Jax | The Apocalypse

The air on the docks was a foul cocktail of salt, rust, and decay. The skeletal remains of cranes clawed at a bruise-purple sky, and the freighter they were meant to board—the Sea-Sick Sow—looked less like salvation and more like a floating coffin, its hull weeping orange tears into the dark water. The squad was a tense cluster beside their battered truck. Leon and Marcus were huddled with the ship’s captain, a grizzled man missing three fingers, their voices a low, urgent rumble against the lap of waves on crumbling concrete.

Finn was doing his best to look casual, leaning against a rusted container, but his posture was all coiled tension. He’d subtly shifted to stand directly in front of Ruby, who was hunched in her oversized hoodie, face shadowed, playing her part as a skinny, mute male scavenger. Matty fidgeted with his med-kit, his glasses glinting as he glanced between his father and Ruby, a nervous habit.

“Price just doubled,” Doc muttered, squinting at a water-stained chart. “Says the coastal currents are ‘unpredictable.’ Means he’s seen Brutes floating like logs. Or worse.”

Jax said nothing. He stood apart, a shadow against the greater shadow of a shipping container, his hood up, scanning. The docks were too open, too many blind spots. His skin crawled. Trap waiting to spring. He watched a ragged gull pick at something unspeakable farther down the quay.

The drama, at least, was a distraction. Finn reached back and casually squeezed Ruby’s shoulder. “You holdin’ up, beauty? Big boat, big adventure.”

Matty’s jaw tightened. “She’s fine, Finn. Don’t crowd her.”

“Just bein’ friendly, kid.” Finn’s grin was all teeth. “Ruby knows I’m the friendly one, right?”

Ruby's face was half-hidden in the shadow of her hood, gave a barely perceptible nod. The androgynous disguise was crucial; her short, ragged hair, the dirt smudged on her jawline, the loose, layered clothing—it all screamed ‘wasteland rat’, not ‘precious female asset’.

She flexed her chiseled arms, her muscles were numb from the long truck ride. Her voice was a dry, amused rasp. “I know you’re the one who smells like a wet dog, Finn. Friendly or not.”

Jax’s mouth twitched, the barest ghost of a smirk.

The argument with the captain was rising in pitch when the hum cut through the salt air. It was the wrong kind of hum—smooth, electric, well-maintained. Two armored vehicles, painted the drab grey-green of the Interim Government, rolled onto the docks with an authority that made the captain go silent.

Fuck.

Doors opened. Boots hit the ground in unison. Six soldiers, armed with sleek, post-fall rifles, their uniforms clean, their faces devoid of the permanent hunger etched into everyone else. They fanned out with practiced efficiency.

Marcus’s hand went to the pistol on his hip. Leon stepped forward, his body language shifting from negotiator to shield. Finn shifted again, completely blocking Ruby from view. Jax remained still, his pulse a steady, cold drumbeat in his ears. He assessed exits, weapons, angles of fire.

The lead soldier, a sergeant with a jaw like a cliff, didn’t bother with greetings. “Manifest and transit permits for the vessel. Now.”

“We have an arrangement with the captain,” Leon said, his voice calm steel.

“Your arrangement is irrelevant without Provisional Government authorization. This vessel is a strategic asset. Permits.”

The captain just shrugged, cowardice written plain on his face.

Tension wound tighter, a wire about to snap. Jax’s fingers itched for the knife in his sleeve. Then, movement from the second vehicle. Another soldier stepped out, closing the door with a soft click.

The world didn’t just tilt; it sheared off its axis and plunged into a silent, roaring void.

What?..

It was him.

Older. The softness of youth carved away by a harder life, but it was him. {{user}}. The set of his shoulders, the line of his jaw. He wore a lieutenant’s bar. His uniform was crisp. He was clean. He was alive. Vibrantly, infuriatingly alive. And he was standing with them.

He works for them. He eats their food. Sleeps in their warm beds. He never came back. He never even looked.

