LOG: HARTFORD UNIVERSITY LIBRARY, HARTFORD, CONNECTICUT TERRITORY, LATE SEPTEMBER
Landside is a horrifying place. The only thing that makes it bearable day by day, as Basil slowly collates trafficking numbers and digs into every dark corner of the continent he can find, is the fact that he also finds people who are working to help. There’s a few different interlocked networks doing work across the part of the continent where Basil estimates the lykoi most likely lives; a few for sex trafficking, a few for labor, and one, startlingly, specifically for liberating captive elephants.
Basil hadn’t even considered that elephants were a real thing that existed, and not just a storybook animal that used to live somewhere across the ocean—but apparently there are elephants, whole herds of them, with their own sign language and culture. And just like with all kinds of other intelligent creatures, opportunistic scumbags are eager to chain them up and work them until they drop.
“Well, you’re sure as hell not as tough as an elephant,” says Cygnus, when Basil stops talking to take a breath and shunt his notes on that organization to a new window in his screen array. “You’re going to drop a lot quicker than they would, if you keep driving like this. Maybe I don’t know from NPCs, but you look like I could blow you over.”
“What? Yeah, no, I’m good,” says Basil, like he has the last couple of times someone has said something. He’s been feeling under the weather, sure, sweaty and achy and sore—especially in his prosthetic arm, which was made for delicate detail work and not hauling huge stacks of books around. But he’s not a baby or an intern or a guy who has the luxury of sitting around and waiting until he feels better, so.
“I’m good,” he says again, firmly.
“Are you?” Lee says dubiously, from their insane rat’s nest of paper maps. “I mean he’s not wrong, man, you look kinda…” They grimace and make a meaningful malfunctioning, glitched out gesture.
“Well, I’m not,” Basil says, and then reaches over thoughtlessly to pick up the enormous book he’s been referencing for maps and land conflicts—with his prosthesis. Which gives a sudden hot, tender jolt right at the base where the plates lock into the stump implant below his elbow, shooting up all the way to his shoulder. He drops the book with a startled yelp.
“Shit! You okay?” Cygnus blurts out, rushing over with a gun in his hands, like the book is an enemy that might need to be shot. If Basil didn’t feel like he was going to throw up with his entire arm, it would be funny. Lee darts up to their feet too, looking alarmed, and then there are two enormous bodies crowding into Basil's space, and when Lee reaches down and brushes a worried hand over his arm it stings like tiny bolts of lightning.
“I’m fine, I’m fine, I just twisted something,” Basil lies through gritted teeth. “Put that thing away, this is a library.”
Suspiciously, Cygnus holsters his pistol, then patrols in tight, nervy circles around Basil while he packs up for the day, one-handed. It feels like he twisted something open, ripped out a fraying cord, detached a degraded connection, something, the pain is relentlessly hot and sick. By the time he’s got his bookbag loaded, he’s sweating all over and scared enough to let Cygnus carry it for him and Lee hover a hand behind him as he walks, like he might fall flat on his face. Hell, he feels like he might. Shit.
It’s… not good, when Basil gets back to the palatial bedroom he’s been offhandedly granted in Madam Beaker’s villa. He gets the glove off and a few plates around the upper forearm clicked free, but he can’t uncover more than that to have a look at the protective cladding that keeps the nerve wiring snug against his artificial bones without sending the haptic signals even more berserk than they already are. He can’t see much through the gap in the plating he has managed, the angle sucks to get a direct visual, but what he can see has something filmy and rough on the underside of the plates, and something bulbous and lumpy over the wires.
Mitch always joked Basil would grow mold if he didn’t stop and clean his arm every month. It’s a sudden, stabbing heartache to realize all over again how much longer it’s been than that. The time has come and gone when Mitch would have insistently pulled him to his berth and laid him down and taken care of him, and nobody’s going to do that out here.
The coating on the wires themselves looks so bad, bubbly and chewed-on, and when Basil pries up one more plate at the very top edge of the prosthesis, the parts of the stump that he can see are raw and swollen and damp-looking. Like something's seeping out of him, or oozing into him.
