Despite how stressed he was, he permitted himself to rest before Kinzer helped him take the edge off. They fucked the way they had previously, enjoying the privacy of their own room in the six-bedroom cabin. And even though he had to remain quieter than he preferred because of their company, he was pleased he got to spend time with Kinzer.
Quintz and Kinzer breathed heavily as they came down from the high of their fucking, Kinzer resting on top of Quintz, their abs pressed together, Kinzer’s eyes sealed shut as he enjoyed his final release. Quintz gazed up into Kinzer’s beautiful dark-brown eyes—those eyes that seemed to reflect all the pain and hurt of the eons Kinzer had suffered in what, at the time, was the lowest order of the Almighty’s creations in Heaven.
Kinzer’s gaze drifted, his thoughts clearly pulling out of the experience they’d shared. Quintz felt as though Kinzer had abandoned him, left him stranded after such a delicious encounter.
“What are you thinking about, Kinzer?” Kinzer’s gaze met his again, and Quintz enjoyed looking into those dark eyes of his, being captivated by them.
“What am I not thinking about?” He chuckled, but Quintz knew it was less from amusement than a sort of bitter realization of the horrible state everything was in, what they were tasked with.
“Yes, I find myself equally stressed right now. I want Treycore to get here so I can know we actually stand a chance against Janka and the Christ.”
Kinzer pulled out of Quintz, leaving him feeling so empty even with Kinzer’s cum inside him, and rolled onto his side, relaxing his body against Quintz’s side.
“This weapon,” Kinzer said. “I know you can’t tell me about it yet, for whatever reason, but how do we know it will even work against the Christ?”
“It will work. I can promise you that much. This whole time, the Christ has behaved exactly as our plans have suggested, meaning that our counter against it will likely be just as powerful. The real issue won’t be if the weapon will work. It’ll be whether or not we can even get to the Christ to use it.”
Kinzer nodded, his thoughts still seemingly on their mission. After everything that had happened, even when he hardly understood how the fuck they were going to take on Janka, he still maintained enough hope to keep on going.
Quintz marveled at Kinzer’s stamina, his perseverance, even in the face of such dim hope. He wasn’t like any immortal Quintz had met before, and he was greater than the legend he had become. “How have you done all this, Kinzer?” Quintz asked, choking up as the words escaped his lips.
“Done what? I haven’t done anything all that noteworthy.”
“Yes, you have. You’ve taken on immortal after immortal. You have fought. You haven’t given up. My life’s work is to bring people to that point where they lose their faith, their will, their strength, to break them so they surrender what I need to get from them. It intrigues me. You’ve always intrigued me, Kinzer.”
“Always?” Kinzer asked.
Quintz blushed. He knew before he’d said the words that he was saying more than he should, but considering the fate that lay ahead of them, he didn’t see a reason not to.
“I feel kind of silly for just now telling you this, but there really wasn’t a way to bring it up, I guess. When I was younger, in the golden days of Heaven, I remember you. I was heading to the University of Thought and Aesthetics during construction to make some necessary changes. You were working on part of it with some other higherlings. Well, at the time we were all higherlings. One of your fellow workers fell down while he was trying to move a stone and ended up shattering some glass. The coordinators began going for him, and you rushed in front of them, fought them off, told them to beat you instead of him. And then they did.”
“That’s what anyone would have done. He hadn’t done anything wrong. It was a mistake.”
“Not anyone would have sacrificed themselves like that, Kinzer. Not during those times. I don’t think I’d ever seen anything like it before…true selflessness. At first it looked moronic. Why would you have done such a thing? And it puzzled me until I realized you had done it for another because you were willing to let harm come to yourself before it went to others, and it changed my life forever. I was so selfish and self-centered…and then you changed me.”
Kinzer’s face scrunched up, as though he was disgusted by the idea that he’d influenced Quintz so much. “It seems like such a silly example. I was hardly all that noble. It took Janka to even convince me of a reason to stand by mortals. My own prejudices certainly didn’t help me there.”
“But even Janka didn’t believe that.”
“So I’ve learned,” Kinzer said, his expression sorrowful.
Quintz set his hand on Kinzer’s face, feeling his thumb through the scruff he’d grown over the past few days. “You always had this thing inside you, though, that’s so different from the way immortals are. Empathy. Generosity. You opened my world up, and I’ve lived every day since then trying to walk in those footsteps.”
Kinzer eyed him peculiarly. “You clearly thought way too much about that one instance.”
“No, I didn’t, Kinzer. Because here we are, all this time later, and why are you here right now? What has led you down this impossible path? That same thing I saw in you so long ago. It’s why I’m working to help the Leader even today. Because you opened my eyes to my own privileged circumstances. And to what I had the power to do for others that I never exercised. But even more than that, you’re weak, Kinzer. I don’t mean mentally, but physically. So much has been taken from you. Powers have waned to the point where you struggle in battle, and yet you fight to the death when you could have run. You could have given up on everything. Even when we found you, you were looking for a way to track down Janka.”
As Quintz spoke to him, he kept moving his hands across Kinzer’s face, then up to his hair, feeling his fingers through his black locks, appreciating how far they’d come from when he’d been torturing him to ensure his loyalty, which goddammit he had been pleased to be right about.
“That’s vengeance,” Kinzer said. “You would be amazed at what a vengeful person can do.”
“Is it vengeance? I thought it might have been, but I don’t know anymore. Do you just want to get Janka back for the terrible thing he did to you? I’m skeptical that’s the reason.”
“Why is that?”
“Because you lack bloodthirst for that cause. You lack the disdain. You’re hurt by him, but your actions are for something greater.”
“If you say so.” Kinzer shook his head, obviously dismissing everything Quintz was crediting him for.