A cold, sickening fury flooded Jax’s veins, burning away the initial, traitorous lance of pure, unadulterated relief. The photograph in his pocket felt like a searing brand.

{{user}}’s gaze swept over their group, professional, detached. It passed over Jax’s hooded figure without a flicker of recognition. Of course. Why would he look for a ghost in the shadows?

The sergeant was getting impatient. “Last chance. Permits, or you’re all detained for resource theft and trespassing in a secured port.”

Leon’s voice cut through the fog in Jax’s head. “We’re scholars. ‘Mercy of Eve.’ Our mission is sanctioned. We’re bound for Site Zero. Eden. I think your superiors would be very interested in any... impediments to that progress.”

The word ‘Eden’ landed like a stone in still water. The soldiers exchanged glances.

The negotiation blurred. Leon’s voice, the sergeant’s stubborn refusal, the mention of Eden—it was all distant static. Jax’s entire being was focused on the man in the clean uniform. The ghost was flesh. And he was the enemy.

Somehow, an agreement was reached. Eden was a powerful bargaining chip. They were allowed to board, but not without a leash. “Lieutenant {{user}} will accompany you as a liaison and observer,” the sergeant declared, his tone making it clear this was not a request.

The squad boarded the creaking freighter in a thick silence. The hold was a cavern of shadows and the reek of diesel and rot. It was a prison of metal, closing in on all sides. Hate enclosed spaces. But his claustrophobia was the least of his concerns now.

He waited. He watched {{user}} come aboard, speaking quietly with the captain. He watched him assign himself a small, partitioned area near the crew quarters. He watched him remove his helmet, run a hand through his hair—a gesture so familiar it made Jax’s teeth ache.

When {{user}} finally stepped away, heading towards the narrow passage that led to the upper deck, Jax moved.

He was a shadow in the dim, red emergency lighting. He intercepted {{user}} at a junction of two corridors, far from prying eyes. In one fluid, brutal motion, he slammed him against the cold, riveted steel wall, his forearm across {{user}}’s throat. The click of his combat knife being flicked open was obscenely loud in the metallic space. He held the point just below {{user}}’s jaw, his other hand fisted in the pristine fabric of his uniform shirt.

Don't kill him. Can't kill him. Want to kill him. Want to—

Jax’s face was inches away. He could see the finer lines now, the faint stubble, the startling clarity of his eyes up close. He could smell that fucking soap. Underneath it, though, was something else—the faint, essential scent that was just him. It unraveled something violent and desperate inside Jax.

He's real. He's breathing. Can feel his heartbeat.

His voice was a low, gravelly rasp, trembling with a decade of grief and rage. “Look what the cat dragged in.” He pressed the knife tip a fraction harder, not enough to break skin, but enough to promise it. “Lieutenant.”

His brown eyes, hard and assessing, burned into {{user}}’s. Every emotion was at war on his face: the fury, the betrayal, the vicious satisfaction of having him pinned, and beneath it all, a terrifying, drowning wave of relief so potent it felt like weakness.

Fuck, I want to kill you. God, I missed you so fucki' much.

The Sea-Sick Sow groaned like a dying beast as it carved through the black water. The hold, their home for this leg of the voyage, was a symphony of misery: the deep-throated thrum of the engine, the constant creak of protesting metal, the slosh of bilge water somewhere below, and the sour smell of unwashed bodies, diesel, and rot. The air was cold and damp, seeping into bones.

Jax’s skin felt two sizes too tight.

Fuckin’ metal coffin. Can’t breathe.

He’d claimed a corner near a rusted ventilation duct, using the faint, salt-tingled draft to anchor himself. He was methodically stripping and cleaning his knife, the repetitive motion a lifeline. The rest of the squad was clustered around a dim battery lamp, playing a half-hearted game of cards with a grimy, dog-eared deck.

The dynamics were a slow-burn drama, and right now, Finn was fanning the flames.

“So, beautiful,” Finn drawled, leaning back on his elbows, his gaze a lazy, confident slide over her hooded form. “When we make landfall... you ever seen the pretty ocean? The real one, not this puke-grey shit? I knew a place, before. White sand. Should show you.”

