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"Don't worry. I understand. Everything."
Ken tried to take it in - he could not quite move. His own voice in his ears was a soothing stimulant to his senses as he wallowed up toward consciousness. What was happening? He was trying to tell himself. If he would only listen...
"You can't escape. But I will free you. In a little while. First I want you to listen. There is no shame in being confused. You will understand soon."
His own thoughts seemed to be answered in his own mind's voice at its calmest. Spoken aloud, in this total darkness. Was it significant? He was barely awake. Why was he talking to himself?
"You are Ken Washio," said his own voice, smooth and soft in his ears. "And I am Ken Washio. Relax and let me explain it to you."
Ken resisted this suggestion, instinctively. If he was being told to relax he would do everything but. He stretched his arms against the restraints, and found them quite competently bound. He was not going anywhere immmediately, in any case. Was it a trick, an elaborate trick on the part of Berg Katse...? Wasn't everything...?
"I know everything you know, and have felt everything you feel. I know, for example," said his own voice, "in a way that you don't yet accept, that you're gay. You've never responded to a girl in your life, not out of virtue, but by nature. It's not like you haven't tried, it just isn't in you. You care about Jun, but you just don't want her.
"Not just that, but the truth is you want Joe more than you want anything. I know it, because I am you, and you cannot lie to me."
A long silence. It was true. So succinctly true. He would not have answered this anyway, but he couldn't if he tried.
"I have been all the way from one end of the probability axis to the other," said his own voice, bitter now, "and I have never found a Joe who would love us back. Not the way we want. It can't be had."
There was a long and terrible silence. Ken did not know what the voice was talking about. Probability axis?
"I've looked. And looked. All of us want all of him. Always. There is a reality where we rape him," said the voice in his ear. "Several where he rapes us. But every time... it leads to death. The love we want... It can't be had. It does not exist. He's just not like that."
"Stop," Ken cried aloud, turning his head away from the touch of warm breath and unwanted words. The word rape drenches his nerve endings with cold, cold water. "I don't want this. This talk about Joe. Stop it."
"All right," said the voice, Ken's own voice. "All right then. Let me touch you. I know you need it, need it so much. Let me touch you..."
"Don't," said Ken, his breath sharp in his lungs as he tested his bonds again. Just one limb free and he could put an end to this.
The darkness turned out to be his own, a blindfold now pulled away. The room was dimly lit, and his darting eyes took in various inconsequential details before acquiring their target, the source of his voice which he was sure, utterly sure must be excellent mimicry, that he was about to see Katse -
Not Katse; Ken Washio. Ken, about ten years older. What did this mean? Was this... time travel? Could that ever really happen? What future could drive his own self to talking like this, to acting like this?
The present soon had his attention back, however. The hand on his thigh was warm and real and sliding up. Ken cringed, and it paused for a while, but did not lift away.
"You know how it is when Joe gets to horsing around, don't you?" said the other, older Ken in a conversational tone, his gaze drifting vaguely in recollection. "Like when he'll grab you around the neck to ‘noogie' the top of your head, until you punch him in the side and he has to let go?"
Ken did not answer, but he knew what the other was talking about. Joe did a lot of this roughhousing.
"And you know how, for that one instant, when he's got you locked against his side, with your face pressed half into his chest, and you breathe in - you breathe him in..."
Ken closed his eyes, trying to turn away from this, but he could not turn and it only made him better able to imagine it, to relive it, and yes, that one instant, he knew it well, one of the tiny crumbs of sustenance he was free to take. That one breath, and Joe's scent, his hard chest, his body heat, the live weight of his muscled arm.
"What's this?" said the voice softly, with a smile in it. "Hard now?" The warm fingers finally completed their upward slide and closed gently around his cock. Ken gasped, then bit his lips.
"So hard for Joe," the voice started to go on, but Ken snapped "Shut up!"
Despite the sharpness of his voice and the rudeness of his words, Ken failed in offending his tormentor. "No, I won't." The other Ken was still smiling, it could be heard in his voice. Knowing fingers trailed through precum and then strummed gently against a sensitive spot below the tip, making Ken suck in his breath, then release it in a low moan. His arms flexed against the restraints again.
"Those wings of his. They don't come down very far in the back, do they."
