Chapter 8
Random Name Generator
Levi opened his eyes to a room that hadn’t changed.
The ceiling. The dim ambient light...the smell underneath the air that his nose stopped noticing at some point. And behind him, the arm across his waist, the warmth, the steady breathing against the back of his neck. All still here, exactly where he left them.
Levi wore nothing and neither did Asher, and each point of skin-to-skin contact registered individually — chest to back, thighs against thighs, a somehow–already-stiff-again cock pressed against the small of his back, all the trapped body heat in a space too small for two people.
He shifted, just slightly, and his cheek burned where it pressed against the pillow. He tried to flex his fingers, but his knuckles were still stiff, protesting like they’d forgotten how to straighten. His body had other complaints too, deeper ones, in places he was choosing not to acknowledge.
Asher’s arm tightened around him. “Stay.”
“What time is it?”
Asher’s chin moved against his shoulder, looking around the room. “The clock on the desk says 0322.”
Levi lay very still, trying to make sense of the information.
He actually…slept?
How many days had it been? He’d lived entire days running and scared and died without a single moment of sustained rest, his brain never offline, never dreaming.
And his body was just out there somewhere with a VR headset strapped to his face while his brain ran at full capacity inside a simulation designed to terrify him?
What is that doing to me?
“You didn’t dream,” Asher said.
Levi turned his head. “What?”
“You didn’t dream. I was watching. No eye movement, no sounds. Just...” His arm pulled Levi slightly closer. “Still. You were completely still.”
“You watched me sleep?”
“I watched you be peaceful.” Asher spoke the words almost like he was afraid of them, pressing a kiss to Levi’s shoulder. “You’re never peaceful when you’re awake. I wanted to see what it looked like.”
Levi’s chest ached and his skin crawled; both happened at the same time and neither cancelled the other out. “What did it look like?” he asked, not sure he wanted the answer.
“Quiet.” Asher’s lips pressed to the back of his neck. “Your face does this thing when you sleep. All the managing goes away. The thinking. The calculating. And what’s left is just...” He trailed off. His thumb continued its circuit on Levi’s ribs. “I like holding you when you aren’t scared of me.”
The sentence sat in the room like something with weight, and Levi let it sit.
There was nothing in it that wasn’t true — Asher’s arm around him felt like the only solid thing around him, and the chest against his back and the mouth near his hair had become what his body recognized as safe.
Not safe like an absence of danger, because Asher being around meant there was always going to be danger, but safe in a way that always knew Asher would be there.
“You know what?” Asher began, and his tone shifted — brighter, almost childlike. “We should have pet names for each other. That’s what couples do, right?”
Levi blinked. “I…what?”
“Pet names.” Asher settled more firmly against him, his arm still possessive around his waist. “Special names just for us.”
He was naked and bruised, lying in a dead man’s bunk, with a room that smelled like blood and sex, and Asher wanted to discuss pet names. Sure. Why not. This is my life now.
“I was thinking I could call you something like... sweetheart? Or maybe baby?” Asher’s thumb grazed Levi’s collarbone, slow, tracing the line of it like he was memorizing the shape. “You have such a young face. It would be perfect.”
Levi closed his eyes. The emotional whiplash of it — from I like holding you when you aren’t scared of me to sweetheart or baby?
in under ten seconds. His hands tightened on the mattress edge because they needed to be holding something.
But the fingers on his collarbone kept moving, impossibly gentle, and the heat of Asher behind him was steady and close, and Levi let himself have it.
Just this. Just the quiet and the warmth and five consecutive minutes without something trying to kill them.
“Baby,” Asher decided, the word landing in his voice with the certainty of someone who’d just solved a particularly difficult equation.
“I’ll call you baby. It’s perfect for you.
” He pressed his nose into Levi’s hair and inhaled, slow, and made a small, satisfied hum, like this mattered more than any of the violence that had led them here.
Levi just lay there, staring out at the room, at the desk, at the door, his mind spinning as he opened his mouth and nothing came out because what was he supposed to say to that?
He liked the weight of the word in Asher’s mouth.
That was the thing he wasn’t going to look at directly — not the liking, which was just there, but what the liking meant.
