Cupping the back of Joe’s head with one hand, Devin slid his other across the expanse of Joe’s back, shoulder to shoulder and down his spine. Too thin. Joe had always been a skinny shit, but not like this.
Devin took his time going back up, counting the vertebrae, then sliding over and counting the ribs. He’d done that on occasion back at the Flats when he couldn’t sleep. Even before they were together, when they were strangers sharing a bed, he’d touched. It’d given him comfort to be reminded that someone so coldly intense had been human after all.
Now, as then, Joe wriggled a bit under the touch, but this time the movement against his belly aggravated Devin’s bladder. He pushed at Joe’s shoulders. “Let me up. Gotta pee.”
Joe rolled off him, and Devin sat up and opened his eyes. Good fucking God, so bright. He winced and squinted, trying to block out as much light as he could. He was sitting on his sleeping bag, which had been laid on the ground and had a little fortress of smooth rocks piled around it. They were in a building that had no roof and from the looks of it, no bathroom, either.
Devin climbed to his feet, but all his body parts felt either too small or too big, and as he made his way to the exit, he stumbled and bumped into the door frame. Outside, a little cemetery ringed by a fence sat off to the right, so he headed left and made it around the corner before getting some relief. He was still watering the ground with the strength of a fire hose when he heard a rustling behind him and looked over his shoulder. “Why are you all watching me piss?”
They were, too. Even Peter was standing there, his eyes darting between Joe and Devin. Aria had a rectangle, some sort of computer. Flix and Joe, shoulder to shoulder, wearing matching expressions of confusion. And dammit. Joe’s cheeks were sunken.
Devin tucked himself back in. “Why the hell haven’t you been eating? You look like a skeleton.”
Aria glanced at Joe. “You see that, Devin?”
“Be hard to miss. Why haven’t you all been making him eat while I was...” Wait.
“Does your head hurt?” Joe asked.
“No. I...” What?
So slowly it was like waking up all over again, Devin remembered. The debilitating headaches. The weeks in agony. The blindness. The fear that he’d never recover. Poof. Like it had never happened. All he had left was some disorientation and the feeling that he’d missed far too much.
Joe rushed forward and flung his arms around Devin’s neck. His shallow, rapid breaths tickled Devin’s neck, and all Devin could do was wrap him up in a hug so fierce that Joe’s back cracked. A chuckle vibrated against Devin’s skin and cooled the sudden wetness there.
A ragged whisper. “Papi.”
Devin drank in the sight of Joe’s shoulder against his chest, the blue of his shirt, Flix’s somber, watery eyes. Beyond Flix, the brown dirt and dead weeds stretching out in all directions. The rough red bricks of the building. The road. “You left.”
Joe lifted his head. “I had to. We had to get you well. I’m not apologizing for it.”
This big part of Devin simmered. He hadn’t wanted Joe to risk himself like that, walk out with only Peter to watch his back. But Devin had been so sick. He wouldn’t have been able to travel, and fuck, it had felt like he was dying. Maybe he had been. And having someone who loved you enough to risk their lives to help you — that wasn’t something to be pissed about. “We can talk about it later. What was wrong with me?”
“It was bad,” Aria said, her eyes on the little computer in her hands. “Subdural hematoma. Bleeding inside your skull. Thank God it was a slow bleed or you’d be dead. But it’s fixed now. I don’t even think you’ll have any lingering effects.”
“These nani things put me back together?”
“Nanotech. More advanced than I’ve ever heard of. Joe saved your life.”
So much of the time since they’d left Purcell was a blur. The parts that Devin could recall seemed like they’d happened to someone else and he’d just heard about them. How long had it been since he’d lived his life? “How long was I —”
“You’ve been recovering for five days,” Joe said.
Devin stumbled over that. “I remember the whites-only store and the dome in Kansas City and the farmer and his wife. It feels like we left Purcell maybe a week ago, but —”
“It’s been forty days.” Flix wiped underneath his eyes. “Forty.”
Devin’s knees went weak. Fuck. All that lost, jumbled time. Bits of memory floated into his consciousness — heat and cold and sound, soft skin, shivering in the dark. They fell away before he could grasp them and force them into an order, something that made sense.
Joe pulled back and grasped Devin’s face between his hands. His stern face and molten chocolate eyes calmed Devin’s breathing. “Concentrate on where we’re going.”
Joe kissed Devin then, his rough lips warm and familiar and safe. That sensation, Devin remembered.
“We’re almost there,” Flix said.
Devin glanced at Joe, who nodded. Cupping Joe’s cheek and pulling him close one more time, Devin said, “Let’s finish this bastard.”
***
Joe had never before seen the season called spring. Along the improving roads, farmlands and fields grew lush and green. Early flowers, red and gold and a fragrant purple, flecked the roadside. The whimsy of spring, the beauty, the damp freshness of the smell — it was beyond anything he’d ever imagined. The world burst with life — grass in the cracks of sidewalks, potholes lined with mushrooms and moss. People everywhere in this little town twenty miles outside Minneapolis. Joe was so close to reaching his goal.
Two weeks had passed in a giddy haze. As they walked Wizard of Oz-like toward a city