No. No they did not. Ken groaned, toes curling, as the warm hand tightened up on his shaft. Joe had a tendency toward running ahead in pursuit of action, too. Or... or climbing ahead of Ken on a ladder. Many times he had been forced to focus on the mission, to avert his eyes from that finely muscled butt - not to mention the back and legs - so transparently and magnificently outlined in Joe's birdstyle. Almost without effort, this older Ken had summoned up all this rough beauty with the mere mention of the Condor's short wings. And with all the other things he knew? Somehow... this other, older Ken really was Ken too. There was not a shadow of a doubt about it.
Ken felt his hips rocking in helpless response as the other man's hand slowly pumped his cock.
"Remember the time we walked in on him with that waitress...?"
Ken squeezed his eyes shut and gritted his teeth. Those other things that had been mentioned, those were things he could not have helped. But he was ashamed of this one.
"We knew what he was doing and we went in quietly, didn't we? Rather than knocking or calling out or anything. We told ourself we wanted to catch him, get him in the trouble he deserved but... We wanted to watch him. Didn't we?"
"Shut up." There was no heat in his voice. He licked his lips and tried not to think about that day, that moment, that succession of images. Joe's ass, bare because his jeans were shoved down, thrusting. The girl's legs around his back, her panties dangling on one ankle. Her fingernails, long and sharp and painted an absurd shade of orange, gripped Joe's back. Ken had intruded on the couple's final moments of coupling. Joe's face, seen in profile, dark and growling, eyes closed. And then - gasping, hips hammering, Joe came - and he pulled out of the girl at the last moment, holding out his thick shining-wet cock like an offering as spurts of come pulsed up and out and all over the girl's breasts. And the look on his face, the savage pleasure, masculine beauty out of control...
These images had tormented Ken ever since that day, fiercely though he might try to repress them. One could not say to one's best friend, to one's second in command, ‘you could come all over me if you want.' But the stolen images had shamed him many times over, when he touched himself. They were all he had, but the other Ken did not lie: he had known at the time what he was hoping to see, and he saw it.
"Why are you doing this to me?" Ken cried out, agonized, and the older version straightened up, smiling, and let him go. His aching flesh throbbed unassuaged against his belly.
"I've been waiting for you to ask me that. You do understand that there are many, many versions of us...? Why did I particularly pick you? It's not you yourself - you're just the same as any of us, a Ken Washio born and bred and mutated into what they need to save them. It's your Joe that's different."
"Different how?"
"I don't think I should tell you."
There was a change in the air, like an open door, though no door opened. Light assaulted Ken's eyes and he shut them helplessly, unable to shield them with his bound hands. There was a violent rush of wind.
"What the fuck," said a voice.
A loud voice. Joe's voice.
"What the fucking fuck is going on in here?"
***
Ken found his erection unequal to the sudden reality of Joe and his loud shouty voice. To be found bound and naked like this, one thing: to be found enjoying it, well! That would be another.
Joe stood looking back and forth between him and the older Ken. He was not in birdstyle. He was not... not in anything. He was as naked as the rest of them. But when he noticed the Ken on the bed noticing this, Joe just shrugged.
"I can't bring anything with me," he muttered.
He was not older, like the other Ken was. He looked like the Joe Ken knew. And yet... something was different. Indefinably different. He must be a different Joe - a Joe from a different point on the ‘probability axis,' Ken supposed.
Meanwhile, the older Ken had stood stock still, staring at Joe as though at an apparition.
"I heard all that shit you were saying," Joe said to the older Ken. "What did you tell him all that for?"
"What - what do you mean? Heard what I was saying?"
"It takes me like five minutes to get all the way through," Joe said impatiently. "I get stuck. I had to stand there listening until the window finished opening."
What on earth was he talking about? But whether the other Ken understood Joe or not, he plainly did not like that he had been overheard.
"What's this crap about people raping people?" Joe demanded, advancing on the older Ken. "What stupid world did you find that in? Like there's a world where I don't love you - you dumb fuck!"
"What?" and the other Ken was pale, trying to retreat but running out of room. "No. Wait. It's him you should be talking to. He's your Ken, your world's Ken." He pointed at Ken on the bed, hand visibly shaking.
"You're all my Ken." And strange thing enough that it was to say, Joe looked so strange when he said it. Ken lifted his head to stare at him. He had to understand what was happening; he had to make himself understand it. Joe was here, but... this was not the Joe Ken saw yesterday. This Joe had seen much more.
