417519
Title: 417519
Rating: PG-13
Characters/Pairings: Matsumoto Jun/Sakurai Sho
Summary: Maybe the vastness of the sky serves as a reminder of how wonderful the world can be, even if things on the ground aren't.
Notes/Warnings: Written for Sho's birthday contest at sakumoto and based on the song Desert Garden by VAST. Lyrics.
Four months, and they've only lain about seventeen kilometers of track. Rumor has it that a train full of new prisoners will arrive today. But they've been saying that for weeks. With the campaigns north in the mountains, getting people to lay track here in the south isn't as high a priority. It'll be a year or more before they join this track up with the territory that's just coming under their sway.
They'd started small, crossing the narrow sea to the land Jun had called home. Back when Jun had still considered himself Jun, not the number on the bar code seared into the back of his neck. From his home they kept moving north. The lands there are more fertile, better protected. It was all too easy for them to overrun Jun's village, Jun's people.
The crew Jun's a part of follows them north at a snail's pace, but when it's done the high-speed rail line will be able to connect the rich farmlands and mineral ore of the mountains with the sea. And then the riches of Jun's land will float across the water to their emperor's coffers.
Sometimes Jun wonders if he'd have been better suited to the front lines, absorbed into the enemy's armies just like so many of his other friends from the village. Shun, Toma...Jun's fairly certain he'll never see their faces again. It might have been better to go to the lines with them, die by their sides instead of enduring his current occupation.
There are no wages. The camp is full of men from overseas as well as men from his village and the valley around it. It is a glorious new world, the overseers say. They've come across the sea to bring progress. But this alleged progress will not be possible until they reach up and bring the north under their control. Jun's lands, Jun's home, is nothing but a desert waste that's in the way.
They lay a few kilometers of track and the camp packs up, moves north. They've moved seven times since Jun's been here. They sleep during the day, the desert sun beating down on the canvas tents. They work under the stars and the invaders' plasma lamps, lifting the steel pieces that were cut across the sea and shipped over. Jun's crew lays down the stone, puts down the steel ties, and the invaders are the ones who fuse them together with their specialized tools.
His family raised chickens back in Toshi Town, the patch of dirt and yellowed grass that had been one of the first to appear in the desert decades earlier and one of the first to surrender. He's used to being outside to work, but chickens were always a bit easier than building a rail line.
It's sunrise when the foreman tells them the day's work is done. Jun's back aches, and he's got sand under his fingernails that'll never come out. Unless a nail rips off, he supposes. They're trudging back to the camp, the barcoded natives of his land and the better-treated imports from across the sea. Criminals from the foreign land are a part of the camp, have been for a few months now. They steal Jun's things, piss on Jun's blankets for a laugh. They can get away with it. They don't have bar codes.
Jun has to cross the track to the rows and rows of identical, sand-whipped tents that house them. But suddenly he can hear the howl, the shrieking that the foreign trains make when they coast along the tracks. They really are bringing in some new folks today. The mag-brakes kick on with an altogether different shriek, and the train comes to a stop just south of the camp where the secured bit of rail ends and the under construction track begins.
He and the others stand together as the sun brings a brand new day. The camp brass go to the train with their clipboards. "Bet it'll be more of them," Kazu says, resting his arm on Jun's shoulder. Kazu's from the next village over, but they're just as close as Jun had ever been with anyone in Toshi Town. Kazu's small, but they still make use of him. He pushes wheelbarrows of stone.
More of them, Jun thinks uneasily. Since Jun's been on the crew, the numbers have always been in some sort of balance. Sure the criminals from across the sea get away with more, but only because most of the crew comes from the deserts on this side of the water. Things will get worse if they bring in more of their own people, Jun knows. Worse for him, worse for people like Kazu.
It's pretty much a given that when there are new arrivals, the natives' tents are forfeit. No need to accommodate them in any sort of comfort. He's been lucky. He's one of the last natives with a tent to himself. Kazu's been sharing for over a month now with someone named Satoshi who snores. Who will Jun find himself stuck with? It's hard enough sleeping during the day, trying to stay cool.
The train's unloaded; the brass are already leading the newbies over. From across the sea, the lot of them. The hard, calculating eyes of men who've been serving prison terms for who knows how long and for who knows what crime. Petty thieves, murderers? It's not public knowledge, but it keeps Jun from sleeping easy even after a long shift.
They've kept one man back, and Jun squints into the rising sun in confusion. They're making an example of this one. "Nice clothes," Kazu comments, leaning more heavily into Jun. He's ready to drop, but they'll already be rearranging the camp to accommodate the new arrivals.
He does have nice clothes as they shove him up onto the foreman's platform. The place where the large man stands at the beginning of a shift and barks out orders to the crew leaders. Instead they're snaking thick wires from the foreman's tent (tent in name only, seeing as how it's got four collapsible walls, a door, and a flush toilet). Jun sees the wires connected to the charger. He remembers the charger, the energy already building up.
He watches them force the well-dressed new arrival to his knees. Kazu's still murmuring noises of confusion. What's this guy doing here anyway? He's got the clean-cut looks and nicely fitted clothes of an aristocrat from across the sea. The guy's crying out, yelling about something or other that gets carried off in the other direction since he's facing another way. It's taking three men to hold the guy down while someone else is putting the charger gel on his neck.
"They didn't numb him," Kazu's saying in disbelief. Jun's eyes widen. Two things are wrong with the picture before him. One, the invaders numb everyone before they zap a barcode on you. Sure they'll invade your hometown, press you into manual labor or into their swelling army ranks, but they'll "humanely" stick the bar code on you. It's not just an external tattoo. There's some kind of tech in it, something that gets embedded under the skin so they can scan it with their machines and know who you are and what town you're from. Jun remembers when the numbing agent wore off hours later, the throbbing in his neck that stayed with him for a week. But this man hasn't been numbed.
And two, what's even more confusing is that this man is one of them. From his clothes to the paleness of his skin (code for someone who's never worked a day in the sun), this man is one of them. They've never coded one of their own, not ever in Jun's recollection.
There's little time to ponder what it means as Jun watches them push the charger against the skin of his neck, the man's screams cutting through the air like the whistle of one of those trains. Kazu looks away, spitting in the dirt. There's a reason they've got this guy up on the platform. There's a reason they're burning their code into his flesh.
He brings his fingers to the back of his neck in some measure of sympathy, finding only beads of sweat and knotted tendrils of his own black hair.
Thoroughly coded, the guy's dropped unceremoniously onto the platform. He's not fussing or yelling now. He's curled himself up, and his countrymen have watched him be marked like one of the natives, like one of the people they've conquered. His shame's known to everyone now. There's only one meaning here. Whatever this guy did, he's now the lowest of the low in camp. Shit work, shit treatment. Jun feels bad, but he doesn't know why. Most of the others from across the sea think Jun's nothing more than a rock in their work boots.
The foreman calls out orders - new recruits one through twenty head for A camp and the others to B. Jun and Kazu are in B, south of the mess hall, and they all start trudging back. He looks behind him, sees the brass getting the suffering man to his feet, dragging him back off the platform as they put their magic machine away, kill the power.
Kazu sees the waving hand of his snorer and from the lack of activity in their row, it looks like they're already booked up. Jun feels disgusting in his work clothes, longing for a shower, and the sweat in his clothes is making his skin itchy. But instead he has to stand and wait outside his tent as the brass go by with their clipboards and new recruits disappear into tent after tent. The man to his left gets one, so does the man to his right.
When Jun thinks that somehow he's lucked out again, they tug over the newly bar coded fellow on a stretcher. Seems as though the pain and shock of being coded have knocked him out for now.
"417234," Crew Leader Hayes says, reading off the clipboard.
Jun nods in acknowledgment.
"This is 417519," he declares and the tent flap is opened. They take little care in dragging the man into the tent, dumping him right onto Jun's open bedroll instead of the new one he can see tucked into the corner. "Check his neck. Might be some pus for a few days, but inflammation means take him to the infirmary."
And that's all they say before moving onto their next assignment. Now this guy is Jun's problem.
Jun's nearly sleeping on his feet after his long shift, and he moves into the tent and closes the flap. He unravels the new bedroll, remembering exactly why he'd been sleeping on the other side for so long. There's more rocks under this side.
He strips down, shuddering with the knowledge that he'll be ruining the one and only time the bedroll will be in pristine condition with his sweaty skin. But he'll probably have to show the guy around when they wake before the shift later. He can shower then.
He lays down on his side, leaning on his elbow. They've put a bandage over the guy's neck. Jun turns away, not wanting to know how bad it's going to feel when the guy wakes up. And of course in the back of his mind he's also wondering who the hell the guy is and what he did to piss off the invaders so badly.
--
Mid-afternoon arrives and with it comes the stirring of his new burden in the other bedroll. Jun's still sticky, still hot, but he hears the guy quietly weeping and knows his life isn't as bad.
He sits up, hears his joints pop when he stretches his arm overhead. "Hey."
The guy doesn't say anything back.
Jun swallows, his belly rumbling from skipping the mess hall as well as his shower. "Look, I should probably check under your bandage."
"Hurts." For some reason, it's painful to hear the man's rasping voice. Even though he and Kazu hadn't heard what the guy had been yelling about on the platform, his voice had been proud. Hadn't taken much to bring him low.
"Let me check it, and I can tell you if it's normal hurt or infirmary hurt."
He kicks off his thin blanket, crawls over to the other bedroll as his tentmate slowly, shakily gets up. He's still dressed in the fine cotton shirt and dark slacks from across the sea. Now that he can see him up close in the light that trickles in where the tent could use some stronger patching, he discovers that his new friend is good looking. A round face, well-fed body, broad forehead.
The guy seems really hesitant when Jun grabs hold of his shoulder, tries to get him to turn. "Not going to hurt you," Jun assures him with a roll of his eyes. Doesn't this guy know how good he has it? If he'd been put in a tent with one of his own people, they wouldn't give two shits about his condition. Jun, however, has seen enough, endured enough, and he's not going to start mistreating someone stuck in this hellhole with him. "Come on, let me check it real quick."
