18% Gray (35 page)

“Works faster in skin,” he added.

Just before touching down, Matt came to again.

“We’re almost home,” James told him, leaning in to say it in his ear, brushing his lips against the whorl. Matt shivered a little. He turned his head and kissed James slowly.

“If my family’s waiting, you might need to back off a little. Give them time at me. You know.”

“I know.” Even if it sucked.

“And my dad, he’s kinda weird. Freaks out if I get too touchy with a boyfriend.”

James started to frown, but Matt quickly went on. “It’s not a gay thing, babe. He’s the same way if Andry has a girlfriend. Freaks him out to think of his kids getting any.”

“Okay.” James didn’t know what to say. He suddenly felt like time was running out for them.

Matt was closing off his mind again. James could tell it was habit, now. He didn’t even realize he was doing it.

“’Sides, your dad will prolly be there, right?” Matt asked. James shrugged, stifling the sardonic snort that wanted out. “And Lance will want to talk to you.”

“’S’okay, baby. You just worry about your family. We need to talk, soon, but tonight be with them.”

“Gah. ‘We need to talk’? Those are, like, the four scariest words in the English language.”

James managed a smile for the joke. Matt looked a little puzzled, and even alarmed. “I’ll come by tomorrow, babe. We can talk then.”

Matt looked a lot puzzled and alarmed now. “Tomorrow? Um, okay.” He looked like he wanted to ask, and James was hoping he would,
Aren’t you staying with me tonight?

But he didn’t. And then they touched down. Getting Matt off the Feng Niao took work and coordination in the tight space, and there were too many people around and things going on for them to talk again.

Matt’s family was waiting. His parents, brother, Anais, and the grampas. And some other people James could only guess at. Not to mention the team that had extracted him.

James let himself get shunted off to the side, away from Matt, when Gabi Viteaux-Tennimore grabbed on to her son. He could see Matt’s dad, Finley, right behind her, reaching in to touch Matt’s arm.

James looked around. No surprise, but his own father wasn’t there. Probably finding out he had a gay son was too much of a shock for him.

He looked on for a while, watching Matt’s family chatter away. The love and relief they all felt was so tangible, James thought he could almost see it. It looked like a swirling cloud of red and cream, enveloping them. For a few seconds, James wondered if he was starting to see auras. But he shook his head hard, and the visual went away.

The feeling of being excluded didn’t leave, though.

He was so caught up in watching the reunion—with a barely conscious man at its center—that he didn’t realize anyone was standing next to him.

“Welcome home, James.” James turned his head. It was Lance. He’d never really met the guy, except on the vid hookup.

“Lieutenant Colonel.” James saluted.

“Can it, Ayala. Call me Lance. Or Kell if you can’t stomach Lance. You’re as good as discharged and I’m retired. You and Matt have to appear at a hearing tomorrow at 1800, and then it’s official, but the deal’s already been made. Just what we talked about in Cambridge.”

James swallowed. “So, um, Matt has to go?”

Lance slanted him a look. “Yeah. Need his testimony. I thought you’d want him with you.”

“Well, yeah.” Shit. How to ask this. “I just don’t want him to be stuck with me, sir.”

“Don’t call me ‘sir’, either.”

“Uh, okay, Lance, sir.”

Lance rolled his eyes. “Listen, James, Matt needs to be there tomorrow night, and unless he gets barred by his doctor he will be. And if you’re wondering about the future…?” Lance gave an exaggerated lift of his eyebrows. As in “go on, boy.”

James just kept himself from standing at attention. “Yes. I’d like to make sure that if Matt doesn’t want to, he won’t have to work with me. As a team, I mean. Just in case things, um, change.”

Lance stared at him. It was a little intimidating. The guy was big, and still vital, even in his seventies. And James was fucking his grandson. “What are you worried about, James?”

James took a breath. “I’m not sure it’s good for his life expectancy to hang around with me.”

“I think that’s his decision. Unless you don’t want him to ‘hang around’ with you.”

“I do want him hanging around.” Jesus, he felt like a teenager, having this conversation with his date’s mildly threatening father figure.

“Are you going to try to make that decision for him?”

“No. I’m going to discuss it with him first, sir.”

