Pair-Bonded (an Institute story)
by Wrestlr
2.
Four years ago, you were fourteen, and Don was fifteen. You didn’t know each other at the time. He was a year ahead of you in school, had different classes, ran with a different crowd. You don’t remember whether you ever saw him in the hallways before that day; if you did, you didn’t notice. You didn’t know his name. You weren’t friends.
This was before you and Don met, before you escaped from the Federated States and ran south to the backwater clan countries like Darven, where the Institute supposedly could not reach you.
You were a typical suburban teenager. You lived your sheltered life in another country, filled with other typical suburban people just like you. Don was a typical suburban teenager too, though more outgoing and jock-ish. When you finally did meet, he seemed so much more mature and worldly to you.
The assembly was announced for Friday, second period: a motivational speaker coming to talk about the importance of staying in school, studying hard, and when you graduate please consider a career in our fine military or public service. Attendance was mandatory.
Your friend Denny said the speaker was some kind of “recruiter.” Everybody knew about the screening, the ones that detected Talents. You’d had yours the year before when you were thirteen. Everybody knew about the detection scanners too. There was one over every door to the high school—you passed by it every day. Denny said they weren’t one hundred percent foolproof, though. Sometimes Talents slipped by undetected, or hadn’t manifested yet, or maybe weren’t strong enough to trip the detector. Parents felt a lot better knowing that, the moment a Talent was detected, officials were ready to sweep in and remove the kid from the school and ship him or her off to the Institute, though whether for the kid’s safety or the general population’s was a matter of some debate. Most good citizens didn’t want Talents anywhere around—psychic powers like mind-reading or moving objects around with just a thought or knowing the future were not normal. Normal people were supposed to be equal. No citizen should have a psychic special advantage over any other.
Denny said the speaker was a “recruiter” for the Institute. He was coming to your school to try to detect students who had slipped past the screenings and the scanners. The speaker was probably a filthy Talent himself, Donny grumbled. Denny and his family didn’t much like Talents. You figured Denny should know what he was talking about; he was practically an expert on how these things worked, since his older cousin had gotten “recruited” and shipped off to the Institute a couple of years back. But the “inspirational” speech part sounded insufferable. Plus, you had a secret that you’d managed to keep, in spite of the screening and the detectors. You’d probably be just one more kid lost in the crowded audience, but you were thinking why chance it? You were thinking you shouldn’t risk being around this recruiter.
You were ready to sneak away and skip the assembly, maybe head to the mall half a mile’s walk to the west; but the teachers announced they’d be taking attendance there, and then they rounded up everyone—Come on, don’t dawdle, no stragglers now!—and shooed them and you into the gymnasium, the only building large enough for the entire student body to fit into at once.
So, at the appointed time you and every other student at your high school sat on uncomfortable bleachers. You and Denny sat on the far side of the gymnasium, in the fourth row, just four meters from the exit.
The speaker was introduced. He was a good-looking man, maybe thirty. You’d also recently begun admitting to yourself what liking to look at good-looking men probably meant—yet another secret.
He started talking, and you were looking at the double doors, wondering if you could climb over the three people between you and the exit, slip down to the floor, ease through the door. If somebody tried to stop you, you could say you had to pee really, really badly. Once through the double doors, you’d have to pass the restroom, cross twenty feet of foyer, and you’d be out the exit door. You could be gone and halfway to the mall before anyone noticed.
You had a bad feeling about this. Something itched at the back of your head, like a worry you couldn’t shake. You turned back to Denny, ready to tell him your plan. You’d sneak out, then he’d follow a few minutes later—you’d leave together. The mall was always more fun when you were with someone. But Denny wasn’t looking at you. He was looking at the speaker after all, and his face was rapt, half-smiling, practically staring. You nudged him. He paid you no heed. You looked around. All of your fellow students were paying close attention to the speaker, practically enthralled. You looked over at the speaker again and it seemed like he was looking right at you; and, yeah, you completely understood what he was saying. You felt as though he was speaking directly to you. The itching in the back of your head was a distraction, but you could ignore it. Why would you want to sneak out and miss this? You decided he was fascinating.
When the assembly ended, Denny asked if you still wanted to slip away and go to the mall. You could skip third-period French, he said. You blew him off, told him you had something else you needed to do, you’d see him later. What you wanted, needed, to do was go talk to the recruiter. You wanted to tell him how much you enjoyed his presentation. Given what Denny had said earlier, you decided you should go talk to the recruiter without him.
A few other people had come up to the podium to say hello to the speaker: the guidance counselor, the student council president, the usual sycophants. They shook his hand, nodded, said a few things—Thank you for coming, such an important message, so persuasive—and then moved on back to their boring lives as the next one stepped up.
