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Johnny's been on the beach for all of two minutes and there's already sand in his boots. Hair slicked to his head with rainwater, fingers trembling from cold, and none of it matters, because Bodhi is right in front of him.
Just standing there, tall and bold and brilliant, blond hair curling from the salt in the air and his shoulders set straight and proud. Solid and real, so much more so than the trail of evidence he'd left in his wake—a fake ID dropped here, a story told by a bored bartender about a tall surfer douche with a weird name and bright eyes there. Johnny's worst enemy and his best friend, the only person besides Tyler who'd really made him think there was something more to life than his tailored suits and his perfect marksmanship scores.
Bodhi doesn't turn to look at him, not even when his boots crunch on the sand behind him, but Johnny knows Bodhi's aware of his presence. Something like a month they spent together, but Johnny knows him—the way he shifts his weight from heel to heel like he's preparing to take flight, the way his shoulders stiffen, the way his muscles tense. They'd know each other with their eyes closed, with their ears plugged, stumbling in the dark or blinded by light. Two halves of a whole, snarling and biting at each other the closer they get.
"Bodhi," Johnny says when he finally reaches him. He'd had a lot of time to think his opening line over, during various plane rides and car trips and sleepless nights. Something like hands up, asshole , or hang-ten, motherfucker, ten to life . A bad line from a bad action movie that the old Johnny—the secret agent man, suited and booted and absolutely unpre-fucking-pared for the reality of the field—enjoyed so very much. In the end, this is what spills out. Just his name, crisp and precise.
To know a thing is to name it, after all.
Bodhi turns, then, a private, small smile on his mouth. "Hey, kid," he says. "You found me."
"You didn't make it easy on me," Johnny says.
"That's because I figured you could handle the challenge," says Bodhi. His eyes are as blue as the ocean behind them—just as tumultuous and dangerous, too. "Figured you were the only one who was up for it."
Johnny's not sure how he does it, how he makes Johnny crave his praise even when he's aware it doesn't mean much. How even now, at the end of what Harp had called a veritable fucking manhunt , Johnny's still searching for Bodhi's approval.
"I was," Johnny says. Clears his throat. "I am ."
"Here's another challenge," Bodhi says. Johnny knows what he's going to say before he says it. Not because he knows Bodhi, but because of his training. It's written in the way Bodhi shifts, the little ripple of kinetic energy that starts in his feet and makes his knees bend, his fists clench. They teach you how to clock a runner in the Academy. First lesson. "Catch me."
Johnny's started moving before Bodhi's even fully finished, sucking in a lungful of wet, salty air, his boots kicking up droplets of water as he sprints. Bodhi's quick, quick as he's always been, but not quick enough. Johnny hits him right in the back, arms looped around his middle, and they both go down with a splash.
His first thought is that it was insanely stupid to wear a denim jacket to a fight on the beach, not least because he can hardly move his fucking arms. His second thought is that Bodhi is an incredibly dangerous man. Always has been, always will be.
Bodhi lifts him up— Jesus , fully lifts him up, he’s always been too strong—and throws him down. The back of Johnny’s head hits the sand with a wet splat . The wind gets knocked out of his lungs. God, he’s fucked. Bodhi’s already coming at him again, eyes alight with all the savagery of a beast halfway to bursting out of a cage. He hauls Johnny up, yanks him tight against his chest, and he gets an arm around Johnny’s neck and squeezes. Johnny’s vision is already blurring, black spots against the gray sky, and his throat’s on fire.
He’s come too far and sacrificed too much to give up now, though, so he jerks and twists in Bodhi’s grip, a fish on the hook, and he slams his elbow back into Bodhi’s ribs with a sickening crunch. Bodhi grunts, surprised, wounded, and they both go sprawling. Johnny’s up first, charging through the waves to aim a kick at Bodhi’s side, the toe of his boot colliding with Bodhi’s gut.