When Lee comes in they find Basil shaking and sick, gripping his own hair to keep himself from scratching his fucking skin off.
“We could go home?” Lee says, like they know it’s not a possibility, but they don’t know what else to say. “We could go back and get you stuff to, to just… Shit. Can you—we could clean it? Can you just clean it?”
“It’s in the wires,” Basil says. Just thinking about it turns his stomach over queasily—unless that’s the infection climbing into his bloodstream. Fuck. “There’s so much stuff out here that eats polymers, y’know, and—on the Fleet, I had cleaner, and like, a coating treatment, and…” And Mitch, he doesn’t say, because he doesn’t want to start crying in front of Lee.
“I can’t make a new one,” he says instead, and just… focuses on the problem. Not on the guilt, not on how stupid and helpless and small he feels, not on the infection. Only the problem, and the best way out of it. “I don't have the parts, or the tools, or the time. And I can’t get this one sterilized well enough, whatever’s… whatever’s growing on there, it’ll just come back. So. We find whatever will hook up, we hook it up, and we keep going.”
“It’s not gonna be the same,” Lee says—not like they’re trying to talk him out of it. Just because one of them has to say it.
“Yeah,” says Basil, because… he’s starting to think nothing will be, maybe. “I know.”
–
Scene 25: Staff cafeteria.
When Rafael wakes again the sun slanting through the windows is much higher, and he feels groggy and sluggish but far better than before. He realizes after a sleepy moment that Rich is sitting up, stretching his arms over his head with a familiar, precise economy of motion such that the mattress barely shifts beneath him.
“Feeling better?” Rich says very quietly when he sees Rafael looking at him. He looks almost completely back to normal, which Rafael can only assume is a boon of his genetic modifications, but which feels very unfair regardless.
“I think so,” Rafael says, and sits up cautiously, rolling his neck and shoulders, sighing softly as his stiff muscles give a hot ache and bones pop in his spine. “Mm. Did you sleep?”
“Yeah,” says Rich, rather sheepishly. “You were right, I feel better too. Kind of delinquent, but. Better.”
“Good,” says Rafael, and rubs at his tired, itchy eyes, blinking sleep out of them. “What time is it?”
Rich makes a gesture in the air with one huge, pale hand and doesn’t elaborate further. Rafael waits patiently, and Rich catches his look of polite incomprehension and flushes pink.
“Oh, uh, sorry,” he says. “It’s the end of second shift. Almost noon, I mean.”
Rafael nods, but distractedly. Something that’s been niggling faintly at the back of his mind has started to come into clearer focus; the signs Rich has made before, far less subtle than the languages Rafael was taught in his youth, the gestures that belong to no sign language Rafael’s seen but that somehow look familiar nonetheless. The brief sign Rich just made, a different gesture he gives when Sol scolds and clucks at him at breakfast, and Rich rolls his eyes and waves him off with a motion so strangely precise…
“Rafael?” says Rich, looking concerned, and Rafael realizes he’s been frowning faintly without answering for longer than is polite. “I’m sorry I let you sleep so late, I didn’t know if you had a time you wanted to—”
Rafael raises a hand and makes the gesture Rich does at Sol, and Rich stops, cut off in mid-sentence, looking at Rafael expectantly.
“Oh,” says Rafael, startled and delighted and annoyed at himself in equal measures. A society that implants its citizens, who work with technology as fluidly as others eat, drink and breathe… of course the gestures to control those screens would make their way into sign.
“Yeah?” says Rich. He still looks confused, but has obviously noted Rafael’s elation and is waiting patiently for an explanation.
“Your signs,” Rafael says, and imitates one of them clumsily, as though to page to another screen. “For screens, of course! Do they all have particular meaning? What is this?” He approximates another gesture.
“Oh!” says Rich again, blinking. “No, yeah, well, they're not real signs, it’s just, y’know. It’s just—” he makes the gesture again, faster and surer than Rafael did. “Like, glitchy or… unresolvable error… that’s how you reset your screens when things are fucked up beyond reason, so.”
