Archive of Our Own

The first thing any officer in the Federation learned when it came to interrogation was that the golden rule was detachment.

It might have been different for that particular breed of clinical, ascetic man most commonly found in the Federation’s interrogation divisions, all of them of a type so similar they might have bred specifically for the role, but it had never come easily to Travis, particularly when Roj Blake was involved.

They had, he judged, about twenty-four hours grace before the gang of space pirates he'd thrown his lot in with got bored of exploring the abandoned Federation complex and returned. It had been abandoned during the recent wave of Andromedan attacks, and the subsequent skirmishes had pushed the battlelines of the war too close for comfort. The evacuation would have been systematic and efficient, and it was doubtful that much of value would have been left behind to be ransacked: the place was too clean and orderly for that. 

Travis didn't care. He had what he wanted. When the Federation personel evacuated, they'd might have taken the weapons and valuables and precious unencrypted data with them, but they'd left the machines.

Blake was strapped to the bed of one of those machines, an interrogation device that Travis was only passingly familiar with. His face was bloodied, pale with pain and exhaustion, and his brown curls slicked against the outline of his skull with sweat, but his chin jutted out stubbornly as he fixed Travis with a look of defiance.

He was still fighting, Travis thought, fascinated and impressed despite himself.

Even captured by his worst enemy, even after having a taste of torture and knowing he only had death to offer him release from more of the same, the stupid, stubborn, self-righteous bastard was still fighting.

Something twisted in Travis's chest at the thought and he clenched his jaw, refusing to acknowledge it.

"You should have shot me in the back the first chance you got, Blake," he said as he busied himself with the controls on the machine, taking the settings down a couple of notches. Blake’s mind was fragile: it wouldn’t do to burn him out. Not before Travis was ready. "Paid me back for betraying humanity."

"That would have been more than you deserved."

"Of course, I forgot. You're an honourable man." Travis turned to face him, his fingers lingering on the controls. "I suppose you'd have delivered me over to Servalan to face a fair trial."

"If there is such a thing as a fair trial in the Federation. We both know there isn’t."

Travis shrugged. "Even if there was, it would never have reached a court of law. Not this time. Servalan would never have allowed it. She would have had me shot in the back the first time I let my guard slip."

Blake kept silent, which meant he probably agreed.

Travis studied him for a few moments longer, his throat tight. "Do you remember those two witches on that uncharted planet," he said before he'd even realised he was going to speak. "The ones who tried to make us fight to the death?"

Blake looked up sharply, fixing Travis with a long searching look. "They didn't have to try very hard in your case."

"Or in yours," Travis pointed out. The upsurge of relief he felt that Blake remembered them too took him by surprise.

Sinofar and Giroc. He’d tried very hard not to think about them, but their names came back to him almost at once.

Part of him had always been afraid that the whole affair had been a dream. His memories of the event had the same intangible quality, which hadn’t gone down well in his debriefing. Not quite the first step in his downfall, but certainly one of the slipperiest. The ship’s readings had been inconclusive, his Mutoid companion all but useless. She remembered nothing and in the Federation the infallibility of her cyborg memories alone ought to have proved that Travis was either lying or delusional.

He’d known he hadn’t been lying, but the other… well, that he wasn’t quite so sure about. It was only now, seeing that Blake remembered them too, that he could know for certain it was real. He hadn’t lost his mind. Not then, anyway.

"I think about them sometimes," Travis continued, his voice dreamy, "ruling alone over their dead planet with nothing but the graves of their people to keep them company. They hated each other, you could see it in their eyes. That could be us, Blake, the last two men alive in the ruins of Earth."

"Maybe then," Blake murmured, "we might actually learn the lesson they were trying to teach us."

Travis grinned without humour and leant forward, running his fingers over Blake’s hair.

"I'll never learn that lesson," he said and flipped the switch.

The machine burst into life.

There was a certain satisfaction to be found in the way Blake contorted at the instant the sensations hit him, and Travis clenched his fist in Blake’s hair to see his face, to ensure he didn’t miss a single moment. 

