Iron Communion

"Some knowledge doesn't come through words or study. Some knowledge has to be tasted—and by then it's already changing you."

"What the hell?" I muttered, the words escaping before my brain had finished processing what my eyes were seeing.

The Portal's dissolution left me standing in what should have been my living room—familiar walls, familiar furniture, the particular quality of electric light after hours under Clivilius's dark sky. But something was catastrophically wrong with the picture. My foot caught on an obstacle that had no business being there, and I stumbled forward, sending a cascade of small, brightly coloured vessels crashing to the ground in a symphony of plastic and rubber.

Kayaks. My living room was full of fucking kayaks.

My heart hammered against my ribs, adrenaline flooding a system already oversaturated with whiskey and the raw sting of Jamie's rejection. The memory of his hands pushing against my chest—pushing me away despite the hardness I'd felt beneath me—throbbed like a fresh bruise somewhere behind my sternum.

"Gladys," boomed a deep voice from the kitchen, slicing through my confusion with casual authority.

Cody. Standing there as though my living room hadn't been transformed into a sporting goods warehouse, seemingly unfazed by the chaos surrounding us.

My gaze swept over the disaster area—kayaks in various sizes and colours, camping equipment stacked against walls, boxes and bags creating an obstacle course between the Portal location and the rest of my home. "What the hell happened?" I demanded, my voice emerging harsher than intended. The wound of Jamie's rejection was still bleeding, leaving me with precious little patience for anything that wasn't an explanation or another drink.

Cody brandished a single sheet of paper like it answered all questions. "It's Gladys's doing," he announced. "And she's left you a note. Shelving will be delivered tomorrow." His words trailed off, punctuated by the sharp clink of glass as he raised a bottle to his lips, the amber liquid disappearing in one swift motion.

"Ah, this is great stuff you've got here, Luke," he commented, as though the quality of my whiskey was the most pressing matter at hand. "I had to open a new bottle. Hope you don't mind."

My frustration boiled over, the absurdity of the situation sharpening the anger that had been building since Jamie's hands had created distance where I'd wanted closeness. "I'm not talking about the camping shit," I snapped, my voice rising, bouncing off walls that suddenly felt too close. I gestured wildly at the kayaks now littering my floor, these ridiculous symbols of my disrupted life. "I'm talking about the fucking body!"

Cody's eyes widened, the casual indifference washing away to reveal something that might have been genuine surprise—or might have been a very good performance of it. "Body?" he echoed, uncertainty threading through the word. "What body?"

"Joel," I replied, letting ice creep into my voice. The name hung in the air between us, heavy with everything I wasn't saying—the accusations, the suspicions, the image of that boy's body floating in the river whilst Jamie had no idea his son was dead.

Cody shrugged, a subtle lift of shoulders that seemed wilfully ignorant of gravity. "I'm not sure what you're talking about," he said, his tone casual in a way that made me want to throw something.

I clambered across my living room, navigating the sea of kayaks and camping equipment with the particular clumsiness of someone whose blood was more whiskey than plasma. Each step felt like a battle against chaos made physical—the clutter a manifestation of everything in my life that had spun beyond control. I pushed into the kitchen, my feet grateful for the familiar tiles even as their coldness seeped through my socks.

The ritual of reaching for a glass provided a momentary anchor. My fingers found cool surfaces, sliding the glass across the bench with more force than necessary—the sound sharp, satisfying in a petty way. Cody was quick to fill it, the golden liquid flowing with smoothness that seemed to mock the tension crackling between us.

"We found Joel's body," I stated, accepting the drink and letting its cold weight settle in my palm. The words were heavy, final—an accusation dressed as information.

Cody's reaction was immediate and violent. A cough burst from him, harsh and uncontrolled, as though my words had punched him in the throat. Expensive whiskey splattered across the granite, droplets catching the kitchen light like amber tears. A trail of saliva escaped the corner of his mouth.

"Yeah," I said, watching him with the particular attention of someone cataloguing tells. "That's what I thought."

"I'm so sorry, Luke," Cody murmured, his voice carrying that peculiar blend of remorse and confusion that accompanies unexpected revelations. "I had no idea he'd get away." He shook his head, the gesture seeming to carry more weight than his words—as though he was trying to dislodge something stuck between truth and the version of events he wanted to present.

I fixed my eyes on him, searching for the seams in whatever story he was constructing. "I hardly think he got away by himself." My voice remained steady, but inside, a storm of emotions churned—anger at his evasions, betrayal at his secrets, disbelief at the web I was only beginning to glimpse.