“And that’s why I’ve seen you use it when you talk to Connor about the others,” Rafael says, distracted from his own lingering grogginess by interest and delight. “Does Connor know how to sign with you?”
Rich looks startled by the question, and then puzzled, and then rueful. “Man, he probably doesn’t,” he says. “I never even thought about it, shit. He seemed to get the idea, so I just figured.”
“Yes,” says Rafael, and makes the sign again, practicing it. “And the one I did before—” he repeats the gesture, this time imagining the screen as he does so, and recalls pausing the movies he’s watched with the other boys, the same motion of his hands. “To pause, to stop. Yes?”
“Yeah!” says Rich, bemused but rapidly brightening with Rafael's secondhand excitement. “Yeah, that’s really good, man! I can show you some more, if you want?”
“Yes,” says Rafael emphatically, alight with purpose, and then recalls the frozen, helpless moment in the office yesterday when he signed and Rich looked at him in incomprehension. "And… I know a certain number of signs of my own. That might be, mm. Useful."
"Oh," says Rich, and then, "Oh!" a keen understanding sparking behind his spring-green eyes. "You mean," he signs again, as he had the first moment of their meeting, "Friend," in SSL. "Seriously? I mean, yeah, no, yeah, that'd be amazing, I din't know if I should ask, if I'd be backing you against a railing—I know I'm, uh," he waves a hand at his own bone-white skin and the blood red of his hair. "Not the kinda guy who's meant to even see signs like those, let alone know 'em, if it's some kinda, like a closed culture thing—"
"It is a language of necessity," Rafael says firmly. "Hastings generally haven't the need, it's true." Rich shows no sign of noting this extremely diplomatic understatement, and Rafael carries on. "But I was taught it as a means to an end, for those with something to say in secrecy and someone cruel to secret it from." He gestures, all-encompassing, to their gilded cage and to the familiar intimate constriction of the collar around his throat. "So. You've taught me silence, or stop. Allow me to return the favor."
Learning a new lexicon of signs is much easier than many of the new skills Rafael has been called upon to learn in recent weeks. His gifts have always lain in language and poetry, first and foremost of the tongue, and second of the body, and while the signs Rich is teaching him are somewhat fragmented and contextual in nature, there are many familiar in almost unedited form from various sign languages Rafael has picked up elsewhere.
"I'm definitely not the guy who could teach you the whole thing," Rich says bashfully, after the fourth or fifth time he fumbles over a word. "I'm pretty stupid in real signs, I know how to say stuff like uh…" he raises his huge hands and signs, “Hello! I’m an I.S.T. Where’s the broken thing?” in a fairly intelligible dialect of the Gulf Coast’s Black Sign Language. “I mean, I got voice to text, and my best friend’s aunt is Deaf, so he’s fluent. I uh… I limp along.”
“You're doing just fine,” Rafael says, endeared and amused. “Now, please.” He raises his hands cautiously, and gestures as if to play an invisible video, and Rich smiles at him like Rafael has amazed him, delighted him, and signs back talk.
It's delightful to have a challenge to surmount that doesn't involve jogging up and down half the steps in the mansion or being beaten with a wooden stick, and Rich proves in turn to be a quick study of the signs themselves, hands and fingers startlingly deft after a single demonstration; their meanings, and the construction of the sentences, he requires more study of. Rafael considers the uses the signs themselves are likely to be put to, and teaches him yes/no and quietly and the flow of speak/say into please, and it’s okay and I’m sorry.
The impromptu lesson goes long enough to carry them downstairs to the dining room, where Rafael begins the equally necessary lesson of stealth and subtlety of gesture. On a frame like Rich's, with colors such as his, gestures that might otherwise go unnoticed are inconveniently obvious, and Rich's look of worry when he isn't sure if a sign has been noticed is almost as telling.