Up close, Travis caught some of the sensory spill-off, the lights and colours pulsing in his skull, pressing at the backs of his eyeballs until it felt like there was no room for his own thoughts inside his skull, no room for anything but Blake. He gritted his teeth against the growing headache and leant in even closer, feeling the way Blake’s hair brushed against his cheek as he writhed, locked in an agony of sensory over-stimulation.

This was the one thing he’d always wanted. The one thing he’d clung to in those long empty nights as whatever condemned shitheap of a space vehicle he’d found a berth on shuddered its way through space, the stale air reeking of recycled sweat and leaking coolant, his mind roving in wild restless circles, but returning again and again and again to thoughts of Blake. And to one memory in particular, to something he couldn’t even be sure was a memory: of a machete blade pressed to Blake's skin as Travis readied himself to cut the bastard's throat.

It seemed not just a lifetime ago, but several, and less like his own memory than an implanted one. Less real, most likely, than the memories implanted in Blake’s mind during his brainwashed sojourn on Earth after Travis caught him that first time and, like a fucking fool, handed him over to face what he’d believed would be an appropriate punishment.

As Blake sweated and moaned beneath him, he remembered it all. Watching the show trial while still in agony from the injuries Blake had given him, every part of him in pain but especially the prosthetic arm and eye. Blake’s recorded confession and rejection of his previous beliefs. The glazed look in his eyes which any fool could see meant the Federation’s re-educators had been at work.

Travis had realised in that moment that whatever Blake was about to face wasn’t anything that Travis would have called punishment. His mind and memories would probably be wiped and he'd be returned to life as a model citizen, because he was too good a tool to waste. His family would probably be murdered, of course, and he'd spent the rest of his existence drugged to the eyeballs and watched virtually every second of every day, but what else could any modestly successful citizen of the Federation expect?

Instead of punishment he'd be rewarded, blessed with complacency, forgetfulness, bliss, while Travis adjusted to life after having been left maimed, robbed of an eye and an arm, his career most probably in tatters.

The pang of loss Travis had felt had been clearer and cleaner than anything he’d felt as a result of his injuries, and the flash of rage more powerful than anything he'd felt before. Strangely, it hadn't been entirely directed at Blake, but at the Federation itself.

He hadn't been able to admit itself to himself then, and had told himself his fury was for Blake and Blake alone, but things were different now. Travis wasn’t the same man he used to be. Like Blake he’d been reshaped by the Federation. He’d come to know the work of their re-educators intimately himself, and the cut-price butchers who’d worked on him hadn’t done anywhere near as good a job as they had on Blake.

Sometimes when you take a man’s mind apart it isn’t always easy to put it back together again.

"Does it seem familiar?" he hissed into Blake’s ear. "It should. They used a machine very much like this one on you, in fact, although not nearly so advanced." From the way Blake flinched, he knew the barb had struck home. "I could rewrite your mind, Blake. Shape your memories into anything I want them to be."

"It won’t work," Blake gasped. "Do you really think they didn’t try to reprogram me again after what happened to Bran Foster and his group?"

"That was then. Imagine the advances made in all that time. And you’re forgetting that I know how your mind works, Blake. I know you better than you even know yourself." He said it almost gently, watching the grim knowledge flare in Blake’s eyes.

The truth was that Blake was probably right, but even so Travis found himself turning the possibility in his mind like a precious crystal: Blake mind-wiped once more, refashioned into whatever Travis wanted him to be. He shivered with a thrill of uneasy delight at the thought. What better way to make Blake suffer?

But something was wrong. As the sensations peaked, Blake shuddered, his limbs contorting. There was something strange about the way his body was writhing on the bed. Travis's attention sharpened to a needlepoint, his skin prickling with unease and growing suspiction.

Before Blake could swallow it back, a groan escaped him, the sound sending a flood of ice water through Travis’s veins. His hand jerked towards the controls then froze, and he'd seemed to have no voluntary control over either of the movements.

Blake’s chest shuddered as he drew in a breath, and then as he dropped his head back, his hips arched upwards in a gesture that was unmistakeably obscene.

He was hard. Somehow Travis didn’t even have to look down to know it, and for some reason he couldn’t seem to catch his breath. It was sickening, enthralling. Travis found himself leaning in closer, his mouth dry, his gaze involuntarily focusing in on Blake’s mouth, on his lips, shining red and wet. 

