Chapter 2: Pinned to the Wall
The static hum of the fluorescent bulb was the only sound in Kato’s quarters. It was a noise he usually filtered out, but tonight it felt like a taunt. A high-pitched whine underscoring the silence. He’d been sitting on the edge of his cot for an hour, staring at the reinforced steel door.
Three days. Seventy-two hours of GZ looking through him in the mess hall, of clipped, technical answers during the post-op debrief, of a careful, calculated distance that felt colder than the shower ever had.
The memory of GZ shuddering against the tiles was a brand on Kato’s mind. It felt more real than anything in this concrete box. The avoidance since then was a betrayal of that reality.
He moved before he could think better of it. The door opened without a sound under his hand—he’d long ago learned the exact pressure to keep the hinges from complaining. The corridor was empty, lit by the same sickly yellow light. He didn’t walk to GZ’s room. He stalked.
GZ’s door was identical to his own. Kato didn’t knock. He turned the handle and pushed. It was locked. A quiet, definitive click.
A normal lock. For normal people.
Kato pressed his palm flat against the metal just beside the handle. He pushed, not with a sudden jerk, but with a slow, inexorable increase of pressure. The metal around the bolt assembly groaned, then gave with a sharp, shearing crack. The door swung inward.
GZ was on his feet in the center of the room, shirtless, his body coiled tight. His pale eyes glinted in the bad light. Surprise, then a flash of anger. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
“You tell me,” Kato said, stepping inside and letting the broken door settle shut behind him. The room was a mirror of his own: barren, cold, a cell.
“Get out.”
“No.”
Kato advanced. He wasn’t gentle. He backed GZ against the unyielding cinderblock wall, the sheer mass of him blocking out the light. He could feel the familiar, feverish heat coming off GZ’s skin, a reactor on idle.
“You’ve been avoiding me,” Kato growled. The words were low, roughened by the nights of silence.
GZ’s jaw worked. “There’s nothing to avoid. It happened. It’s done.”
“Like hell it is.” Kato’s hand came up, not to strike, but to cage GZ’s face, his thumb rough against the sharp cheekbone. “You think you can just reset? Go back to being the fucking weapon in the vault?”
“That’s what we are.”
“Not with each other.” The statement hung between them, audacious and fragile.
GZ tried to turn his head away. “Kato…”
He didn’t let him. He leaned in, his voice dropping to a harsh whisper. “You came apart for me. You think I don’t feel that every time you look through me like I’m a piece of furniture?”
Their mouths were inches apart. Kato could see the rapid pulse in GZ’s throat. He saw the conflict, the fight between the lifelong training of isolation and the raw, human need that had broken through in the steam.
“Fuck you,” GZ breathed, but it lacked conviction. It sounded like a plea.
“Yeah,” Kato said. “That’s the idea.”
He closed the distance. This kiss wasn’t the battle of the showers. It was hungry, searching, a question he was desperate to have answered. GZ resisted for a fraction of a second, then a broken noise echoed from his throat into Kato’s mouth and he surrendered. His lips parted, his tongue meeting Kato’s with a frantic edge.
Kato’s hands slid down the lean, hot plane of GZ’s back, over the ridge of his hips. In one fluid, powerful motion, he hoisted him up, pinning him against the wall with GZ’s legs automatically wrapping around his waist. The ease of it, the sheer physical trust of it, sent a jolt through Kato’s core.
“Been thinking about this,” Kato muttered against his mouth, grinding his own aching hardness against GZ’s ass. “For days. Just this.”
One massive hand stayed under GZ’s ass, holding him aloft as if he weighed nothing. The other shoved between their bodies, palming GZ through his fatigues. He was already hard, his cock a thick line of heat against Kato’s palm. Kato fumbled with the button and zipper, shoving the rough fabric down just enough to get his hand inside.
His fingers closed around GZ’s cock. It was hot and silky, already leaking. GZ’s head thunked back against the cinderblock with a sharp gasp, his eyes squeezing shut.
“Look at me,” Kato demanded, his voice gravel.
GZ’s pale blue eyes flew open, wide and unfocused. Kato held his gaze as he started to stroke him, a slow, brutal rhythm, his fist gliding up and down the slick length. He used the precome beading at the tip, spreading it, making the glide filthy and perfect.
“You’re not a weapon right now,” Kato said, watching him unravel. “You’re just a man. And you want my hand on you.”
“Yes.” The word was ripped from him. His hips began to stutter, fucking up into Kato’s fist.
“What do you want?” Kato demanded, tightening his grip on the upstroke, twisting his wrist.
GZ’s breath hitched. His thighs tightened around Kato’s waist. “I want… I want you inside me. Now. I don’t want to wait. I don’t want gentle.”
“I know.” Kato let him slide down just enough. With one hand, he yanked his own fatigues and briefs down to his thighs, his cock springing free, thick and flushed and desperate. He spat into his palm, slicked himself roughly. It wasn’t enough, not really, but the raw ache of it felt right. He notched the head against GZ’s hole, which was still clutching empty air.
“You’re sure,” Kato gritted out. It wasn’t a question. It was a last barrier.
“Do it. Fucking do it.”
Kato pushed. The resistance was fierce, a hot, tight clench that made stars burst behind his own eyes. GZ cried out, a sharp, bitten-off sound, his nails digging into Kato’s shoulders hard enough to bruise even his invulnerable skin. Kato shoved harder, burying himself in one relentless, burning inch, then two, then sinking the rest of the way until their bodies were slammed together, until he was as deep as he could possibly go.
They were both panting, frozen there. GZ was impossibly tight, a scorching, velvet fist around him. Kato could feel the fine tremors running through the body pressed against him.
“Move,” GZ begged, his voice shattered. “Please, Kato, move.”
He did. He pulled back and surged forward, setting a pace that was all driving need. The angle was brutal, each thrust punching the air from GZ’s lungs in a ragged gasp. The sound of it was obscene—skin slapping, Kato’s ragged breaths, GZ’s choked-off moans. Kato fucked him against the unfeeling wall, each slam a punctuation mark in a sentence they’d been trying to form for years.
GZ’s hand scrambled between them, fisting his own cock, stroking in a frantic, messy rhythm that matched Kato’s pounding. “I’m gonna… fuck, Kato, I’m…”
“Come for me,” Kato growled, pistoning into him, losing himself in the heat, the friction, the terrifying rightness of it. “Let me feel it.”
GZ’s body went rigid. A silent scream tore his mouth open as he came, hot stripes of release painting both their stomachs, his inner muscles clamping down on Kato’s cock in a devastating, rhythmic vise. The sensation tipped Kato over the edge. He drove in one final, deep time, his own release flooding GZ’s heat as he buried his face in the sweaty hollow of GZ’s neck, a long, guttural groan being torn from his chest.
The tremors took a long time to subside. Kato’s arms, locked under GZ’s thighs, began to ache with a human fatigue. He softened, slipped out. GZ’s legs unwound, his feet finding the floor, but he swayed. Kato kept him upright, hands on his hips, their foreheads resting together. The air reeked of sex and sweat and the faint, always-present ozone of GZ’s power.
GZ wouldn’t look up. His breath was still uneven.
“Talk to me,” Kato said, softly. The command from earlier was gone.
“I don’t know how,” GZ whispered, the confession raw in the silent room.
Kato’s hand came up, cupped the back of his neck. A simple, steady pressure. “Then don’t talk.”
They stood there in the wreckage of the door and the quiet, for a long time. The hum of the light was just a sound again. It wasn’t a taunt. It was just the place they were in. Together.