The Good Fight, by Glacis. No copyright infringement intended. Spoilers for ‘Into the Moonless Night’, season 3 premiere.

The first thing he heard when he woke up was the sound of people in pain. Crying, whimpering, some of them dying.

Jesse gradually stretched muscles cramped from being held far too long in a hyper-dense state. He didn’t remember massing; the last thing he remembered, they were running for the exit. Him, and Brennan, then Shalimar and her father, followed by Emma, with Adam bringing up the rear. He must have massed unconsciously in response to the threat.

Yet another unexpected improvement. His powers, like those of all the team, were developing by odd quantum leaps. He worried at it in the back of his mind as his body burrowed through the crowd of people, some wounded, some dead, and dozens of emergency workers trying to keep the injured from dying.

He felt as if his muscles had whiplash, so perhaps he’d de-massed during the explosion, then massed again as the building collapsed around them and the ocean burst through the walls. Yeah, he decided, that made more sense, and he was distantly proud of his mutation for reacting so well without any conscious thought on his part.

Because every conscious thought he had was centered on finding his family.

He saw them before he reached them. Shalimar appeared unhurt, but hysterical, practically attacking a woman to get to her father, who was carried off on a gurney. A tall figure lurching over to her caught Jesse’s eye, and he swallowed against a lump in his throat that threatened to choke him.

Brennan was alive.

Thank god.

Jesse hadn’t prayed in years, but he’d been praying under his breath since the moment he’d woken up. It would cripple him to lose Shalimar; she was the sister he’d never had. Or Adam, more a father to him than his own had ever been. It would hurt like hell to lose Emma; she, of them all, understood his need for solitude. But it would kill him to lose Brennan. Brennan was his heart; without Bren, Jesse might as well be dead himself.

Shaking off the momentary paralysis he’d been caught in, stemming from sheer relief, Jesse started forward again when Shalimar gave a scream like a wounded animal.

“Emma!” She reached out to a body, shrouded in a yellow sheet. She was shaking so badly Brennan had to hold her upright.

Jesse stumbled, then pushed on. Brennan reached around Shalimar and pulled the sheet away long enough to verify that the corpse was, indeed, Emma. Jesse’s muscles stopped moving again, and he stared dumbly at Brennan, holding a sobbing Shalimar, as Emma’s body was carried away. A lifeless hand jolted off the side of the gurney and a shining silver band fell from it. Shalimar reached down and picked up the ring.

“This can’t be happening.” Jesse didn’t know if he said it aloud, but Brennan looked around and saw him. The light in those dark eyes told him without words that Brennan was as relieved to see Jesse as Jesse was to see him. If they hadn’t been in the middle of triage hell, Jesse would have kissed him, outing be damned.

Then it hit him.

“Where’s Adam?”

Grief would wait. It had to. They had to find Adam.

Jesse led the way out of the teeming mass of people, roughly shouldering them out of his path, Brennan and Shalimar on his heels. The Double Helix was still cloaked, sitting where they’d parked her. In less than three minutes they were underway, barely giving the engines time to warm. Jesse’s hands flew over the console, demanding answers, wringing data from it every way he knew how, searching for any trace of Adam’s presence.

To no avail.

“Damnit, he’s got to be here somewhere.” But he didn’t seem to be. There were no indications from his ring, no signal from his cell, no sign that Adam Kane was anywhere at all anymore.

Jesse refused to give up. Adam told him once, “Jess, you could out-stubborn a mule.” It had been an oddly homely thing for Adam to say, and it still made Jesse smile. It also buttressed his determination when exhaustion might otherwise have made him falter. He was a Molecular, and he had a will of granite. He drew on every ounce of that will now.

“The sensors at Sanctuary are more sensitive.” With wider coverage. Requiring less power to amplify the signal and still have it within acceptable range to find it. So even if Adam were unconscious they’d find him. Even if he were dead. Jesse gritted his teeth, closed down that thought, and as soon as they touched down he ran full-speed to the main computer grid.