His regard seemed to attract Joe's notice, and when Joe turned toward him Ken had never felt so naked before in his life. Joe's steps toward him seemed loud for bare feet. And when he leaned over Ken, the scent in his nostrils was exactly what the other Ken had conjured before, but now it was a true torment. Joe... heard... all that. Ken squeezed his eyes shut in a fresh wave of shame.
Joe snapped Ken's restraints open with careless flicks of the fingers, then turned away from Ken, letting him sit up and recover on his own.
"You are the cyborg. Aren't you?" the other Ken was saying to Joe.
"Thought you didn't want to tell him," Joe drawled, raising eyebrows.
"That was before you showed up!! And you, you just Hulked those steel cuffs off him."
"I'm still waiting to hear why you were telling him all that shit," Joe said, ignoring that last. "The love we want doesn't exist, blah blah blah. You tie him to a bed to tell him that shit? What are you, nuts? How old is he?? How old are you, Ken?" - swiveling around to confront the Ken who was now sitting up on the bed, rubbing the feeling back into his hands and feet.
"Nineteen," Ken muttered.
"Nineteen," repeated Joe, gesturing around as though he himself did not appear twenty. "Christ. I've been following you for I don't know how long now. And I ought to have just waited for you to come to me! I don't know exactly how your axis thingy works but it makes an unholy fucking mess in the prime throughline, that's what, for someone trying to jump a straightforward -"
He did not get to finish: the older Ken flew at him and kissed him quiet, wrapping his arms around his neck. Joe gripped him around the waist - and responded. He responded. He kissed Ken. Like he meant it. His eyes were closed, lashes dark and distinct against his cheek, as his mouth mingled with the older Ken's.
The younger Ken caught his breath and looked away quickly. But he had already seen it and could not stop seeing it, Joe, kissing a man. Joe, kissing someone who looked like him. Clothes. Where were his clothes? He was burning: his eyes burned, his breath scorched his throat. He must escape. Naked or not!
The dimly glimpsed door was almost within his reach when Joe's arm slid around his waist. Ken twisted as though to elude a grapple, but he found Joe inexplicably strong, his grasp unavoidable. That body heat scorched all along one side of Ken, and then Joe was breathing in his ear:
"Don't leave me now. I'm your Joe," he whispered. "I'm the Joe you saw yesterday."
"He said you're a cyborg," Ken challenged. And now it was Joe who looked ashamed.
"Yeah," he said, and let go of Ken's waist.
"Don't be like that," said the older Ken, shooting an angry look at his counterpart. "It's better than him being dead!"
"That depends on how he feels about it," said younger Ken softly, his eyes on Joe's face. "But that's not what I'm talking about. How are you the Joe I saw yesterday?"
Figure it out, Joe's face was telling him. Ken took a stab. "You're older than you look...?" A cyborg wouldn't be expected to age, he supposed.
"A lot older," Joe said. Ken stared at him for a moment, but then decided not to ask that particular question. Instead he asked,
"So you have a time machine...?"
Joe laughed at that, white teeth showing in a familiar half-grin. "I am a time machine."
"What do you mean," said the older Ken, "you've been following me?"
"When you mess around in all those timelines - or axes or whatever exactly you're doing - it messes them up, Ken. They don't fucking reset when you're done playing with them. I finally made it to when you were when you were still then. And here you are with MY Ken, telling him...?"
Ken felt a jolt at Joe calling him ‘MY Ken.' It was as sudden and direct as Joe's arm around his waist had been. And, I'm your Joe.
"I just didn't want him to turn into me," the older Ken said, and sat down bleakly on the edge of the bed.
Joe turned toward Ken, who stood breathing hard as he tried to sort out the things he was hearing. A cyborg. A time machine. HIS Joe - from the future, who knew how far - A lot older.
And yet he was the same, his very scent was the same.
"I think he did all that just to get me here," Joe said to Ken, and yes, this was Joe talking to him, real Joe, Joe's eyes meeting his. Joe's voice saying impossible things. "What do you think?"
Ken shook his head. What did he think? He didn't understand.
"I'm not the only one of me that becomes a cyborg, am I? When I die?" said Joe, turning to the older Ken, who flinched at the last word as though struck.
"No," he said hoarsely, after a minute. "But you're the only one who time travels."
"Ah." Joe nodded. Turning back to the younger Ken he put an arm around his shoulders, same as he ever had. Except that they were both naked. "So Ken. Did it ever occur to you that the reason I horse around so much is because I want to touch you? And I don't know how else to do it?"
