskirts)

It was dark out and cool, and the tongues of a hundred campfires drifted between the trees like fireflies, pixies, maybe something from the Real World. Something beautiful and unflawed and realer than me, more real than any of this. For a second, I stumbled, boney shoulder scraping on the rough bark of a tree. I hadn’t been this high in months, not since the road and every little horror it brought me to.

I hadn’t gotten clean. I’d dried up slowly, like a shallow little creek baking in the summer sun. I didn’t have much of a choice in the matter. Eventually, sucking dick for a twenty minute escape to wonderland even made a strung out junkie start questioning his station in life. But...god, I’d missed this. The happiest moments in my life to date were at the peak of a high, when every corner, every alley, every oil slick puddle was a gateway to a life that wasn’t this life, a life where there were still bumblees, where the bomb had never exploded, and where a gutter rat like me was happy. Using, I was at the center of every good thing in the world.

I smiled vaguely a couple out on an evening stroll, hand in hand like high school lovers, like life wasn’t fucked ten feet outside the shantytown’s boundaries. Giggling quietly to myself, I slapped the young man on the ass hard enough to make him startle, glaring at me over his shoulder with fierce indignation as he led his startled date home. I was laughing, mouth open and stumbling backward on the packed dirt path.

I was free and unhinged, and maybe there was a war going on in a toolshed in the center of this paradise, and maybe Nash was a walking freakshow, but right now, everything was easy to forget. It was remembering that was hard. I followed the beaten path through camp, singing to myself, monopolizing stares from curious on-lookers.

What's wrong with him?

Come over here, baby, and I’ll show you all my scars.

*

“...fuck?”

It was later. At some point I’d lost all track of time. It was dark, still, but the kind of darkness that was unfriendly, the darkness that was uncaged and bred at hours when the honest men of the world was asleep. Somewhere, Tom Hobbes was sleeping, alone and warm.

Mike PInocchio wasn’t. Mike Pinocchio was wide awake. 

I was listing as I stood in the middle of his tent, feet finding unexpected relief in the plush carpet. I laughed, stuffing my hand against my mouth, trying for the life of me to remember how I’d ended up here. The last hour was indistinct, filled with a myriad of lights and sounds, and all I remember really missing in that moment was a hot, solid body against mine. I needed something to stop the squirming under my skin.

Uninvited except for that muttered curse, I trailed over to where he was seated at a desk, kerosene lamp shedding flickering light on a thick stack of papers, fractionating in the glass of scotch at his elbow. It was a nice desk, deep mahogany, beveled edge, clawed feet. It was a nice carpet, soft enough to ease the battered soles of my feet. Beyond him, there was a nice bed, a real mattress, heavy blankets. I grinned slowly. Maybe Tom Hobbes tried his best to live in trenches beside his fellow man, but Mike Pinocchio didn’t seem the type to turn down luxury. Or, the illusion of luxury. Persian carpet and goosedown, yeah, sure, whatever. It was all still in a tent in a refugee camp on the edge of a tyrant’s world.

He was watching me intently, pen still poised above a stack of reports. His eyes were a brilliant shade of blue, a color that only artists and poets had a word for. I was dumbstruck and tripping. I didn’t know how I got here, but he already knew why.

With care, I dipped my finger into the chilled, amber liquid, and wondered what it would be like to drown in gold. Smiling, I traced my bottom lip with one finger, trailing scotch and licking it away with the tip of my tongue. Something changed in his expression, grew darker, and I couldn’t stop my grin from spreading. Right then, in that moment, I had already won. 

“You’re high as shit,” he murmured, hands folded over his stomach.

“Yeah?” I said, tipping my head. “When...did you get so fucking...discerning?”

“You don’t know me, kid,” he murmured, but his grin was dark, evaluating. I’d lost my shirt somewhere and, for the moment, he was talking to my naval. “How much did you take? When?”

