All in the Blood

Editor's note: this story contains gay male content. If this does not interest you, please read no further.

Sex pollen.

Apparently that shits real.

Some part of Flint knew it'd be a bad idea to take on the Seelie Queen on his own.

The creature was two parts witch and one part wrong.

It had been an uphill battle since the moment he entered her domain, clawing at the ghostly trees and stumbling over roots that seemed to magically find ways to get him on his knees. Although he probably should have guessed that the Seelie would've been a vicious bitch to take out. It was obvious by the way she had bloody kitten-skulls hanging off the branches like lanterns at a macabre festival. Kittens. That was five kinds of messed up.

The fact was he didn't think - a rare oversight for a Hunter Scout - so in the end he paid for his arrogance.

But he could live with that.

What he couldn't live with was his father being that one to save him.

What he couldn't live down was his father getting hit in his place from a poison dart in the back from the Seelie Queen herself and it didn't help because in the end Flint got hit too. Now both estranged father and son were huddling in a cabin that looked like a serial killer's vacation home and trying to stave off the spores in their lungs and the poison in their veins.

To think after surviving two wars, three motor accidents and a stabbing in his back, Flint was going to die like this. Stuck in a room with a man he barely knew and with freakin' sex pollen urging him to rub up against the couch like a cat in heat.

Flint didn't even have time to feel despair.

He was just too bloody embarrassed that he was going to die from literal blue balls.

+

Father and son hid together in silence for nearly thirty-two hours.

They decided to play the game of ignorance for as long as they could. Don't look. Don't touch yourself. Don't touch anything, especially each other and everything will be right as rain. Just ignore that they were both feeling randy as hell and ready to grind up against the hard wood floor and everything will be alright.

Not bloody likely.

They lasted one day and one night till both Flint and his father Kane, were going out of their minds.

"This is your fault." Flint bit out, breaking the silence they had maintained for so long.

Kane made a gruff sound at the back of his throat that meant, Fuck off.

"Why'd you have to come? I told you and the rest of the unit I'd be fine huntin' that Queen on my own." Flint snapped. "I had her."

"Is that what you call being pinned to a tree by knives?" The older man huffed from his corner of the room.

Flint shot the man a dirty look.

"You know you shouldn't have been there Kane. Your team doesn't have jurisdiction to hunt on that land. Mine does. And as far as I could tell, I'm literally the only person on the team that has legal permission to go burn the bitch." Flint ran tired shaky fingers through his hair. "I'm not trying to be high and mighty. You just shouldn't have been there."

The older man leaned against the wall and propped his feet on a log of firewood. The ease in which he moved made Flint's teeth grind in annoyance.

Even now, Kane was cold and composed as ever. It rubbed Flint in all the wrong ways.

"Last I checked, you don't follow rules boy." Kane turned to look at the evening sky outside the cabin window. "And that's exactly the reason why you can't be left alone on solo runs. You're reckless and a danger to the rest of us who are trying to do our jobs properly so we can get back home to our families in one piece."

And there was the cool, condescending tone Flint had been waiting for.

God he hated that man.

"Don't talk to me about family Kane. I could hardly take that word seriously when it's coming out of your mouth." Flint hissed. "Deserter."

"Blood traitor." Kane threw back easily while still looking up at the sky through the window.

"Murderer."

"Like you ain't one?" Kane snapped. "And stop pacing. You're giving me a headache."

"Fuck off."

"Sit down."

Flint doesn't.

+

Hallucinations are apparently apart of being drugged out on sex pollen.

And apparently, they're really bad.

It's his father that shows the symptom first after nearly two days of being confined to the cabin.

Kane's eyes had glazed over and spent three hours staring at the wall like he'd been lobotomized. Nothing Flint said or did made his father respond him. By the fourth hour, when Flint had a glass of water from the small kitchen, he was suddenly attacked.

There was a knife in Kane's hand and he was genuinely trying to slice Flint's throat open.

They brawled for a while, smashing chairs and breaking what little glass was in the kitchen till Flint slammed his father's head hard against the wall. Suddenly that disturbing glazed look in Kane's eyes was gone and all that was left was confusion and shaking hands.