That itching in the back of your head was back, and you scratched at it. You found yourself standing off to the side with four other students, all male. Maybe they wanted to speak to the recruiter too. You didn’t know three of them, though you thought the tall jock-type was kind of hot. The only one you sort-of knew was Vance, though his friends called him Vlad, and everybody made fun of him because he dressed all goth and wore eyeliner like a total freak. You didn’t want to stand too close to him for fear his freak-hood was contagious. The last thing you wanted was for people to see you standing near Vlad the Vampire-Wannabe and assume you two were friends. You’d never live that down.
You’d never met a Talent before. Was this man one? His uniform tunic bore a stylized lower-case i symbol, more like a corporate logo than a government or military seal. You seemed to remember hearing somewhere that symbol meant the Institute. Had Denny been the one telling you that?
When the last glad-handler was done, the recruiter turned to the five of you and said, “Ready, boys?”
You followed without question. Maybe he wanted to talk to you someplace private. He led you deeper into the gym, past the locker room door, past the coaches’ office, to the big equipment storage room. “Line up right there, boys,” he said. “This won’t take but a second and then you can get back to class.”
The five of you formed a line, facing him, shoulder to shoulder. You didn’t ask why because it all made perfect sense for you to be here, doing this. Somehow you knew exactly what to do. You just wished than damned itching in the back of your head would stop.
He started at the far end of the line. “Have your ID cards ready, boys.” You and the other four held yours out.
The recruiter—you never did learn his name; later you would simply refer to him as the Telepath—took the first boy’s ID card and swiped it through his handheld device. It looked like a portable phone, only a little larger. He consulted the screen. “Isaac Michael Thompson,” he said, looking at the boy whose name he had just read out. That itching in your head got stronger. The Telepath frowned at the boy, Isaac, for a long moment. “False positive,” the Telepath said finally, and he poked a few buttons on his device before handing Isaac’s ID back to him.
The next boy was the hot-ish jock, a little older than you.
The Telepath took his ID and repeated the swipe-and-read procedure: “Donald James Remson.” Then he stared into the jock’s face. “Well, well—what do we have here?”
Donald—or Don as you would later learn he preferred—frowned, seemed to be perspiring, trembling to hold something back.
“Now, now, don’t be uncooperative ...” the Telepath began.
Part of a rolled-up volleyball net in the corner burst into a fist-sized flame.
The Telepath laughed. “Ah. Well. I think we can safely say you’re no longer latent, Mr. Remson.” He took the fire extinguisher off the wall and sprayed the powdery white foam until the small flames were out.
The jock looked mortified, as if he had pissed his pants or something. His lip quivered, but he didn’t say anything or move. The Telepath stared into the jock’s face, and said, “Now, now—that’ll be enough of that. Stop struggling. Just relax. This won’t hurt a bit. That’s it.”
After a moment, the jock’s expression relaxed. You’d only been around people who were tripping on drugs a couple of times, but now this guy sure looked stoned to you. He smiled sloppily.
Satisfied, the Telepath stepped back. He poked several buttons on his device quickly. He sounded pleased: “Donald James Remson. Pyrokinetic. Beta level. Recommend immediate recruitment.”
He didn’t give Don his ID back.
The third boy: “Michael Ray Pierce. False positive.”
The fourth: “Vance Xavier Atwater. Possible telepath, still latent. No action at this time. Recommend rescreening in three months.”
Then you. The Telepath plucked your ID card from your fingers, ran it through his device, and read your name off the screen: “Allen Ryan Lynch.” He looked you directly in the eyes. That itch in the back of your head got worse, but you couldn’t move your arms to scratch it.
“Hmph,” he mused cocking his head. “Well, Allen, that’s unusual.”
“Ryan,” you said, since you went by your middle name. “They call me Ryan.” You wondered why your voice sounded so clumsy.
“Of course they do,” the Telepath said, more dismissing the distraction than being condescending. “Let’s try this again, shall we?”
He met and held your gaze. You remembered Denny saying something about how telepaths could tell what kind of Talents people had by looking into their heads and seeing what kind of keys were associated with it or unlocked it or activated it—something like that. You decided maybe you should have paid more attention to Denny after all.
“A little too late for that, I’d say,” the Telepath remarked, having eavesdropped on your thoughts.
He poked buttons on his device—a lot of them. “Allen Ryan Lynch. Talent indeterminate, but definitely beginning to manifest. I’m going to put it down as telepathy. Level indeterminate. Recommend immediate recruitment. Secondary recommendation for a more detailed assessment during intake processing.”