"Shit! I didn't think of that!" he exclaimed, composure slipping further, revealing something that might have been genuine alarm.

"So, you did know!?" I pressed, my voice rising to fill the kitchen, echoing off surfaces that had witnessed too many difficult conversations today. The air between us felt charged, heavy with the weight of confession he was being forced toward.

"Yeah, I knew who he was, but I thought…" Cody's voice trailed off, his gaze sliding away from mine, unable to hold the intensity of my scrutiny.

"Then why the fuck did you pretend you'd never seen him before!?" The question was a demand, a challenge—pushing him into a corner from which there was no elegant escape.

"Huh?" He feigned confusion, a poor attempt to buy time, to weave another layer of deflection.

"Joel. Why'd you act like you didn't know him?" I was relentless, my patience eroded to nothing by the day's accumulated betrayals.

"Ahh, shit!" Cody cursed, his hand moving to rub his forehead with the particular frustration of someone whose lies had entangled themselves beyond easy management. The gesture was admission enough—a silent acknowledgment that the web he'd spun was finally snaring its maker.

"What?" I demanded, my voice sharp enough to cut through whatever evasion he was formulating.

"I'm not talking about Joel." Cody's words emerged calm, unexpectedly so, as though we'd been discussing different subjects entirely.

"Then who the fuck are you talking about!?" My voice escalated, reflecting the mounting confusion that had joined forces with my irritation.

"Griffin Langley," Cody replied, settling his back against the side bench in a posture that suggested casual conversation despite the seriousness of what we were discussing. His muscles tensed visibly beneath his shirt, his palms pressing flat against the cool stone surface.

I extended my glass toward him, an unspoken demand for refill. My nerves needed steadying, and whiskey remained the most reliable method available. "And who the hell is Griffin La…?" I attempted to inquire, but the unfamiliar name slipped away from me like water through fingers.

"Langley," Cody supplied, patience threading through his tone despite everything.

"Yeah, him," I acknowledged, grasping at the name. I threw back the whiskey, feeling the liquid carve its familiar path down my throat—a fleeting distraction from the web of revelations being spun around me. The glass landed on the bench with a loud clatter that seemed to echo the chaos inside my skull.

"He's a Portal Pirate," Cody declared, the words carrying weight that demanded I pay attention despite the absurdity of the term.

A wild smirk spread across my face before I could stop it. "A Portal Pirate?" I scoffed, the ridiculous combination of words sparking something like amusement amidst my brewing storm of emotions. It sounded like something from a children's adventure book—all swashbuckling fantasy and harmless danger. Yet the gravity in Cody's gaze suggested a starkly different reality.

"Yes," he affirmed, his expression hardening. "And I believe his partner, Nelson Price, may be in your settlement."

I shrugged, the gesture more dismissive than I felt. "Nobody's mentioned seeing anyone unfamiliar," I remarked, my hand reaching instinctively for the whiskey bottle. The notion of unknown threats lurking in our already struggling settlement added another layer of impossible to an already impossible situation. "The people I do know are already struggling to survive. I doubt anybody that I don't know about could survive on their own for long. And besides, I really don't care right now."

But Cody wasn't having any of it. In a swift motion, he snatched the bottle from my grasp, his eyes locking onto mine with intensity that brooked no argument. "Luke, this is serious. They're incredibly dangerous."

His stern tone, the urgency in his gesture—it all served to pierce the bubble of whiskey-fuelled indifference I'd been wrapping myself in.

"I don't understand," I confessed, frustration and something like fear threading through my voice. "How did he get into my settlement without me seeing him?"

"He may not have, but if he did, you'd never know it. They're sneaky bastards." Cody's words were stark, unvarnished by any attempt to soften them.

My eyes widened as I gazed out the kitchen window. The glass threw back my own reflection—a man who looked more haggard than he should, grappling with threats he hadn't known existed. "Are they the ones who attacked Joel?"

"I believe so," Cody confirmed, his tone carrying the weight of certainty.

The information settled over me like something physical, a blanket of unease I couldn't shrug off. "But even so, if you took Joel's body, how did it end up at our settlement?"

Cody exhaled deeply, the sound filling the tense silence. "I captured Griffin and was holding him captive at Belkeep. But somehow, he managed to escape." He paused, letting the weight of his next words build. "He stole the truck with Joel's body."

"Can't you just follow his tracks?" I asked, my hand extending toward the whiskey bottle once more—seeking comfort in the familiar ritual.

"No," Cody responded, his frustration manifesting in a fist meeting the island bench with force that made the glasses rattle. "That's the thing with pirates, once they have recorded a location, they can access any other recorded Earth or Clivilius location from it."