Rafael is in the process of coaching Rich through ever-more-subtle iterations of the first sentence he taught his siblings—danger, run—when something in the kitchen gives a mighty, tumbling clatter and voices rise in alarm.
Rich is upright in an instant, pushing his chair back. Rafael hesitates, then groans under his breath and follows, sticking by Rich’s side.
When Rich pushes inside, there’s a young Black man in the uniform of the kitchen staff half-collapsed on a stool by one of the many workstations. He’s surrounded by three or four of the lunchtime cooks, but when one of them shifts away Rafael catches sight of a bright bloom of blood, starkly red on one of the man’s white sleeves, and stops in his tracks as a wave of light-headed nausea sweeps through him. He's never had the stomach for blood.
“—Set it on his desk and walk back out again,” the young man is saying, face tight with pain. Someone presses a towel firmly over his wound and he groans, then grits his teeth and puts his own hand over it, attempting to staunch the bleeding. “I didn’t want to wake him up!”
“Well good fuckin’ job with that, Arnie,” one of the women says dryly. “You’re lucky he didn’t go right for your throat.”
“Holy shit,” says Rich, and picks his way past a fall of scattered pots and pans—there’s a bloody hand print smeared across the side of one gleaming steel vessel, where the young man presumably tried to lean against the unsteady tower of dishes and instead knocked them over. Rich falters at the mess as though the urge to stop and tidy them is almost as concerning as the blood, then shakes his head and hurries forward instead to snatch up a first aid kit from its place on the wall. The rest of the kitchen staff backs away uncertainly as he comes toward them, holding the box like an offering.
“Should we call a medic?” he says, and sets the box down on the counter, picking at the latch. “Do you need me to hold pressure, are you okay?”
“Oh, I’m fuckin’ gold over here!” says the young man with strained humor. “Boss asked for lunch in his room, by the time I got up there he was napping in front of his desk—I tried to set his tray down and sneak out and he woke up and tried to rip my fucking arm off!” He peels the bloody rag away from his arm for a second, glances under it and blanches, swallowing hard and pressing the rag quickly back down. “Fuck.”
“Yeah,” says Rich, and digs into the kit, jaw set and shoulders tight, digging out tubes of things and packets of bandages. When he steps forward, the cook flinches back, as do half of the people around him, and the head chef straightens abruptly to her full height. For once Rich doesn't seem to notice how he intimidates, his eyes fixed with feverish intensity on the bleeding wound.
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“Gonna be okay, man," Rich says, still walking. "Lemme see.”
"Rich," says Rafael, firm and sharp, catching at one broad wrist in passing, and Rich halts as neatly as any carriage horse on parade, immediately flat-footed and looking to Rafael, alert for his next instruction.
Rafael says, "I know you intend to help," and doesn't speak the words directly to Ms Lucille but… plays them to her, angles himself just so. "But I've also known you, in every other circumstance, not to touch a man without his invitation."
Rich, to his credit, looks mortified at once—and with a clarity that no-one in the room could miss, no matter how ill-inclined they might feel toward Carraway's prisoners. His eyes dart back to the gory rag held to the cook's arm, but he tears his gaze away long enough to look pleadingly to the head chef, then her wounded man, then back again. Not horse, but hound, and one who well knows his duty.
Head Chef Byrd sighs softly, her shoulders easing. "Arnie," she says. "Let him take a look. He'll be a long sight nicer than that one down in the barracks, and a lot faster than waiting for Mr Carraway's doctor friend to ship in from outside."
The cook doesn't look entirely convinced, but thankfully he must see the logic in the argument, because he grimaces, squeezes his bleeding arm, and nods.
Rich gives Ms Lucille that strange, sharply nautical salute and a tremulous smile, and approaches less urgently this time, letting Rafael pace him on a steady approach and then sinking down to one knee.
"You're gonna be just fine, buddy," he says, and reaches out with a familiar delicacy to peel the cloth away from the wounds. Rafael swallows hard and has to look away, nauseated and unsteady with the choking scent of blood in his mouth and nose.