Telepathy? You wanted to tell him, no, it wasn’t like that, you weren’t a mind-reader, you couldn’t be a Talent.
He did not hand your ID back to you.
“Okay. We’re done here. Donald and Allen—I mean, Ryan—please come with me. The rest of you are free to go.”
You followed the Telepath and the jock to the guidance counselor’s office. The counselor was nowhere to be seen. You and the jock sat down and waited.
And waited.
You forced your eyes open. A face drifted into view. You’d been half-asleep, but you couldn’t seem to wake up. The face resolved itself into your father’s. You smiled when you finally recognized him. You couldn’t read his expression.
“Hello, son. Your mother and I came to say goodbye—and—and to wish you luck.”
Your mother’s face floated in too, behind your father’s. She looked worried.
“What’s wrong with him?” your father said. “Is he drugged?”
“No, it’s just a mild mentally induced trance. Think of it as a light sedative, to prevent him from doing anything rash. Nothing to be worried about. It’s for his own good, of course.”
“It’s for his own good,” your father repeated, nodding.
Your mother appeared unconvinced. “But, is this ... is it what he wants? Did he agree to this? Maybe we should call ...”
“Now, now, ma’am,” the Telepath cut her off with practiced smoothness, “you know calling your lawyer will do no good. What your son wants is immaterial. The law is quite clear, and this is what the law requires.”
“This is what the law requires,” your parents repeated in unison, nodding.
“Goodbye, son,” your father said. “We’ll come see you as soon as they let us.” You tried to smile and nod. But their faces were already drifting away, and you were already drifting back into that half-sleep.
At one point, later, the Telepath walked in. He was pacing, arguing with someone on his phone. “Agh!” he snapped, cutting off the call. “Well, boys, thanks to another administrative screw-up, our transport won’t arrive at six p.m. tonight as expected. It’ll arrive at six a.m. tomorrow morning. Bureaucrats! I hate bureaucrats!”
A cheap motel on the edge of town. The Telepath guided you and Don into a room with two beds. You sat on the one away from the door. Don sat beside you. You waited patiently while the Telepath put his overnight bag on the other bed.
A pizza and drinks arrived twenty minutes later. You were hungry; you hadn’t eaten since breakfast. You still felt strangely groggy—the Telepath’s doing—but you tore into the pizza in spite of that. Pizza was always your favorite.
“Bedtime, boys,” the Telepath announced to you and Don. The Telepath seemed tired. Perhaps keeping your head feeling quiet like this took effort. “We have an early morning tomorrow, and then you have a long day ahead of you. Better get some sleep.”
You nodded. Don nodded.
Twenty minutes later, your teeth had been brushed with a complimentary toothbrush provided by the motel, which you had to share with Don. Your bladder had been emptied. You and Don stood at the foot of the bed, awaiting instructions.
“Get those clothes off,” the Telepath told you, and you wrestled out of your shirt, then your shoes and socks and pants. You stood there in your underwear, pale gray boxer shorts. Don beside you had stripped to white briefs.
“Hold out your hands.”
Don held his hands out in front of him. The Telepath fastened something around one of Don’s wrists, then the other. It looked like handcuffs you had seen in movies, only instead of a chain between the two bracelets, this device had a solid bar, five inches wide, an inch high, a quarter-inch thick. A little diode changed from red to green when the second bracelet snapped shut. Because of that solid bar between the bracelets, you decided, these were more like shackles than handcuffs.
The Telepath fastened an identical device around your wrists. “For your safety and mine,” he smirked. “Can’t have you two sneaking out in the middle of the night, can we? There’s a tracker in them—if you do get any bright ideas, we’ll be able to find you wherever you go. Now get into bed, you two.”
Don pulled back the covers on the bed and slid himself under them and over to the opposite side. You slid in alongside him, clumsily, unused to your hands being bound together.
“And this,” the Telepath said, “is one of my favorite tricks for budding young telepaths like yourself. You get to do my work for me.”
He touched the back your head. You felt that itching spread from the back of your head and around the edges of your skull. Something stretched between you and Don, some sort of ... connection, you decided.
You looked at Don. He looked at you and smiled. You smiled back. You were aware of him in a new way. This close, you could practically feel what he was thinking. More than just the vague impressions of memory and emotion you’d ever gotten in the past. You could practically feel his thoughts, though you couldn’t quite make out how to interpret them. Don felt like a shiny new toy. The feeling fascinated you, and you felt it fascinate him too. This was the first time you felt his anger and his Talent, beguiling in the way they were tangled, all hot and bright. He rolled toward you. You rolled toward him. Forehead to forehead, hips and legs touching. Fascinating.