"What the hell was that about?!" Flint snatched the knife off the floor and tossed it into the sink.

Kane rubbed a shaky hand across his face, looking more tired than Flint had seen his father in a while.

"I thought you were someone else...I couldn't see you. I didn't know where I was." His father sat down on the floor.

God damn.

"It's progressing faster than it should." Kane added quietly.

"How come I haven't had hallucinations?"

"You will." His father replied back with unnerving certainty. "I had it first because I'm older. You're twenty while I'm thirty-nine, your metabolism is fighting it off better."

There was something grim in the line of his father's mouth.

Flint finally asked, "This...poison...it will eventually go away right?"

Kane just looked at him.

Surely, it couldn't be that bad?

"No." Kane looked away. "It won't naturally dissipate. The poison is spore based, which means its nature is to multiply."

"Multiply?" Flint repeated worriedly. "Isn't...isn't there anything we can do?" He quickly added after a pause. "Other than the obvious option I mean."

His father's silence was more telling than any answer he could have given.

+

Flint was having an extremely hard time hiding his hard-on.

Somewhere in the back of his head, he knew Kane would be having the same problem. But every time he looked at his estranged father, the older man looked like he was bored out of his mind which only served to make him even more agitated.

Jesus. His balls felt like they were on fire and his own clothes were sandpaper against his skin. It was unbearable.

Hyper-sensitivity wasn't as kinky as it sounded. It just hurt.

Flint adjusted his watch. Midnight of the second day in their little hell-hole and the young hunter was just about ready to burn the cold little hut down and leave.

He checked his watch again for lack of things to do and blinked at his wrist in confusion.

There was something wrong.

Flint must have been staring at the watch for almost five minutes but no matter how hard he tried, the markings on the clock face made no sense to him.

He couldn't read the numbers.

Actually he could focus his eyes on anything.

Suddenly there were warm hands on his chin, tilting his face up as he blearily blinked away the sudden vertigo.

"Flint."

Who was talking?

"Flint."

The deep voice was very close and he couldn't recall when had sat down.

Were the walls always that strange shade brown? Or was it green?

"Flint, focus on me." That voice commanded and Flint slowly made eye contact. "Do you know where you are?"

"Kane?"

"Wrong. Try again. Where are you?"

"Hell hole?" he muttered.

"Close enough."

Those large, scarred hands nudged his face closer and Flint could suddenly think clearly again. His father's face was inches away and while it was still stony and sharp, there was a slight crease in his soot coloured eyebrows.

Flint felt something warm trickling down his nose and smudged it on his fingers. He inspected his hand with vacant curiosity, his head still half lucid and filled with cotton.

Blood.

"Shit."

Suddenly his father's large palms where on his shoulders and urging Flint to lie down. The sudden contact felt too sharp, too sensitive and too hot. He wanted to shrug them off but the contact was doing things to his groin while his mind just wanted Kane to go away.

He didn't need that damn man's sympathy or help. Or a boner.

"Oi, get off."

"Stop moving." The older man ordered firmly. "Your nose is bleeding all over the place."

"I don't fuckin' need your help!" Flint snapped.

"Can you just follow instructions without complaining for once in your life?" Kane growled, his temper rising and his ire increasing.

"Not from you!"

Flint was aware how petulant he sounded but the pounding in his head and the fire in his groin was making him less inclined to deal with his shitty father.

"Do you want the poison flowing faster through your body?!" Kane raised his voice for the first time. "Just do as I say!"

"Fuck you!" Flint spat, his voice dripping with malcontent. "You don't get to tell me what to do, whether as a Captain of the Watchman Unit or as my father!" The younger man started coughing but he continued on. "You forfeited that right years ago when you decided you wanted jack-shit to do with me and left!"

The wheezing became worse in Flint's lungs and his mouth felt bone dry.

Kane just stared all grim and cold and Flint just wished his father would look at him with something other than professional politeness or apathetic distance.

God he hated that man.

The older soldier sighed and rubbed his face then finally he spoke low and infuriatingly calm.