“Don’t call me sir,” Lance snapped absently.

James managed not to snort. He watched Lance stare off into his family’s impromptu celebration. Finally Lance refocused on him. “You have a job with QESA, James, no matter what. But if you hurt my grandson I can’t promise to be a pleasant boss.” He paused a second, then softened his voice a little. “Things will work out for the best, James. Give it a chance.”

Then Lance’s whole demeanor changed, becoming more professional. “Now, there are a few things I need to tell you. I told you already the Boulder Blue cell escapees said the report of your detainment in the re-education camp didn’t come from them. Things there were chaos since right after Boulder fell. No one knows of any extractee reports coming out of there.

“We still don’t know how you were found or who reported your location. But SOUF has someone in custody. One of the original scientists on the project, McNeel Blau. He’s the scientist who testified to the Pentagon that the implant project was ready for beta-testing in troops. He’s also been the sole oversight for project data and assessment since you and the others were implanted.”

James felt too out of touch with reality to absorb the significance of what Lance was saying. “So… one guy’s responsible for the whole program?”

“Seems unlikely, doesn’t it? For one thing, he had to put together the surgical team. They’re being questioned. He almost had to have help, and he’s saying he was following orders, but refuses to give up names until SOUF cuts an immunity deal with him.”

James felt like laughing. Some fucker potentially ruined the rest of his life, and who knew how many others, and he wanted immunity? “How many others?” James asked roughly.

“Five. There were six of you altogether.” James could feel Lance’s eyes on him, and he turned to look. “No one knows who any of them are, except you. Anonymity was necessary to protect the data, according to Blau. He claims to not even know the implantee names himself.”

James was speechless. There were so many things wrong with the picture. It was overwhelming. “I know about one other guy,” he offered.

“Anais knows that. Forget about it for tonight, son.”
Son
? “You and Matt will be debriefing with Major General Selkirk and Anais tomorrow after the discharge hearing. You can think about it then. For now just be careful. I think my grandson cares very much about your life expectancy too.”

So James did exactly that. He let it all go. He’d deal with it tomorrow. After he dealt with the more important issue of his future with Matt.

“Someone over there is waiting to talk to you.” Lance gave a chin jerk, indicating someone was standing behind James. He clapped his hand on James’s shoulder and walked away.

James turned around slowly. He had a bad feeling about this. An entirely justified bad feeling. It was his father. Pop was wearing the same stony expression James often adopted.

This could go either way.

Pop shook his hand. That was James’s greeting from the father he hadn’t seen in more than three years.

“Hey, Pop,” he said uncomfortably.

“James.” He got a head nod.

It took exactly seventeen more words to decide that James would first go to the base clerk and get his ID reinstated and Blue chip turned back on, then Pop would take him “back to my place.”

Apparently, it wasn’t James’s home anymore. James sighed and bounced along beside his father in the old electric flatbed.

The ID reinstatement took a while, with the instant DNA identification test, and James had to com with the Psi-force duty officer. Even if he was getting discharged and everyone knew it, they all still pretended not to and did everything by regulation.

James wouldn’t even have bothered, but he had a sneaking suspicion he’d need to be a part of the military machine again, at least for tonight. Morning, whatever. Even if it was just to have a place to sleep after he had it out with his father.

At the ranch house, Pop was nice enough to offer him a beer first. Then he started in.

“So, they say you’re a fag.” Pop held himself stiffly, and for a second James could see a flicker of hope in his eye.

“Yep,” he said casually, then burped. It seemed appropriate. He looked Pop in the eye, waiting for the blowup. He’d been waiting his whole life for this.

Instead, Pop wilted. “Ah, fuck,” he muttered, running a hand through his hair. Then he looked up again. “You’re sure?”

“Yeah, Pop. And I’ve sucked enough cock to prove it.”

“Don’t say that shit in my home!”

“What, cock?” He
could
be the bigger man, here, and not say incendiary shit, but he was annoyed and his heart hurt and this fucker who’d barely given him the time of day his whole life was about to kick him out, so fuck it.

His father took a step forward, like maybe he was thinking about hitting James. James let a smirk break out. The old man knew he was beat before he even started. James would mop up the floor with him. “Whatsa matter? Afraid your fag son’ll kick your ass?”