Finally he settles, shifting around and sitting cross-legged as Jun kneels behind him. He feels almost bad that his never again clean hands are on this man's clothes, but he'll be given the same trousers, work shirts, and boots as all the others.These clothes aren't meant for a place like this. The man's angled shoulders are stiff, probably from the stress of his journey.
Jun rests his hand gently on one shoulder, moving the other to the guy's neck. His dark hair's dripping with sweat, same as Jun's, but he doesn't smell as bad yet. Jun's closeness has the guy's hackles up, and he stops Jun at least four times before Jun's finally able to tug on one end of the bandage. There it is, pink and gooey fresh. 417519.
Not enough to see the doctor. Jun pushes the bandage back down, fingers patting the man's skin to secure it as best he can before he jumps away.
"I'm Jun," he says, wondering why he's doing all the talking, all the work here. "That's my rucksack in the corner. We'll get you one."
"Okay," the guy says shakily, still wound tight as a spring, as though he wants to be anywhere but in this tent with Jun. "Okay then."
"Usually this is where the other party introduces themselves. Unless you want me to address you as the number they just burned onto your neck in front of everybody."
The guy gives him the meanest look, his brown eyes near black in their irritation. But it works. "Sho," the guy manages to spit out. "I'm Sho."
--
Their shift starts at 10:00 PM, and they're on steel crew. Kind of mean to the new guy, hauling heavy five foot long bars from the makeshift storage units to the men working out in the moonlight. Gloves aren't thick enough, so Jun's always getting cut up from sharp edges here and there. His tentmate has said as little as possible as he slunk around the camp behind Jun for the entire late afternoon and early evening.
He'd been frightened by the conjugal shower tent, clearly unaccustomed to such things in whatever lap of luxury he'd been enjoying. Jun had politely and needlessly waited for the place to clear out before standing at the entry flap and turning the other way for Sho to clean himself up. They'd picked up his work clothes, gotten him a rucksack. With Sho already unpopular among his own people, Jun had taken him to second meal shift - the pickings were slimmer, but most of the tables were natives. Sho has a bar code now. He may as well eat with them.
Jun's bent over backwards to get the guy situated, kept walking at his side as people from his own land called him coward and spat on him. Jun is deserving of at least a thank you for not abandoning the guy to whatever punishment this place is meant to be for him. Instead of using his rare free hours to play cards, read one of the decade-old magazines in the shoddy "leisure" tent, he protected the guy, found a place for him. Sho hasn't said anything, walking around with defiant eyes but a broken demeanor.
There is little to be said during their shift. Hayes has stuck Sho on Jun's crew so now he can babysit the guy 24/7. Sho stumbles in the sands the same as Jun had in his first few weeks. Sho's hands, the gentlest-looking hands Jun has ever seen on a man in his life, almost immediately blister. Between the pain in his neck and in his hands, Jun thinks the guy will be on his ass crying in less than an hour.
Even Kazu had put a bet in at the dinner table in full earshot of the newbie. Finally they have someone beneath them. Finally the shoe is on the other foot for at least one of the bastards who'd come over the sea and stolen everything away.
But Sho works. His skin cracks, he sweats off the bandage protecting the still throbbing code on his neck, and he doesn't complain. They work the full shift under the stars, hauling one way and walking back along the plasma lamp-lit paths and only taking their authorized breaks.
Day comes, and it's only when they get back to B camp that Sho's fatigue truly turns on him. He falls against Jun heavily, letting out a sigh. Jun gets an arm around him, tugs him to the tent. Their tent, as he'll have to think of it now.
He gets Sho down on the bedroll, rolls him over. "Let me check it."
Sho doesn't even protest this time when Jun's fingers probe along his neck. The wound's not inflamed but his skin is hot to the touch, unlike the clammy sweatiness of Jun's own. He's overworked himself. He's not going to be able to show for his shift tonight if his fever doesn't break. And that'll be on Jun if Hayes has anything to say about it.
"Damn it," Jun mutters aloud. To prove some point, Sho's overworked himself on his very first shift. What is he trying to prove? He's stuck here with the rest of them. He'll be doing the same job every day until they finish the rail line. There's no promotion opportunities out here, especially with the code on his skin.
Jun angrily leaves the tent. On most days he could grab a shower, catch the tail end of the meal shift at the mess. Instead he goes to the infirmary where the foreign doctor, Aiba, asks him a dozen questions before finally, begrudgingly handing over a fever adhesive patch and a fresh bandage roll.
When he returns Sho is on his back with his hands up in front of his face, staring at his fingers like they must belong to someone else. Guy's probably never worked a day in his life, Jun thinks. But even so he forces Sho to roll over onto his side so Jun can cut off some of the bandaging, press it down against the healing code on his neck before shoving him onto his back again.
He rips off the backing, roughly pushes the fever patch onto Sho's forehead and then grabs him by the wrists. "Need to wrap these blisters. It'll be a few weeks before you get the calluses you need to keep going."
"No, don't," Sho begs him. "Please don't."
Jun's growing more irritated by the second. Why is he risking his own hide, his own limited reputation in the camp, to help this guy? He'd bend over backwards for Kazu, the other guys on his crew. Anyone from the valley that was home. What does he owe this guy, aside from maybe a smack?
There are tears in Sho's eyes though, and Jun knows what it feels like to be nothing, to be treated as less than dirt. To be branded like cattle so it's all the easier for the enemy to track how many of them have died at the front lines or here building the future.
He ignores Sho's pleas and wraps the bandaging around the man's damaged hands, twisting it tight so he'll still be able to wear gloves during his shift. "You're here now," Jun tries to explain. "And that means learning what your pace is. That means taking a shower when you can because if the tanks run out they don't refill them if you ask. That also means," he says, fingers lingering on where he's just finished tucking in a loose bit of the bandaging, "don't cry. Not where the people out there can hear you."
Sho shuts his eyes, and Jun wishes he wasn't saddled with the guy, wondering how he got here in the first place.
--
The new crew's kind of a godsend, even if Jun's loath to admit it. Only one alleged murderer in the bunch, Kazu reports casually to their lunch table. Most of them in for robbery, battery, nothing major. Most of them have worked on chain gangs in their own land, and the transition isn't tough for them. They're used to working hard. Before two weeks are up they've got a full two new kilometers laid, and they're getting far enough ahead that they'll be moving camp in a week to start the new section the surveying team has planned out.
Unlike this patch of nothingness and the desert dunes to the left or right, this one will curve around a gully. Track won't be one straight line to the north and the continuing chaos there. It'll have to bend.
Sho's starting to bend, Jun notices. He hasn't cried about his sorry fate since Jun reprimanded him. His neck's healed up, and even though his hands are blistering, Jun's been diligent about patching him up. Though Sho could go to the infirmary himself, he comes to Jun with his slightly quivering hands out every morning after their shift. Jun finds himself unable to say no.
Because Sho's not a bad person. Jun's never had the full prejudices of most of his people, that all the invaders to their land are evil, greedy usurpers. Because even if Hayes is a complete dick, he's fair and gives them breaks during shifts. Even if the foreman's pocketing more than his fair share of food from the supply trains, no man's been worked to death since Jun's been here. They're not evil, not to their cores.
Sho spends a lot of his leisure time reading, keeping to himself. But Jun sees the eyes that follow him. Nobody from Jun's side of the water bothers him or even gives him a second glance. But the ones from his home laugh at him, still spit on him. "Coward" and "spineless" are the kindest words they have for him.
"What did you do that was so bad?" Jun finds himself asking after every shift as they bed down in the tent. "Why did they do this to you?"
Sho's still not ready to open up, much as Jun thinks it'll do him good to get it off his chest. Jun's done more than his fair share of telling his life story, relating tales of the exotic lifestyle that was chicken farming in a rundown desert oasis town. He tells him about Shun chasing after every girl who came through on a caravan, tells him about Toma's pranks. Sho cracks a smile here and there, and Jun likes the sight of it. Smiles are rare from him.
"We took that from you," Sho says when Jun's seconds from sleep one morning. "I'm really sorry."
The only apology that's been offered since Jun's been working the line.
--
Shifts are shortened over the next few nights so the camp can start getting packed up. They collapse the mess hall tents, yank up the temp pipes that have been pulling the water for their showers out of the ground. The night before they leave, the foreman does them all a kindness and says they've got a night off. Of course there's still their own tents to see to come morning, but it's a rarity. Jun intends to enjoy it.
There are men with rifles posted throughout the camp to keep them from running, but otherwise the codes on their necks are decorative. There's no point in juicing up a scanner to track them. There's nothing but desert to either side. Several days' walk anywhere they'd want to go. Rifles and the animals that roam the desert are a good enough deterrent.
The outskirts of the camp are dotted with sand-smoothed rocks jutting up out of the dunes. Most of the others have similar ideas for how to spend the time off, and he watches men move past with their pillows and bedrolls. They always sleep during the day but tonight the foreman's letting them sleep under the stars.
Jun opens the tent flap, finds Sho lying down in his bedroll with a blank look on his face. Jun rolls up his own. "Come on," he says. He's grown used to sleeping with company. He could follow Kazu and his crew. They've probably had their bit of rock scouted out and claimed for hours. But Sho can't miss this. No matter what he's been dealing with, no matter what pain and misery they'll be dealing with at the next camp he can't miss this.
"That's okay," Sho mutters.
Jun stands with his bedroll in his arms. "You get up, and you come with me," he says in a voice that's not joking around.
Sho sighs, giving in. Jun feels the slightest twinge of remorse for his forcefulness. He's spoken to Sho like he's in charge of him, like Sho's someone he can order around. It makes Jun no better than Hayes, no better than the foreman. He doesn't apologize though, helping Sho to pack up.
They leave the tent behind, taking their rucksacks along and wandering past the guards with their stuff in tow. Jun's deliberately gone the opposite way most of the others have. The prime locations are in the other direction, but Sho will have more quiet on this side. Jun swallows down the sensation of putting Sho's needs and concerns first when he still doesn't know the first thing about him. He only knows the callused hands, the less-rounded cheeks, the shock of dark hair that like Jun's is long overdue for a trim.