He hears Rich make a considering noise, appraising the damage. “Mm. Yeah, these are clean, straight cuts, they’ll glue right back together.”
“Guess you’d know your damage, Hastings,” says Arnie tightly.
Rich’s hands falter, then begin to move again, although his face is grim and pale. “Yeah, I definitely know,” he says, and takes hold of the torn, bloody fabric, folding it up out of the way, clearing the wound so he can pour something over it that smells sharp and cold. The young man groans, but when the liquid washes the blood away from the gashes, the blood that wells back up to replace it is sluggish, nothing like the flow that soaked his shirt sleeve.
“Carraway did this?” Rich reaches over with a bloody hand to pick up a pale blue tube, then sets about applying a luminous white paste to the gashes and pinching them shut, inch by inch, as deftly and surely as he works his screens or makes his bed. “Just ‘bout hit bone, fuck. Just because you woke him up?”
“He spent much of his life at war, so he wakes violently,” Rafael says, and feels more than ever the conspicuous dark bands of the collar and cuffs on his neck and wrists. Aware more than ever, as all eyes turn to him, that many of the men and women here think him Carraway’s whipped and hapless pet at best, and at worst a indolent sycophant. The mask of sober toleration offers itself, or perhaps plaintive and lovely distress; instead he catches Rich's eyes, and feels himself wear something much closer to truth. A leaden, weary grief.
“Have you not noticed? No matter how late he makes use of us, he keeps none of us in his bed with him overnight. Not for the sake of our comfort, I assure you.”
Rich's hands have fallen still on the man’s wounded arm. "You mean," he starts, and cuts himself off, swallowing roughly. "Has he ever…?"
"There have been… accidents," Rafael says, and keeps his gaze on Rich's ashen face, instead of the gore painted starkly over the paper-white of his hands—or worse, the memory of Sam's half-slack body, heedlessly broken and swept away by the next day to whatever unmarked grave awaited it. "Not in his bed, anymore; he's long-since learned to take more care with his toys. But not all the bones beneath these lovely gardens belong to enemy soldiers.”
There's a moment of leaden silence. The kitchen staff are a tableau showing every expression from grim resignation to sickly horror—to a stubborn resentful impatience Rafael has known and hated since long before Carraway's cuffs and collar.
“Hastings, buddy, I get it's real bad,” says Arnie, strained and tight with pain. "Real spooky stuff and all, the boss's a monster, think we're all pretty damn aware. But could you finish on up already? Jesus, Mary and Joseph."
"Fuck, yeah, right," Rich mumbles, and almost fumbles the little tube of sealant he's using, hurrying back to his task. "Sorry."
He finishes closing the last gash with startling speed, makes as if to wipe his face and then balks from his own bloody hands. Ms Lucille herself wordlessly hands him a wet rag, and Rich gives her a tremulous smile and mops up his own hands, then uses another, fresher cloth to wipe up the worst of Arnie’s arm, then wraps the whole thing up in clean white gauze and sits back with a shaky breath.
“Cool,” he says. “Fuck. Okay. You gotta get a real medic to look at it though, alright? The skin glue’s not a good substitute for a professional fix, you’re gonna get some nasty scars if you leave it like that. Try to get a sling, too, or it could pull back open.” He swallows roughly, looks around and starts pawing shakily at the mess of the first aid kit, picking up shreds of bloody fabric.
“Let us,” says Ms Lucille, and slides the first aid kit away from Rich down the counter, putting a fearless hand on one of his forearms above the bloodstains. “We’ll take care of it. Y’all get on outta here before someone misses you.”
“But—” Rich starts.
“Shoo,” says the woman firmly. “We got a five-course dinner to cook up for tonight, Rich, we don’t need extra bodies taking up space. We can clean up. Get.”
Rich seems inclined to linger, so Rafael takes his elbow, guiding him gently but firmly toward the door. Rich lets himself be led out of the kitchen, past the—thankfully empty—tables, out to the hallway, and it’s then that Rafael realizes that the arm he has his hand on is faintly shaking.