“Maybe I don’t know you,” I said, ignoring him, “But I know Hobbes. You think he’d let me suck his dick, Mike? You think he’d ask me to?” I trailed my fingers down the grooves on my belly, letting them on my fly, fingers rubbing my dick through denim. “Does he pull your hair when you suck him off? Maybe gets rough with you? Shove his dick down his throat and call you a whore-?”

Mike shoved back his chair hard, so hard I thought he was angry enough to hit me. For half a second I held my breath, watching him get to his feet. Something like a smirk was playing over his features. Standing, he met my eyes, gaze not even flickering to my fly as I let my fingers slip under my waist band, desperate noises starting to cloy and gather in my throat.

“I bet he says ‘I love you‘ when he comes,” I murmured, half a foot in the grave and just getting started. Lightening quick, Mike reached out and, before I could react, his fingers were knotted in the hair at the back of my neck, hard enough to make me gasp, hard enough to make me groan. Through the lights and the colors and the sound, pain bled into pleasure until everything was a warm and trembling, waiting for a new sensation to come along. I had one hand in my pants, shirtless, and I was shaking with need from that one, rough touch. All I wanted was to go down on my knees and press my face into the crease of his thigh and be told what to do.

“I should throw you out,” He said, hauling me close by my hair, lips brushing my neck as he spoke.

“Yeah?” I murmured, arching into him, grabbing onto him with one, trembling fist before he batted it away, annoyed. “Let me out in the streets, let the first squad of Marines that finds have their way with me?” I grinned blearily, letting out a desperate, needy sigh as he stripped me out of my pants with one hand, the other still anchored unforgivingly in my hair. “Bet you’d like that, you sick fuck. Watch them hold me down, take turns...”

He growled and I stepped out of my jeans, not surprised at all when he hauled me in for a rough, lip splitting kiss, forcing his tongue past my lips, sliding past my teeth and tongue before he relented, bitting my bottom lip hard enough to make me cry out.

“No,” he said, grinning, one hand groping my ass hard enough to leave bruises, scratch marks and my body said yes, that, like that but harder.

These pills were a good way to die, if you weren’t careful.

“No, I think I’ll just fuck you myself.”

“Okay,” I breathed, voice a lot more relieved than triumphant.

“Good,” he murmured, taking another kiss and slapping me hard on the ass before releasing his grip. “Get on the bed and get your ass up in the air.”

After that, things got blurry quickly. He had a bed, a real bed with a boxspring and head board and I know that for at least a little while that night my wrists were tied to that head board with soft linen and sure nots. Mike didn’t go soft, he didn’t go slow. Panting and sweat slicked, no lube except for what he spat into his hand, I took him and groaned like a whore, dick leaking and pressed into the sheets. I cursed at him, begged him, asked him how Tom Hobbes sounded when he fucked him like this, if Mike called him a whore and a slut, too. I don’t remember coming, but I remember his hands anchored on my hips, pulling on my dick, knotted in my hair. He was rough - I knew he would be. You throw yourself into the fire, sometimes, just to see if you can burn.

I don’t know what I was expecting, really. Spent, sweating, achey from my shoulders to the back of my thighs, I collapsed forward into the bed and moaned quietly to myself. He untied me, smoothed his hands over the burning marks on by back and hips and, mysteries upon wonders, he put out the light and climbed in beside me. Not words spoken, no more touches exchange. I could have wept for thanks. Already I was coming down and the inklings of mortification were clawing at me.

There was a war on and I was a wastrel, chewing on the dregs of a bombed out world and pretending that life goes on. Life doesn’t go on, not for us. For us, life dwindles. For some reason, on the edge of sleep, I remembered Nash’s face, bloodied and beaten, but brighter for the sight of me. What could possibly be thinking, I wondered, coming down off a high and covered in Mike Pinocchio’s come, bruise and bloodied for my asking. My fingers trembly against the fine linen pillow, and turned my head to hide the tears. What could he have possible seen?

Soon, very soon, I slept.