“That will keep you two linked. I won’t have to worry about one of you trying an escape if you’re forced to stay together. And this part”—you felt something new injected into the connection, something dark and heavy, spreading like colored liquid diffusing through water—”this will make sure as long as one of you stays asleep, you’ll both stay asleep. Sweet dreams, boys.”
The dark heaviness spread into Don’s head. You could practically watch it spread, and that fascinated you. He yawned, his breath warm against your chin and mouth. He was falling asleep, you realized. You hadn’t yet felt someone asleep from inside his head before. The sensation fascinated you, the way parts of Don’s brain just faded down, and other parts took on the glow of activity.
You could feel the heaviness spreading into you too, though the connection. You could practically sense it diffusing toward you as Don’s brain quieted. You yawned too, and closed your eyes to better concentrate on what you were experiencing in his head.
Somebody poked your shoulder.
“Wake up.”
You opened your eyes, and it was morning. You still lay on your side against Don’s body and he against yours, like puppies. Your still-shackled hands between your stomachs prevented you from getting as close as you wanted. At a year older than you, he was taller, more developed than you, but you didn’t feel overshadowed. He yawned and stretched, pulling his arms and torso away from yours. The motion of his upper body away levered his lower body toward you. You felt his morning wood alongside yours, through your underwear. You had never felt another’s erection in real life before either, and you froze, not wanting to lose the press of it against you.
The Telepath towered over you. You blinked up at him, blinked away sleep. He was saying something important.
“Our transportation arrives in forty minutes. I’m going out to get us some breakfast. Get up and get yourselves showered and dressed. I’ll be back in twenty minutes. Be ready when I get back.”
You and Don pulled apart, reluctantly, but the itch in the back of your skull was back. Something compelled you to do what the Telepath said and would not be denied. You both shuffled into the tiny motel bathroom. You busied yourself with turning on the shower while Don pissed. You tried not to stare at his cock, which hadn’t softened entirely yet.
Don slipped off his briefs, casually as if in the locker room at school, and you traded places. He adjusted the water temperature as you pissed. He stepped into the shower and pulled the plastic curtain mostly shut. You stepped out of your boxers and stepped into the shower too.
Bathing with your hands shackled, a rigid bar between the wrists, proved tricky. You and Don passed the soap back and forth. Bathing your fronts was easy. Don handed you the soap and turned his back to you. The connection between you had not faded, and though it you sensed what he wanted, not in words but in images, impressions. You ran your soapy hands over the stretch of his shoulders, the hard muscles and bones of his back. You marveled at the round solidity of his ass. Kneeling, you soaped his legs, feeling the muscles tense and flex as his weight shifted.
You stood, and Don turned to face you again. His shackled hands were held at navel level. Beneath them you saw his cock, hard again, jutting your way. You checked his face: his expression was unreadable, his eyes closed, waiting on you.
Your soapy hand slid up and down his erection. Don moaned some little encouragement but mostly pretended to ignore what you were doing. By turning your arms, you managed to get your other hand in position to tickle his ball sack, and through the connection you felt little lights of pleasure go off in his brain. You’d never touched another man’s erection before. You’d never felt these lights in another’s head before. Don gasped, flexed his fingers, balling them into fists. The lights quickly got brighter and larger, merging, and suddenly Don was cumming. His balls rode up away from your fingers. His cock jumped in your hand. His cum spurted across your arm. Light erupted in his head. The shower rinsed everything away.
Don blinked at you. You blinked back, conscious of your own erection. Something was different.
The link between you was still there, but the dopey feeling was gone. The grogginess that had colored everything since the assembly was gone. You looked at Don. He looked at you. You understood what each other was thinking, not in words but you understood the concepts.
You both tore out of the shower, dried quickly, and dressed as best you could—underwear, pants, socks, shoes. You had no way to get your shirts on over the shackles; Don tucked his in his pants, and you carried yours. Out the motel door. The Telepath had gone right, toward the street. Don turned left, heading to the woods behind the motel. Even then you were already following his lead.
You ran down trails, through underbrush, your arms up to shield your faces from branches. “Wait,” Don hissed, skidding to a stop on slick leaves. You understood what he meant: the trackers in your shackles. “Hold your hands out,” he said. You poked your shirt into the waist of your pants to free your hands, then held them out as instructed.
Don frowned at your shackles. After a moment, they began to feel warm, then hot, not quite hot enough to burn you yet but becoming uncomfortable. “Don?” you said, whispering his name for the first time.