"Then you don't have to do anything. Just listen." Kane leaned away from Flint. "We've tried to wait the poison out and usually it would've eventually disappeared but I don't know what kind of pollen strain the Seelie Queen used. So far, it looks a lot more persistent than the usual."

The captain moved back, his slate-grey eyes analyzing Flint's body like his was a map or a weapon that had to be taken apart.

Flint dreaded that words he knew his father would say.

"You've begun hemorrhaging from your nose and soon it's going to be your ears and then your eyes. I won't be that far behind either. At this rate, my guess is that we'll both be dead within the next thirty hours."

His father's pale eyes bore holes into Flint's growing sense of doom.

"We'll be fine." Flint insisted but he knew his words were weak. "Just...a few more hours. We might be better then."

It was flimsy logic and the young fighter's words felt even less convincing when his nose started bleeding again.

"Flint...I know you don't have to listen to me but at least take my advice as one soldier to another. We can't wait this out."

Flint knew what Kane was saying. He understood the logic and he even agreed on it. The problem was the unsettling churning in Flint's gut that just screamed no, no, no.

"I'm not having sex with you." Not with my own father. Flint turned away, unable to look at the captain.

His father just stared at him for a little while longer with unreadable eyes. Then after a long moment, Kane nodded.

"I know and it's alright."

It was just a few words but it conveyed easy acceptance. Acceptance at father's own death and Flint wasn't surprised that the older man wasn't going to push further.

As much as Flint despised the man, he knew Kane had outstanding moral fiber. He'd never push. He'd never force. He'd make sure everyone always had a choice but without being a push-over. It's why he was so damn successful as a captain, as protector and as a leader.

Fucking noble asshole, Flint thought helplessly.

"Get some sleep." Kane instructed as he stood up and turned away.

So Flint watched his father walk out of the room and furiously crushed the guilt rotting in his stomach and the hot burn in his groin.

It was official.

They were going to be dead by tomorrow.

+

The next morning, after beating-off nearly six times in a row, Flint looked down at his hands and watched the white semen dry on his skin with a sort of muted depression.

He was a prodigy in his field.

He was an orphan that pathed his own future on hard work and sheer bull-headedness.

He was an expert marksman by the age of fifteen and already promoted to a frontline fighter against the border creatures that lurked at the dark edges of the city.

He was a protector, just like his sweet dead mother had said he'd become.

He was a fucking survivor.

So why was he counting down the hours to his death when he could do something to prevent it?

Was this how he was going to die?

Desperately wanking off alone in a cold shack?

Flint washed his hands and leaned heavily against the bathroom sink while trying to not think about Kane in the other room. Kane who had accepted so quickly that he would die because a prideful, bitter child couldn't sacrifice a little bit of himself to save both their lives.

Suddenly Flint had to see Kane, had to talk to him. Maybe even apologize? He wasn't sure. But all he knew was that he couldn't stay in his small three-by-three room feeling guilty as fuck till the moment his dropped dead.

So he quietly entered Kane's private room.

The older man was sleeping rather uncomfortably on the hard mattress. It seemed the pollen was making living a terrible endurance with the hyper-sensitivity and the raging hard-ons and his father's was no different.

But before Flint woke the man up, he spied something in Kane's hands.

It was a little locket made of silver and delicate hair-line carvings. The feminine trinket looked out of place in his father's large hands that was more suited to holding guns than delicate jewelry. Curiosity getting the best of him, Flint looked closer and realised there was a picture of a baby girl inside the open locket.

Something cold ran down Flint's spine.

The girl was Kane's two year-old daughter. Emma? Anna? He couldn't remember the child's name. All Flint knew was that Kane had family. Actual proper family and they would probably miss him if he died and that little girl in the locket would grow up not knowing the asshole Kane as a dad and it would all be Flint's fault.

"Shit." The young marksman quietly swore to himself.

He wasn't a family-wrecker and despite his sporadic fantasies about killing his absent father, Flint wasn't going to suddenly commit patricide.

"Shit."

He rubbed his face with defeat and started to take off his combat jacket then his shoes. Flint swallowed the bile in his throat as he psyched himself into the right mindset. He could do this.