*

I woke dry mouthed and achey when night was still clinging to the new day, my bones feeling broken under my skin. Vaguely I could remember crying out that night, half woken by nightmares, only to have the wide breadth of Mike’s hands pass over me, soft words mouthed against my ear. This wasn’t a romance. He was doing what he needed to get back to bed. Still, a desperate, warm wash went through me at the memory, and I leaned into for a few, stolen moments as he slept. I closed my eyes. I wondered if Nash was still alive.

It was that thought alone which got me out of his bed, stumbling drunkenly as my bare feet hit the ground. I was naked and bruised purple, my head throbbing as if my skull was cracked. It was hard enough to focus just to find my clothes. My boxers and jeans were in a pile by Mike’s desk, and it was almost impossible to get myself into them. As I struggled hauling them up, my eyes fell on one of the many charts he’d hung around the canvas walls of his tent. Most were maps of the states, lists of numbers, pictures of cities that had to be maintained inside Santiago’s fence. I squinted at one in particular, a strange web chart that took up the better part of oak tag, branched in messy handwriting to the edges of the page. In the center, someone had written HQ in block letters. There was only one line leading off it, connecting to a bubble bearing the name of a small town that had died years ago. Two lines off this, one to a city that had been in Illinois, a tourist destination in the years before the bomb. The other was to a town I’d never heard of, but was apparently in Ohio, a hundred miles away. The connections went on and on like this, with no discernible pattern. Some connecting towns that were side by side, others that were hundreds of miles apart. Still others were marked with just latitude and longitudes, as if no town was close enough to call it by name.

I was just about to turn away, curiosity coming up against a brick wall of pain, when my eyes fell on another bubble, newly drawn if the fresh ink compared to the faded pencil of HQ was clue enough. It had been circled several times and in it was written SANTIAGO CITY.

I stumbled over, picking up my hand to trace the connecting lines...

“Christ you’re up early,” Mike grumbled, watching me from bed. I got the feeling he’d been awake for a long time, watching me. A thin thread of shame went through my chest and I flushed, avoiding his eyes.

“Yeah. Well. I’m a fucking pillar of health, evidently. You seen my shirt?”

“You weren’t wearing one when you got here,” he said frankly, swinging his legs out of bed and hauling on pants.

“Shit,” I grunted, passing my hands over my head. Slowly, the details came back.

“Shoes, either. You need a doc, kiddo?”

I shot a glare up at him and took a step forward, speaking to him through my teeth.

“You fuck me like that, Pinocchio, you don’t get to call me kiddo anymore.”

He laughed, a sardonic smile making him look sleek and unruffled in the dawning light. “Alright, sweetheart. You wanna go to prom with me and maybe get pinned?”

“I fucking hate you,” I spat at him, but I let him pass his hands over me again, warm in the cool air of morning, and I murmured a quiet word of thanks. He gave me one of his sweatshirts, a pair of boots and ten minutes later I was gone, released into my morning after, sweaty with shame and guilt and sex.

*

I thought about a shower, I thought about food, but ultimately decided that that I could do as a luxury, later. After I’d been asleep for as many years as it took to forget a night, a week, half a life time. I was drifting, as useless in the world as ever, just a little bit more shit for the wear.

But there was no relief for the drug addled whores, not immediately. When I got back to the tent the mute woman was sitting on my bed, sharpening a knife.

“Good fucking morning to you,” I murmured, arching an eyebrow at her. “Don’t you have any other hobbies, Ramb-ette? Knitting? Making macramé pots for craft fairs?”

She was paler than the last time I’d seen her, and while there was immediate concern on her face as she took in my state, I saw dark anger, disappointment. She indicated the other bunk with a sharp nod of her head.

You should have been here.

Nash was asleep, thank whatever deity gives a shit about me, but even his comforting bulk looked smaller under an excess pile of covers. He was pale and while the covers were drawn up to his chin, I could see his lips tremmoring as if he were very cold. Feverish. I made a noise, standing there and looking at him, but I didn’t cross to him. I couldn’t. He was a hero, a freakshow, someone who believed that I was something worth bringing out of the ashes, and I still smelled like come and was still sweating drugs out of my pores. Particular or not, I...

