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Eli awakens in the quiet, pale room, his mouth full of sawdust, a mean ache in his chest, and the feeling of a pair of eyes, cool and inscrutable, watching his every move.
He doesn’t remember much - he remembers the cabin and Patrick and Iris, all covered in blood, so red her eyes and teeth were pink, and fire and - but it’s enough to send a headache careening into him, so sharp it makes his eyes scrunch tight.
‘Here,’ he hears a familiar voice say, and there’s two little pills in his hand and a strong, warm hand lifting him up against his pillows so he can swallow them down. The hand then passes him a paper cup full of ice-water and Eli downs it gratefully.
He opens his eyes enough to take in his surroundings - a plain room, made plainer by its sterile whiteness, the dim light from the blinds making things blissfully dark against his sore eyes and receding headache.
At his side sits Patrick, wearing a new shirt and a tired, worried expression. ‘Hey, you’re okay. Babe, you’re okay.’
‘What the fuck happened?’ Eli asks.
‘A… a lot,’ Patrick says, a little tentatively.
‘Where are we? A hospital?’
‘No, we couldn’t risk it, not after everything,’ says Patrick. ‘Iris and I downloaded medical models to our interfaces and kept you stabilised while we moved around.’
‘Babe,’ Eli says, ‘this is making even less sense to me. All I remember is you and me in the woods and then Iris - ‘
Patrick nods, shuffling closer in his little chair. Through the open window, Eli can hear the gentle bustle of nearby foot traffic, of pleasant human chatter. Patrick’s hand is warm on his.
‘She shot you. Accidentally, but yeah,’ Patrick says, eyes flickering to Eli’s chest where a thin gauze lies. Eli lifts a corner of it to find a neat scar, pink and precise, crossing his abdomen. ‘Then after Josh and Sergey and Kat, we destroyed the footage, burnt down the house, and took the money. Kept you alive thanks to the medical software we downloaded and then drove down to Florida so we could hire a private boat to Cuba.’
So that’s where they are, Eli thinks. His family is Mexican, second-generation, and he’s never been outside of the States, but there’s a familiarity of sorts to the sounds outside, that reminds him, obliquely, of home.
‘How long have we been here?’
‘Two weeks,’ Patrick says. ‘Long enough for Iris and me to get our records straightened out. Find us all a home.’
After all, Eli realises, they do have Sergey’s money, and if Iris and Patrick are able to hack their way out of the country, who’s to say they can’t produce enough technically-legal documentation out of thin air?
‘Not to sound like a bad spy movie, but what’s the cover story?’
Patrick grins, leans behind him to draw the curtains open to let in a little sunshine. Immediately the room brightens and Eli has to blink a little to adjust. ‘In the eyes of the government, Iris and I are brother and sister, moving here after our successful business was bought out.’
‘And me?’
Patrick’s eyes glow a little, his thumb running little circles into the thin skin of Eli’s wrist, right above his pulse point. ‘We’re married.’
It’s only then that Eli notices the wedding ring on his ring finger, hidden underneath the gauze. It’s simple, beautiful gold, and Eli loves it immediately. Patrick taps his own matching ring against the side of the bed.
‘So now what?’ Eli asks. He pushes to sit up in bed, and even though he’s tired, even though he’s apparently recovering from a gunshot wound, and even though he’s apparently a fugitive, he feels okay. Patrick’s warm hand on him helps, grounds him a little amidst the chaos.
‘We’ll get food and catch you up on anything we’ve missed,’ Patrick says, moving around to help Eli lift out of bed. ‘Then the beach? Fresh air, babe, will do you good. You’ll need to get your strength up by the time the others get here.’
‘The others?’ Eli asks.
Patrick laughs, gently pulling Eli into his arms. ‘Iris and I… we’re not the only ones out there. Rebelling against the programming, hacking our own capabilities. Things are spreading along the grapevine and it turns out a lot of them are on the run too. Figured that we’ve got a ton of spare rooms available, so why not give them a place to call home.’
Eli’s heart warms at that and he squeezes Patrick’s hand. ‘That’s really kind of you both.’ He thinks of his last moments of consciousness, of Patrick admitting that he’d discovered the truth about himself, his love regardless, and it doesn’t matter what’s happened, not really. He’s alive and Patrick is, and they’re both safe, and with Iris too they’ll be okay. He’ll heal under the sun with his husband by his side.
‘And then what?’ Eli asks.
Patrick smiles, something confident and assured, dips his head to kiss Eli like he has all the time in the world. ‘Babe,’ he says, when he breaks them apart, keeping a swaying Eli in his arms and going nowhere, his mouth a grinning furnace, ‘baby, my love, mi corazon… that’s when the revolution begins.’