"What?"
Time travel, probability axes, multiple selves, all these Ken could more or less take in, but for Joe to talk this way just wasn't possible.
"I know I look the same, believe me. I know. But I'm different. In my ‘present', you've been gone... a long time. And I've missed you. God, I've missed you." Joe slid his other arm around Ken and embraced him, holding him close as he went on speaking to both of them at once.
"I'm old enough to know it just doesn't fucking matter that you're a guy, it doesn't matter what it means about me. I - just - love you. I can't help it. And I still love you, after you're gone. There's never been a damn thing I could do to make myself love you less. And thinking about all that wasted time... being afraid of it... fuck, I couldn't stand it. You don't - you don't know how long it's been...
"So, I don't know what Ken here means exactly by not loving you the way you want, but I guess I interrupted something, didn't I? Why don't I interrupt it some more? I think that bed looks big enough for three."
"What?" said Ken again, and Joe pulled his head back by the hair and kissed him.
The older Ken said, "I'm old enough to be able to say, I love you, too." He got up from the bed and came to them, sliding an arm around Joe and the other around his other self. "And I've missed you..."
Joe turned from one to the other, taking up his mouth in a continuation of the other kiss, while his hand slid down the younger Ken's back.
After a little while Joe said, "What exactly were you planning to do before I showed up?" to the older Ken, who was panting and starry-eyed, just like the other one. "No, it's obvious what, but I mean, how far were you going to go...? If I'd waited a little longer, would I have walked in on you, fucking yourself?"
"Yes," said the older Ken, while at the same moment the younger one said, "No!"
Joe turned his head to look at the younger Ken. "I couldn't see what he was doing. I only heard his voice. You didn't like it?"
"He was touching me," Ken said, his voice barely audible. "I - didn't - like him talking about you."
"Liar," said Ken from the other side of Joe. "Just thinking about him made you hard, don't lie."
"That's not the question." Ken tried to make his voice cold and commanding, but it felt absurd when they were all three of them hard and... and then Ken gasped in what felt like all the air in the room as Joe's hand curled around the shaft of his cock. Ken's wide eyes took in the fact that Joe was doing exactly the same with his other hand to Ken's other self. Like a reflection in a mirror.
The argument should have died at once. But something in Ken rebelled at this, at seeing himself reflected. He jerked back from Joe, panting, eyes averted. "Leave me out of this. I don't like him," gesturing at the older version of himself, who leaned back with a bitter little smile.
"Of course you don't," said the other Ken, "seeing as I'm you."
"That's not it."
"You tied him up," Joe pointed out. "You thought he'd like that?"
"You think I don't know what he likes?" Other Ken stood up and stepped away from the bed. "I know he would if you did it."
Ken found them both looking speculatively at him, and heat rushed into his face. He dropped his gaze in embarrassment, but that only directed his attention to his cock, more eager than ever at the idea.
"I won't touch you anymore if you don't want me to," Ken said to Ken. "But I do know you. And I know that it'll take tying your ass down to the bed to make you give in to what you need."
Joe turned his full attention to Ken now, his gaze smoky with interest. "Can I?"
Ken had already experienced a hint of what ‘cyborg' meant in terms of strength. Surely he could. But of course Joe was asking. And that...
"Yes."
...made all the difference.
"Please," Ken added.
Since he was willing this time, his arms were all that were necessary to immobilize. His legs were free: infinitely more comfortable this time.
"So. What does he need?" Joe, sitting on the edge of the bed, asked the older Ken. Perhaps he ought to have felt offended not to be asked directly, but Ken didn't know the answer to the question himself.
"He needs you to fuck him," the older Ken replied, his eyes fixed on Joe's face. "Hard. And he needs to fuck you." He licked his lips. "Harder."
"Well then it's a good thing there's two of you," Joe drawled. To the Ken tied to the bed, "Never mind need, what do you want."
Ken stared at him mutely. For once in his life, he did not say "What." All he could do was to stare at Joe in unmasked longing. Help me. I don't know what to do. I just want you. But Joe just waited.
"Come here," Ken said at last. "Kiss me. And then suck me." He was not begging. His voice was hoarse, but strong. Somehow being pinned down like this... made him feel more powerful. And indeed Joe obeyed him with admirable, really soldierly alacrity. Or maybe he just moved faster now. Joe kissed him - and it was not just the wicked teasing heat of his mouth but the heat and weight of his body leaning across Ken's. Ken drank in that kiss and breathed in that scent with a low moan that could not be suppressed. Not anymore. His arms flexed and tested the restraints; his hips surged into rhythm, undulating against Joe, so hungry for contact.