He hesitated, and then he made his choice.

"I could leave you like this," he murmured, stroking his fingers trough Blake’s hair. "The machine can keep this going indefinitely. I don’t even need to be here."

Blake gasped, his eyes half-closing. Fighting it, he forced them open, staring wildly at Travis. "And miss all the fun?" he managed, forcing the words out before the intensity peaked again and he wrenched against the straps with such violence they bit into his wrists. He made a sound, a groan which he tried to bite back but couldn’t quite stop from escaping completely.

He’d bitten his tongue. A drop of blood ran down his chin and when Travis caught it with a finger Blake must have felt the touch even through the sensory chaos affecting his mind because he recoiled, throwing himself across the bed so violently that Travis thought he might wrench his arms out of their sockets. His strength finally giving out, Blake slumped, gasping for air. He was trembling uncontrollably, his eyes glazed as though he was drunk or drugged.

"Travis," he said through the uneven hitches of his breath, and then, "Please."

Which could have mean anything: please stop or please more, and Travis knew as he stared down at Blake with a crawling sensation in his gut that he’d probably never know for certain what Blake meant. Nor did he have the time to figure out how he felt about that before the respite ended and the sensations slammed into Blake with such force that Travis seemed to feel an echo of them carried up his arm to his own nerve endings.

Blake dropped back his head back, mouthing soundless pleas up at the ceiling. His lips parted, letting out a soft agonised moan, and suddenly an image flashed through Travis's mind: of himself straddling Blake's chest and slipping his own erection between those lips. He might not even have to make Blake do it, he was so far gone.

The thought was insidious; it took hold, refusing to be dispelled when he shoved it roughly away. His cock thickened and swelled with blood, pressing hard and urgent against the confines of the leather trousers, Travis's arousal growing with every one of Blake's moans.

With a curse, he slammed his palm violently against the controls. As the machine died, he closed his eyes, listening to the sounds Blake made as he recovered. His attempts to catch his breath sounded like involuntary sobs. Travis had heard those noises before. He’d been the one making them.

A stab of guilt spiked through his heart, an echo of the empathy he’d thought he crushed out of himself long ago, and if he hadn’t quite succeeded he’d always assumed Servalan had finished the job.

Slowly, not quite knowing what he was doing or what the gesture meant, Travis reached out his hand. Like a wild animal, Blake flinched away.

Travis froze. Something seemed to have curdled in his stomach. Whatever might have remained of his imagined triumph had turned to a leaden weight. There was nothing triumphant about this. There never had been. They were as trapped in their roles as the witches, Giroc and Sinofar, locked in their roles for eternity.

Blake’s head slumped to the side, his eyes sliding closed. He was so still that for a moment Travis thought he was dead. 

A beeping from the machine caught his attention. Travis cast the screen a cursory glance, enough to make it clear that while Blake was alive, he probably wouldn't be much longer. In his struggles Blake had reopened the wound in his abdomen, the stab wound he'd received courtesy of one of Travis's temporary allies. Travis had patched it up, amused at the irony of himself saving Blake's life, but the job he'd done had only been cursory. Without treatment Blake would probably bleed out.

Some part of Travis, the clear eyed part, the part fostered by the Federation and by his training and by the work of the countless retraining therapists who’d got their hands on him over the years, thought, Good.

Blake had to die, and sooner rather than later. Travis couldn’t risk Blake telling the pirates who he really was and what they’d done. Whether they cared or not – and he had his doubts about whether they would – they wouldn’t need much of an excuse to slit his throat. They didn’t like him much.

He should have killed Blake himself, wrapped his hands around his throat and brought this bloody mess to an end once and for all. It was the pragmatic thing to do. The only thing to do.

And instead, he tore the straps open and pulled Blake out of the machine.

It was touch and go, the fight to keep Blake alive. Travis had learned the basics of triage on the battlefield, but he’d never been much of a medic.

Distractedly, he wiped the half-congealed blood on his trousers, too exhausted to do much more, wondering what the hell he was doing, what the hell he’d really achieved. And why he was seemingly as incapable of killing Blake as Blake was of killing him.