They find a place still within eyesight of one of the riflemen and he sets down his bedroll. The ground here's no harder than he's used to in the tent but already the cool night air is a blessing. Jun lies down on his back, letting out a quiet whoop of joy. He hears Sho chuckle at his enthusiasm as he unravels his own things. Despite their relative freedom, the lack of the tent, Sho doesn't make a move to separate them. Instead he's got his things just as close as always, close enough that Jun could stretch his arm out to the side and collide with Sho's.
He doesn't know why, but this pleases him. Maybe Sho respects him. Maybe Sho even likes him. After everything Jun's done for him, it's nice to see that Sho doesn't bolt at the first chance he gets.
They're quiet for a while, on their backs with the open sky above them. Jun can feel a few tears forming in his eyes, and it's dark enough that he just lets them roll down his cheeks. He's worked for months under the stars, under the never-ending sky and the promise it holds. Only now can he actually enjoy it.
"When I was a kid," Sho mutters a few minutes later, "we sometimes camped out in our back garden."
"Who?"
"Me, my younger sister," Sho says, and for the first time Jun knows that Sho belongs somewhere. Belonged, more like. "But it was hard to see anything. Where I'm from, I mean. There's too many lights from the buildings, other people's houses. It's never really dark like this."
Jun's always known a night sky, dotted with thousands of stars. Other worlds, so far from their own. Maybe a world where there aren't people across the sea who seem to think they need more land than they already have. Maybe a world where they could have just let things be.
"I like it," Sho admits. "How can you not, right?"
It's the most Sho's said about himself in the weeks they've known one another, the most he's ever opened up. Maybe the vastness of the sky serves as a reminder of how wonderful the world can be even if things on the ground aren't.
Jun remembers so many nights camped out like this with Toma and Shun, and he tells Sho as much. Back then they'd name the stars after stupid things, after dirty things, after people in town they didn't much care for. "That's Old Man Harlan's constellation," Jun noted, pointing up to a small cluster directly overhead, a formation of five.
"Who's that?" Sho asks.
Jun smiles. "He used to go behind Toma's dad's shop and jerk himself off, and we caught him one day."
Sho's laughter is one of the best sounds Jun has ever heard, this crazy high-pitched sound like he's almost out of breath. "What?" he finally gasps.
Jun can't help laughing too. "We were twelve years old. We thought the Jack Off constellation was the funniest thing ever."
Sho's still trying to breathe. "Here I am telling you about my sister and you're talking about masturbating stars."
Jun leans over and elbows him. "Harlan was the masturbator. We just named the stars after him. I don't know, Shun thought that together they were shaped like a dick."
That sets Sho off again, and they laugh until it aches. Jun hasn't laughed like this in ages, not since the days when the invasion from across the sea was nothing but a rumor. Instead of the shy, quiet person who's been more of a shadow than a friend, he learns that Sho likes to laugh.
"Alright, alright," Jun finally says, trying to calm down. He pulls his blanket over himself because the temperature's cooler than he's used to since he's not working. "Got an early start tomorrow."
"Thank you," Sho says in response, which Jun doesn't expect.
"For what?"
"This," Sho replies. "For everything. You didn't have to help me. I'm sorry for being such a burden."
Jun can already feel sleep tugging at him, but Sho's opening up, and it would be wrong not to listen. "Not a burden," he says. At least not as much as it felt like at first.
"I played piano," Sho explains slowly, holding up his hands. The hands he'd all but shredded on that first shift he'd worked. The hands he'd begged Jun not to wrap up, not to hide. "I know it probably seems like a frivolous job to someone who's worked like this for so much of your life, but it's different where I'm from. I wasn't the best, but I taught piano to kids. It was a decent living. And then we decided to invade, and the time for being frivolous had to be put on hold. They told me I was going to officer training, the army. I refused to go. Wasn't my war. They didn't like my answer."
Coward. Traitor. All the names the men from his own land call him. Sho's not like the others. He just wanted to do what he loved and didn't want to be parted from it. And so his own people have brought him low, dropped him here in a place they surely knew would ruin his hands and break his spirit.
"I don't know much about music. And you don't want to hear me sing," Jun says, for some reason itching to feel Sho's hands, Sho's touch. To watch those hands drift over piano keys in some fancy concert hall in the cities Jun's never seen. "But I just wish a lot more of you were the piano playing type and not the soldiering type."
"Me too."
"Be months before we finish this job," Jun says, eyes stuck on the sky. Looking from the Jack Off constellation to the one named after the girl Shun lost his virginity to. "And then after that I don't know what they'll make us do. We may have to join the army after all."
Sho shifts, leaning on his elbow to look down at him. He feels close, even out here in the open air, so much closer than he ever felt when they were in their tent together. He's so close Jun can smell him, the lingering scent of the cheap bar soap from the shower tent.
"I won't join the army. Labor I'll do. But I won't fight your people."
"We'll have no choice," Jun reminds him. "They'll run out of stuff for us to build so they'll find us something to destroy. So they can rebuild it again the way they think is better."
"What if..." Sho's voice trails off, full of doubt.
"What if what?"
"Too presumptuous to speak of," Sho murmurs. "I'm sorry, we should just sleep."
"You started it," Jun says, giving Sho what he thinks is a playful shove, but it's enough to send him onto his back on his bedroll again and Jun almost falls with him, desperately holding himself up. "What then?"
"I studied the maps. Back home, we all know what your land is like. Desert here, mountains north. Desert's just a means to an end, a place we have to pass through to link up with the northern riches. Unlike your Toshi Town, we didn't take over the whole desert. Just snatched up the land we needed for the rail line."
It amazes Jun that Sho can still talk about his homeland as something he belongs to, even if it spat him out and marked him for life. "So what are you saying?" Jun prods him, even if he has an uncomfortable idea where this is going.
"We cross the desert. Start a new life."
"Together?" Jun blurts out, his stomach tying in knots. Sho and him, him and Sho. Breaking away from the endless work.
"I..." Sho falters, his confidence draining. "You've been such a friend, I just...see, I told you it was presumptuous."
"Not presumptuous," Jun says. "Stupid. In case you haven't noticed, we've got codes imprinted on our necks. We can change whatever we want, but that's not going away. We're marked. And that's assuming we first get away from camp, which is near impossible, and if we somehow manage that, it takes days to cross the desert. It's hard going, assuming we even find an oasis town that'll take us in."
"I can't stay here, Jun. I can't."
Jun chews the inside of his cheek. In all these weeks, he's come to accept the way of his life, no matter how terrible. Running away would be cowardly. Leaving Kazu, the other men behind. Shirking responsibility, the life he has that Toma and Shun might not have any longer.
But with the new camp they'll surely get more workers. At the pace they're going it's the leading camp gossip. More workers from overseas, more hands to haul and to hammer. More workers to step on him, belittle him. Belittle Sho.
"As long as we're here, they own us," Sho says. He points at the stars again with his finger, which may never again play a piano. "You can name them after as many folks as you want but nobody owns them. It's a dumb metaphor, I don't even know what I mean."
What it means is that Sho's dead set on going, no matter what Jun thinks. But they'd come up to his tent that day. "This is 417519," they'd said, leaving Sho in his care. And Sho's come to depend on him, to need him. He can't even imagine Sho trying to cross the desert sands alone. And he doesn't know how he could live with himself if he lets Sho leave without him. He knows others have deserted the camp before. Nobody goes after them because the desert will claim the unprepared, the desperate. They can always get more workers.
"We do this my way," Jun says defiantly. "If you want to go, we do this intelligently."
"Jun..."
"Go to sleep. We're not going anywhere for a while."
Sho settles down, his movements on his bedroll stilling. Jun cares about Sho, more than he's even realized. Everything he thinks he's been doing, obliging a foolish, shy person, has not been the full truth of it. He's been watching Sho, protecting Sho from the second he saw him up on that platform, getting marked without being numbed.
Jun keeps his eyes on the ownerless stars shining down on them, wondering what they can possibly do to break free. And wondering what it would be like, just him and Sho, running away under the big open sky.
--
They move camp, and tent assignments remain the same. In the upheaval of the camp, a full six workers have disappeared by the time they arrive and settle down, and Kazu's among them. This many have never tried it before. It's usually two or three pressing their luck when the camp makes their way north. This will only make it harder for him and Sho if they try to leave. The only good thing about it is that Kazu is free.
The foreman's not going to do them any favors now, not with so many runaways. Rations are cut in half for a few days, making work shifts all the more tiresome. The track they've just laid over the past month brings a train full of new workers. Like before, they're all from across the sea, from Sho's home. The tents are made for two, but some are forced to house three now.
The faster they finish the line, it seems, the faster they'll be able to get supplies north to the fighting. Jun's people are proving more resistant than had been anticipated. The war is long and losses are gaining. He hears the workers from overseas grumbling about it, hears the crew leaders complaining.
Tensions rise in camp. The close quarters, the extra bodies in the shower tent, in the mess. Even though he and Sho are lucky enough to still have their tent to themselves, any day now they might find themselves saddled with another person. Fights break out during free hours, during break time. Jun can't watch Sho every second of the day, and hostilities quickly turn against him.
One night during a shift, Jun's coming back with steel on his shoulders when he sees a group of four men from another crew surround Sho, who's just trying to keep his head down and do his job. They surround him, taunt him, knock him down. The crew leader's down the line, but he hears the commotion and comes running. But he won't be fast enough to break it up.
Jun drops the bars angrily, hurries over. "Lay off him!" he shouts, hands quickly becoming fists as he attacks the first man he sees. "You just lay off him!"
As Jun hoped, they turn on him instead. Even after all this time, Jun's crew has little sympathy for Sho, but they're local boys and still loyal to Jun. Sho's on the ground, air kicked out of his lungs, as the others swarm and try to help out. Jun still gets a punch to the face that sends him reeling, a hard boot in the back that lands him on the ground, sand and dirt kissing him.
"Break it up!" Hayes screams when he arrives, the crew leader of the bullies with him. "I said break it up!"
It takes another ten men to separate them all. "It was him," says one of thugs, pointing at Sho still on the ground. "He started it."
"Liar!" Jun hisses, wiping at his face. Under the plasma lamp light he can see a streak of blood across his glove. "They ganged up on him. Four on one sound like a fair fight to you?"