Shalimar was off somewhere, probably Emma’s room. Jesse didn’t look away from the data streaming across his monitors to check. Brennan was beside him. He didn’t have to look up to know that.

Bren radiated a warmth no one else did, and Jesse could feel him, knew where he was even in the pitch dark. The heat of a broad hand resting on his shoulder for a moment tempted him to lean into it, but he resisted, still staring at his screens.

“You okay?” Brennan’s voice was as warm as his presence, layered with concern and carefully concealed love. Jesse didn’t know whether to laugh or scream, so he did neither.

“Not really,” he answered with false calm. He glanced up at Brennan for a split second.

Long enough.

He saw understanding and a share of his own grief in Brennan’s dark eyes. Then Jesse turned back to his search. After a moment, Brennan left him to it.

Almost subliminally Jesse heard the murmur of voices from Emma’s room. Shal, tense, wild, high; Bren, low, aching, controlled. He forced himself to tune them out, his world narrowing to numbers and grids and traces of broken data that might be the echo of Adam’s electronic signature.

When he saw it, he blinked twice before he believed it. “Guys!” he yelled. “Get out here!”

Five minutes later Shalimar and Brennan were in the Double Helix speeding over the city, with Jesse still tracking, still watching, feeding them the information they needed to save Adam.

They failed.

The echo was a specter, a homeless man wired by a heartless man as bait in a trap for what remained of Mutant X. Jesse listened over the COM link in horror as Eckhart and his flunkeys taunted Shalimar, already so close to the end of her tether, then turned on Brennan, until Brennan broke and lunged at them. As he attacked they dissipated, holographic ghosts of the gatekeepers to truth.

When it was over Brennan and Shalimar returned to Sanctuary empty-handed, and Jesse forced burning eyes and an exhausted brain to try to crack Adam’s code. The only chance they had to rescue Adam was to give Eckhart what he demanded; the cure for the debilitating genetic disease that was killing the madman.

It was hopeless.

Even to a man who lived on hope.

Then a stranger appeared.

The woman knew much more than she should about Adam, about Sanctuary, about Mutant X. She showed them a ring that resembled their own, told them she was part of Mutant X version 1.0, and that she would help them get what they needed to get Adam back.

As Shalimar hissed, and Brennan yelled, the woman entered the password Jesse had tried and failed for hours to find. Lexa. Her name. As much proof as Jesse needed that, whatever else she might be lying about, she did know Adam.

Later, much later, after sifting through data until he thought his eyes would explode in their sockets, Jesse handed Brennan the disk with the information Eckhart demanded in exchange for Adam’s life. Brennan and Lexa argued about the plan, and Jesse spoke for the first time in hours.

“She’s right.” They could fight over territory later. Lexa had a plan, and it just might work. They had to take the chance. Brennan shot him an angry look, but eventually agreed. He led Shalimar and Lexa to the Double Helix, for the second showdown with Eckhart since the nightmare began.

Jesse listened in over the COM link, horror slowly being replaced with growing rage, as they failed again. Eckhart outwitted them; his thugs stole the disk, knocked Brennan out of the fight, penned Lexa in to keep her from following, lost Shalimar when she did manage to track one of them. Jesse listened numbly, brain matching body in an exhaustion so deep breathing hurt, as the three argued and fought all the way back to Stormking Mountain.

And into Sanctuary.

And all the way through the meditation area to the information center.

He stared at them in disbelief. How the hell did they have the energy to fight? He barely had the energy to stand upright. Then again, Brennan had always fed off adrenaline long past the time when other people, even other mutants, were usually unconscious. It was one of the wellsprings of his strength.

It also contributed immensely to his short-sightedness. Jesse watched with resignation as Brennan fought with Lexa about Adam, comparing him to Eckhart and damning them both to hell. Brennan said he’d survived on the streets before he’d even heard of them, and he could damned well do it again.