All he had to do was fuck his father.

+

Kane woke to the feeling of someone unbuckling his belt.

Without even opening his eyes, the older man reached under the pillow and grabbed his gun but cold hands stopped his movement before his could shoot the invader dead on the spot.

"None of that Kane." said a low voice from below.

Kane's eyes blinked open to the bizarre sight of his estranged son threading his belt out of his combat pants and dropping it onto the floor. The boy had tossed his trousers on the chair, lost his jacket at some point and his pale skin was covered in goosebumps.

"What are you doing?" Kane asked with some alarm as he watched his son sit with his head near his crotch.

The boy didn't answer, those deft, quick hands made little work of pulling down his fly and with next to no warning, cupped Kane's groin with a gentle squeeze.

Kane hissed.

Flint's hand palmed his hard erection through his boxers, rubbing long strokes through the fabric in firm, controlled movements. The older man felt electric jolt run up his legs and swell directly into his organ.

It felt unbelievably delicious. And unbelievably wrong.

He immediately sat up and grabbed his son's hands and stopped him in his tracks.

"Stop."

For the first time Kane caught sight of Flint's face properly and there was a strange blank expression staring back at him. That was not the face of a person that was happy with their hands on his junk. That wasn't even the face of a person that was happy period. What the hell was the boy doing?

"Go back Flint." Kane ordered quietly, trying very hard to ignore the repulsive erection he'd been carrying for the last three days. The captain had even manage to reel in the violent urge to rut up against the mattress to an acceptable level but now the boy had ruined all his work and he was now resorting to digging his nails into his own palms so he wouldn't start masturbating right then and there.

Flint remained frozen at the foot of the bed, unmoving and still.

"I'm not leaving." The younger man finally said. "I'm not...I'm not going to carry the guilt of killing the both of us because of my indecision."

The boy clenched his hands and then tugged them harshly out of Kane's grip.

The man looked at the boy and asked, "You don't want this."

"Of course I don't!" Flint barked. "Despite that fact that I've been horney as hell non-stop for the last three days, it doesn't mean I actually want to have sex with you."

"Neither do I." Kane added.

"We then that's something we both agree on for once but that doesn't change the fact that we're gonna have to do this." The boy said it with a grimace that didn't bolster Kane's confidence.

"You were pretty adamant about leaving it alone last night. What changed?" Kane asked curiously.

Flint frowned and looked out the window where the rain was pelting against the glass.

"Nothing changed." The boy added quickly. "I just...I'm not dying like this." And neither are you, seemed to be implied.

Kane eyed the erection tenting underneath his son's boxers. Well at least physically they were more than ready but that was the pollen-spores talking. Mentally, Flint looked as if he was a world away and even Kane wasn't sure he'd be able to bleach his brain out afterwards if they did this.

"I get that." Kane agreed. "But you're not doing this if you can't even look at me."

Flint snapped his amber eyes at him, all defiant and burning like whiskey on fire.

"I can do this. We doing this and that's the end of it."

"Are you sure?"

Kane reached over and gently unfurled Flint's palm.

When they opened, it revealed bloody fingernail marks in the boy's soft flesh.

"It doesn't look like it to me."

Kane knew he said the wrong thing because there was coiling anger rolling behind Flint's eyes, ready for a challenge and ready to prove Kane wrong. The captain sighed. Why was dealing to boy so difficult? He had better chances of taming a killer wildlings on drugs than the young man he could barely even call 'son'.

Flint was suddenly on top of Kane, thighs bare and straddling his stomach. Those pale amber eyes glared down at him with impotent fury and cocky confidence.

"Listen to me Kane." The boy said his name like it tasted of raw meat. "I'm a Watchman soldier. I've trained to serve and to protect and I'm more than aware that I'll probably die on a mission, I'm more than certain I probably won't live past thirty." Flint sneered, his palm resting on the both sides of Kane's head. "So if I'm going to die, it'll be because I was doing my job right. It'll be because I was saving someone's life or protecting the people I love most." The young man leaned right up to Kane's face, his breath hot against his cheek. "So I ain't gonna fucking to die from blue-balls, you get me?"