Blake stirred as Travis injected him with a dose of opiodes. His head turned, his eyes squinting as he struggled to focus. "Travis?"

His voice was slurred and thick with pain, but filled with unexpected relief. Maybe because he'd been afraid of waking up to find his mind and memories wiped. It felt strange to feel welcome.

Blake shifted on the cot, pulling his shirt up to reveal his stomach. His hand moved over the wound in his abdomen, his fingers lingering on it as if he was trying to read some meaning in the fresh scar tissue. Then he looked at Travis, something strange in his expression.

"Don’t read anything into it," Travis said. "I’m just not ready for you to die. I'm not finished with you yet."

Blake sighed. "This isn’t the first time I’ve been tortured, you know," he said wearily.

"Perhaps you can take some consolation in knowing that anything I've done to you, the Federation have done worse to me."

"I suppose that’s how you justify yourself."

Travis laughed without humour. "Justify myself? These days, I don’t bother trying."

Blake's gaze flicked towards him, something speculative in his eyes. "Maybe," he said slowly, "you don’t have to."

"Meaning?"

"That it still isn’t too late. And it never will be, until you’re dead."

"Too late for what, exactly?" Travis asked, although he already knew.

"We want the same thing, the total destruction of the Federation. Together–"

Travis laughed. "Together?"

"Is it really so absurd? It’s not too late."

It should have made him sound defeated, that repeated refrain, made him seem like a broken man clinging to the only thing he had left, but the more he said it, the more it began to take on a strange sort of sense. It wasn't like Blake's hands were clean.

And maybe it was just because he was so exhausted that the thought entered his head: what if Blake was right?

They were working towards a common goal of sorts. They both wanted the Federation destroyed, even if one of the differences between them was that Travis already knew it was hopeless, and that about all they could achieve if they went up against the might of the Federation was to go out in a self-destructive blaze of slaughter, Unlike Blake, he wasn't delusional. But then again, unlike Blake, he’d stopped fighting long ago.

It should have been unthinkable to let Blake live. But then again, Travis was a man who had already done the unthinkable.

"‘It’s not too late’. I’ll have that carved on your grave marker," Travis said. "I almost admire your stubbornness. Or is it stupidity?"

"There’s a chance it could be both," Blake said and Travis huffed another humourless laugh.

Blake kept watching him in silence. He looked exhausted, heavy shadows beneath his eyes. Travis stared back at him.

"Maybe..." he started to say, the hesitant words seeming to rise out of him, emerging from a deep longing he hadn’t even realised was there. He couldn’t bring himself to finish the sentence, but he didn’t need to, the words hanging in the air like he’d said them aloud.

Maybe in another world I could have joined you.

Blake's expression was strange and twisted. There was something in his eyes, a challenge or an invitation. His eyes were dark, his jaw clenched and tight. His shirt was still pulled up, leaving his stomach exposed, and one hand was clenched so tight on the threadbare blankets the knuckles had gone white. He looked as though at any moment he might throw them back so that he could stagger to his feet. Or invite Travis to join him.

"Sinofar and Giroc," Blake said distantly after a long silence. The painkillers were starting to take effect: his voice was slurred, his eyes drifting closed. "I haven’t thought about them in a long time. I can think of worse things."

"Than what?"

"Than us, the last two men alive."

Once, not long before they ran into Blake, Travis and the pirates captured one of the Andromedans. It had been pure fluke: one of the crewmembers of a ship they’d hijacked had turned out to be one of the aliens in disguise. They’d learned that the hard way when it transformed, slaughtering several people before they managed to subdue it.

He’d insisted on killing it himself, partly because he couldn't risk the pirates finding out about his brief alliance with the aliens, partly because he wanted to for some reason he couldn't seem to articulate to himself. 

The way it had looked at him in the end, nothing human in its eyes, its features melting like wax to reveal the thing underneath. Yet another betrayal to add to the pile, and the alien probably hadn’t even understood that it was a betrayal.