“What would you call me?” Asher asked, pulling on Levi’s shoulder until he was on his back.
He sounded like a kid asking to be included in a game he didn’t quite understand but desperately wanted to play.
His mismatched eyes searched Levi’s face, the only thing in them a desperate want that Levi wanted to meet.
It was almost enough to forget that Levi had been dragged into this room and practically stripped at gunpoint.
“I...” Levi’s voice came out as a squeak. His mind scrambled for anything, landing on a concept, and the word it found was the wrong one, or the right one, or the one his guard wasn’t high enough to stop. “Dovey.”
He wanted to take it back immediately, but Asher’s whole face lit up before he could. It became younger and soft, lips parting, eyes wide, and he looked like someone who’d been given something he’d stopped believing he’d ever get.
“Dovey,” Asher repeated, testing it, then said again, softer: “Dovey.” The wonder in his voice was audible and terrible. “You — that’s from lovey-dovey. That’s a love name.”
Levi’s face burned. “It’s not—”
“You almost called me lovey.” Asher grinned, propping himself up on one elbow. “You were going to say the whole thing and you stopped yourself and you gave me the part without love in it.”
“That’s not what—”
“It is.“ Asher planted a kiss on Levi’s cheek with the uncoordinated enthusiasm of a dog who’d just earned a treat, then pulled back enough to look at Levi’s face.
The smile on him was so bright, so genuine, so completely free of every sharp edge Levi had learned to watch for, that Levi felt himself start to smile back before he could stop it.
“And a dove? That’s a peace bird. You think I’m peaceful? ”
“I think you’re the opposite of peaceful.”
“But you called me it anyway.” He traced Levi’s jaw with his fingertips, barely touching, then let them drift — down the side of Levi’s neck, across the bite mark that still hadn’t faded, along the line of his collarbone to the hollow of his throat.
Like Levi’s skin was something he’d been given permission to explore and he intended to map every inch of it.
“Because when you’re with me, you feel—”
“Don’t finish that sentence,” Levi warned, but his voice came out thinner than he wanted because Asher’s fingers had dipped below his throat and his body was paying attention to that in ways his brain hadn’t authorized.
Asher smiled. Settled, certain, the smile of a man who didn’t need to hear the answer because the pet name already gave it to him.
He lay back down and threw an arm over Levi’s chest, pulling him in until there was no space left between them — bare skin flush against bare skin, the length of Asher’s body warm and solid along his back, his face tucked into the curve of Levi’s neck.
His lips brushed the spot just below Levi’s ear, not quite a kiss, and one leg hooked over Levi’s thigh with a casual possessiveness that made Levi very aware of exactly how much clothing neither of them was wearing.
“I’m so happy,” he murmured against Levi’s skin, his mouth still close enough that the words themselves were a sensation. “No one has ever given me a nickname before. No one has ever…” He stopped and swallowed hard. “No one has ever wanted to.”
Levi stared at the ceiling and felt something twist behind his sternum that he didn’t have a name for and didn’t want one.
“You have a pet name, I have a hostage situation.”
“You have a boyfriend who loves you and a pet name that proves you love him back even though you won’t say it yet.” He sighed against Levi’s neck. “No one else gets to call me that, right? Just you?”
“Just me,” Levi heard himself say, and he meant it.
Asher made a sound against his neck, like a low, pleased growl as his hips shifted closer, pressing his erection into the small of Levi’s back.
Levi’s face heated. He could feel Asher’s heartbeat against his shoulder blade, fast and hard, and the slow drag of Asher’s mouth along the tendon of his neck, open and warm, tasting the skin there like he couldn’t help himself.
“You’re doing that on purpose,” Levi muttered.
“Doing what?” Asher whispered against his throat, and Levi could feel the shape of his grin.
They lay like that for a while. Asher’s thumb had found the dip between two of Levi’s ribs and kept returning to it, the same small circle, and Levi’s breathing had synced to it without his permission.
The quiet was new. No alarm, no running, no one dying in the next room.
Asher’s hand drifted from his ribs to his hip, his palm flat against the bone, fingers curling loosely over the jut of it, and every few seconds his fingers would sweep a slow arc across the skin below Levi’s navel — idle and absent, the way someone might pet a cat without thinking about it.