The crew backs Jun, and even Hayes doesn't know what to do. There's more and more fights every shift, and it's clear that the men in charge are growing scared of losing control.
"417519, can you walk?" Hayes asks Sho.
"Yes, sir."
"Take 417234 to the infirmary. You're both on mess cleanup duty for the next two weeks. Dismissed."
Sho struggles to his feet, holds out his hand and Jun takes it. The pair of them limp off while Hayes and the other crew leader start doling out punishments for the others.
Sho's got his arm around Jun's back, and for the first time, it's Sho carrying Jun's weight. "Should have let them beat on me," Sho chides him as Jun tries to determine if his face or his back hurts more.
"Don't be stupid," Jun grumbles back at him.
While Aiba examines him, Sho sits on a stool in the infirmary and watches close. Jun's nose isn't broken, so he only gets a cold pack and a tiny, pathetic excuse for a pain pill. Sho doesn't ask for anything from the doctor.
They make it to the tent, Sho helping Jun inside. "Lie down," Sho orders, and Jun rolls his eyes. But he obeys just the same.
He feels nervous as Sho unlaces Jun's boots, sets them neatly beside his rucksack and then sits down cross legged at his side. Sho takes the cold pack from Jun's hand and holds it against Jun's nose.
"I can do this myself," Jun points out.
"We'll never be even for those first few weeks," Sho says quietly. "Just let me help you for once."
Jun says nothing, only opening up his palm. Hoping that he hasn't misjudged this completely. Sho keeps the cold pack pressed to Jun's face but twines the fingers of his other hand with Jun's. Something passes between the two of them that neither seem ready to talk about, but Jun squeezes Sho's hand and knows that they need to move up their timetable.
They need to get out of this camp before it kills them both.
--
Mess duty on top of their regular work schedule isn't so much difficult as it is unpleasant. And then, of course, there's plotting an escape simultaneously. They have to scoop out portions at both meal shifts, and the scraps that remain are all they're fed.
At the rate the crews are completing track, they'll break camp in another week. They'll be watched when the caravan moves off; they'll all be scanned before they get going and they'll be scanned again when they arrive. And maybe this time the foreman will send men after those who run.
Which means they have to leave some other time. They have to leave before camp packs up. They've curved this section of track around a dried-out gully. It's the natural border of the current camp, and it's where they've been throwing the waste from the mess after every meal. It's maybe ten, twelve feet down, and Jun thinks that they can hide stuff down there while they prepare. They've got a decent excuse to be walking to the gully and back, and so they start to steal.
They hide small tins of beans, tins of beef inside rubbish bags, and they toss them in the gully where the flies have gathered and most of the men with rifles don't want to walk. People on second meal shift are Jun's people so he distracts them, talks to them while they ignore Sho as usual. And then Sho siphons water into empty bottles, seals them up. Into the gully they go. Water's the most precious thing they'll need, other than one another.
During their shifts, Jun memorizes the movements of the men with the rifles. Memorizes the movements of the crew leaders as they walk up and down the track, yelling at the men to work harder. He sees where the plasma lamps reach and where they do not. The gully is at the opposite end of camp from where they work. They'll have to slip away one at a time, running for the tent instead of walking back to pick up more steel or rock.
Sho protests when Jun tells him to make a run for it first. "I'll be right behind you," he says quietly in their tent. "I promise I will. It's more important that you get away."
"That's bullshit."
Jun doesn't argue the point further, and Sho seems to reluctantly agree.
They spend their leisure time as normal, playing cards just like the others. They work their long mess shift, dropping off the last water they'll be able to carry into the gully. It's been a hot, nasty day, and the flies are still around. When night falls and their shifts begin, they work the first three hours as normal, take their break. He and Sho exchange one last glance. Their last chance to change their minds. Sho only nods.
They start working again, and before too long the crew leaders are back in top form, barking out orders. The men are breaking their backs, and Jun's going back and forth to get more steel. Then Sho disappears, right on schedule. Jun's heart races. Every sound in the camp becomes suddenly louder. The men in the crew further down the line who sing songs from home, the crew leaders' shouts, the sound of the tools fusing the metal together.
Any second now Sho could get caught. He doesn't even know what the punishment could be for getting caught deserting. He waits fifteen long, agonizing minutes as they've agreed. Jun's journey is shorter when he breaks away. He can go straight for the gully because Sho's already been to the tent for their rucksacks and bedrolls. No alarms have sounded, so he's managed to walk off with all that bulk and avoid the riflemen and the plasma lamps.
He gets to the edge of the gully, only the moon and starlight to guide him, and he signals. One short whistle, heart in his throat. He needs Sho to be down there. He needs him to be.
He hears a whistle in return and it's the most beautiful sound.
He crouches down, boots kicking up rocks as he sits down at the edge. He can smell the garbage, and it makes him gag but he goes down, crawling a bit like a crab down the most gradual slope of the gully. It's much harder in the dark, but he reaches the bottom, and Sho's there, reaching for him instantly and pulling him up.
This is happening. They're leaving. And all they know is that they're following the gully south as far as it'll hide them, then they'll head west until they find somewhere, anywhere that can take them in.
Sho's hesitant to let him go. Jun's hesitant too. But there's no time. "Already packed as much as I could find in the dark," Sho says, sounding a little disgusted. He smells, too, which makes Jun grin, but the food and water they've managed to steal away will help them for a few days at least if they ration properly.
Jun finds the two rucksacks, decides to take the one that feels a bit heavier. But at least all of these weeks of hauling have made the two of them stronger. He leads the way south. They've got at least three or four hours of darkness to help them along.
It's slow going in the dark, and they stumble and steady one another countless times. But Jun feels confident with Sho at his back. He's getting Sho out of here. No matter what the desert holds, he's getting Sho out.
--
When day comes and the heat grows unbearable they rest in a small break in the gully wall, something carved out long ago by a river. They've gone hours and they've heard nothing behind them. Maybe it's easier on the camp if Sho's gone from it. The stars above seem to have protected them this far. Now they'll be relying on just the sun.
They eat and then they sleep. When they wake, Jun finds that Sho's curled up behind him, and he can feel Sho's breath against the back of his neck. He wants to shut his eyes, enjoy the closeness a moment longer but they have to move. "You stink," he says in mock irritation. Sho rolls away with a murmured apology, sounding embarrassed.
It's mid-afternoon, and they pull out the cloth they've taken. Few dish towels here, few bath towels from the shower tent there. They fashion them into coverings for the top of their heads, their faces, to endure the heat and the kicked-up sand. They look ridiculous, but Jun will take ridiculous over sunstroke.
They set out once more and finally leave the gully behind them. It's navigable for now. The invaders chose this part of the desert to build their railway because of how hard-packed the earth is in the region. There are dunes, sure, but their boots don't sink in and they won't get stuck. He lets Sho set the pace walking in front of him. Jun grew up out here, Sho didn't. He doesn't dare force him to move faster than he's capable of.
Even with their faces covered, sand gets in his eyes. They itch and burn as the sun bakes them. They're leaving tracks if anyone cares to follow them, but if the foreman's men didn't catch them in the gully, they've pretty much been given up for dead already. To the men at the camp, Jun and Sho are now coyote bait, vulture food.
And still they press on, even as night falls and Sho grows weary. They can't camp out in the open, not out here where there's too many things that could go wrong. The caravans go through here, though, with their pack animals. No mag brake trains for them out here, but they seem to manage just fine. There must be places they set up camp with some means of protection.
They trudge up a small hill, finally spying a cave carved into rock. There's scattered bones on the floor of it, so it must have been an animal's den at some point, but there's no sign of any predators now. It's not much more than a notch in the rock, just like in the gully, but it's big enough for them both to lie down without their feet poking out. They settle in for a few hours. If they can walk through the rest of the night they won't have to travel as much by day, provided they keep finding shelter and don't run low on water. Already he's forcing himself not to drink as much as he wishes to, all for the sake of conservation.
He's stirring from sleep when he hears Sho move, feels his hand on his forehead. He opens his eyes, confused. There's an intense look in Sho's gaze. "Something wrong?" Jun asks, wondering if Sho's heard an animal or something outside.
Sho leans down, and before Jun realizes what's going on, Sho's kissing him. But Jun, as always, has been quick to adapt. Their lips are dry, cracked from the unforgiving desert but Sho is so warm when Jun slips his arms around him, moving so Sho can lie beside him. They're filthy and tired but they've escaped. Nothing else matters because they're surviving together.
"Jun," Sho says, needing more. All those days and nights side by side in their tent, and Sho's wanted this. Jun's wanted this. Only now can they act on it. Only now when they aren't focused on getting through another day at the camp can they have this. The hands that Jun took care of in those first days are now exploring his skin, slipping under his shirt. The tension that's marked the last few weeks, the nervous hours waiting to escape...it all slips away.
The rail line will keep stretching north as the men hammer back at the camp. The invading army will continue their siege on the northern cities. Jun's town is gone, Sho's life back home is gone. Out here they'll forge a new beginning.
--
They've almost exhausted their supplies and their own strength when they find a town several days later. They've strayed off their course to avoid a pack of coyotes. They've fallen down, pulled each other back up. The wind has blown sand in their eyes, whipped their skin red and raw. But they've trusted in the skies, in the stars, in each other, and they've found this place.
The town is empty, they discover. One of the desert start-ups that never lasted. Maybe it was off the usual caravan routes. Maybe the invaders hauled the residents away for their labor camps or military. But to Sho and Jun, it may as well be a beautiful garden in the middle of the empty desert sands.
There's shelter - most of the houses have fallen into disrepair, but they'll have a roof overhead. The well needs fixing, but there will be water. Some of the houses still have food, and some of it's not even rotten. It's not a permanent place by any means, but if they've gotten here, they can surely get anywhere once they've regained their strength.
He watches Sho drop his rucksack from his tired shoulders and step forward, arms outstretched in gratitude for the relative paradise that's welcomed them. Jun sees that the numbers 417519 imprinted on the back of his neck are hidden now by the growth of his hair. He touches his own skin and discovers the same.
Sho turns and holds out his hand. Jun steps forward to take it.
It won't be easy. Maybe it never will be, but so long as there are stars overhead there are possibilities.