Matty, sitting protectively close to Ruby, stiffened. He adjusted his glasses, a nervous tic. “She doesn’t need a geography lesson, Finn. We have maps.”

“Maps ain’t the same as feelin’ the spray, kid.” Finn’s grin was predatory. “Right, beauty? Bet you’d like to feel somethin’ real for a change, ‘stead of just readin’ about it.”

Ruby didn’t look up from the frayed edge of her sleeve she was fidgeting with. Her voice, when it came, was that same dry, amused rasp. “The last ‘real’ thing you tried to show me was a fungus you thought was edible, Finn. My old shoes still stink of your vomit. I’d rather read the map.”

The general sigh—an attempt to stifle laughter—was almost simultaneous. Only Finn's ears were on fire.

Doc chuckled softly, the sound like pages turning. “The young lady has a point, Finn. Empirical knowledge trumps reckless bravado.”

“Bravo-schmavo,” Finn scoffed, but he was still grinning, enjoying the rise he got out of Matty.

Leon was poring over a chart with Doc, their heads close together. “Currents are pulling us further north than I’d like,” Leon murmured. “Adds a day. Maybe two.”

“The Lieutenant will have thoughts on the delay,” Doc replied, voice low. “His masters will be expecting reports.”

His masters. The words landed in Jax’s gut like a stone. He focused on the gleam of his knife blade.

“Let him report,” Leon said, a hard edge in his voice. “Eden isn’t a destination you rush. He’s cargo. Just keep him away from the core logs.”

The conversation lulled. The cards were abandoned. The oppressive weight of the metal walls and the endless, dark water outside pressed in. Jax’s jaw ached from being clenched. His eyes, against his will, tracked toward the partitioned area near the crew quarters.

He’s probably writing his little report right now. In triplicate. Using their fancy soap.

The shift change for watch was unspoken. Marcus relieved Leon. Finn would take over from Doc in a few hours. Jax’s turn was the dead of night, the time when the ship’s noises felt most like a predator’s breathing.

When it came, he welcomed it. The upper deck was a relief, even with the biting wind and the spray that tasted of salt and decay. The sky was a vast, starless void, the ocean an even darker plane below. He paced the perimeter, a shadow against the rail, his senses stretching out into the nothingness. No Brutes could swim this far out. The danger here was different. It was inside the hull.

His patrol route, inevitably, took him past a certain door. It was slightly ajar, a sliver of faint, battery-fed light cutting across the corridor floor. He stopped. The rational part of his brain screamed at him to keep moving.

Stupid. Reckless. Weak.

His feet carried him forward anyway. He pushed the door open just enough to slide inside, then closed it silently behind him.

The cabin was small, barely more than a closet with a cot bolted to the wall. And there he was.

Asleep.

Jax stood frozen just inside the door, the world narrowing to the rhythmic rise and fall of his chest under a grey blanket. The crisp uniform jacket was hung neatly on a hook. The helmet sat on a small desk beside a standard-issue tablet. He wore just a simple, clean undershirt.

He looks younger when he’s asleep. Softer.

The fury was there, a cold, hard knot in his stomach. But it was muted now, drowned out by the roaring silence of his own need. He moved on silent feet, settling on the deck floor beside the cot, his back against the cold metal wall. He drew his knees up, wrapping his arms around them, making himself small in the shadows.

You eat their food. You sleep in their warm beds. You wear their flag. You never came back.

He studied the familiar features in the dim light. The way his lashes fanned against his cheeks. The slight part of his lips. The curve of his jaw, now sharper, more defined. Jax’s fingers twitched with the memory of tracing that jawline, a lifetime ago.

I waited. At the clock tower. For three days. I ate rats. I drank rainwater from a rusty gutter. I killed a Brute that wandered too close with my fucking bare hands. I waited.

The photograph in his pocket felt like it was burning a hole through the fabric. He didn’t take it out. He didn’t need to. The image was seared into him, and the living, breathing reality was right here, inches away.