“Hush. Just another second.”
Your shackles made a popping sound, a smell of burning circuits, and the diode went dark. Don blinked and grinned. “It worked!”
In two minutes, Don’s shackles were dark too. In ten, you were out of the woods and running behind buildings that bordered a side street, still no destination in mind other than away. You followed Don. There was no question about staying together.
You wanted to run home, find your parents, call a lawyer. Don, though, was adamant: no, the Institute would be watching your homes, monitoring telephone lines, waiting. You couldn’t bring this trouble into your families’ lives. Besides, what would they do?—The law would force them to turn you two, or any information about your whereabouts, over to the Institute. You got flashes from Don’s memories: a belt, an angry father, blows carefully kept to the body where the bruises could be explained away as sports-related. You understood Don’s opposition to going back, sensed his anger barely held in check, but you also discerned his absolute conviction that the best solution was to run, far away, as far as you could. He had thought about this before, though not under these circumstances. He already had the outline of a plan. His certainty swept you up in his wake as you followed him, as you both ran.
“Wait,” you called, because Don’s longer legs were pulling him ahead, and because you recognized the store behind which you were running. Old Man Johnson’s pawn shop. The time was still early, but you thought you remembered that he lived upstairs. You walked around front. The store was already open.
The bell on the door jingled as you entered. Old Man Johnson was half-blind, ancient. He always seemed like a relic from some forgotten time, the age of dinosaurs, like most of the items in his shop. But you remembered seeing something when your father brought you once here years ago. Back in the back, next to the case with pistols and knives. He had handcuffs. Maybe he had a key.
You took a deep breath for confidence. “Mister Johnson?”
“Dude, what are you doing?” Don hissed over your shoulder.
“Don’t say anything,” you whisper back. “No matter what. Let me do the talking.”
You heard him before you saw him. More importantly, you felt him. You had a feeling you knew exactly what would work. Handcuffs. Kids. Something Old Man Johnson remembered. How did you know that? What could you do with that?
Mister Johnson emerged from the back, blinking behind thick glasses.
You could do this, you told yourself. You could draw on that memory.
He looked at you and blinked, unbelievingly. “Billy? Is that you?”
“Hi, Mister Johnson,” you said. Images. Words. A feeling of compassion—no, of pity. What were the details? Too many pieces, as if Old Man Johnson’s head was filled with nothing but memories, fragments of broken mirrors, all overlapping and competing with each other. Which parts of the memory were important? Which weren’t? Your head ached. You could do this. Just a few more seconds to think; you could put all these pieces together if you just had a few seconds to think. Could you make him believe—
From behind you, Don hissed, “Who’s ‘Billy’?”
You jabbed your elbow back at him to make him shut up.
“Hi, Mister Johnson,” you said, just like the kid in his memory—only the kid in his memory was five years younger than you, wasn’t shirtless, and didn’t have another boy with him. Old Man Johnson’s thoughts skittered just out of your grasp, running over the top of this memory. You’d have to improvise some way to keep him from noticing the discrepancies. Fortunately his thoughts ran slow—everyone said he was going senile. You needed to keep him focused on the reason he remembered that incident: the handcuffs. Hold your shackles up a little where his rheumy eyes behind the thick lenses can see them. Focus his memory on that.
“Your big brothers locked you in handcuffs again, huh?”
“Yes, sir. Can you help me, please?”
Old Man Johnson shook his head. “Tsk. Kids these days. Well, come over here and let’s see what we c’n do.”
Your head ached. This was harder than you thought. You had only managed to pick up vague memories and emotions from people previously. You’d never tried reaching for and holding a specific memory before. You’d never tried sending back instructions of your own to control the way someone experienced the memory, the way details were recalled or weren’t. You’d never tried broadcasting the way the Telepath did.
Old Man Johnson led you to a drawer and pulled out a ring of keys. “Never see’d cuffs like these before,” he said, peering through the bottom of his lenses.
“They’re from my brother’s super-spy action kit,” you improvised. The Billy in his memory, many years before, probably as old as your parents now, was trapped in generic handcuffs. These obviously weren’t.
Mister Johnson adjusted his glasses and peered at the shackles. “I might got a key that’ll fit ‘em, though. Most things like this don’t got complicated locks.”
Fourteen keys later, the bracelet popped open. You and Don swapped triumphant grins over Old Man Johnson’s head as you rubbed your wrists. Moments later Don’s wrists were freed too. You thanked Old Man Johnson, pulled on your shirt, and took off.
You discarded the shackles nearly a mile away, just in case they could still be tracked, so no one would connect Old Man Johnson to your escape.