Even through the roar in his ears, Jesse heard that, and pain shot through his heart. He swayed on his feet. Shalimar sent him a desperate look, but he couldn’t do anything. He couldn’t move. Couldn’t talk. Could do nothing but stare at Brennan in dumb despair and silently beg him not to leave.

Shalimar understood, reacting when Jesse couldn’t. She raced after Brennan, stopping him before he could leave the room. “I can understand you giving up on Adam,” she told him, her voice breaking. “But please don’t give up on me and Jesse.”

Please, Jesse agreed silently, please don’t leave me.

“I won’t,” Brennan told her, meeting Jesse’s eyes over her head for a moment before leaning down to kiss her forehead. “I just need time to think.”

He’d be back. He’d promised, with that look.

Jesse took the thought back to his quarters with him and fell, still dressed, on his bed. He was asleep before his head hit the pillow. The nightmares began as soon as his eyes closed, and chased him through the rest of the short night. When he woke, he was far from refreshed, but he could focus again, and that was all he needed.

A quick breakfast, and he was back at the computers. He began to track their prey through other routes. If Eckhart were going to use the information he’d blackmailed from them, he’d need to create a bio-chamber. Most of the equipment he’d need was standard, but some was highly specialized. Jesse concentrated on those items, painstakingly hunting them down, meticulously following their trail. Sometime during the afternoon, Lexa came up and sat facing him.

“You worry me,” she told him bluntly.

“Why?” he asked quietly, eyes not leaving the information flow. “Because I’m not in your face like the others?”

Don’t assume I trust you, he added silently, because I don’t. But you’re not my priority. My family is. I’ll deal with you when they’re home and safe. He didn’t say it. He didn’t have to. He knew she understood him perfectly well.

“Don’t let people in too easily,” she warned him.

As if he needed the warning. He already knew that. He shook his head. “Adam wasn’t perfect,” he told her. “But he taught me a lot of good ideas, and I’m going to keep fighting for them.”

“An idealist,” she called him, a note of admiration fighting with an entire score of disdain in her voice.

He didn’t care. She was a resource; not one he completely understood, and not one he might ever fully trust. But he’d take every tool he could find if it helped them get Adam home.

Eventually she left, and he kept tracking. When his body protested loudly enough at sitting on one position for hours, and his eyes trailed over the same data several times without any of it penetrating his brain, he reluctantly took a break.

He turned off the interior monitors, set them with his personal security codes, and locked himself in the Dojo. For an hour, he turned off his brain and kicked the holy crap out of a slew of holographic GSA agents. Every time a thought tried to creep in, or an emotion tried to ambush him, he concentrated harder. By the end of the workout, he was drenched with sweat, feeling cleansed bone-deep. He took a shower, washing away fatigue and leaving behind a renewed sense of purpose.

He was going to find Adam. It was going to be all right.

As he left the Dojo, he heard voices from one of the side rooms off the main computer module. Lexa, and an older man whose voice he didn’t recognize. Moving silently, he stayed in the shadows and listened as she reported in to her handlers.

From the sound of it, she didn’t want to be here any more than Mutant X wanted her there, but she had no choice. They were blackmailing her, something about information they had that she needed to find people important to her.

Sounded familiar. From where Jesse stood, there wasn’t much difference between them and Eckhart. It was one reason Jesse wasn’t as angry as he might otherwise be at Brennan. From Brennan’s perspective, Adam’s experiments weren’t all that different than Eckhart’s, either.

Then the anonymous man continued, and Jesse froze. The man’s words left him reeling. Eckhart didn’t just have Adam, bad as that was.

The son of a bitch had Brennan.

The conversation ended and he stepped forward, letting Lexa know he was there. She asked him if he made it a habit to listen to other people’s personal conversations. The look he gave her showed how stupid he thought that question was.

“It’s about my friend,” he understated considerably. “You bet I do.” Then he turned back to the computers.