Rating: PG-13
Characters/Pairings: Matsumoto Jun/Sakurai Sho
Summary: Maybe the vastness of the sky serves as a reminder of how wonderful the world can be, even if things on the ground aren't.
Notes/Warnings: Written for Sho's birthday contest at sakumoto and based on the song Desert Garden by VAST. Lyrics.
Four months, and they've only lain about seventeen kilometers of track. Rumor has it that a train full of new prisoners will arrive today. But they've been saying that for weeks. With the campaigns north in the mountains, getting people to lay track here in the south isn't as high a priority. It'll be a year or more before they join this track up with the territory that's just coming under their sway.
They'd started small, crossing the narrow sea to the land Jun had called home. Back when Jun had still considered himself Jun, not the number on the bar code seared into the back of his neck. From his home they kept moving north. The lands there are more fertile, better protected. It was all too easy for them to overrun Jun's village, Jun's people.
The crew Jun's a part of follows them north at a snail's pace, but when it's done the high-speed rail line will be able to connect the rich farmlands and mineral ore of the mountains with the sea. And then the riches of Jun's land will float across the water to their emperor's coffers.
Sometimes Jun wonders if he'd have been better suited to the front lines, absorbed into the enemy's armies just like so many of his other friends from the village. Shun, Toma...Jun's fairly certain he'll never see their faces again. It might have been better to go to the lines with them, die by their sides instead of enduring his current occupation.
There are no wages. The camp is full of men from overseas as well as men from his village and the valley around it. It is a glorious new world, the overseers say. They've come across the sea to bring progress. But this alleged progress will not be possible until they reach up and bring the north under their control. Jun's lands, Jun's home, is nothing but a desert waste that's in the way.
They lay a few kilometers of track and the camp packs up, moves north. They've moved seven times since Jun's been here. They sleep during the day, the desert sun beating down on the canvas tents. They work under the stars and the invaders' plasma lamps, lifting the steel pieces that were cut across the sea and shipped over. Jun's crew lays down the stone, puts down the steel ties, and the invaders are the ones who fuse them together with their specialized tools.
His family raised chickens back in Toshi Town, the patch of dirt and yellowed grass that had been one of the first to appear in the desert decades earlier and one of the first to surrender. He's used to being outside to work, but chickens were always a bit easier than building a rail line.
It's sunrise when the foreman tells them the day's work is done. Jun's back aches, and he's got sand under his fingernails that'll never come out. Unless a nail rips off, he supposes. They're trudging back to the camp, the barcoded natives of his land and the better-treated imports from across the sea. Criminals from the foreign land are a part of the camp, have been for a few months now. They steal Jun's things, piss on Jun's blankets for a laugh. They can get away with it. They don't have bar codes.
Jun has to cross the track to the rows and rows of identical, sand-whipped tents that house them. But suddenly he can hear the howl, the shrieking that the foreign trains make when they coast along the tracks. They really are bringing in some new folks today. The mag-brakes kick on with an altogether different shriek, and the train comes to a stop just south of the camp where the secured bit of rail ends and the under construction track begins.
He and the others stand together as the sun brings a brand new day. The camp brass go to the train with their clipboards. "Bet it'll be more of them," Kazu says, resting his arm on Jun's shoulder. Kazu's from the next village over, but they're just as close as Jun had ever been with anyone in Toshi Town. Kazu's small, but they still make use of him. He pushes wheelbarrows of stone.
More of them, Jun thinks uneasily. Since Jun's been on the crew, the numbers have always been in some sort of balance. Sure the criminals from across the sea get away with more, but only because most of the crew comes from the deserts on this side of the water. Things will get worse if they bring in more of their own people, Jun knows. Worse for him, worse for people like Kazu.
It's pretty much a given that when there are new arrivals, the natives' tents are forfeit. No need to accommodate them in any sort of comfort. He's been lucky. He's one of the last natives with a tent to himself. Kazu's been sharing for over a month now with someone named Satoshi who snores. Who will Jun find himself stuck with? It's hard enough sleeping during the day, trying to stay cool.
The train's unloaded; the brass are already leading the newbies over. From across the sea, the lot of them. The hard, calculating eyes of men who've been serving prison terms for who knows how long and for who knows what crime. Petty thieves, murderers? It's not public knowledge, but it keeps Jun from sleeping easy even after a long shift.
They've kept one man back, and Jun squints into the rising sun in confusion. They're making an example of this one. "Nice clothes," Kazu comments, leaning more heavily into Jun. He's ready to drop, but they'll already be rearranging the camp to accommodate the new arrivals.
He does have nice clothes as they shove him up onto the foreman's platform. The place where the large man stands at the beginning of a shift and barks out orders to the crew leaders. Instead they're snaking thick wires from the foreman's tent (tent in name only, seeing as how it's got four collapsible walls, a door, and a flush toilet). Jun sees the wires connected to the charger. He remembers the charger, the energy already building up.
He watches them force the well-dressed new arrival to his knees. Kazu's still murmuring noises of confusion. What's this guy doing here anyway? He's got the clean-cut looks and nicely fitted clothes of an aristocrat from across the sea. The guy's crying out, yelling about something or other that gets carried off in the other direction since he's facing another way. It's taking three men to hold the guy down while someone else is putting the charger gel on his neck.
"They didn't numb him," Kazu's saying in disbelief. Jun's eyes widen. Two things are wrong with the picture before him. One, the invaders numb everyone before they zap a barcode on you. Sure they'll invade your hometown, press you into manual labor or into their swelling army ranks, but they'll "humanely" stick the bar code on you. It's not just an external tattoo. There's some kind of tech in it, something that gets embedded under the skin so they can scan it with their machines and know who you are and what town you're from. Jun remembers when the numbing agent wore off hours later, the throbbing in his neck that stayed with him for a week. But this man hasn't been numbed.
And two, what's even more confusing is that this man is one of them. From his clothes to the paleness of his skin (code for someone who's never worked a day in the sun), this man is one of them. They've never coded one of their own, not ever in Jun's recollection.
There's little time to ponder what it means as Jun watches them push the charger against the skin of his neck, the man's screams cutting through the air like the whistle of one of those trains. Kazu looks away, spitting in the dirt. There's a reason they've got this guy up on the platform. There's a reason they're burning their code into his flesh.
He brings his fingers to the back of his neck in some measure of sympathy, finding only beads of sweat and knotted tendrils of his own black hair.
Thoroughly coded, the guy's dropped unceremoniously onto the platform. He's not fussing or yelling now. He's curled himself up, and his countrymen have watched him be marked like one of the natives, like one of the people they've conquered. His shame's known to everyone now. There's only one meaning here. Whatever this guy did, he's now the lowest of the low in camp. Shit work, shit treatment. Jun feels bad, but he doesn't know why. Most of the others from across the sea think Jun's nothing more than a rock in their work boots.
The foreman calls out orders - new recruits one through twenty head for A camp and the others to B. Jun and Kazu are in B, south of the mess hall, and they all start trudging back. He looks behind him, sees the brass getting the suffering man to his feet, dragging him back off the platform as they put their magic machine away, kill the power.
Kazu sees the waving hand of his snorer and from the lack of activity in their row, it looks like they're already booked up. Jun feels disgusting in his work clothes, longing for a shower, and the sweat in his clothes is making his skin itchy. But instead he has to stand and wait outside his tent as the brass go by with their clipboards and new recruits disappear into tent after tent. The man to his left gets one, so does the man to his right.
When Jun thinks that somehow he's lucked out again, they tug over the newly bar coded fellow on a stretcher. Seems as though the pain and shock of being coded have knocked him out for now.
"417234," Crew Leader Hayes says, reading off the clipboard.
Jun nods in acknowledgment.
"This is 417519," he declares and the tent flap is opened. They take little care in dragging the man into the tent, dumping him right onto Jun's open bedroll instead of the new one he can see tucked into the corner. "Check his neck. Might be some pus for a few days, but inflammation means take him to the infirmary."
And that's all they say before moving onto their next assignment. Now this guy is Jun's problem.
Jun's nearly sleeping on his feet after his long shift, and he moves into the tent and closes the flap. He unravels the new bedroll, remembering exactly why he'd been sleeping on the other side for so long. There's more rocks under this side.
He strips down, shuddering with the knowledge that he'll be ruining the one and only time the bedroll will be in pristine condition with his sweaty skin. But he'll probably have to show the guy around when they wake before the shift later. He can shower then.
He lays down on his side, leaning on his elbow. They've put a bandage over the guy's neck. Jun turns away, not wanting to know how bad it's going to feel when the guy wakes up. And of course in the back of his mind he's also wondering who the hell the guy is and what he did to piss off the invaders so badly.
--
Mid-afternoon arrives and with it comes the stirring of his new burden in the other bedroll. Jun's still sticky, still hot, but he hears the guy quietly weeping and knows his life isn't as bad.
He sits up, hears his joints pop when he stretches his arm overhead. "Hey."
The guy doesn't say anything back.
Jun swallows, his belly rumbling from skipping the mess hall as well as his shower. "Look, I should probably check under your bandage."
"Hurts." For some reason, it's painful to hear the man's rasping voice. Even though he and Kazu hadn't heard what the guy had been yelling about on the platform, his voice had been proud. Hadn't taken much to bring him low.
"Let me check it, and I can tell you if it's normal hurt or infirmary hurt."
He kicks off his thin blanket, crawls over to the other bedroll as his tentmate slowly, shakily gets up. He's still dressed in the fine cotton shirt and dark slacks from across the sea. Now that he can see him up close in the light that trickles in where the tent could use some stronger patching, he discovers that his new friend is good looking. A round face, well-fed body, broad forehead.
The guy seems really hesitant when Jun grabs hold of his shoulder, tries to get him to turn. "Not going to hurt you," Jun assures him with a roll of his eyes. Doesn't this guy know how good he has it? If he'd been put in a tent with one of his own people, they wouldn't give two shits about his condition. Jun, however, has seen enough, endured enough, and he's not going to start mistreating someone stuck in this hellhole with him. "Come on, let me check it real quick."