His father swallowed uncomfortably. “Your mother said this was going to happen.”

“What?” James swallowed now.

“She said if we stayed here, you’d end up like this. ’S’why she left, she couldn’t stand to see her son turn into a fairy.”

“
What?
” He had to be making this shit up. But he wasn’t.

“I thought she was nuts. Wanted to stay because we could make so much more than if we went back to Idaho. More government protections, better trade restrictions. Better relationships with the markets in Asia. Shoulda fucking listened to her,” he finished in a mutter.

“Mom left because she thought living here would turn me gay?” James needed to make sure he had this shit straight in his mind.

Pop sneered, but just nodded, staring challengingly at James.

Oh, he so didn’t need to take this shit. Fuck ’em. Pop could age and die alone, as far as he was concerned.

James took two steps forward and got right in his father’s face. “News flash, Pop. If anyone ‘made’ me gay, it was you. Or mom. It’s genetic, you fucking prick. I was born gay.”

“A Red state could have made you straight. Re-educated you.” His father didn’t back down. He believed he was totally in the right.

James snorted. This was pointless. “Yeah, I had their version of straight shoved down my throat. Guess what the suicide rate for people who get out of re-education camp ‘cured’ is, Pop? Seventy percent. And that’s a Red state statistic. The Blue estimate is higher. I met a guy in Idaho who’s in his thirties, and he’s hidden he’s gay his whole life, because he doesn’t want to die. He thinks either someone’s gonna kill him, or he’s gonna get fucked up in re-education. His
whole fucking life
he’s lied about what he is because the alternative is death as far as he’s concerned. I’m not fucking living that way. If you can’t handle it, I’ll get my shit out of here and you won’t ever see me again.”

Silence. His Pop looked down at the floor after a minute, unable to hold his gaze. James snorted softly and walked off to his old room. He couldn’t sense any regret or forgiveness from his father. Not even sadness. Just disappointment and resignation.

James had maybe a half dozen things he wanted out of here. Really, he could live without any of it, but there was one thing he’d really like to have. He lay down on the floor and reached up under his old chest of drawers. It took a minute, but he found the false bottom, and then the chip. He took it out and looked at it.

It didn’t look like much, but it contained about ten stills of Matt from some kegger in high school. Matt, fully clothed, smaller, a little awkward and a lot drunk.

How pathetic was it that he’d jerked off to those a couple hundred times? James sighed. Pretty fucking pathetic.

He stood up and dropped the chip in his pocket, reached for the old-fashioned print still of Gramma, picked up a watch from Grampa, threw in a change of clothes that might still fit him. He could get more on the base if he had to.

He hesitated a moment, but then he grabbed the family bible his mother had left for him. It detailed her family for generations. He couldn’t imagine why he wanted it, but….

James grabbed the keys to the “family” vehicle on the way through the kitchen, taking them off the hook. They’d always had an electric plugged in out in the garage, but it rarely got used when he’d lived at home. He’d had his crotch rocket in high school.

On the way through the family room—lot of family shit in a house that had never had much of a family—he stopped and looked at his father. “You can pick up your vehicle at the base whenever. I’ll leave it in the visitor lot. Sorry you couldn’t accept me, Pop. Have a nice life.” Pop was all anger now. Dissatisfaction.

Driving through the pitch-black early morning countryside, James tried to figure out how he felt. He didn’t seem to feel mad, much, or sick at heart, or guilty. He just felt mostly numb.

And maybe a tiny bit lighter.

J
UST
after breakfast, James took off for the Tennimore place in a motor pool SVO. The military cooked with enough grease. Big of them to fuel their vehicles with it too.

Part of him didn’t want to have this conversation, but more of him was terrified of not having it. He couldn’t just let things go on the way they were. Wondering how Matt really felt—obligated? Trapped? Bored?—would kill him.

He was ready to admit it wasn’t just worry about whether Matt would get hurt again. Matt had a dangerous job, and he could get hurt again at any time. When it came down to it, James would feel better if he was around Matt so he could protect him. Even if the risk was somewhat elevated being around James.