His mind was icily concentrated. He banked down the rage threatening to consume him, forcing himself to utter calmness, focusing completely on the task at hand, refusing to allow his emotions to get in the way of his mission.

To find Brennan.

Shalimar went to the bar where Brennan had been taken. Jesse’s fingers flew over the keyboard as he followed up the snippets of information she’d beaten out of the bartender. Ten minutes later, he pinned down the cell phone one of the kidnappers used to contact her masters.

Five minutes after that, Shalimar was in the Double Helix on her way to break Brennan out of Eckhart’s clutches.

By the time she made it to the abandoned power station where Eckhart had his base of operations, Jesse had hacked into the monitor grid in the building. He spoke softly into the link, directing Shalimar to the center of the building where an obscene scene was taking place.

Brennan was chained to a chair, one that grounded him, from the look of it, rendering him incapable of using his Elemental power. A psionic had her hands clamped around his skull, tearing his memories from him, raping his mind to get information on Sanctuary for Eckhart, weaving a tapestry of stolen memory in the air for Brennan’s captors.

Jesse swore under his breath as he saw Stormking Mountain appear before Eckhart, wondering only for a moment what Eckhart meant when he said the place had meant so much to him and Adam, before hoarse screams wrenched Jesse’s attention back to Brennan. Jesse’s fists clenched and he barely restrained himself from putting a massed fist through a wall as the psi-bitch pushed deeper, pulled out more, leaving Brennan a trembling, sweating, wild-eyed figure hunched in his chains.

Thankfully before she could destroy his mind completely, Eckhart called her off. Then he turned to his pain-wired freak of a sidekick, Silva, and ordered him to kill Brennan.

“Hurry, Shal,” Jesse murmured into the link in her ear.

She got there fast, but not before Silva sent a massive jolt of raw pain through Brennan’s body. Jesse growled at the screen as Brennan’s skin turned a strange shade of opalescent purple as the force cascaded through him. Fortunately for Shalimar, Silva was a true sadist, and the first blast to Brennan was to hurt him, not kill him.

When Shalimar swung Silva around and eviscerated him with one swipe of her curled, clawed hand, Jesse muttered, “Thank you.”

The next few moments were unbridled savagery. Shalimar broke Brennan’s chains, and Bren attacked the psionic who had tortured him so cruelly. Throwing the woman off her wheelchair face-first into the broken remnants of Eckhart’s bio-chamber, Brennan ripped a power line from the wall and thrust it into her body, holding it there, channeling massive amounts of electricity into her thrashing body, until all that remained was a charred corpse.

Shalimar watched for a moment, wide-eyed, then raised her head and sniffed the air. Jesse saw her take off after the super-feral who’d gotten away from her the first time they’d faced off with Eckhart. He didn’t get away this time.

She caught him on one of the catwalks not far from the main chamber. He didn’t stand a chance. She threw him down, clawed her way up his body, and gutted him before he could escape or attempt to defend himself. Jesse felt a little sickened, but the rage howling at the back of his mind was swamping everything else.

Mutant X had gone primal, and this time there was no Adam to rein them in.

That was never more evident than when Brennan caught up with Eckhart. The stupid man actually taunted Brennan, apparently having no idea just how far over the line of sanity Bren had been pushed. The first volley of electricity merely slowed Eckhart, who had the audacity to tell Brennan he’d never find Adam if Eckhart was killed. Jesse shook his head. Brennan no longer had any intention of finding Adam. Brennan only had one thought left in his tortured mind.

Killing Eckhart.

He did, then, with a tesla coil of such sizzling intensity it made Jesse’s eyes hurt. Eckhart lurched and twisted in the flood of blue-white fire, his body flying backward to impact a railing, then falling over it to land fifty feet below.

His body was still smoking when Shalimar walked up to stand beside Brennan. She looked down at the corpse, then up at Brennan.

“He had to die,” Brennan said simply, his voice sounding hollow in the silence following the sounds of combat.

Jesse could only agree.