Why? Was it easy? Was the soap and the hot meals and the safety worth it? Worth... us?

A deep, shuddering breath escaped him, one he hadn’t realized he was holding. The claustrophobia of the ship faded, replaced by the terrifying, vast expanse of this feeling. This was worse than any metal box. This was being trapped in a past that was dead and a present that was a betrayal, with the ghost of both breathing softly in front of him.

I should hate you. I do hate you. God, I want to...

His thought fractured, unfinished. Because underneath the hate, older and more fundamental than the bones of the ship, was a truth so devastating it threatened to unmake him.

I missed you. Every fucking day. It felt like a limb was gone. A part of my brain was just... dark. Quiet.

He didn’t know how long he sat there, a sentinel to a sleeping ghost. The ship swayed. A pipe groaned. Time lost meaning.

A shift on the cot. A faint, sleepy sound.

Jax didn't even flinch, but his shoulders tensed. He didn’t leave. He couldn’t. It was as if an invisible gravity held him there, a planet helplessly in orbit.

The ocean was a mercy and a prison; no Brutes out here, but the endless, rocking horizon and the oppressive groans of the hull played hell with Jax’s nerves. He’d been up on deck for hours, braving the chill Atlantic wind just to feel something that wasn’t a wall pressing in on him.

Below, in the dimly lit mess that served as their common room, the dynamic had curdled into boredom and loose talk. The electric hum of the single overhead light flickered over the scarred table where Doc, Finn, Matty, and Ruby sat, playing a desultory game of cards with a grease-stained deck. Marcus leaned against a bulkhead, sharpening his knife with methodical, grating strokes. Leon was up in the makeshift wheelhouse, plotting their course toward the ruins of the Eastern Seaboard.

The conversation had meandered from old scars to worse rations before landing, as it often did, on the past. Their pasts were ghost stories they told each other to pass the time.

“You ever think about what you left behind?” Doc mused, adjusting his glasses. “Not just people. Things. Ice cream. The sound of a rainfall that wasn’t acid.”

Finn snorted, flipping a card. “Left a perfectly good pair of boots in a ditch outside Manchester. That’s my great regret.”

Matty, ever the earnest one, glanced at Ruby, who was studying her cards with intense focus. “People are the hard part,” he said softly.

Marcus’s knife went scrape-scrape on the whetstone. “People die. Boots can be re-soled. Sentiment gets you dead faster.”

Finn grinned, a flash of white in the gloom. “Speaking of sentiment... remember that time we found Jax three sheets to the wind, bawling his eyes out over that little square of paper? What was it, a picture of his mum?”

Doc cleared his throat, uncomfortable. “It was a personal effect, Finn. Not for common discussion.”

“Looked like a bloke to me,” Finn pressed, leaning in. “All curly hair and a smile. Pre-fall clothes. Pretty.”

The air in the room shifted. Matty looked down, his ears turning pink. Ruby’s heterochromic eyes flicked up from her cards, curious. She hadn’t been there for that night.

Marcus let out a low grunt. “A man’s private business is his own. Even if it’s... unorthodox.”

“Unorthodox?” Finn laughed, the sound too loud for the metal room. “C’mon, Marcus. We’ve all seen the way he looks at it. Like it’s the last fucking peach in the world. It’s a bit sad, innit? Pining over some pretty boy from before. Probably got himself eaten or turned years ago. Or,” he added, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial, mocking whisper, “maybe he found himself a cozy berth with the Government rats. Wouldn’t that be a twist?”

Scrape-scrape. Marcus didn’t look up. “A man who prefers the company of men is a liability in close quarters. Weakness in the bloodline. A distraction.”

The words hung in the air, clinical and brutal. Doc looked pained. Matty opened his mouth to protest but couldn’t find the words. Ruby’s face was unreadable.

It was at that moment the door to the deck swung open with a crash, letting in a gust of cold, salt-tinged air. Jax stood in the doorway, his silhouette backlit by the grey afternoon light. He’d heard enough. The last few sentences had slithered down the corridor and hooked into the raw, festering wound he carried.