Finally he settles, shifting around and sitting cross-legged as Jun kneels behind him. He feels almost bad that his never again clean hands are on this man's clothes, but he'll be given the same trousers, work shirts, and boots as all the others.These clothes aren't meant for a place like this. The man's angled shoulders are stiff, probably from the stress of his journey.
Jun rests his hand gently on one shoulder, moving the other to the guy's neck. His dark hair's dripping with sweat, same as Jun's, but he doesn't smell as bad yet. Jun's closeness has the guy's hackles up, and he stops Jun at least four times before Jun's finally able to tug on one end of the bandage. There it is, pink and gooey fresh. 417519.
Not enough to see the doctor. Jun pushes the bandage back down, fingers patting the man's skin to secure it as best he can before he jumps away.
"I'm Jun," he says, wondering why he's doing all the talking, all the work here. "That's my rucksack in the corner. We'll get you one."
"Okay," the guy says shakily, still wound tight as a spring, as though he wants to be anywhere but in this tent with Jun. "Okay then."
"Usually this is where the other party introduces themselves. Unless you want me to address you as the number they just burned onto your neck in front of everybody."
The guy gives him the meanest look, his brown eyes near black in their irritation. But it works. "Sho," the guy manages to spit out. "I'm Sho."
--
Their shift starts at 10:00 PM, and they're on steel crew. Kind of mean to the new guy, hauling heavy five foot long bars from the makeshift storage units to the men working out in the moonlight. Gloves aren't thick enough, so Jun's always getting cut up from sharp edges here and there. His tentmate has said as little as possible as he slunk around the camp behind Jun for the entire late afternoon and early evening.
He'd been frightened by the conjugal shower tent, clearly unaccustomed to such things in whatever lap of luxury he'd been enjoying. Jun had politely and needlessly waited for the place to clear out before standing at the entry flap and turning the other way for Sho to clean himself up. They'd picked up his work clothes, gotten him a rucksack. With Sho already unpopular among his own people, Jun had taken him to second meal shift - the pickings were slimmer, but most of the tables were natives. Sho has a bar code now. He may as well eat with them.
Jun's bent over backwards to get the guy situated, kept walking at his side as people from his own land called him coward and spat on him. Jun is deserving of at least a thank you for not abandoning the guy to whatever punishment this place is meant to be for him. Instead of using his rare free hours to play cards, read one of the decade-old magazines in the shoddy "leisure" tent, he protected the guy, found a place for him. Sho hasn't said anything, walking around with defiant eyes but a broken demeanor.
There is little to be said during their shift. Hayes has stuck Sho on Jun's crew so now he can babysit the guy 24/7. Sho stumbles in the sands the same as Jun had in his first few weeks. Sho's hands, the gentlest-looking hands Jun has ever seen on a man in his life, almost immediately blister. Between the pain in his neck and in his hands, Jun thinks the guy will be on his ass crying in less than an hour.
Even Kazu had put a bet in at the dinner table in full earshot of the newbie. Finally they have someone beneath them. Finally the shoe is on the other foot for at least one of the bastards who'd come over the sea and stolen everything away.
But Sho works. His skin cracks, he sweats off the bandage protecting the still throbbing code on his neck, and he doesn't complain. They work the full shift under the stars, hauling one way and walking back along the plasma lamp-lit paths and only taking their authorized breaks.
Day comes, and it's only when they get back to B camp that Sho's fatigue truly turns on him. He falls against Jun heavily, letting out a sigh. Jun gets an arm around him, tugs him to the tent. Their tent, as he'll have to think of it now.
He gets Sho down on the bedroll, rolls him over. "Let me check it."
Sho doesn't even protest this time when Jun's fingers probe along his neck. The wound's not inflamed but his skin is hot to the touch, unlike the clammy sweatiness of Jun's own. He's overworked himself. He's not going to be able to show for his shift tonight if his fever doesn't break. And that'll be on Jun if Hayes has anything to say about it.
"Damn it," Jun mutters aloud. To prove some point, Sho's overworked himself on his very first shift. What is he trying to prove? He's stuck here with the rest of them. He'll be doing the same job every day until they finish the rail line. There's no promotion opportunities out here, especially with the code on his skin.
Jun angrily leaves the tent. On most days he could grab a shower, catch the tail end of the meal shift at the mess. Instead he goes to the infirmary where the foreign doctor, Aiba, asks him a dozen questions before finally, begrudgingly handing over a fever adhesive patch and a fresh bandage roll.
When he returns Sho is on his back with his hands up in front of his face, staring at his fingers like they must belong to someone else. Guy's probably never worked a day in his life, Jun thinks. But even so he forces Sho to roll over onto his side so Jun can cut off some of the bandaging, press it down against the healing code on his neck before shoving him onto his back again.
He rips off the backing, roughly pushes the fever patch onto Sho's forehead and then grabs him by the wrists. "Need to wrap these blisters. It'll be a few weeks before you get the calluses you need to keep going."
"No, don't," Sho begs him. "Please don't."
Jun's growing more irritated by the second. Why is he risking his own hide, his own limited reputation in the camp, to help this guy? He'd bend over backwards for Kazu, the other guys on his crew. Anyone from the valley that was home. What does he owe this guy, aside from maybe a smack?
There are tears in Sho's eyes though, and Jun knows what it feels like to be nothing, to be treated as less than dirt. To be branded like cattle so it's all the easier for the enemy to track how many of them have died at the front lines or here building the future.
He ignores Sho's pleas and wraps the bandaging around the man's damaged hands, twisting it tight so he'll still be able to wear gloves during his shift. "You're here now," Jun tries to explain. "And that means learning what your pace is. That means taking a shower when you can because if the tanks run out they don't refill them if you ask. That also means," he says, fingers lingering on where he's just finished tucking in a loose bit of the bandaging, "don't cry. Not where the people out there can hear you."
Sho shuts his eyes, and Jun wishes he wasn't saddled with the guy, wondering how he got here in the first place.
--
The new crew's kind of a godsend, even if Jun's loath to admit it. Only one alleged murderer in the bunch, Kazu reports casually to their lunch table. Most of them in for robbery, battery, nothing major. Most of them have worked on chain gangs in their own land, and the transition isn't tough for them. They're used to working hard. Before two weeks are up they've got a full two new kilometers laid, and they're getting far enough ahead that they'll be moving camp in a week to start the new section the surveying team has planned out.
Unlike this patch of nothingness and the desert dunes to the left or right, this one will curve around a gully. Track won't be one straight line to the north and the continuing chaos there. It'll have to bend.
Sho's starting to bend, Jun notices. He hasn't cried about his sorry fate since Jun reprimanded him. His neck's healed up, and even though his hands are blistering, Jun's been diligent about patching him up. Though Sho could go to the infirmary himself, he comes to Jun with his slightly quivering hands out every morning after their shift. Jun finds himself unable to say no.
Because Sho's not a bad person. Jun's never had the full prejudices of most of his people, that all the invaders to their land are evil, greedy usurpers. Because even if Hayes is a complete dick, he's fair and gives them breaks during shifts. Even if the foreman's pocketing more than his fair share of food from the supply trains, no man's been worked to death since Jun's been here. They're not evil, not to their cores.
Sho spends a lot of his leisure time reading, keeping to himself. But Jun sees the eyes that follow him. Nobody from Jun's side of the water bothers him or even gives him a second glance. But the ones from his home laugh at him, still spit on him. "Coward" and "spineless" are the kindest words they have for him.
"What did you do that was so bad?" Jun finds himself asking after every shift as they bed down in the tent. "Why did they do this to you?"
Sho's still not ready to open up, much as Jun thinks it'll do him good to get it off his chest. Jun's done more than his fair share of telling his life story, relating tales of the exotic lifestyle that was chicken farming in a rundown desert oasis town. He tells him about Shun chasing after every girl who came through on a caravan, tells him about Toma's pranks. Sho cracks a smile here and there, and Jun likes the sight of it. Smiles are rare from him.
"We took that from you," Sho says when Jun's seconds from sleep one morning. "I'm really sorry."
The only apology that's been offered since Jun's been working the line.
--
Shifts are shortened over the next few nights so the camp can start getting packed up. They collapse the mess hall tents, yank up the temp pipes that have been pulling the water for their showers out of the ground. The night before they leave, the foreman does them all a kindness and says they've got a night off. Of course there's still their own tents to see to come morning, but it's a rarity. Jun intends to enjoy it.
There are men with rifles posted throughout the camp to keep them from running, but otherwise the codes on their necks are decorative. There's no point in juicing up a scanner to track them. There's nothing but desert to either side. Several days' walk anywhere they'd want to go. Rifles and the animals that roam the desert are a good enough deterrent.
The outskirts of the camp are dotted with sand-smoothed rocks jutting up out of the dunes. Most of the others have similar ideas for how to spend the time off, and he watches men move past with their pillows and bedrolls. They always sleep during the day but tonight the foreman's letting them sleep under the stars.
Jun opens the tent flap, finds Sho lying down in his bedroll with a blank look on his face. Jun rolls up his own. "Come on," he says. He's grown used to sleeping with company. He could follow Kazu and his crew. They've probably had their bit of rock scouted out and claimed for hours. But Sho can't miss this. No matter what he's been dealing with, no matter what pain and misery they'll be dealing with at the next camp he can't miss this.
"That's okay," Sho mutters.
Jun stands with his bedroll in his arms. "You get up, and you come with me," he says in a voice that's not joking around.
Sho sighs, giving in. Jun feels the slightest twinge of remorse for his forcefulness. He's spoken to Sho like he's in charge of him, like Sho's someone he can order around. It makes Jun no better than Hayes, no better than the foreman. He doesn't apologize though, helping Sho to pack up.
They leave the tent behind, taking their rucksacks along and wandering past the guards with their stuff in tow. Jun's deliberately gone the opposite way most of the others have. The prime locations are in the other direction, but Sho will have more quiet on this side. Jun swallows down the sensation of putting Sho's needs and concerns first when he still doesn't know the first thing about him. He only knows the callused hands, the less-rounded cheeks, the shock of dark hair that like Jun's is long overdue for a trim.