Fighting him feels terribly wrong and terribly right at the same time. Bodhi’s the craziest person he’s ever met and also the smartest, the only person he’s ever known who’s fully in touch with the blistering, sublime wholeness of the universe. All the good and all the bad, all the euphoria of cresting a massive wave and all the raw fear of being subsumed by one. Bodhi holds all that within him, full to bursting. Trying to collar him, trying to beat him down—it feels stupid, almost, because Bodhi’s the only person who can connect him with what really matters. That’s what makes him dangerous, though. That he doesn’t care who gets hurt in his quest to find what’s important.
Johnny slams his fist into the vulnerable space at the top of Bodhi's spine, the golden skin that peeks out of the top of his collar like a target. Bodhi gasps and crumples like a paper bag. Johnny goes down on top of him and smacks at his shoulder, the weak muscle there that Johnny knows got torn in a surfing accident a few years ago. Bodhi squirms and rears back, gets an elbow into Johnny’s side and throws him off, gasping for air. Johnny’s arms pinwheel, trying to catch his balance, and it’s at that moment that Bodhi catches him across the jaw with a vicious blow that makes him light up with white-hot pain.
“ Fuck ,” Johnny says, with blood and salt water mixing in his split lip. “Jesus, man, fuck you—”
“Yeah, come on,” Bodhi says, smiling, snarling, and Johnny launches at him. Sends a fist straight into his nose and knocks him back into the water, grinning all the while.
Bodhi pops up, quick as a cobra, and he lashes out, his leg flying straight for Johnny’s chest. Johnny doesn’t even have a moment to think fuck again before he’s stumbling back, tipping onto the sand in a tangle of limbs. His head is spinning with pain and lack of oxygen and the sheer fucking wrongness of having to do this, of having to end his mission and send Bodhi away.
Apparently, Bodhi feels no such qualms, because he lands on top of Johnny with a thud that makes his bones ache, strong thighs clamped around Johnny’s waist. And then he’s inexorable, inevitable—a fist to Johnny’s nose and then both hands go around his throat and Johnny’s thrashing, flailing, gasping for air that won’t quite make it into his lungs. The water rages all around them, and Bodhi’s in tune with it like he always is, just as furious, just as dangerous.
Johnny’s vision is blurring and there’s blood in his mouth and salt in his eyes and fire in his chest, but it doesn’t end like this. It can’t end like this. He digs a hand into his pocket, trying to buck Bodhi off as he does, and his wet fingers strike cool, slick metal. The handcuffs.
It’s over as quick as it’s begun. Bodhi pulls off, and when Johnny surfaces from beneath the water he can see that Bodhi’s triumphant, a lion looming over its kill. Johnny lifts a weak wrist, metal jingling as he does, and Bodhi’s face is priceless, melting into horror like ice on a hot day.
“No,” Bodhi says, utterly broken. Then, realization dawning on his face: “You didn’t come alone, did you?” he asks, breath hot and poisonous in Johnny’s ear.
“‘Course not,” says Johnny, the words scraping against his raw throat like knives. He turns his head to the side and spits blood, acrid and sharp. “I told them you’d go quietly. I got that part wrong, I guess.”
“How long?”
Johnny thinks of the Australian cops, wiping smudges of Marmite off their fingertips and careening down slick roads, thinks of the helicopter battling through the torrential storm. “Ten minutes,” he says. “Could be less.”
Bodhi smiles at him. “Lot we can do in ten minutes.”
“You’re insane,” Johnny tells him. “You’re actually insane.”
“Just got a taste for life, kid,” Bodhi says. “C’mon. Buncha trees back there, yeah?”
“You just tried to kill me,” Johnny says.
“Lover’s quarrel,” Bodhi says, and when he smiles his teeth are limned with blood. “You need me to help you up, princess?”
“You’re sick,” Johnny says helpfully, but he’s scrambling up already, boots slipping on the wet ground. “Where’d you say the trees were?”
Bodhi laughs, big and full-throated, head tipped back into the rain and mouth wide open. “Straight ahead, baby. Straight ahead.”