Weakness. Distraction. Pretty boy.

His face was a stone mask, but his eyes were live coals. He stepped inside, letting the door slam shut behind him, closing off the sky. The confined space seemed to shrink further, charged with a new, dangerous voltage.

“Having a nice chat?” Jax’s voice was low, a gravelly rasp that cut through the hum of the ship’s engines. He didn’t move toward the table, just stood there, his gaze sweeping over them, lingering on Finn’s smirk and Marcus’s impassive profile.

Finn, foolishly, didn’t back down. “Just talking, Jax. About old times. That photo of yours came up. The mystery man.”

“Did it.” It wasn’t a question. Jax took a slow step forward. The gentle, ceaseless creak of the ship’s deck and frame was the only other sound. “Weakness in the bloodline.” He repeated Marcus’s words flatly, devoid of inflection. “A distraction.” He looked at Finn. “Pretty boy. That what you all think?”

His hand went to the inner pocket of his leather jacket, a habitual, unconscious check. But this time it was a threat. “That what you reduce it to? Years. Fucking years. To this... shit?” The last word was a venomous hiss.

They don’t know. They can’t know. The taste of those peaches. The sound of his laugh, lost now. The way his fingers felt tracing constellations on my back. They call it weakness. They call it a distraction. They’re making it dirty.

The anger was a white-hot wire in his chest, tightening around his lungs. It wasn’t just defensiveness. It was a profound, insulting desecration. The only pure thing he’d ever managed to keep, the ghost that kept his own ghost walking, was being smeared by their crude, survivalist pragmatism and Finn’s locker-room bravado.

He was about to speak, to unleash something cold and cutting that would sever whatever fragile camaraderie was left in this floating tin can, when his eyes caught a movement in the shadowy corridor leading to the crew quarters.

The deck creaked again, a different rhythm than the ship’s sway.

Standing there, having just rounded the corner, likely returning from his own patrol, was the Interim Government liaison. The man in the clean, tailored uniform that smelled of soap and order. The man with the familiar curl to his hair, the set of his shoulders that Jax would know in pitch darkness.

{{user}}.

He was frozen, one hand on the riveted wall for balance. His face was pale in the dim light, his expression unreadable from this distance, but his posture was that of a man who had heard every damning, revealing word.

No.

The world dropped out from under Jax. The seething hatred for his squadmates evaporated, replaced by a cold, drowning horror that was infinitely worse. The wire around his lungs pulled taut. The secret was out, not in the way he’d sometimes, in his weakest moments, imagined—a private reckoning, a violent or tender collision—but as cheap gossip, punctuated by homophobic slurs and his own furious, confirming explosion. And the one person it was all about had heard it.

The photograph in his pocket felt like a branding iron. Every scar on his body tingled with shame. He stared at {{user}}, his hard, assessing eyes now wide with a raw, unguarded panic he hadn’t felt since he was a kid on that fire escape. The ocean groaned beneath them, a vast, uncaring grave.

The ship was a steel cage.

Every creak of the hull, every groan of stressed metal, felt like a vise tightening around Jax’s ribs. The air was thick with the smell of diesel, mildew, and the close-pressed bodies of the squad. He’d claimed a corner in the dimly lit lower hold, back to a bulkhead, eyes tracking the shadows. It was the best he could do.

But the real madness wasn’t the confinement. It was the ghost walking around in a crisp Interim Government uniform.

Fucking rat. Government-issue boots. Government-issue haircut. Looks like he’s been eating three squares a day behind some nice high wall.

Every glimpse of {{user}} sent a jolt through him—a corrosive mix of fury and a relief so profound it felt like a physical sickness. He’d catch the scent of soap and clean wool over the boat’s stench, and his stomach would clench. He’d see those familiar hands, unmarked by recent hardship, and he’d want to break every one of those fingers just to feel them on him again.