My heart sank with the particular heaviness of hope being extinguished. "Shit! There are more settlements in Clivilius?"

"Yeah… uh… I think that's a conversation for another time," Cody deflected, his evasion adding yet another layer to an already impossibly complicated situation.

"Shit," I mumbled, the room seeming to tilt as the weight of everything pressed down on me. Other settlements. Pirates who could hop between locations like stepping through doorways. Joel's body somehow ending up in my territory through means I couldn't track or prevent.

"But wherever Griffin took Joel, it can't be too far from your settlement if you found Joel's body there." Cody's attempt at reassurance barely registered.

"And if his partner is there, how do we find him?" I pressed, the potential danger to my people cutting through my personal fog.

"Not sure. If there are no signs of life around you, which I suspect is the case, then it is likely that he will not know where he is either." Cody's analysis was grim, clinical. "A pirate's instincts are for survival. He will happily steal whatever he needs and he won't hesitate to use violence if he thinks the situation calls for it."

The torrent of information felt relentless, each revelation another wave I couldn't quite get my footing against.

"But in all likelihood, he will hang around the Portal for a few weeks, or as long as he can last, in the hope that another pirate will come along and he can finish making the location connection. He will attempt to record the location at every chance he can get – but he needs the Portal to be active to do it. So, expect him to remain close to your Portal. You could attempt to flush him out, but he is dangerous."

I tried to absorb his words, to catalogue the threats and formulate responses, but my capacity for strategic thinking had been eroded by whiskey and heartache and the accumulation of impossibilities that had become my daily existence.

My hand moved to my face almost without permission, swiping at moisture I hadn't realised was there—a tear that had escaped my defences, caught just before it could trace its way down my cheek.

"You okay?" Cody's voice cut through my spiralling thoughts, his hand landing firm on my shoulder in a gesture of support.

My body shuddered at the contact—an involuntary response that had nothing to do with cold and everything to do with touch-starvation. The warmth of his palm through my shirt was the first genuine physical connection I'd felt in hours. The first that hadn't been rejection. My skin seemed to drink it in, desperate for contact after Jamie's hands had pushed me away.

"Luke?" Cody repeated, concern threading through the syllable.

I felt the solidity of the kitchen cupboards against my back—hadn't realised I'd been moving backward—and then my legs simply stopped cooperating. My knees buckled with the particular surrender of a body that had reached its limits, and without any conscious decision, I was sliding down the cabinetry. The cold, hard tiles met my body with unforgiving reality. I tucked my knees close, making myself small against the cupboard doors, and then the dam I'd been holding together with willpower and whiskey simply gave way.

Tears erupted with a force that surprised me—not the gentle leaking of earlier but a flood, violent and uncontrolled, streaming from eyes that felt swollen and hot. Everything I'd been suppressing since Jamie's rejection, since Joel's resurrection, since the brochure in my house and the lies collapsing around me—it all found its way out through my tear ducts in a display I couldn't have prevented if I'd tried.

Cody, to his credit, didn't flee from my collapse. He crouched down to meet me at eye level, his hands finding my shoulders with firm, grounding pressure. "Luke, what's going on?" His voice carried both firmness and genuine concern.

His scent filled my awareness—sweat and exertion, the earthy musk of a man who'd been working hard, something underneath that was simply him. It was raw and real and overwhelmingly present. I tried to avert my gaze, to escape the intensity of his eyes that bore into me with unwavering focus. But they were inescapable, pulling me in despite my resistance—dark and deep and demanding honesty I didn't want to give.

"Just too much whiskey," I managed between sobs, the words a transparent deflection that fooled neither of us.

"Come on. Get up," Cody urged, his hand extending toward me—a lifeline offered without judgement.

As my fingers closed around his hand, something happened that I wasn't prepared for.

A jolt coursed through me—sharp, electric, nothing like the simple warmth of skin against skin. It started at the point where our flesh met and spread upward through my arm like lightning seeking ground, cascading down my spine and radiating outward until every nerve ending in my body seemed to have awakened at once. Goosebumps erupted across my skin in waves, chasing the sensation as it moved through me.

In my vulnerable state—emotionally raw, physically exhausted, blood soaked through with whiskey—the intensity of the connection cut through every defence I had left. I didn't just want Cody's support. I craved his presence, his touch, his proximity. The need transcended friendship, transcended the appropriate boundaries of our interaction. It was want—pure and visceral and terrifying in its intensity.

Perhaps it was the rejection still burning in my chest. Perhaps it was the desperate hunger for touch that Jamie had been denying me for months. Perhaps it was just the whiskey amplifying everything until want became indistinguishable from need.