When he'd allied with the Andromedans he'd told himself that it was the perfect cap to his long and not-so-illustrious career, and that the Federation, and Servalan in particular, had left him with no other choice. He'd appreciated the irony then, almost found it amusing that when the Federation had trained him, they'd been forging a weapon that they’d ultimately turn on themselves.

Now he wondered why he’d had to lumber himself with any masters at all. Was there some cringing element in his soul that crippled him with the need to follow? Or maybe it was yet another thing the Federation had done to him, something implanted in his mind designed to turn him into a better soldier.

Distracted as he was, he only just heard the scuff of footsteps behind him.

Blake was slow from his injuries, which might well have been the only reason Travis managed to avoid the weapon as it came swinging down.

Irritation at his own complacency flooded him. His training, something which seemed like something that belonged to another age, kicked in, and at least there was one thing he had to be grateful to the Federation for: some weapons never lost their edge.

He caught a glimpse of Blake’s weapon out of the corner of his eye as he rolled to the side and drove himself upwards onto his feet in a fluid movement. A scalpel, something metal and cruel and glittering, but easy to avoid.

Travis hooked a foot around his ankle and jerked it out from under him, swinging his fist into Blake’s kidney. "Not like you, Blake," he spat, breathless with something akin to laughter. "Doing something so stupid. I really must have got under your skin."

He gripped Blake and slammed him back against the wall so hard his skull recoiled off the metal. Blake tried to lurch forward, but came up hard against the muzzle of the pistol Travis had pressed against his forehead.

There was something wrong with him: Travis could see that at once. His face was flushed and shiny with perspiration, his eyes glazed, and not just with rage. Blake had never been the type to go out in a self-destructive blaze of glory. He was too arrogant for that, too assured to waste his tactical skill on a suicide mission. Nor was there much about this sordid little affair that was glorious, but something in his eyes suggested he was considering trying to fight anyway, despite his weakness, despite the gun. As though he wanted to force Travis to kill him.

Travis's upper lip curled back from his teeth.

There’d always been something about Blake that brought out the predator in him, like he’d got the scent of blood and couldn't wait to tear out his throat. The brief scuffle had left him feeling more alive than he’d felt in a long time, keenly alert and almost disappointed that it couldn’t have lasted longer. There whad been nothing clinical about his fight with Blake, no machines to provide a buffer between them. This was fists and broken bones, Travis’s knuckles left raw and bloodied. It felt like coming back to life.

And then it occurred to him that he might have been mistaken, that Blake might have had another reason for attacking.

Pressed so closely against him, Travis could feel the tension in Blake's body, how hard he was trembling, and how much effort it was probably taking taking him to hold still. Blake’s eyes rolled up towards the gun pressed against his forehead, and they weren't filled with fear, but something almost like longing.

Unwillingly, Travis's mind returned with unerring precision to the machine, to the way Blake had all but begged for something he wouldn’t or couldn’t put into words, any more than Travis would have admitted to the fantasies playing in his mind. Those fantasies were back now and more powerful than ever, his brief vision of Blake, brainwashed again and serving Travis as Travis might have served Servalan, which probably meant on his knees.

Something dark and insidious coiled inside his chest.

"Unless," Travis said slowly, the mocking edge audible in his voice, "it's this you wanted." Pressing the pistol a little harder against Blake’s forehead, just in case he got the idea to do anything stupid, Travis slid his free hand down and cupped Blake's genitals through his trousers.

Blake’s reaction was instant and electric. Heedless of the gun, he bucked, twisting his lower half to the side, but not before Travis had felt his cock thicken and press urgently into his palm.

Travis's lips curled into a cold smile. "Spot on."

Blake glared at him. "If you're going to kill me," he snapped, "get it over with." But he couldn't quite manage the tone of cold condemnation he was aiming for. There was too much heat in his voice, too much need. It was a sham.

"You'd like that, wouldn't you?" Travis used the weight of his body to force Blake back against the wall, pinning him with his leg between his thighs. He squeezed Blake's cock roughly through the fabric, searching his face hungrily. "Admit it, Blake," he murmured with a tremor in his own voice as his own arousal spiked. "Admit that this is what you really want, that you're not just a terrorist, but a deviant as well."