So they struggle up the beach, lashed by the rain and fighting the wind, and there really is a copse of trees, the border between the beach and the city. A space between the natural and the industrial, just waiting for them. Johnny stumbles after Bodhi, everything aching, the old wound in his knee twinging viciously.
One minute they’re in the middle of the storm, sopping wet and shivering, and the next they’re tucked under the shelter of the palms, with the rain as a steady rumble all around them. Johnny looks at Bodhi—hair soaked and sticking to his cheeks, shorter now than it was when he’d first met him, wetsuit clinging to the strong lines of his shoulders and arms, eyes sparking with warmth—and he can’t stop himself from stepping forward, close enough that their chests touch.
“One for the road,” Bodhi says breathlessly, and then he’s on Johnny, pressing him back against the trunk of a tree so quick that he damn near knocks the wind out of Johnny’s chest. ( Again .) Kisses him all deep and dirty, the heat of his mouth like a firebrand, and Johnny moans against him. Bodhi laughs, low in his chest. He tips his forehead against Johnny’s and tugs at his belt. Johnny can feel the sharp line of the handcuffs pressing into his stomach. “Yeah?”
“Yeah, Jesus,” Johnny gasps, wriggling underneath him.
Bodhi fumbles with his belt buckle, slides his fingers against Johnny’s jeans, and pops the button. “Any way I can convince you to let me go?”
“Give you up?” Johnny asks. “Never.”
“I’ll keep trying,” Bodhi says. He holds his free hand up, palm open. “Spit.”
“Disgusting,” Johnny informs him. Bodhi lifts his other hand up, the one chained to Johnny’s, and squeezes the back of his neck. Hard . Johnny hisses out through his teeth, pain blooming into pleasure, indistinguishable. “Fuck. Fine.” He spits, and it’s awful and dirty and terribly, disgracefully hot.
Bodhi smirks at him. He leans in and kisses the underside of Johnny’s jaw, right where he’d hit him before—already a bruise blooming there, tender and hot. Johnny gasps again, jerks in his grip, but Bodhi just presses against him harder and holds him in place. Johnny can feel the tree bark biting into his back even through his jacket.
“Stay still ,” Bodhi says against his skin.
“ Hurts ,” Johnny replies testily, except it doesn’t. It feels good, too good, and that’s what he’s scared of.
“Does it?” Bodhi says, and he digs his teeth in.
“ Ah , fuck me ,” Johnny says, jolting with the burn of it, and his head snaps back and hits the stupid tree with a dull thunk .
“Ain’t got time for it,” Bodhi says mildly. He gets his free hand around Johnny’s cock, wet and hot, and Johnny whimpers. “Yeah. Knew you wanted it. How long do you think we have?”
“Not a lot,” Johnny says. “Not now. I’d rather not— oh God —get caught like this, if you don’t mind.”
“Probably compromise your reputation, huh, G-man?” Bodhi says.
“Just a little,” Johnny says. His hips jerk up into Bodhi’s hand, almost of their own volition. Bodhi laughs at him.
“I said don’t move,” Bodhi says. He tugs at the hand linked to Johnny’s, wet fingers slipping against his skin, and then he’s got Johnny’s wrist pinned up over his head. His grip is biting into a scrape on Johnny’s skin, skin worn raw from sand and stone rubbing at it earlier. “Jesus, you’d think you FBI drones would be better at following orders.”
“My orders don’t usually come from someone who looks like you,” Johnny snaps, half-offended, and then Bodhi twists his wrist on the upstroke around his dick and he can’t muster another retort.
“I bet I’m a lot prettier than what you’re used to,” Bodhi says, entirely unperturbed, and Johnny laughs. Tips his head back again and lets his eyes flutter shut, floats away on the rush of it—pain and near blinding pleasure, heat where Bodhi breathes against him and chill where the wind blows, too much sensation altogether. “Don’t close your eyes,” Bodhi says. “You gotta—you gotta look at me, kid. Don’t fucking look away.”
