tamingthemuse | Prompt #137: Filched - The Cleansing (part 2) - Fizzerbass

Title: The Cleansing (part 2)
Author:

fizzerbass
Fandom: Original
Prompt: #137: Filched
Warnings: None
Rating: G
Summary: He remembers their time together as summer.
Notes: Trying to flesh out the story I started with the Bleach prompt. I had trouble creating the same mood as the first part so, if you read that one and wouldn't mind reading this one, can you please give me some suggestions as to how to "toughen" this part up? Thanks!

Even though they met in winter, he remembers their time together as summer. Bright. Warm. Sunny. Stolen moments turning into whole days filched from the unrelenting grasp of Chicago in January.

Now, he has a hard time remembering it at all; the constant pain of everyday living an acid bleaching away the remnants of anything good in his life and leaving behind only the white crystalline residue of what once was and could now never be. He finds it very hard to believe he ever had anything as clean and pure as what they had together back then, a fact his sadistic brain likes to remind him of bitterly…acridly…achingly: He never really did.

It was pouring down rain the first time he laid eyes on Mike, a fact he only remembers now because it was the actual wetness that brought them together. As Recruit numbers 134 and 135, they were expected to do everything together, starting each day with breakfast side by side, exactly six inches apart, and finishing with lights out at precisely eleven fifteen, one three feet above the other in their perfectly made bunks. Between times found them running, studying, practicing and slowly erasing any traces of the outside world from their memories – all without any eye contact whatsoever.

No looking, no touching, no “Hey, how you doin?” the first day. The Management demanded it, enforced it harshly, spraying pepper spray into the eyes of those who forgot the rules and glanced in the wrong direction. According to them, Recruits ceased to exist as individuals the minute they walked through the doors of Security and Protection Management, and as such, there was no need to look upon their classmates.

You can’t see what doesn’t exist.

Mike had lost his footing on the steepest part of their morning run that day, slipping a good two feet on the mud-slicked trail before his own brain kicked in and he shot out a hand to nab his stumbling partner. Mike grabbed on tighter than a pit bull, nearly bringing them both down in a crumpled heap of tangled arms and legs before finding good purchase and regaining his balance. He pulled his hand back immediately, risking a quick side-long glance and slight nod of the head before the Cadence Director came abreast and chewed him out for being so clumsy. They’d both been sent back to the starting point to run the whole trail again as punishment.

Even today, six months later, he still draws a sharp breath at the picture of Mike’s face in that moment, still feels the quick roller coaster drop of his stomach to his toes. The other man seemed so real and solid, so there, almost as if he was two men, surrounding him and running on either side of him. He should have known right then and there he was making a huge mistake in accepting The Management’s offer of recruitment – an offer of a new life, really - for there was no way on earth he could ever forget Mike existed after touching him like that, after feeling the other man’s pulse racing in his wrist as he clamped their hands together...life flowing just mere centimeters away from his own dead self.

He told his first lie after Lights Out that night. Well, his first lie to Mike, anyway, but it didn’t count because he didn’t know it was a lie at the time. Mike had whispered a grateful, “You saved my life today, man”, punctuated by a single finger poking at his mattress from underneath. He’d smiled, the movement unfamiliar against his face and muttered, “No big deal”, shrugging off both the gratitude and the newborn feelings of attraction skimming through his veins. It wasn’t until it was all said and done, until the blood had dried and the bodies were buried that he knew the truth.

Mike saved his life that day.