CHAPTER THREE NO CAMERAS IN THE CAVE
The morning after the storm, the island steamed.
Grant and Cody left their trunks drying uselessly beside the dead fire and entered the jungle wearing boots, utility belts, and nothing else.
Nakedness had become less startling than wet fabric.
The camera crew's drones followed above the canopy whenever gaps allowed, their hum blending with insects.
Grant carried the pot. Cody carried both knives and an expression of dangerous satisfaction.
“You're walking strangely,” Cody observed.
“So are you.”
“I have an excuse.”
“So do I.”
They grinned despite themselves.
Survival demanded an intimacy less glamorous than television promised. Twice a day, they checked one another for ticks, leeches, cuts, heat rash, and the pale burrowing larvae Grant had found on missions farther south. The first inspection happened in a spear of full daylight beside a kapok tree.
Cody raised his arms and turned slowly. “See anything?”
“Your ego.”
“Too large to miss.”
Grant crouched. A swollen red mark sat high on Cody's inner thigh. He steadied Cody's leg over his shoulder and leaned close.
“Plant fiber,” he said. “Embedded.”
“Use the knife.”
“Too close to an artery.”
Grant caught the splinter with his teeth and drew it free. Cody's hand closed in his hair—not pulling, exactly, but not accidental.
Grant looked up.
“Mosquito,” Cody said hoarsely, swatting the empty air.
“Of course.”
Later, when they stopped at a spring seep, Cody found a cut near Grant's hip. He cleaned it with boiled water, then pressed his mouth to the unbroken skin just below.
“That is not medical,” Grant said.
“No.”
“Drone.”
Cody glanced through the leaves. “Coward.”
The jungle opened at a flooded gorge. Brown water rushed between black walls of basalt. A fallen tree provided the only crossing, its trunk slick with moss.
Grant tested it. “I go first.”
“Because you're older?”
“Because I know how to fall.”
“I know how to land.”
Cody passed him and stepped onto the trunk.
He made it halfway before moss sheared under his boot. He dropped with a curse. Grant jumped instead of thinking.
The water struck like a fist. Grant surfaced downstream, caught Cody around the waist, and braced both feet against a submerged rock. Cody wrapped around him. The current kept thrusting their bodies together.
“Stop laughing,” Grant said.
“You jumped after me naked.”
“You were drowning.”
“I was standing.” Cody lowered one foot. The water reached his chest. “Mostly.”
Grant tightened his hold anyway. Cody's mouth brushed his jaw.
“The drone has an excellent angle,” Cody murmured.
“Then smile.”
They climbed the far bank and found the lava tube by accident. Cool breath rose from a crack behind curtains of fern. Cody squeezed through first, then called Grant's name with such wonder that Grant followed without argument.
Inside, the passage widened into a grotto. Warm freshwater poured from a shelf of volcanic rock into a clear pool. Mineral deposits glowed amber along the walls. Sunlight fell through a narrow opening overhead, turning mist to gold.
The drone signal died at the entrance. Grant's microphone hissed, then went silent.
Cody stared at the dark lens clipped to his belt. “No transmission.”
Grant removed his own. “No fixed cameras.”
“No audience.”
The words changed the room more completely than silence had.
They did not touch immediately.
For the first time since boarding the ship, Cody appeared uncertain. He walked the pool's edge, checking for animal tracks and water contamination, his professional habits suddenly transparent as defense.
Grant understood. Every previous kiss could be blamed on emergency, challenge, or performance. Here, hidden by stone, whatever happened would be chosen in private.
“We can use this only for water,” Grant said.
Cody glanced back. “Is that what you want?”
“I want you to believe you can say no without changing what happens outside.”
Something in Cody's posture eased. “And if I say yes?”
“That changes everything outside.”
“Good.”
Cody stepped into the pool.
They entered the pool. Warm water closed around Grant's thighs, then his waist. Cody swam beneath the fall and tipped his face into it, washing away sweat and clay. Grant joined him.
“Turn around,” he said.
Cody did.
Grant worked his fingers through Cody's wet hair, massaging grit from his scalp. Cody's shoulders lowered. His eyes closed. Grant washed the length of his back, tracing the scars production had numbered in black marker.
“Patagonia,” Grant said, touching the ribs.
“You remembered.”
“I remember everything too.”
Cody turned and laid both hands on Grant's chest. Water streamed from his lashes. He followed the scar map on Grant's body without looking down: avalanche debris at the ribs, helicopter cable at the shoulder, broken glass at the thigh.
“I hated these,” Cody whispered.
“You didn't know me when I got most of them.”
“I hated them when I learned them yesterday.”
Grant caught the back of Cody's neck. “There is something you aren't telling me.”
“There are several things.”
“Start with why you left.”
Pain closed Cody's face. “Not here. Not when you'll think I'm inventing it because I want this.”
“Want what?”
Cody answered by kissing him.
Without lenses, the kiss became slower. There was no performance to resist and no image to control. Grant tasted spring water and the truth Cody would not yet give him. He backed Cody beneath the fall, then let Cody turn them so Grant's shoulders met the warm stone.
“Tell me if anything hurts,” Cody said.
“Nothing hurts.”
“Tell me anyway.”
“Yes.” Grant touched Cody's mouth. “And you?”
“Yes.”
They explored instead of collided. Grant learned that Cody shivered when kissed beneath his ear and went perfectly still when a hand settled firmly at the back of his neck.
Cody learned that Grant's strength became most vulnerable when someone asked him to surrender it.
They traded leverage and trust, teasing until restraint dissolved, then slowing whenever emotion rose too sharply.
The water held them. Volcanic stone warmed their backs. When they came together, it was with their foreheads touching and their hands joined against the rock.
Afterward, Cody floated against Grant's chest while the waterfall filled the cavern with white noise.
“The cameras made you angry,” Cody said.
“You looking at them made me angry.”
“I looked because I wanted them to know you chose me.”
“I haven't chosen anything.”
Cody studied him. “You came into a cave where nobody could see and touched me like that.”
Grant had no answer that wasn't a confession.
Cody smiled without triumph. He pushed away, climbed onto a warm ledge, and stretched out with shameless grace. “Then don't choose. Come here.”
Grant went.
The second time began with laughter when Cody used a wet footprint to trip him and ended with Grant holding Cody against the volcanic wall while Cody whispered demands into his ear.
They reversed positions halfway through, then again, neither willing to let control become ownership.
By the end, Cody's legs trembled and Grant's arms did too.
They slept beside the spring. Cody sprawled across Grant's chest; Grant kept one hand at his hip as if guarding him from the entire island.
Grant woke once in the night to find Cody watching him.
“What?” he asked.
“You sleep like you're waiting for an alarm.”
“Occupational.”
“Even here?”
“Especially here.”
Cody traced the scar at Grant's shoulder. “What happens when someone else keeps watch?”
“I do not know.”
“Try.”
Grant closed his eyes.
The waterfall covered every distant sound, but Cody's breathing remained distinct. Grant let it become the measure of safety. For the first time in years, he fell asleep without rehearsing evacuation routes.
When he woke again, Cody was still there.
At dawn, their discarded microphones remained dead.
“We could stay,” Cody said.
“We need food.”
“I was hoping lust had finally damaged your priorities.”
“It has. Food is still first.”
They squeezed through the entrance together.
A drone hovered ten feet beyond the ferns, waiting.
Its lens tilted down over their wet, unmarked bodies and the bite on Grant's shoulder Cody had left in the dark.
Cody took Grant's hand.
This time, Grant did not let go when the camera moved closer.