He didn’t know if Adam was still alive. Didn’t know if they’d ever find him. Knew that he wouldn’t stop looking.

Back at the power station, Brennan started to shake, and Shalimar ducked under his arm, supporting him to the Double Helix, then strapping him into a seat and flying them home.

Jess was waiting for them when they got there.

Shalimar handed Brennan over to him without a word. Jesse took the near-deadweight against his side and watched Shalimar wander back toward Emma’s room, absently picking bloody shreds of unidentifiable flesh out from under her nails.

Jesse winced, wishing for a moment he could clone himself so one of him could go with his sister to coax her into talking, one could put Brennan to bed, and one could spend the rest of the night in the meditation room trying to find some peace after all the losses of the past couple days. Since he didn’t have that luxury, he half-dragged Brennan into his room, dumped him gently on the bed, and stood over him, fists on hips, glaring hard enough to set the oblivious Brennan on fire.

Several long minutes later, it dawned on Jesse that he was more tired than he thought, because Brennan was sound asleep and all the glaring was making no impression at all. He sighed. Plan B, then.

Walking out of Brennan’s room with one last glance over his shoulder that promised they would talk about this soon, Jesse went to find Shalimar.

He didn’t have to look far.

Hair wet from her shower, Shal lay curled up on Emma’s bed, the bright fuchsia and blue pillow that was Emma’s favorite held to her face. All traces of blood were gone from her hands, but the memory lingered in Jesse’s mind. He walked up to the side of the bed and settled on the edge, looking at her, waiting for her to acknowledge him.

“I will miss her the rest of my life,” she finally said, her voice muffled by the pillow and smothered in tears. “I can’t believe we lost Adam, too.”

“Can I get you anything?” Jesse asked, feeling helpless and hating it. “Is there anything I can do?”

Red-rimmed brown eyes stared at him through a tangle of dark blonde hair. “A hug would be good,” she admitted.

He scooted forward and wrapped his arms around her. They stayed that way a long time, the tension gradually leaving her body as he held her. When she was completely relaxed, he eased her down onto the bed, gently placing her head on Emma’s pillow and drawing the cover up over her shoulders. Leaning down, he placed a feather-soft kiss on her tear-stained cheek. She didn’t stir.

Moving quietly so as not to disturb her, Jesse eased out of the room and started to walk toward his own, looking forward to some much-needed sleep. Halfway there, his feet turned all on their own and he ended up outside Brennan’s room. He took a deep breath, and pushed the door open.

Brennan was awake, tired dark eyes staring at him. Jesse stared back, torn between the need to grab hold of Brennan and never let go, and to hit him so hard he’d feel it for years for being so incredibly thoughtless. Emotions Jesse had clamped down on for two days rushed up, overwhelming him. Before Jesse realized he’d moved he was on the bed, straddling Brennan, pinning him to the bed.

“You stupid fucker!” he growled, yanking Brennan’s hands up above his head and holding them against the pillow. “How could you be such an asshole? How could you let them TAKE you like that? Why the hell weren’t you watching your back, and if you weren’t up to it, why the hell didn’t you let ME watch your back?” By the time he finished the growl was more like a yell.

Thankfully, given the way Jesse was screaming, Shalimar was sleeping so heavily it would take either an earthquake or an immediate lethal threat to wake her. Brennan wasn’t so lucky. His eyes widened and his own quick anger flared up.

“Goddamnit, Jess, I knew what I was doing–“

He didn’t get the chance to finish the sentence before Jesse interrupted, voice sinking back to a growl that raised the tension in the room to a nearly unbearable level.

“Bullshit you knew what you were doing. You trusted a snitch who sold you out before you downed your first shot. You left yourself wide open when you knew Eckhart was out there, knew neither Shalimar nor I was anywhere near to help – fuck it, Brennan, if Lexa hadn’t found out from her handlers that you’d been taken you would have been dead before we even knew you were kidnapped!” Jesse’s voice broke on the last words, and Brennan, who’d begun to fight to get away, froze. He stared up at Jesse’s anguished face.