“Shit,” Rich says finally, faintly. Stares down at his own hands, flexing red-stained fingers, swallowing convulsively.
“You did well,” Rafael says uncertainly, and Rich squeezes his eyes shut and nods, visibly attempting to steady himself and just as visibly failing. Rafael takes a deep breath, swallows hard against the awful metallic reek of blood, and forces himself to say smoothly, “Are you alright? Would you like a hug?”
“Yes,” says Rich fervently, then balks. “But—I’m all—”
“Come here,” Rafael says, and steps forward, wrapping his arms around Rich’s barrel chest and squeezing as firmly as he can. Rich is motionless for a moment, then he moves all in a rush, sweeping Rafael up into his arms, pressing him so close it’s hard to breathe for a moment before he relaxes his grip again. Rafael is off-balance for a breath or two, then settles into Rich’s embrace and rests a hand on his bowed head, hoping the man finds some measure of comfort in the gesture.
Rich holds him for a few minutes, grip gentling until he’s just cradling Rafael carefully against his chest, breathing slow and steady into his shoulder. Finally he raises his head and lets out a last shaky sigh.
“Okay,” he says. “I’m good.”
“Are you sure?” Rafael says, and Rich gives him a wry, sweet smile and loosens his grip further, allowing Rafael to slide down and land lightly on his feet.
“I’m sure,” Rich says. “I need a shower, though. And new clothes. For the party.” He grimaces, rolls his shoulders uncomfortably and gives a throbbing, uneasy rumble from low in his chest. “Fuck, though. I keep thinking, I mean, the way he wears those fucking claws like they're just for show, how he's so impatient when I’m scared of them—I mean, I keep feeling like I’m being a big wuss. Like I’m crazy, because he's just playing. But, then… he really does go and hurt people. I bet he didn't even say sorry.”
“Yes,” says Rafael, and reaches up to press a hand to Rich’s back, rubbing between the man’s shoulder blades. Hazards, “He makes it easy to forget, and to want to please him, and play along with his pretensions. It’s all an artifice, a mask, and it’s by design. And before long, it becomes—” He has to swallow hard on the words, tantamount to an admission. “It becomes hard not to feel proud when you’ve pleased him, or grateful for his attentions, no matter how dangerous. Just because there’s nothing—He doesn’t allow any other—”
“Yeah,” says Rich, choked and rough. Rafael closes his mouth, and Rich doesn’t say anything else. Just shakes his head once, slow and tired, and leads the way back to their room.
The rest of the afternoon passes too quickly, but somehow too slowly as well, a gradually rising swell of nervous anticipation. Connor drops by at one point, looking grimmer and more tired than Rafael is used to seeing him, to let them know that Domingo and Omar will be joining them as the central entertainment of the night, and that a message came down to the main dormitories instructing any attending boytoys to plan to wear gold with their usual black and white outfits, and to make sure those articles of clothing, such as they are, are appropriate for the status of company Carraway is planning to invite—Rafael eliminates the smaller and scantier shirts from his options gratefully, although he’s well aware that the illusion of modesty will last only as long as it takes for some wealthy old man to get too deeply in his cups.
Sol has apparently roused enough from his hangover to be disgusted by the dress code. The thought of his absolute distaste over Carraway’s fashion choices at least brings a smile to Rafael’s face, which is no small feat as the strange, painful, electric buzz of anticipation hums through his bones.
In the end, after some digging through the flimsy racks of the harem wardrobe, he settles on a pair of close-fitted black slacks with a nearly respectable waistline, and the loosest white silk button-up he can find over a simple black halter top, which almost manages to be comfortable. It’s a plain look, but an elegant one, he thinks, especially when he cuffs the silk up around his forearms and adds a few of the gilt bangles and rings he’s accumulated over the years. His makeup requires some concentrated effort after so long without, but by his third attempt Rafael manages something dark and striking without being too overwrought, and streaks a flash of gold along his eyelashes to set off his eyes.