When the kiss broke Ken panted, "Suck me. Now, Joe." His voice was harsh and urgent, his eyes only barely open, glittering through his eyelashes. He watched as Joe slid down his body, hands sliding to his hips, and he watched as Joe dipped his head and hungrily sucked in Ken's aching, dripping cock.
Heat of his mouth. Heat and wetness and that swirling, flickering tongue. Ken writhed under Joe, crying out incoherently. Joe was relentless, ravenous on him. Ken so wanted, so needed to come, (biting his lips) but he was desperate to prolong it, (feet pawing the bed) make it last, (fists digging nails into his palms) to always and always be thrusting and fucking up into that tight. hot. heavenly mouth and -
"Let go and come," said the other Ken, and Ken gasped, unable to resist - arching back in uncontrollable spasms as he came. Joe held his bucking hips and didn't let him go, holding him in till the very end.
Ken lay stunned for many heartbeats. For Joe to do that - yes, he'd told him to, but for Joe to - actually swallow that - He took a deep, shuddering breath. Would they let him up now?
Joe lay down on top of Ken, seeking out his mouth for several lazy minutes, then he said, "So. You want to fuck me? Or do you want me to fuck you?"
Ken opened his mouth, then closed it again. The other Ken laughed a little, not unkindly.
"He's never done either. In fact that might have been his first kiss, earlier. Before his first blowjob."
Ken growled in embarrassment, turning his face away. Joe shot a look at the other Ken, but got only a well-it's-true sort of gesture in return.
"I want you to fuck me," Ken said, and if he did not say it in as strident a tone as his previous commands, the words were still throbbingly clear. He turned his head back to look at Joe. "Fuck me," he said again, "and - and come all over me - " because as it turned out, sometimes it was something you could say to your best friend after all. "Please."
"Damn, Ken," Joe slid his hands down Ken's sides. "I ought to be the one asking please."
"Will you hurry it up already," broke in the other Ken. "Here," and he shoved a small bottle into Joe's hand.
"Hurry it up? really?"
"YES," said both Kens in the same maddened tone. The younger of them flexed his arms against the restraints again.
Joe flashed his teeth again in his hey-it's-me smile. Pouring lube over his fingers, he reached down between Ken's legs. He probed expertly, coaxing tense, trembling muscles into giving way and letting one, then two fingers inside. Ken was hard again now, panting.
"That's enough, Joe. Do it now," he ordered. "I'm tired of waiting."
Joe made a strangled sound at that, maybe a laugh, but in the next moment he was obeying orders again and Ken had no more time to think about it. Joe lubed up his cock, then passed the bottle to the other Ken.
Ken made sure to keep his eyes open, to see Joe's face, as Joe pushed in. It was big and so hard and when the head went fully in Ken gasped at the sharp ripple of pain, but he did not look away. After that... after that... it was so easy, Joe slid in like he belonged there - filling Ken so full with the bulk and the heat of him, and the scent and feel of him all over Ken's body, and the sound of his voice moaning low... Ken cried out when Joe drew back to stroke forward again, but there was no sound of pain this time.
Then, it seemed, something was happening to Joe as well: the older Ken had put the lube to use, and had positioned himself behind Joe.
"This all right?" said the other Ken to Joe, stroking down his back, and Joe said, "Fuck yeah. Do it," pausing mid-thrust as Ken writhed underneath him.
And so Ken watched Joe's face as Ken behind him pushed in, and saw the same wild pleasure there that he was feeling now, and now he understood Joe's remark about it being lucky there were two of Ken.
And then things got a bit too wild for careful study of anyone's faces. The older Ken groaned and thrusted and bit Joe's hard, impervious shoulder. Joe growled and thrust back and forth between them both, and then he leaned down to hold Ken's mouth in a fiery kiss as his hips kept tirelessly hammering. Joe tipped his head back then, gasping, "Yes, God yes..."
"Joe," they both groaned, in one voice. The sound of it made Joe shiver: Ken felt it against and inside him.
"Oh gods," murmured the other Ken, leaning his forehead against Joe's back as he thrust in undulating waves - the motion that had made Joe cry out.