Johnny says, “ OhmyGod ,” all in a rush. This is insane, absurd, patently idiotic. They should not be doing this. Johnny came here to collar him, to drag him back to the Bureau spitting venom and dripping blood all the way. He has no idea how they ended up like this.
It makes sense, really. The first time Johnny had ever touched him had been that night on the beach, a bonfire lighting up Bodhi’s ocean eyes and golden hair, his skin gleaming with sweat in the flames. The two of them locked around each other, tumbling into the water, reaching for the football as a pretense but really just testing each other, steel against steel, pressing to see how the other would bite back. Of course they’d finish things the same way; Bodhi used to say everything is cyclical, after all.
“‘S good, right?” Bodhi asks, bending to kiss Johnny before he can answer. Tongue slick against Johnny’s split lip, blood wetting both of their mouths. “You wouldn’t care if we got caught like this, anyway, would you?”
“Don’t—fuck, you’re terrible,” Johnny says, salt and metal in his mouth and Bodhi all over him and his head clouding. Closest you can get to touching God , he thinks. “You’re so fucking crazy.”
“Yeah,” Bodhi says, grinning like a skull. “You think they don’t know how much you want me? You chased me halfway across the damn globe, Utah. You aren’t fooling anyone.”
Johnny makes a noise like a goddamn wounded animal. It’s embarrassing, really—that he sounds the same whether he’s fighting with Bodhi or fucking him. He’s never wanted anyone like Bodhi, it’s true, never bent or bowed to anyone like he has for Bodhi. He’s used to being in control in bed, all action just like he is in training or in the field, but the first time they’d fucked Bodhi had pressed a hand to his throat where his pulse beat like a hummingbird beneath thin skin and said, let go .
Bodhi’s hand is so fucking tight around his cock, a fucking vise, and he shoves a knee between Johnny’s thighs so he can’t move. He’s trapped like a fucking butterfly on the page, still alive and fluttering beneath the pin. The image makes Johnny’s eyes roll back in his head.
“Embarrassing for you, I bet,” Bodhi says. “You’re not supposed to let your target get the best of you. Let your target get on top of you.” It’s mean, he’s so mean, all that acid boiling just underneath the facade of tranquility. Just another way he reminds Johnny of the ocean—still and smooth as silver on the surface, full of treachery underneath. Can’t ever make the mistake of thinking you’re in control. Johnny opens his mouth, tries to object, and Bodhi dips his head and bites at his neck again, teeth too sharp. Johnny croaks and snaps his mouth shut again. “You should see yourself. All open and eager. Desperate .”
“God, fuck , Bodhi,” Johnny says, absolutely not the eloquent reply he’d been trying to form. He twists under Bodhi’s weight, fingers of his free hand scrabbling at the back of Bodhi’s neck, scoring lines into smooth, vulnerable skin.
“Yeah,” Bodhi says, egging him on, vicious. “You’re mine, Utah. You’re not gonna be able to forget me. I’ll make sure of it.”
He comes like that, twitching, gasping, Bodhi’s teeth set deep into his throat.
It’s the whirring of the helicopter blades that brings him back to reality, makes him blink frantically, his eyelashes stuck into wet points.
“Time to go,” Johnny says, and Bodhi pulls back slowly. Knows when he’s beaten.
“I’m not gonna do well in a cage,” Bodhi says softly. “You know that.”
“I can’t let you go,” Johnny says, as much an apology as it is an assertion. “You know that, too.”
Bodhi looks at him, head tilted. “Tell them I didn’t go quietly, alright? Tell them I kicked and screamed right till the bitter end.”
Johnny kisses him. One for the road. He says against Bodhi’s mouth, “I’ll tell them. I promise.”
When Johnny hands him over to the cops, Bodhi’s still got Johnny’s blood streaked across his mouth in a messy splash of red. Johnny has a massive bruise, royal purple, blooming on his collarbone. They were always meant to leave marks on each other.
Bodhisattva : one whose essence is enlightenment. Johnny watches him go with a pang in his chest, and doesn’t feel particularly enlightened. It feels like he’s lost something.