Blake's eyes sharpened, shining with the arousal he was no longer bothering to hide. The contempt in them might actually have been the most arousing thing Travis had ever seen. "And what does that make you?"

"I already know what I am." He gave Blake’s cock a final rough caress and raised a questioning eyebrow. "No? Oh, very well." But when he removed his hand, Blake flinched. With a faint keening sound deep in his throat, he ground his head against the muzzle of the gin in an unvoiced plea. Only for a second, but enough that Travis felt the resistance as an ache in his wrist. 

Shifting the muzzle of the gun to Blake’s temple, he unfastened Blake’s trousers with the prosthetic hand. Without breaking eye contact, he pulled out Blake’s erection, half-wishing he could use his other hand and feel bare skin on skin. Still, it seemed somehow appropriate to use the fake hand that replaced the one Blake ruined.

"Do you know," he said conversationally, "how long it took me to get the hang of this arm? In the early days I'd crush glasses without meaning to. It still happens sometimes, when I'm not concentrating. Especially since I haven’t been able to get it recalibrated in a while." He curled his fingers lightly around Blake's balls and tugged on them hard enough to draw an involuntary groan from Blake.

Travis moved his hand to Blake's cock. It kicked against his touch, hot and urgent. As he stroked the length, Blake squeezed his eyes shut, his teeth digging into his lower lip, hard enough to turn the flesh white.

"Look at me," Travis ordered him.

Blake hesitated for a moment, and then his eyes opened, dark with heat and need. They felt like a mirror of his own. Disconcerted, Travis realised that whatever he could see in Blake's eyes, Blake could probably see in his.

He clenched his jaw. "Turn around."

Something flashed in Blake's eyes, something wild and uncontrolled before he caught hold of himself. With an air of challenge, he pressed his head sideways a little, into the muzzle of the gun. Make me, his eyes said, and there Travis could certainly oblige.

"I said, turn around." He repeated the order more slowly, filling the words with an air of menace. He shifted his grip on the gun, brought it around so that Blake could see it. Blake’s eyes flitted to it and then back to Travis’s before he finally began to turn, holding Travis’s gaze right up until the last minute.

"Planning on shooting me in the back?" he demanded as he planted his hands against the wall.

"It isn’t wise to put ideas in my head."

Travis could feel the hitch of Blake’s chest with every breath, could smell the perspiration on his skin. He switched the gun to his other hand and roughly pushed Blake's trousers down further. He sucked on his fingers to coat them with saliva and pressed them against Blake’s entrance. Blake twitched with a sharp indrawn breath.

"Travis," he managed as Travis pressed the tip of his forefinger inside, gently, although the last thing he wanted to be was gentle. From the way Blake bucked back against him he didn't want Travis to be gentle either.

"Travis what?" Travis enquired, his voice silky sweet. He got nothing but mulish silence from Blake and a tightening of the muscles across his back. "Travis, please?"

He reached underneath to cup Blake's balls, trying to make it seem as though it was nothing more than curiosity that drove him to do so. They were tightly drawn up, and Blake’s cock twitched as he brushed his fingers against the base. Blake caught his breath.

"If anything," Travis commented drily as he pulled his hand back, "you're even harder than before. I suppose you want me to debase myself by jerking you off. Well, I'm sorry to disappoint you." Viciously, he jabbed the gun against Blake’s head. "One hand's rather busy at the moment, and as for the other…" As he spoke he entered Blake with two fingers, working them in roughly as he pressed Blake against the wall. "Well. So if you want to deal with it, you'd better do it yourself."

Blake didn’t move, but his hands, still braced against the wall, hooked into claws. For a moment, Travis was certain that Blake was going to tell him to go fuck himself, and then his fingers hit a spot that made Blake’s whole body arch back. 

"I could make you, of course," Travis murmured in Blake’s ear, "but we both know the gun is just for show. We both know that this is what you really want."

"What about you, Travis?" Blake demanded, his voice low and fierce, "What do you want?"

You, Travis thought. On your knees.

He worked his fingers deeper with fast shallow little thrusts. "I want you to suffer."

Blake gave a breathless chuckle. "Then I'm afraid I've got some bad news for you. There's nothing you could possibly do to me that could be worse than what's already been done."