They find a place still within eyesight of one of the riflemen and he sets down his bedroll. The ground here's no harder than he's used to in the tent but already the cool night air is a blessing. Jun lies down on his back, letting out a quiet whoop of joy. He hears Sho chuckle at his enthusiasm as he unravels his own things. Despite their relative freedom, the lack of the tent, Sho doesn't make a move to separate them. Instead he's got his things just as close as always, close enough that Jun could stretch his arm out to the side and collide with Sho's.
He doesn't know why, but this pleases him. Maybe Sho respects him. Maybe Sho even likes him. After everything Jun's done for him, it's nice to see that Sho doesn't bolt at the first chance he gets.
They're quiet for a while, on their backs with the open sky above them. Jun can feel a few tears forming in his eyes, and it's dark enough that he just lets them roll down his cheeks. He's worked for months under the stars, under the never-ending sky and the promise it holds. Only now can he actually enjoy it.
"When I was a kid," Sho mutters a few minutes later, "we sometimes camped out in our back garden."
"Who?"
"Me, my younger sister," Sho says, and for the first time Jun knows that Sho belongs somewhere. Belonged, more like. "But it was hard to see anything. Where I'm from, I mean. There's too many lights from the buildings, other people's houses. It's never really dark like this."
Jun's always known a night sky, dotted with thousands of stars. Other worlds, so far from their own. Maybe a world where there aren't people across the sea who seem to think they need more land than they already have. Maybe a world where they could have just let things be.
"I like it," Sho admits. "How can you not, right?"
It's the most Sho's said about himself in the weeks they've known one another, the most he's ever opened up. Maybe the vastness of the sky serves as a reminder of how wonderful the world can be even if things on the ground aren't.
Jun remembers so many nights camped out like this with Toma and Shun, and he tells Sho as much. Back then they'd name the stars after stupid things, after dirty things, after people in town they didn't much care for. "That's Old Man Harlan's constellation," Jun noted, pointing up to a small cluster directly overhead, a formation of five.
"Who's that?" Sho asks.
Jun smiles. "He used to go behind Toma's dad's shop and jerk himself off, and we caught him one day."
Sho's laughter is one of the best sounds Jun has ever heard, this crazy high-pitched sound like he's almost out of breath. "What?" he finally gasps.
Jun can't help laughing too. "We were twelve years old. We thought the Jack Off constellation was the funniest thing ever."
Sho's still trying to breathe. "Here I am telling you about my sister and you're talking about masturbating stars."
Jun leans over and elbows him. "Harlan was the masturbator. We just named the stars after him. I don't know, Shun thought that together they were shaped like a dick."
That sets Sho off again, and they laugh until it aches. Jun hasn't laughed like this in ages, not since the days when the invasion from across the sea was nothing but a rumor. Instead of the shy, quiet person who's been more of a shadow than a friend, he learns that Sho likes to laugh.
"Alright, alright," Jun finally says, trying to calm down. He pulls his blanket over himself because the temperature's cooler than he's used to since he's not working. "Got an early start tomorrow."
"Thank you," Sho says in response, which Jun doesn't expect.
"For what?"
"This," Sho replies. "For everything. You didn't have to help me. I'm sorry for being such a burden."
Jun can already feel sleep tugging at him, but Sho's opening up, and it would be wrong not to listen. "Not a burden," he says. At least not as much as it felt like at first.
"I played piano," Sho explains slowly, holding up his hands. The hands he'd all but shredded on that first shift he'd worked. The hands he'd begged Jun not to wrap up, not to hide. "I know it probably seems like a frivolous job to someone who's worked like this for so much of your life, but it's different where I'm from. I wasn't the best, but I taught piano to kids. It was a decent living. And then we decided to invade, and the time for being frivolous had to be put on hold. They told me I was going to officer training, the army. I refused to go. Wasn't my war. They didn't like my answer."
Coward. Traitor. All the names the men from his own land call him. Sho's not like the others. He just wanted to do what he loved and didn't want to be parted from it. And so his own people have brought him low, dropped him here in a place they surely knew would ruin his hands and break his spirit.
"I don't know much about music. And you don't want to hear me sing," Jun says, for some reason itching to feel Sho's hands, Sho's touch. To watch those hands drift over piano keys in some fancy concert hall in the cities Jun's never seen. "But I just wish a lot more of you were the piano playing type and not the soldiering type."
"Me too."
"Be months before we finish this job," Jun says, eyes stuck on the sky. Looking from the Jack Off constellation to the one named after the girl Shun lost his virginity to. "And then after that I don't know what they'll make us do. We may have to join the army after all."
Sho shifts, leaning on his elbow to look down at him. He feels close, even out here in the open air, so much closer than he ever felt when they were in their tent together. He's so close Jun can smell him, the lingering scent of the cheap bar soap from the shower tent.
"I won't join the army. Labor I'll do. But I won't fight your people."
"We'll have no choice," Jun reminds him. "They'll run out of stuff for us to build so they'll find us something to destroy. So they can rebuild it again the way they think is better."
"What if..." Sho's voice trails off, full of doubt.
"What if what?"
"Too presumptuous to speak of," Sho murmurs. "I'm sorry, we should just sleep."
"You started it," Jun says, giving Sho what he thinks is a playful shove, but it's enough to send him onto his back on his bedroll again and Jun almost falls with him, desperately holding himself up. "What then?"
"I studied the maps. Back home, we all know what your land is like. Desert here, mountains north. Desert's just a means to an end, a place we have to pass through to link up with the northern riches. Unlike your Toshi Town, we didn't take over the whole desert. Just snatched up the land we needed for the rail line."
It amazes Jun that Sho can still talk about his homeland as something he belongs to, even if it spat him out and marked him for life. "So what are you saying?" Jun prods him, even if he has an uncomfortable idea where this is going.
"We cross the desert. Start a new life."
"Together?" Jun blurts out, his stomach tying in knots. Sho and him, him and Sho. Breaking away from the endless work.
"I..." Sho falters, his confidence draining. "You've been such a friend, I just...see, I told you it was presumptuous."
"Not presumptuous," Jun says. "Stupid. In case you haven't noticed, we've got codes imprinted on our necks. We can change whatever we want, but that's not going away. We're marked. And that's assuming we first get away from camp, which is near impossible, and if we somehow manage that, it takes days to cross the desert. It's hard going, assuming we even find an oasis town that'll take us in."
"I can't stay here, Jun. I can't."
Jun chews the inside of his cheek. In all these weeks, he's come to accept the way of his life, no matter how terrible. Running away would be cowardly. Leaving Kazu, the other men behind. Shirking responsibility, the life he has that Toma and Shun might not have any longer.
But with the new camp they'll surely get more workers. At the pace they're going it's the leading camp gossip. More workers from overseas, more hands to haul and to hammer. More workers to step on him, belittle him. Belittle Sho.
"As long as we're here, they own us," Sho says. He points at the stars again with his finger, which may never again play a piano. "You can name them after as many folks as you want but nobody owns them. It's a dumb metaphor, I don't even know what I mean."
What it means is that Sho's dead set on going, no matter what Jun thinks. But they'd come up to his tent that day. "This is 417519," they'd said, leaving Sho in his care. And Sho's come to depend on him, to need him. He can't even imagine Sho trying to cross the desert sands alone. And he doesn't know how he could live with himself if he lets Sho leave without him. He knows others have deserted the camp before. Nobody goes after them because the desert will claim the unprepared, the desperate. They can always get more workers.
"We do this my way," Jun says defiantly. "If you want to go, we do this intelligently."
"Jun..."
"Go to sleep. We're not going anywhere for a while."
Sho settles down, his movements on his bedroll stilling. Jun cares about Sho, more than he's even realized. Everything he thinks he's been doing, obliging a foolish, shy person, has not been the full truth of it. He's been watching Sho, protecting Sho from the second he saw him up on that platform, getting marked without being numbed.
Jun keeps his eyes on the ownerless stars shining down on them, wondering what they can possibly do to break free. And wondering what it would be like, just him and Sho, running away under the big open sky.
--
They move camp, and tent assignments remain the same. In the upheaval of the camp, a full six workers have disappeared by the time they arrive and settle down, and Kazu's among them. This many have never tried it before. It's usually two or three pressing their luck when the camp makes their way north. This will only make it harder for him and Sho if they try to leave. The only good thing about it is that Kazu is free.
The foreman's not going to do them any favors now, not with so many runaways. Rations are cut in half for a few days, making work shifts all the more tiresome. The track they've just laid over the past month brings a train full of new workers. Like before, they're all from across the sea, from Sho's home. The tents are made for two, but some are forced to house three now.
The faster they finish the line, it seems, the faster they'll be able to get supplies north to the fighting. Jun's people are proving more resistant than had been anticipated. The war is long and losses are gaining. He hears the workers from overseas grumbling about it, hears the crew leaders complaining.
Tensions rise in camp. The close quarters, the extra bodies in the shower tent, in the mess. Even though he and Sho are lucky enough to still have their tent to themselves, any day now they might find themselves saddled with another person. Fights break out during free hours, during break time. Jun can't watch Sho every second of the day, and hostilities quickly turn against him.
One night during a shift, Jun's coming back with steel on his shoulders when he sees a group of four men from another crew surround Sho, who's just trying to keep his head down and do his job. They surround him, taunt him, knock him down. The crew leader's down the line, but he hears the commotion and comes running. But he won't be fast enough to break it up.
Jun drops the bars angrily, hurries over. "Lay off him!" he shouts, hands quickly becoming fists as he attacks the first man he sees. "You just lay off him!"
As Jun hoped, they turn on him instead. Even after all this time, Jun's crew has little sympathy for Sho, but they're local boys and still loyal to Jun. Sho's on the ground, air kicked out of his lungs, as the others swarm and try to help out. Jun still gets a punch to the face that sends him reeling, a hard boot in the back that lands him on the ground, sand and dirt kissing him.
"Break it up!" Hayes screams when he arrives, the crew leader of the bullies with him. "I said break it up!"
It takes another ten men to separate them all. "It was him," says one of thugs, pointing at Sho still on the ground. "He started it."
"Liar!" Jun hisses, wiping at his face. Under the plasma lamp light he can see a streak of blood across his glove. "They ganged up on him. Four on one sound like a fair fight to you?"