“I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “I should have thought…” He gulped, then gave Jesse a weak grin. “I was a bad boy?” he quipped.

That was it. The ever-more-tenuous hold Jesse had on his temper shattered.

“You fucker!” he yelped. Before Brennan could so much as open his mouth to argue, Jesse moved to one side, flipped Brennan over on his belly, and pinned him back to the bed.

Brennan fought to get his face out of the pillow, bucking up against Jesse’s hold. “Jess – fuck – c’mon,” he pled. Jesse ignored him, so he tugged harder, nearly freeing his wrists from Jesse’s grasp.

All that did was piss Jess off further. Not even thinking about it, Jesse massed his fist around Brennan’s wrists, creating an unbreakable hold. Brennan gave a startled yip, then went silent as Jesse tore off Brennan’s tee shirt with his free hand, then reached under him to unbutton his jeans.

“Uhm, Jesse?” Brennan asked, his voice wavering.

“Shut the fuck up, Brennan,” Jesse snapped.

Then he yanked the jeans all the way down to Brennan’s knees. As usual, Brennan wasn’t wearing any underwear. That made the first open-handed slap against that muscular ass all the more satisfying. The sound snapped through the air, and Brennan gave another yip, crying Jesse’s name, more startled than hurt.

Jesse paid no attention, caught up in a low-level fugue state, equal parts rage and helpless protectiveness and exhaustion and arousal. His hand dropped in a hard rhythm, left cheek, right cheek, left, right, until Brennan was writhing and panting beneath him and Brennan’s ass was bright red.

“Please, Jesse, ow, fuck, Jesse, stop it, Jesse, damn it, oh holy fuck, Jesse, I don’t believe this, goddamnit it, Jesse!” Brennan moaned, his voice gradually deepening, losing the sharpness as the combination of being held down, being helpless, being punished, and being controlled, all by Jesse, started to turn him on.

Eventually Jesse noticed that Brennan wasn’t trying to get away any more, but was humping the bed, and it shocked him out of his trance. His hand hurt, though not as bad as Brennan’s ass should, and he was surprised to realize he had a hard-on. His hand stilled against Brennan’s flushed ass cheek, and he blinked at the incredible heat pouring off Brennan’s body.

He lingered there for a moment before he withdrew and quickly stripped, paying no attention to where he threw his clothes, still staring down at Brennan, who hadn’t moved.

Once he was bare, Jesse slid back on the bed, stroking one hand gently the length of Brennan’s arms before clamping down around his wrists again. Brennan groaned, but didn’t protest. Experimentally, Jesse smacked Brennan’s ass. Brennan jumped. Into it, not away from it.

“Wow. That’s weird,” Jesse said matter-of-factly, then reached down and slid his finger along Brennan’s crack. Brennan gasped and arched up. Jesse stared down at the ass pushing against his hand and raised an eyebrow.

He and Brennan had done a lot of things in the year they’d been together, some of it angry, some of it funny, most of it tender, but they’d never started out lovemaking with a spanking. Jesse dipped teasing fingers into Brennan’s hole and thought about it for a moment.

Maybe it was the absolute insanity of the past few days, maybe it was the nightmare they’d barely survived or the bleakness of the future, but suddenly Jesse needed Brennan more than he ever had before. Needed to own him, needed to burrow under his skin, needed to drown himself in Brennan.

From the way Brennan moaned and moved, Brennan needed it almost as much as Jesse did.

He gave one last hard smack that drew a pained, “Fuck!” from Brennan.

“Plan to,” he answered laconically, withdrawing his fingers from Brennan’s ass long enough to reach over the prone figure to dig the lube out from the side drawer. As he did, his cock dragged over the reddened flesh of Brennan’s ass, and they both moaned at the feeling. At this rate he wasn’t going to last long, and he needed to, for both of them.