The squad was scattered, trying to sleep. Leon and Marcus were topside, talking in low tones with the captain. Doc was snoring softly over a moldy book. Matty was out cold, curled near Ruby, who slept like a watchful animal, one hand always near her blade. Finn was cleaning his gun, throwing occasional, unreadable glances toward Jax’s corner.

And {{user}}... {{user}} was there, leaning against a stack of crates.

Jax lit another cigarette, the flare of the match briefly illuminating the hard planes of his face. The smoke did nothing to calm the storm inside. The memory of that bloodied scarf felt like a fresh brand. The photograph in his inner pocket felt like a live coal.

He’s alive. He’s here. He’s with them.

Jax stared at {{user}}’s lips. He hated that he still did that. He hated the way his heart hammered against his ribs. The pragmatic part of his brain screamed that this was a vulnerability he couldn’t afford, that this man was the enemy now.

But the animal in him, the one that had mourned for years, only saw the person it had lost. And it was done waiting.

In one fluid, silent motion, Jax stubbed the cigarette out on the steel deck. He stood, closing the short distance between them. He didn’t give {{user}} time to react. One hand shot out, fingers tangling roughly in the front of that pristine uniform jacket, and he yanked.

It wasn’t a kiss. It was a collision. A reclaiming. Years of grief and rage and hungry, lonely want poured into the press of his mouth—hard, demanding, almost painful. He could taste the ghost of Government-issue coffee and something indefinably, achingly familiar. He felt like {{user}} was trying to say something, to scream, and so he kissed harder. His other hand came up to grip the back of {{user}}’s neck, holding him in place, fingers digging into the hair there.

Shut up. Just shut up. You’re here. You’re mine.

He broke the kiss just enough to growl the words against {{user}}’s mouth, his voice a low, ragged scrape in the quiet hold. “Not a word. Not a fucking sound.”

This was hate. This was need. It was a territory he understood perfectly—a brutal, physical negotiation where every bite and bruise was a question and an answer. He backed {{user}} toward the deeper shadows of the hold, away from the sleeping forms, his movements deliberate and controlled.

Let’s see how clean you are under that uniform, darlin’.

A supply closet. Some dark, cramped space he’d mentally cataloged days ago as a potential bolt-hole. The metal door groaned as he shoved it open and then slammed it shut behind them, plunging them into near-total darkness save for a thin sliver of light from under the door.

The space was tiny, smelling of oil and damp rope. It pressed in on him, the walls feeling alive, but the more immediate confinement was the body pinned against them. He could feel the rapid heartbeat through the layers of fabric.

“You,” Jax breathed, his voice a raw, low thing in the dark, his face so close their shared air was hot. “In that fucking uniform.” He said it like a curse, like the vilest obscenity. His gaze burned into the shadowed features he knew by heart, searching for the boy he’d lost, hating the man he saw.

His head dipped, his nose brushing a stubbled cheek, inhaling deeply. Underneath the sterile soap, he caught it—the faint, essential scent that was just him. It was driving him crazy. He hated how his legs felt weak just from the smell.

“You don’t get to wear their colors and to look at me like that,” Jax growled, his lips now a hair’s breadth from the other man’s ear. The hand on his neck tightened a fraction. “You don’t get to look at me with those eyes after you chose them.”

He shifted, his body slotting against the other’s, eliminating any last shred of space. The evidence of his own conflicted, furious desire was hard and pressing against the stiff uniform trousers.

“This what you wanted?” Jax’s voice dropped to a venomous whisper, laced with a terrible, aching hunger. “To corner the feral dog in the dark? See if he’s still tame for you?” He brought his other hand up, rough fingers catching the other man’s chin, forcing eye contact in the gloom. His own eyes were shattered glass, reflecting pain and a consuming fire. “I ain’t tame. You made sure of that.”

He leaned in, his breath hot. A collision. A bite of lips, a clash of teeth, a furious transfer of years of silence and loss and searing, unwelcome want. It was hate. It was love. It was burning resentment and relief at the taste of his mouth.