I had forgotten she was there, really, until she laid her palm on my shoulder, her features having softened into deep, motherly concern. Just that, a single touch, and fleeting, and it was almost too much. My eyes watered, I looked away.

She plucked her fingers in Mike’s shirt and frowned.

I’m sorry...

“I...I asked him...” I mumbled, and she nodded. She had endless understanding and I wondered if she learned it from Tom or vice versa. Either would have been easy to believe.

She spread her hand on my chest gently, and at first I mistakenly took it for another layer of comfort. While what followed was subtle, it was also undeniable. The ache in my bones retreated, the cobwebbed effects of withdrawal dissipating like smoke. I let out an awed noise, my chapped hand going to her wrist, looking up at her with wide, amazed eyes.

“You...you don’t exist,” I told her. I must have sounded about nine years old, then, because she grinned and cupped my cheek affectionately.

I do, she said with an soft grin and a roll of her shoulders. It was as simple as that. I was too tired to protest. With that, she indicated my chest with a tap of her fingers, and then pointed to Nash, laid up in bed and looking awful. She shook her head severely.

I can’t do this for him.

“You can’t help him? Why not? Is he going to be okay?” I asked, horrified to hear the panic rising in my own voice the need. My fingers knotted in the hem of Mike shirt, twisting pathetically.

She nodded, passing a soothing hand over my shoulders. She shrugged, her face pained and sad. Maybe, I hope so.

What was I supposed to say to that? I stood in dulled silence, staring at the bed. I didn’t even know what was wrong with him, I realized. There had been blood, I remember. I don’t remember seeing wounds.

She took me by the hand, and by then all the resistance had gone out of me and I followed her to the bed, where she’d pulled up a chair. She must have been here all night, I realized, watching the steady rise and fall of Nash’s chest. She was here because I was off doing what I had done.

I wonder if Nash woke up, if he’d known that I was gone.

With me seated, she showed me how to feed him water, check his temperature, and finally, she fished his hand from beneath the blankets and pressed it into mine.

Touch him. She made a gesture with her hands, as if something was building. It will help.

This wasn’t my job, I was thinking as she packed up her things. I wasn’t a bed nurse, I wasn’t a coddler. Nash was a roommate, an asshole who wanted nothing more than to get himself killed. This wasn’t my place. Yesterday, I was half of mind to be out on the road before week’s end, trust my fate to a wild wind and see what the world did to me. This world wasn’t mine.

I opened my mouth to tell her these things, give up the responsibility to some other addled sap, but what came out, roughly, half broken, was;

“...thank you.”

Again, she nodded, compassion making her face look kind, and she spread her palms on the back of my shoulders one last time and I felt the cool, prickling touch of her healing and then, she was gone.

I looked at Nash’s hand in mine, craggy and split, bruised fingernails and warm to the touch.

“Asshole,” I murmured, rubbing my thumb over the back of his hand. There were goosebumps on his arms, I realized, and after less hesitation than it should have taken, I made my decision. I kicked off Mike’s boots and traded my jeans in for clean sweatpants. And, not allowing myself to think too much about it, I slipped under the covers with him, covering us both utterly with the blankets, and slipping my arms around his middle so that I could feel the rise and fall of his chest.

With my head pillowed on his shoulder in the narrow army issue cot, I drifted into sleep, dreamless, this time. Quiet and close and...warm.

He had seen something at some point. He’d seen some spark of good in me. He’d been wrong, probably, deceived by something as simple as charm. But that morning, broken down to my basic components and not liking what it amounted to, all I wanted was for Nash to be right. I wanted him to believe and go on believing, to trust his instincts. To pull and to fight and to survive.

So I stayed with him, in bed, matching breaths, drooling on his shoulder, and for all the world feeling like a better person than I had ever seemed.