"No?" Travis pulled his fingers out. Blake's body jolted, his hips arching back.

"Travis," he snapped, then, like it had been torn been bodily from him, "Please."

Travis leaned forward, pressing the length of his chest against Blake’s back, grinding his erection against the back of Blake’s thigh. He closed his teeth on the lobe of his ear, biting hard enough to hurt a little as he slid his fingers between the crease of Blake’s buttocks, let them brush against his perineum and the base of his balls, aware of the tension in Blake’s body, how hard he was having to hold himself from arching his hips back in search of more contact. Twisting the muzzle of the gun in a corkscrewing motion against Blake’s temple, he hissed, "Do it," into Blake’s ear.

Blake swallowed a groan, and muttered a curse under his breath, his voice taut with heat. After a moment of hesitation so brief it might have been non-existent, Blake moved his hand to his cock. Travis kept up the pressure of the gun, an ache growing in his elbow as Blake leaned into it, pressing a little harder with every stroke of his cock. He groped back with his other hand and made a sound of semi-feigned contempt when he found Travis’s erection, which he squeezed roughly and urgently in time with the movements of his other hand, as though forcing Travis to orgasm too was the only outlet of resistance left to him, as though he wanted to make Travis just as much an active participant in this perversion as Blake himself.

With a snarl, Travis seized his wrist, half-meaning to tear his hand away, but instead found himself pressing it harder against the outline of his erection, rutting against it as he closed his teeth on Blake’s shoulder as a wave of pleasure washed through him.

Without warning, he jerked his hand away, spread Blake’s buttocks and pressed his first two fingers back inside Blake again. He thrust them deeper, working them in circles, snarling when the movement of Blake’s hands faltered. Blake fell forwards against the wall as though his legs had threatened to collapse, and Travis pressed his leg between Blake’s, crushing him against the wall as his fingers thrust deeper with every stroke of his arm.

He buried his face in Blake’s throat, drawing in the scent of his sweat. He could feel the sounds Blake was making viscerally in his own chest, almost as though he himself were making them. He pressed so close Blake lost his grip on Travis’s cock, but Travis rutted against his thigh instead, intensely aware of Blake’s building sounds of desperation. He found Blake’s prostate and ruthlessly, almost cruelly, rubbed against it. Blake jolted at the sensation, panting helplessly as he scrabbled against the wall for purchase.

"Your hand may be on your cock, but it’s my fingers inside you that are going to make you come," Travis said, trying to keep his voice impassive, as though he was doing nothing more than making a clinical observation. Clearly a lie given the way he was grinding himself against Blake and no matter how hard he tried he couldn’t quite keep the strain out of his voice, but Blake moaned as if he believed it, as if he wanted to believe it, and then, as if to prove Travis’s point, his back went rigid in the instant before he began to come, his other hand reaching back and scrabbling against Travis’s thigh as though in search of his cock.

Travis held himself still until it was over, listening to Blake’s shaky shallow breathing. His hand had clenched in Blake’s hair so tight the barrel of the gun scraped against his scalp.

Before Blake could recover completely, he ground himself slowly against Blake’s thigh in a circular moment, then slipped his fingers free, eyeing a few drops of semen that had fallen to the ground.

"I should make you clean that up," he commented. Blake twisted his head around and fixed him with a glare. His lips were red and bitten, shining with saliva. Travis's eyes lingered on them. "But," he added, "I can think of something better to do with that mouth, can't you?"

Gripping Blake’s hair, he pushed him to his knees, feeling a sick little thrill at how easily Blake went. He didn’t even need the pretence of the gun. Remembering it, he was about to brandish it again, liking the thought of Blake’s upturned eyes meeting his over the muzzle, but before he could do anything Blake twisted his upper body around and mouthed at the outline of Travis’s cock through his trousers, leaving saliva slick and shining on the leather.

"Those machines did something to me," he said bleakly.

"Probably," Travis agreed. "They did the same to me once. We're the same, Blake. You've got just as much blood on your hands as I have."