In a misguided attempt to prolong the contact—to feel something other than the despair that had been clawing at me all evening—I let my body weight work against me. Instead of using his grip to pull myself up, I let myself fall back, tugging on Cody's arm with what I hoped looked like accident but was entirely deliberate.

The result exceeded my intention.

Cody's knee hit the tiled floor with a jarring crack, the sound sharp in the kitchen's acoustics. "What the fuck did you do that for?" His confusion and pain were evident, his tongue instinctively seeking out a new source of hurt—a small but vivid bead of blood emerging from his lower lip where teeth had caught flesh.

"Sorry, I slipped. Way too much alcohol," I stammered, guilt and desperation tangling in my chest. The excuse felt thin, inadequate cover for the impulsive act I'd committed. I hadn't meant to hurt him. The blood was an accident—a consequence I hadn't anticipated when I'd deliberately pulled him down.

But now that it was there, bright and red against the tan of his skin, I couldn't look away.

Cody's expression shifted as he processed the unexpected turn, twisting to sit beside me on the unforgiving floor. He dabbed at his lip with the back of his hand, trying to stem the flow, but another drop swiftly replaced the one he'd wiped away.

The sight of it—that vivid crimson against skin that had gone slightly pale—was strangely captivating. It beckoned to me in ways I couldn't explain, a splash of colour that seemed to pulse with its own light in the dim kitchen.

You want it, Luke.

The voice was soft, seductive—Clivilius's whisper threading through my consciousness with familiar intimacy. The boundary between my own thoughts and the dimension's guidance had blurred hours ago; I could no longer distinguish which desires were mine and which were being suggested.

Take it.

The urge was overpowering. Primal in a way that had nothing to do with conscious choice. My body moved before my mind could assess, drawing me closer to Cody until our shoulders touched—a semblance of solidarity, of shared vulnerability in this moment of collective breakdown.

Cody swallowed audibly, the sound loud in the kitchen's heavy silence. His eyes met mine, and I searched them for something—recognition, perhaps, or reflection of the pull I was feeling. Was he hearing the same whisper? Did he feel whatever force was drawing us together with such insistence?

The questions scattered as our faces drew closer, the space between us charged with tension that had nothing to do with the earlier conversation and everything to do with something I couldn't name.

My lips found his.

The first contact was almost chaste—a brush against the roughness of his injured flesh, the particular texture of a split lip beneath my mouth. But there was nothing chaste about what moved through me at that touch. It was need and want and the desperate hunger of a man who'd been starving for connection, finally finding something that resembled sustenance.

Cody's hands pressed against my chest, but the push lacked conviction. There was hesitance in the gesture—a conflict between resistance and curiosity, between maintaining boundaries and exploring whatever this moment had become. Part of him wanted to stop this. Part of him didn't.

Our actions transcended words, speaking a language of need and comfort and the particular connection that forms between people who find themselves low in the same moment. It wasn't romantic, exactly. It was rawer than that—two bodies seeking something they couldn't find alone, communicating through touch what speech had failed to convey.

My tongue ventured forward, exploring terrain I hadn't expected to encounter—the unfamiliar landscape of another man's mouth, someone who wasn't Jamie, someone who was present in ways Jamie hadn't been for longer than I wanted to admit.

And then I tasted it.

The iron tang of blood hit my tongue, and everything changed.

Electricity surged through my veins—not the pleasant tingle from earlier but something far more intense, a current that seemed to rewire my nervous system even as it passed through me. Every cell in my body felt suddenly, violently alive, awakened to sensations I hadn't known existed. My cock stirred with a suddenness that had nothing to do with arousal and everything to do with the life-force flooding through me—blood calling to blood in ways I couldn't comprehend.

Cody's initial tension dissolved as though it had never been, his body language shifting from reluctance to something that looked almost like surrender. His tongue met mine in a dance that was more exploration than passion, tentative movements charged with unspoken understanding.

My tongue found his lip again, drawn to that point of broken skin with hunger I couldn't have resisted even if I'd wanted to. I licked the wound gently, tasting the warmth of him, and a shiver ran through my entire body—a convulsion that felt almost like pleasure, almost like pain, almost like something else entirely that I had no words for.

Cody's hands, firm on my shoulders now, anchored me as the world seemed to shift on its axis.

And then the visions began.

Images flooded my mind without permission or warning—faces and names cascading through my consciousness with the particular clarity of lived memory rather than imagination. Some were familiar: Jeremiah Atkins, the figure from my own Clivilius vision when I'd first discovered what I was. Others were strangers—people I'd never met, whose significance I couldn't know, yet whose faces now existed in my memory as surely as if I'd known them my whole life.