Pushing Brennan’s thighs apart with one knee, Jesse shifted his grip on Brennan’s wrists, keeping his fist massed and keeping Brennan’s arms above his head. Brennan started to whine and Jesse snapped, “Shut up.”

Brennan did, and from the shiver that raced down his back, he liked the way Jesse was handling him.

Flipping the lube open, Jesse placed the end against Brennan’s hole and squirted some directly down into it. Brennan let out a yell that sounded something like “Cold!” or maybe “Christ!” It was so strangled Jesse couldn’t tell.

Not that it mattered, because Brennan rapidly descended into incoherent monosyllables as Jesse pushed his cock deep into Bren’s body.

The heat was incredible. The flinch as he lay fully against the bruised cheeks, the clenching as he thrust in; it nearly finished him. Jesse bit his lip and tried another thing he’d never done before. Once he was fully seated in Brennan’s ass, Jesse massed his cock.

Brennan went nuts underneath him. Apparently the bulk of unmoving, granite-hard flesh stretching him, the weight of Jesse rubbing against the sensitized skin of his ass, and the complete inability to do anything but lie there and take it, triggered a wild animal in Brennan that Jesse’d never seen.

He howled, sparks of electricity dancing off his skin, adding to the heat as it snapped like tiny bites into Jesse’s skin. Brennan braced his knees and humped back wildly against Jesse, jostling and pulling so hard at his arms he nearly managed to escape Jesse’s massed hold.

As for Jesse, the contrast between the ass burning against his groin, the muscular contractions he knew from experience but couldn’t actually feel in his massed state, and the utter desperation in the way Brennan ground against him, were an absolute high. He held himself there, crouching over Brennan’s back, as Brennan fucked himself on Jesse’s literally rock-hard cock.

Just as he was becoming concerned that Brennan would actually rupture something, Brennan came, spurting onto the sheets, writhing like a wildcat, without Jesse touching his cock at all. Jesse felt the trembling in Brennan’s muscles and timed it perfectly, de-massing to regular flesh at the same moment Brennan came.

The resulting climax felt like it blew his head off.

When Jesse came back to himself, he realized that sometime during the orgasmic whiteout his body had once again instinctively done what it had to do. The massed manacle of his grip around Brennan’s wrists had relaxed, and Jesse lay blanketing Brennan’s back. Jesse’s hands moved slowly over the aching muscles of Brennan’s shoulders, up the back of his neck, down along his spine, until Brennan was a relaxed pool of mush in the middle of the bed.

Once he started to snore, Jesse grinned, buried his face in the crook of Brennan’s neck, and tried to join Brennan in sleep.

But sleep was hard to come by. He could feel the nightmares of reality lurking just behind his eyelids, making it nearly impossible to let himself go, no matter how exhausted he was.

After an hour of listening to Brennan sleeping soundly nestled against him, Jesse gave up the fight. Wrapping his arms more tightly around Brennan’s chest, he rested his cheek against the broad back and let himself think about all the things he hadn’t been able to think about during the rescue missions.

The ones that failed, and the one that succeeded.

His arms tightened a fraction, and Brennan snuffled, twitching against him. Jesse soothed him, hands petting his chest and arm gently until Brennan settled again. Jesse stared into the darkness, listening to the reassuring sounds of Brennan sleeping beside him, and thought.

Of Adam. Of lies and truths and how little there was to distinguish between the two. Of father figures, and how trust could be lost while ideals remained. Of how much that trust meant, and how much he still trusted Adam in his heart, regardless of what his brain told him he should feel. Jesse recognized how determined he was to ensure that Adam’s legacy did not die with him, if Adam was indeed dead. And he vowed that he would never stop looking, until he saw Adam’s lifeless body with his own eyes.