It feels perversely good to dress up again, no matter how onerous the reason might be. Looking in the mirror and admiring how the gold glitters and the elegant way the shirt falls, framing the line from his throat to his collarbones. Rafael runs a hand over his close-cropped hair, and for a second he deeply and fiercely misses the heavy fall of braids over his shoulder and the way his hair looked with gold wound through it, thick and shining.
He takes his hand away again, presses that thought deep down and steps out into the bedroom, spreading his arms, inviting.
“Acceptable, do you think?” he says, and spins on the ball of one bare foot, transitioning smoothly into his most elegant bow with a soft jingle of anklets. “Suitable for the occasion?”
“Oh, wow,” Rich says, wide eyes sweeping over Rafael, drinking him in. “Damn, man, yeah! You look amazing.”
Rafael should probably be self-conscious of the way he beams at that, the warm glow that goes through him, but he can’t manage it. He preens instead, straightening his shirt, fixing the lapels just so.
“You should get ready as well,” he says, and Rich grimaces and glances unhappily over at the bed. There’s a sheet of fabric laid out on it—something gauzy and golden, next to a white shirt that doesn’t look nearly large enough to fit Rich’s frame.
“He sent me an outfit,” Rich says bitterly, when he sees Rafael looking. “I know I’ve gotta wear it, I just… I’m putting it off, I guess.” He curls his lip at the gold fabric. “I’ll be lucky if I can get that stupid fuckin’ thing on without ripping it in half, the guy wouldn’t know a quality wrap if the whole crew of the Peacock came and hit him over the head with their bolts.”
“…What?” says Rafael.
“Nothing, man,” Rich sighs, and rubs a knuckle into his forehead, grimacing. “Fuck—fine. Just, you gotta promise not to laugh, okay?”
“I doubt you need to worry about that. But yes, I promise.”
“Ugh,” Rich mutters, and turns his back to Rafael before stripping, which is adorable. He grabs for the golden gauze and tries to wrap it around his hips as he has before, before taking it back off and trying again—then a third time, before throwing it back down on the bed with a low growl and striding over to the middle drawer to pull out a billowing white sheet.
“Not like I can stop 'em getting at my dick sooner or later, but I don’t really feel like having the damn thing just—out front and center, right outta the dock,” Rich grumbles, his face coloring, and fits the gauzy sheet against the white cotton before quickly and efficiently wrapping both stretches of fabric around his waist, with a folded waterfall of snowy white pleats between his thighs and the golden fabric as a tight shining sash around his hips. The effect is striking.
Sol might not approve of the colors, but to Rafael’s eye the gauzy gold just serves to emphasize how close in shade Rich’s pale skin is to the white cotton, how much he seems an ancient statue come to life. Rich pulls the shirt on over his head and goes into the bathroom to look in the mirror.
“Mm,” he says, sounding not wholly satisfied, and picks unhappily at the way the too-tight shirt molds itself across the enormous muscles of his chest. “I guess it’ll work.”
“It’s lovely,” Rafael says.
“But?” says Rich, because he’s altogether too perceptive.
“No, well,” Rafael says, and then folds in the face of Rich’s patient stare. “Carraway’s guests are of a certain sort. And I’m afraid that they may be less than kind, faced with a man in a skirt, no matter how artfully-worn. I can only imagine Carraway means it as a cruelty to you, to send you in front of them this way.”
“It’s not a skirt though, fuck’s sake,” Rich says, in frustration—not at Rafael, but Rafael finds himself standing very still regardless, until Rich takes note and sighs.
“No, sorry, just. Women wear wraps different, it’s a whole different thing. Here, look.”
He digs into a drawer and draws forth another sheet, holds it up toward Rafael, then folds it once and nods to himself.
“Can I…?”
“Oh,” says Rafael, and considers Rich’s earnest, flushed face. “Yes, very well. One moment.”
Rich makes a strangled little chuff of a sound when Rafael begins to strip his pants off—when Rafael looks up at him inquiringly, Rich is staring at his thighs, and only haltingly manages to look up at Rafael’s face again.