A settlement materialised in my mind's eye—small buildings clinging to rocky cliffs, battered by relentless waves that crashed against the stone with furious persistence. The sky above was the particular grey of northern coasts, clouds heavy with the promise of storms that never quite ended. I could smell the salt, feel the spray, hear the cries of seabirds wheeling overhead.

Belkeep.

The name arrived with absolute certainty, a knowledge that felt bone-deep despite my having never been there before. This was Cody's place. His home. His settlement, built into cliffs that shouldn't have been able to support human habitation, sustained by stubbornness and necessity and the particular resilience of people who had no choice but to endure.

The intensity of it—the vividness of the vision, the certainty of the name—jolted me back to the present. I whispered the word against Cody's lips, a soft exhalation of breath, as I gently pulled away from the impossible intimacy we'd fallen into.

"Belkeep."

The name hung between us, a bridge to places I'd never been, knowledge I'd never earned.

"Did you know?" My voice carried curiosity and something else—a new depth of connection I was only beginning to perceive. I held Cody's gaze, searching for answers in the depths of his eyes.

"Know what?" The furrow of his brow spoke to genuine confusion.

Doubt flickered through me. If Cody was unaware of Joel's impossible return to life, how could he possibly understand whatever had just passed between us? The visions, the certainty about Belkeep, the flood of information that had arrived through taste and touch and blood—were these experiences unique to me? Or were we both part of something larger, something neither of us understood?

"So, I'm your first," I whispered, the words hovering between statement and question—a probe into the nature of what was forming between us.

Vulnerability flashed across Cody's features before he could hide it. "Yeah. I've never been this close to a guy before," he confessed, the admission tumbling out with a mixture of acknowledgment and visible discomfort. He shifted his weight, a subtle movement that spoke to inner conflict. "We should stop."

My response was a grin—not amusement but recognition. "As sweet a sentiment as that is, that's not what I'm talking about."

"Then what are you talking about?" His confusion was palpable.

I gazed into his eyes and felt the visions intensify—as though sustained eye contact was strengthening whatever connection the blood had forged. Images of twins unfurled in my mind: a boy and a girl, dark-haired and fierce, their faces carrying echoes of the man before me. The settlement. The cliffs. And woven through it all, the narrative of Gladys—her presence in Cody's life rendered vivid and clear despite my having received no actual explanation of their relationship.

The pressing danger of the pirates faded to background noise, eclipsed by my overwhelming compulsion to understand what was happening. To explore what this connection meant.

Before rational thought could intervene, I closed the distance between us again, pressing my lips to Cody's with urgency that came from somewhere beyond conscious choice. My tongue sought out his wounded lip with need I couldn't have articulated—drawn to that point of broken skin, that source of blood, with desperation that felt almost like addiction.

I took a deep suck from the wound, and convulsion tore through me again—stronger this time, more complete. My entire body shuddered with the force of it, every nerve firing, every cell awakened to intensity that bordered on agony and pleasure simultaneously. My cock was fully hard now, straining against my trousers with the particular insistence of arousal that doesn't care about context or appropriateness.

This wasn't sexual. Or rather, it wasn't only sexual. It was something else—something deeper, something that used the pathways of physical desire to communicate information that had nothing to do with bodies and everything to do with whatever bound Guardians together across dimensions.

Cody pushed me away, his palms flat against my chest, putting distance between us. "I think you've been under too much pressure lately," he observed, worry threading through attempted rationality. "Not to mention the whiskey."

But his words barely penetrated the haze of revelation that had settled over me. "No," I responded, my voice soft but carrying certainty I felt in my bones. "I see you now. Just as Clive sees us all."

The statement emerged from somewhere outside my usual vocabulary—words that were mine and not mine, knowledge that had arrived through blood and kiss and whatever connection now linked us.

Exhaustion claimed me with sudden, overwhelming force. My body slumped against the cool surface of the cupboards, muscles surrendering to the accumulated strain of emotions and revelations that had passed through me in the space of minutes. A smile curved my lips—peaceful, elated, entirely at odds with the chaos of the evening.

My eyes drifted closed as I surrendered to the aftermath, feeling every cell alive with sensation and vision that would take days to process. Whatever had happened—whatever the blood had done—I was changed by it.

And somewhere in the settling quiet of my kitchen, surrounded by kayaks and camping equipment and the confused presence of a man whose life now existed inside my memory, I let the darkness take me.