They have established a relationship expedited by cheap abundant crank and long poorly-defined winter nights — it's nothing to Rust, nothing compared to unremitting dark and cold, but it really puts the zap on Ginger and the shortened span of daylight makes him harder to manage. The air itself gets flammable, starts to feel paper-dry, and the potential for violence spikes from a low-level certainty to a crisis

They kill time around the clubhouse, fucking endlessly in whatever privacy there is to be found — long leisurely sessions where they screw until the condom breaks and keep on going at it, until they're both raw and have fucked themselves too stupid to care. If anyone IC Brotherhood caught them going at it, Rust would be fucked for life. Crash doesn't know that caliber of self-preservation.

Ginger says he loves him once, the three words spilling against Rust's back like the line of spit tracking between his raw mouth and the topmost knob of Rust's spine. He should answer him — Crash would — but Crash is a wreck with the horizon of some kind of release vanishing behind him and all his throat will produce is an animal whine.

Ginger feels at him between his legs; Rust is flagging. He makes an apologetic sound. Crystal makes it impossible to get hard and stay hard, but the desire's still there burning clear and bright. It sharpens the edges between them.

Ginger rolls him over onto his side and wrings an orgasm out of him with his hands, with their hipbones chipping like flint and Rust's nails cutting tracks down the back of Ginger's shaved neck, Ginger's long red beard scratching against his throat. He spills chlorine-white between his partner's fingers.

It's a climax like an exorcism, delayed and drawn-out into a lash of pain. In the flinch of pleasure all memory of anyone else is annihilated — there's only flesh, bloodless and strengthless with the weight of Ginger's body on him. Ginger's arm bracing his chest, sticky in their undershirts with a fresh tattoo still itchy and pink on Rust's forearm. Ginger's palm digs in against the new ink, trying to hurt him a little or trying to keep him in place. He's marked now, that's a good sign. Rust presses his mouth to the tattooed place beneath Ginger's collarbone and says nothing — forcing out breaths just this side of sobs.