Pressing his knee into the space between Blake’s shoulder blades, he shifted his grip in Blake’s hair, rough enough to make a breath hiss through Blake's teeth, furious at himself suddenly at how desperately he wanted this, and not just to have Blake's mouth on his cock, but to take Blake's cock into his own.

The fantasy came with a surge of guilty arousal. It was one thing to debase Blake, another thing entirely to be the one on his knees.

"You're no better than I am," he spat, even while part of him was wondering which of them he was trying to convince.

"I never claimed I was."

Travis glared furiously at him and then jerked at the fastenings of his trousers. As his cock sprang out, Blake’s mouth was already opening.

Travis yanked his hair, twisting Blake’s head back and around. In his urgency he couldn’t tell whether he was thrusting his cock violently into Blake's mouth or Blake was taking him in with an urgency to match Travis’s own.

Somehow managing to remember the gun, and the plausible deniability it offered, he ground it into Blake’s temple in a way that only seemed to make Blake suck all the more eagerly, and god he was good at that, or maybe it was just Travis's desperation that intensified and heightened the sensations, even with the awkwardness of the angle. Travis came too fast, too hard, the hand holding the gun clenching into a fist in Blake's hair.

In the immediate aftermath, he gasped, staring blankly at the wall as he waited for the inevitable shame and rage to come flooding back in. Blake’s mouth was still working at him. He’d twisted around so that he could mouth at the softening shaft.

Travis jerked back, his finger tightening on the trigger. Blake went still, his gaze lifting to meet Travis’s. For a moment they were frozen like that, then Travis hauled Blake up to his feet and pressed him back against the wall.

Before Blake could say anything, Travis kissed him hard. He tasted his own semen on Blake's mouth, realised with a flash of fascinated horror that Blake was semi-hard again, and that the chances were it was sucking Travis off that had got him that way.

When he broke off the kiss he saw the same question in Blake’s eyes that was probably burning in his own: what the hell are we supposed to do now?

Before either one of them could voice it, a sound came from inside the compound, a far-off shout as one of the pirates called to another. Not close, but not nearly far away enough either for Travis’s liking.

Fuck. He really was losing it: for a moment he’d forgotten that Blake had to die.

"Your friends are back," Blake observed. Damn him: aside from a slight tremor in his voice, he sounded calm. "This could get embarrassing. And awkward for you if they find out who you really are."

Travis bared his teeth in a rictus grin. "How can they ever possibly know that?" he wondered bitterly. "When even I don’t know?"

"I don’t know either," Blake said. "Which is probably the only reason you’re still alive." As Travis snorted, he continued, raising his voice insistently. "I could keep your secret, Travis. They never have to know who you are and what you’ve done. I could keep your secret for as long as we need to until we can get away."

Travis’s lip curled. "And work together?" he sneered, although a terrible aching hope had seized hold of his throat. It had a sick sort of appeal, the idea of allying with Blake. All those opportunities for him to twist the knife a little deeper, keep Blake wondering if this would be the moment Travis finally, inevitably, betrayed him? Blake always did love a follower. And, arrogant as he was, he’d relish the chance to feel responsible for Travis’s redemption.

Redemption.

His lips twisted in an involuntary sneer at the thought, but at the same time a hollow space had formed behind his ribs. It made his chest ache.

"Why not? You've worked with worse." Blake tilted his head towards the doorway with a twist of contempt in his lips. Through the gesture he somehow managed to indicate not only the pirates but the Andromedans and the Federation as well. Despite everything that had happened in the past day hours, he almost seemed his old self: smug, self-satisfied, self-righteous. And still, despite everything, fighting. Damn him.

Travis could hear footsteps approaching, Bura by the sounds of the tuneless whistle. Bura, who’d happily cut Travis's throat at the first opportunity.

Now or never.

Travis's voice took on a note of mock-regret. "You know, you're right, Blake. I will never be able to punish you enough for what you did to me. But maybe there's something you'll like even less."

"Which is?"

"I suppose if we were working together, I’d never get a better opportunity to drag you down to my level."

Blake tilted his head, eyes narrowing as he studied Travis like he couldn’t be certain this wasn’t a trick. Travis wasn't too certain himself. "Perhaps I'll drag you up to mine."

Travis smiled bitterly. "You never know."