Levi didn’t want to move. He didn’t want to think about the creatures or the plan forming in the back of his mind to get out of the game.
He just wanted to be with Asher when Asher was like this.
It’ll be different when we get out. He’ll remember how to be a person, not a weapon. We have to get out.
“This place is different from the others,” Levi said. He kept his voice casual, conversational, like he was working through an idea rather than building toward something. “The sanitarium was a trap that actively tried to kill us...but this place? The ship isn’t hunting us. The creatures are.”
Asher remained quiet behind him, his hand stilling on Levi’s hip.
“If we got rid of the creatures,” Levi continued, “this place would just be... a place. Rooms. Food. Systems that work.” His thumb traced the edge of the mattress. “We could learn how to do our roles. Eventually. We’d have time.”
“Time for what?”
“To be together.” Levi let the words land. “Without something trying to eat us or crush us or kill us every five minutes. We could just... be here. You and me.”
“You’d want that?” Asher’s hand flattened against Levi’s stomach, fingers spread wide pressing in like he needed to make sure Levi was still there. “You want to stay here with me?”
“If it was safe.” Levi’s chest tightened with the lie, or with the part that wasn’t a lie — he couldn’t tell anymore, the line between strategy and honesty had become so blurred that when he said together, he heard it in his own voice and it sounded real, because part of it was.
“If the creatures were gone and we could just live here. Yes.”
Asher’s face pressed into Levi’s hair and he let out an exhale that shook, just slightly, before it steadied. His lips moved against Levi’s scalp, not kissing, just pressed there, and Levi could feel the shape of words Asher wasn’t saying. “Together. You and me.”
“Together,” Levi whispered. He turned his head to kiss him, to seal a deal and to feel Asher’s mouth on his, because maybe if he kissed Asher, this moment could last. Maybe he could make Asher remember being a person out there. Maybe he could make Asher want to leave.
The alarm tore the moment apart.
Full klaxon, the overhead lights switching from dim yellow to red, the pulse of it hitting the room as an automated voice rang out over a speaker: Warning: containment breach. Purge protocol authorized for compromised zones. All personnel report to emergency stations.
Asher’s arm locked around Levi’s waist. “Stay.”
“Asher—”
“Let them handle it. We stay here.” His grip tightened.
Levi pushed at Asher’s arm, managing to half sit up as the aches in his body objected to every part of sitting up. “We get rid of them,” he said. “That’s what we just talked about. We get rid of the creatures and then this place is ours.”
Asher looked up at him from the pillow. The alarm light washing red across his face, his eyes bright as that pout seemed to form on his face again.
“And then,” Levi said, and he didn’t know where this came from — strategy or honesty or the recklessness of someone who had just slept for the first time in days, “you find wherever the cafeteria is and you take me on a date.”
“A date?” Asher’s eyes widened.
“My first one. So it better be good.”
“Your first—” He bolted up. The alarm kept screaming and the ship was doing whatever it did during a breach and the expression on Asher’s face was something Levi had never seen on anyone, in any scenario, in any loop — joy so undiluted it looked almost violent. “You’ve never been on a date?”
“No.”
“I’m going to be your first date?”
“If we can get rid of the creatures…yes.”
Asher was already off the bunk and rushing to grab their clothes from the desk. He tossed Levi’s jumpsuit at him without looking. “Get dressed,” he grinned as he pulled on his pants, completely forgoing the boxers. “I’m taking you on a date, baby.”
Levi tried to dress quickly, but he was flustered, both by having Asher watch him dress, the alarm, and the fact Asher was somehow already armed, dressed, and vibrating at the doorframe.
Please let this work. We can make this work.
Play the game. We get back to the void and I’ll make him hold onto me.
“You ready?” Asher asked as Levi finished pulling on his boots. Levi just nodded and grabbed the gun off the desk, slipping it back into his pocket. “Let’s go kill some monsters.”
He loves me, Levi thought as the door opened to a cacophony of sound and chaos, nameless NPCs running about and shouting orders. Asher grabbed his hand, still grinning like a madman. He really does love me.
I’m fucked.