Of Emma, and Shalimar, and how damned lucky he was not to have lost Brennan the way Shalimar lost Emma. Of how much his ‘sister’ would need him, now, and how much she would need Bren, as well. He discovered within himself a surprising capacity to share, but only with Shalimar, and only that part of Brennan that Brennan could give with such generosity. There was a corner of Bren’s heart that no one but Jesse would ever own. There was also room in Brennan’s heart for Shalimar, in a different way than it held Jesse, and Jesse found that reassuring, because Shalimar would need a lot of love to help her through losing Emma.

He thought of the future, and what it might, and wouldn’t, hold. Of Lexa, and boundaries, and sharing the nest without sharing the team. Of rights, and responsibilities, and legacies.

He was still thinking when dawn broke. Brennan caught him at it, turning in Jesse’s arms and smiling softly at him.

“You need to take a break,” Brennan told him, voice rough with sleep.

Jesse shrugged. “Lot of things to work out.”

Brennan dropped a kiss on the tip of his nose, then a deeper one on the smile Jesse couldn’t hold back. It was Brennan’s turn to hold Jesse, now, and he did it gently, exploring Jesse’s mouth thoroughly, until they were both breathless, and both hard.

That first kiss was a prelude to more, as Brennan mapped his way down Jesse’s body, taking his time, using hands and tongue and beard stubble to rouse Jesse to a fever pitch. Jesse twisted his pillow between his fists, not trusting himself to hold Brennan’s head, for fear that he’d lose control and mass at the wrong time.

By the time Brennan took pity on him and took Jesse’s cock in his mouth, Jesse was nearly mindless. He braced his heels against the mattress and thrust up into Brennan’s strong hold, only to lose his footing as Brennan shouldered his way between Jesse’s knees, spreading his thighs wide. Jesse’s frustrated whine changed to a satisfied moan as Brennan swallowed him whole, milking the shaft of his cock with one hand while licking and swallowing the head, then replacing hand with tongue all the way down to his balls.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Jesse chanted, losing his breath as Brennan pushed wet fingers into him, opening him, holding him down and spreading him while sucking hard. It was too much, and Jesse gave a garbled cry as he came, pushing his cock as far down Brennan’s throat as he could get it, ass clamping down on Brennan’s fingers.

More white noise, more white space, and when he came back to himself again Brennan had Jesse’s knees folded up to his shoulders and was pumping into him, hard and deep. Relaxed as he was, it felt good, sending jolts along his nerve endings, making him shiver. Jesse could feel tiny bites of electricity bleeding off Brennan’s cock, buried deep inside him. It was incredibly arousing. He ran a heavy hand through Brennan’s hair, dragging his head down, arching up to kiss him again.

The change in angle was too much for Brennan, and he groaned into Jesse’s mouth, stiffening under Jesse’s hands as he thrust as far in as he could get and stilled there. A jerk of his hips, another, a third, and Jesse could feel himself filling up, then leaking out as Brennan’s cock slowly slipped from him.

Then, finally, he could give in to his exhaustion, as Brennan wrapped his arms around Jesse and held him close. The nightmares waited outside the door, and for the first time since the battle began, Jesse slept peacefully.

It was mid-morning when he woke. Brennan sat on the side of the bed, steadying a breakfast tray. Jesse gave him a slow smile, and Brennan smiled back. Then he handed Jesse a glass of orange juice and watched him drink.

“What do we do now?” he asked plaintively when Jesse handed him back the glass.

Jesse stared at him for a moment, thinking before he answered. The decisions he’d made through the long night crystallized, and he answered plainly, “Keep fighting the good fight.” He didn’t call it Adam’s fight, because it wasn’t just Adam’s. It was his. It was the team’s. It was the only chance the future had.

Brennan flashed him a grin, then leaned over and gave him a coffee-flavored kiss. “You fight the good fight,” Brennan told him. “I’ll cover your ass.”

With a wry grin in return, Jesse said, “That’s good enough for me.”

Later that day, as they stood with Shalimar on the side of Stormking Mountain and etched Adam and Emma’s name into the stone, Jesse knew it would be enough.

Always.

END