The crew backs Jun, and even Hayes doesn't know what to do. There's more and more fights every shift, and it's clear that the men in charge are growing scared of losing control.
"417519, can you walk?" Hayes asks Sho.
"Yes, sir."
"Take 417234 to the infirmary. You're both on mess cleanup duty for the next two weeks. Dismissed."
Sho struggles to his feet, holds out his hand and Jun takes it. The pair of them limp off while Hayes and the other crew leader start doling out punishments for the others.
Sho's got his arm around Jun's back, and for the first time, it's Sho carrying Jun's weight. "Should have let them beat on me," Sho chides him as Jun tries to determine if his face or his back hurts more.
"Don't be stupid," Jun grumbles back at him.
While Aiba examines him, Sho sits on a stool in the infirmary and watches close. Jun's nose isn't broken, so he only gets a cold pack and a tiny, pathetic excuse for a pain pill. Sho doesn't ask for anything from the doctor.
They make it to the tent, Sho helping Jun inside. "Lie down," Sho orders, and Jun rolls his eyes. But he obeys just the same.
He feels nervous as Sho unlaces Jun's boots, sets them neatly beside his rucksack and then sits down cross legged at his side. Sho takes the cold pack from Jun's hand and holds it against Jun's nose.
"I can do this myself," Jun points out.
"We'll never be even for those first few weeks," Sho says quietly. "Just let me help you for once."
Jun says nothing, only opening up his palm. Hoping that he hasn't misjudged this completely. Sho keeps the cold pack pressed to Jun's face but twines the fingers of his other hand with Jun's. Something passes between the two of them that neither seem ready to talk about, but Jun squeezes Sho's hand and knows that they need to move up their timetable.
They need to get out of this camp before it kills them both.
--
Mess duty on top of their regular work schedule isn't so much difficult as it is unpleasant. And then, of course, there's plotting an escape simultaneously. They have to scoop out portions at both meal shifts, and the scraps that remain are all they're fed.
At the rate the crews are completing track, they'll break camp in another week. They'll be watched when the caravan moves off; they'll all be scanned before they get going and they'll be scanned again when they arrive. And maybe this time the foreman will send men after those who run.
Which means they have to leave some other time. They have to leave before camp packs up. They've curved this section of track around a dried-out gully. It's the natural border of the current camp, and it's where they've been throwing the waste from the mess after every meal. It's maybe ten, twelve feet down, and Jun thinks that they can hide stuff down there while they prepare. They've got a decent excuse to be walking to the gully and back, and so they start to steal.
They hide small tins of beans, tins of beef inside rubbish bags, and they toss them in the gully where the flies have gathered and most of the men with rifles don't want to walk. People on second meal shift are Jun's people so he distracts them, talks to them while they ignore Sho as usual. And then Sho siphons water into empty bottles, seals them up. Into the gully they go. Water's the most precious thing they'll need, other than one another.
During their shifts, Jun memorizes the movements of the men with the rifles. Memorizes the movements of the crew leaders as they walk up and down the track, yelling at the men to work harder. He sees where the plasma lamps reach and where they do not. The gully is at the opposite end of camp from where they work. They'll have to slip away one at a time, running for the tent instead of walking back to pick up more steel or rock.
Sho protests when Jun tells him to make a run for it first. "I'll be right behind you," he says quietly in their tent. "I promise I will. It's more important that you get away."
"That's bullshit."
Jun doesn't argue the point further, and Sho seems to reluctantly agree.
They spend their leisure time as normal, playing cards just like the others. They work their long mess shift, dropping off the last water they'll be able to carry into the gully. It's been a hot, nasty day, and the flies are still around. When night falls and their shifts begin, they work the first three hours as normal, take their break. He and Sho exchange one last glance. Their last chance to change their minds. Sho only nods.
They start working again, and before too long the crew leaders are back in top form, barking out orders. The men are breaking their backs, and Jun's going back and forth to get more steel. Then Sho disappears, right on schedule. Jun's heart races. Every sound in the camp becomes suddenly louder. The men in the crew further down the line who sing songs from home, the crew leaders' shouts, the sound of the tools fusing the metal together.
Any second now Sho could get caught. He doesn't even know what the punishment could be for getting caught deserting. He waits fifteen long, agonizing minutes as they've agreed. Jun's journey is shorter when he breaks away. He can go straight for the gully because Sho's already been to the tent for their rucksacks and bedrolls. No alarms have sounded, so he's managed to walk off with all that bulk and avoid the riflemen and the plasma lamps.
He gets to the edge of the gully, only the moon and starlight to guide him, and he signals. One short whistle, heart in his throat. He needs Sho to be down there. He needs him to be.
He hears a whistle in return and it's the most beautiful sound.
He crouches down, boots kicking up rocks as he sits down at the edge. He can smell the garbage, and it makes him gag but he goes down, crawling a bit like a crab down the most gradual slope of the gully. It's much harder in the dark, but he reaches the bottom, and Sho's there, reaching for him instantly and pulling him up.
This is happening. They're leaving. And all they know is that they're following the gully south as far as it'll hide them, then they'll head west until they find somewhere, anywhere that can take them in.
Sho's hesitant to let him go. Jun's hesitant too. But there's no time. "Already packed as much as I could find in the dark," Sho says, sounding a little disgusted. He smells, too, which makes Jun grin, but the food and water they've managed to steal away will help them for a few days at least if they ration properly.
Jun finds the two rucksacks, decides to take the one that feels a bit heavier. But at least all of these weeks of hauling have made the two of them stronger. He leads the way south. They've got at least three or four hours of darkness to help them along.
It's slow going in the dark, and they stumble and steady one another countless times. But Jun feels confident with Sho at his back. He's getting Sho out of here. No matter what the desert holds, he's getting Sho out.
--
When day comes and the heat grows unbearable they rest in a small break in the gully wall, something carved out long ago by a river. They've gone hours and they've heard nothing behind them. Maybe it's easier on the camp if Sho's gone from it. The stars above seem to have protected them this far. Now they'll be relying on just the sun.
They eat and then they sleep. When they wake, Jun finds that Sho's curled up behind him, and he can feel Sho's breath against the back of his neck. He wants to shut his eyes, enjoy the closeness a moment longer but they have to move. "You stink," he says in mock irritation. Sho rolls away with a murmured apology, sounding embarrassed.
It's mid-afternoon, and they pull out the cloth they've taken. Few dish towels here, few bath towels from the shower tent there. They fashion them into coverings for the top of their heads, their faces, to endure the heat and the kicked-up sand. They look ridiculous, but Jun will take ridiculous over sunstroke.
They set out once more and finally leave the gully behind them. It's navigable for now. The invaders chose this part of the desert to build their railway because of how hard-packed the earth is in the region. There are dunes, sure, but their boots don't sink in and they won't get stuck. He lets Sho set the pace walking in front of him. Jun grew up out here, Sho didn't. He doesn't dare force him to move faster than he's capable of.
Even with their faces covered, sand gets in his eyes. They itch and burn as the sun bakes them. They're leaving tracks if anyone cares to follow them, but if the foreman's men didn't catch them in the gully, they've pretty much been given up for dead already. To the men at the camp, Jun and Sho are now coyote bait, vulture food.
And still they press on, even as night falls and Sho grows weary. They can't camp out in the open, not out here where there's too many things that could go wrong. The caravans go through here, though, with their pack animals. No mag brake trains for them out here, but they seem to manage just fine. There must be places they set up camp with some means of protection.
They trudge up a small hill, finally spying a cave carved into rock. There's scattered bones on the floor of it, so it must have been an animal's den at some point, but there's no sign of any predators now. It's not much more than a notch in the rock, just like in the gully, but it's big enough for them both to lie down without their feet poking out. They settle in for a few hours. If they can walk through the rest of the night they won't have to travel as much by day, provided they keep finding shelter and don't run low on water. Already he's forcing himself not to drink as much as he wishes to, all for the sake of conservation.
He's stirring from sleep when he hears Sho move, feels his hand on his forehead. He opens his eyes, confused. There's an intense look in Sho's gaze. "Something wrong?" Jun asks, wondering if Sho's heard an animal or something outside.
Sho leans down, and before Jun realizes what's going on, Sho's kissing him. But Jun, as always, has been quick to adapt. Their lips are dry, cracked from the unforgiving desert but Sho is so warm when Jun slips his arms around him, moving so Sho can lie beside him. They're filthy and tired but they've escaped. Nothing else matters because they're surviving together.
"Jun," Sho says, needing more. All those days and nights side by side in their tent, and Sho's wanted this. Jun's wanted this. Only now can they act on it. Only now when they aren't focused on getting through another day at the camp can they have this. The hands that Jun took care of in those first days are now exploring his skin, slipping under his shirt. The tension that's marked the last few weeks, the nervous hours waiting to escape...it all slips away.
The rail line will keep stretching north as the men hammer back at the camp. The invading army will continue their siege on the northern cities. Jun's town is gone, Sho's life back home is gone. Out here they'll forge a new beginning.
--
They've almost exhausted their supplies and their own strength when they find a town several days later. They've strayed off their course to avoid a pack of coyotes. They've fallen down, pulled each other back up. The wind has blown sand in their eyes, whipped their skin red and raw. But they've trusted in the skies, in the stars, in each other, and they've found this place.
The town is empty, they discover. One of the desert start-ups that never lasted. Maybe it was off the usual caravan routes. Maybe the invaders hauled the residents away for their labor camps or military. But to Sho and Jun, it may as well be a beautiful garden in the middle of the empty desert sands.
There's shelter - most of the houses have fallen into disrepair, but they'll have a roof overhead. The well needs fixing, but there will be water. Some of the houses still have food, and some of it's not even rotten. It's not a permanent place by any means, but if they've gotten here, they can surely get anywhere once they've regained their strength.
He watches Sho drop his rucksack from his tired shoulders and step forward, arms outstretched in gratitude for the relative paradise that's welcomed them. Jun sees that the numbers 417519 imprinted on the back of his neck are hidden now by the growth of his hair. He touches his own skin and discovers the same.
Sho turns and holds out his hand. Jun steps forward to take it.
It won't be easy. Maybe it never will be, but so long as there are stars overhead there are possibilities.