How could this even be real... how did he get here... oh no, if it were a dream he mustn't ruin it now. There was too much to lose. He did need it. The pleasure, the welcome drowning in sensation, Ken's body was singing with the rhythm, and he picked up the way the other Ken was moving and danced with it - not mirroring but complementing, joining his other self in making love to Joe.
Joe, who was who knew how old and had waited who knew how long, a cyborg - but so undeniably still his Joe without having had to say so - Joe, with him at last, filling him completely and writhing helplessly between Ken and the other Ken who started all this.
"Joe..." They did it again, in identical tones of longing, and it would have been annoying except for the way it affected Joe. The look on his face at that moment was something only Ken could see. He would never forget it. That beloved, familar face, those eyes, the trembling mouth.
"Yes..." and Joe gasped, ducked his head to hide his face and pumped harder, as the dance sped up with a desperate, starving urgency. Ken moaned, and now his voice was quite separate from the other Ken's, who panted and growled as he too pumped harder, responding to Joe's need.
"Oh -- Joe," the other Ken gasped, "oh Joe I have to come -- " And then Ken heard his own voice crying out and babbling "Yes good Joe so good yes make me --"
"Yes," said Joe, to both of them.
Ken came then, all over his own chest, wide eyed, gasping for air: he went first, which might have been vexing as the youngest of them if it were not for his other self crying out only a heartbeat later. They both came writhing and the way they both moved and the way they both cried out to him as they came worked a new magic on Joe. He gasped - in an agonized voice, in his first language - "I love you, love you - ah God let me die for it but I love you," and he clutched Ken beneath him, drenching himself in Ken's come as he came inside Ken, face pressed against Ken's neck. It felt good inside, the throbbing of Joe's cock, a secret possession. But it felt at least as good to feel Joe holding him like this... to have heard him say what he just said.
It was time to free his hands now. Easy enough, now that he felt like it. Once free Ken stretched his arms once, then wrapped them around both of the other men in the bed with him. Joe's hair, shaggy as ever, proved fascinating to his fingertips and he stroked them through it, slow and gentle.
The other Ken said, in a slow, thick voice, "I'll - I'll have to sleep soon. And once I do, I won't... won't be able to stay here. I'll revert to my own point of origin," and Joe looked back over his shoulder at him.
"Hope it was worth it," Joe said softly.
"You too," murmured the other Ken, touching his face with the briefest caress of the fingertips before laying his head down on Joe's back with a trembling sigh.
Then - Ken's head swam for a moment, or perhaps it was that everything swam and his head was part of it that noticed. There was a slight sensation of falling and then everything was as it had been. Except that the other Ken was suddenly gone.
Ken looked around, then wound his arms around Joe's back. "Don't tell me you're gonna do that too."
"Nah. I make a lot more noise than that," Joe said, attempting to be light, but Ken could see sad and complicated things passing through his eyes.
"But you have a time limit. Right?"
"Yeah," Joe sighed. "There's always something."
"So all we ever get are stolen moments?" Ken cried out suddenly, and he pulled away from Joe, overwhelmed by grief. "Do I ever get to be with you again? Or do I have to live without it now that I know -" He stopped himself.
Joe pulled him back, effortlessly. He put his arms around Ken, kissed the top of his head. "Ken. My Ken. Remember the other one saying I'm not the only cyborg, but I'm the only one who time travels? You want to know why that is?"
Ken nodded, not trusting himself to answer.
"It's because of you," Joe said. "Because you said - will say - something to the younger me that, later, um..." So strange that he seemed embarrassed now. "Makes me want to live long enough to still be around when time travel is finally invented. - You would not believe how fucking long it will take."
Ken did not ask that particular question. Instead he focused on what seemed the most important point. "What did... what do I say?"
Joe shook his head. "I can't tell you. But you'll say it. Before it's too late you'll say one thing to me that... brings me here to you right now. And... Ken... I'm glad you did. It was worth waiting all those years just to see you again. It was worth everything."
They lay together, not speaking anymore, because Ken could not bring himself to ask how much longer they had. He knew Joe knew, and he could read it by Joe's face. So instead he lay his head down on Joe's chest and marveled that a cyborg still had a beating heart.
Ken dozed off for a few minutes, but he felt it when Joe slid out from under him. He pretended to go on sleeping, to spare Joe the misery of a painful scene; he kept his eyes closed through the light and gale of Joe's "window", and did not open his eyes till long after he was alone.
Apparently, he had an important new speech to work on.