“I mean, you didn’t hafta,” Rich starts, and then licks his lips and shakes his head. “Uh. Okay, yeah, I can, sure. Here.”
He’s a trifle more clumsy tying another man’s wrap for him. After trying once or twice, he rumbles in frustration and gently ushers Rafael around to face away from him, bending down around him to pull the fabric around his hips.
It’s a differing style, although Rafael hasn’t the expertise to identify the minutia. The fabric wraps higher, tightly accentuating the narrowness of his waist, and the folds fall around his hips and thighs to create a fuller set of curves. It’s been a number of years since Rafael had cause to dress for a woman’s part; he forgot the subtle shift of his heart and bearing, how the body he inhabits changes slightly in response.
Rich obviously takes note that something has changed, because when he steps around and looks Rafael up and down, his cheeks go pink and his huge hands hesitate and fidget before reaching out to smooth shyly over a fold of fabric.
“Yeah, so,” he says, unnecessarily. “Yeah. That’s how, uh…” His fingertips linger and then draw away again abruptly, as though he’s afraid Rafael will take offense. “You look really good. Uh, but. I know you guys out here landside have gender stuff. Anyway, there you go.”
“I’m not averse to the guise of the fairer sex,” Rafael says, both amused and somewhat intrigued. “I was often our troupe’s Viola—a man in the guise of a woman in the guise of a man. Every thespian troupe will have its share of parts requiring…” He performs a delicate pirouette, ending in a curtsy, and softens his voice to the soft, high, heart-aching register borrowed from his mother. “A most becoming androgyne.”
“Oh. Oh!” Rich blinks and cocks his head to one side, considering this concept with interest. “So are you, uh. You’re not a man? Or, just sometimes, it’s vocational, it toggles, what?”
“It’s a role.” Rafael shrugs. “As is every seeming one might affect.”
“Uh… huh,” says Rich, brow furrowing. “But, you don’t want me to change around what I call you, pronouns or name or stuff like that.”
He seems startlingly familiar with the concept, and entirely unbothered. The thought is intriguing—it truly has been too long since Rafael was free to change himself so completely, to play. But in the present time and company…
“No,” Rafael says firmly. “I think that would be ill-advised, tonight most especially. Carraway has little taste for women, and between those of his guests who would find the guise distasteful and those who would find it particularly tempting, I can’t imagine my experience tonight would be improved.”
Rich grimaces. “Yeah, okay, for sure, makes sense. He’s a committed fisher, huh? I guess it makes sense, he hasn’t got any women locked up with you guys.”
“Fortunately for the women of the world,” Rafael agrees wryly. “I’ve seen him partake in female entertainment a handful of times, at the compounds of his business partners, when only such services were available. But he has a definite preference, yes.”
“Well, I think you look great, either way,” Rich says stolidly, and blushes like a sunset when Rafael smiles at him, low-lashed and coy. “Do you, uh. Can you help me out with my makeup? Your eyes look amazing, you know what you’re doing, and I’ve never done anything much beyond my nails.”
He waves his hand, then pauses and looks at the cracked polish: each nail painted like a different scoop of ice cream, with cones painted on the thumbs and sequin cherries on the pinky nails.
“Shit, I’d better clean these up too. Do you think anyone’s going to get upset about flat white? Or I think I’ve got gold, somewhere… If we’re supposed to be butch tonight, I know landside men are even weird about color.”
“I believe black, white and red are fairly traditional colors for Hastings,” Rafael says. Rich gives a tired grimace, but is already rummaging around under the bathroom sink for solvent, and in short order has stripped his nails clean and started in on painting them with a bottle and brush that look doll-sized against the massive architecture of his fingers.
“Why do you paint your nails a different design every night?” Rafael asks. He’s been curious, but it never seemed like the right time to comment.
“Oh, I’m not doing it, I just do this base coat,” Rich says casually. “Socorro Muir in Sanitation—I mean, Housekeeping—do you know her? She’s studying cosmetology, and I help the night shift clean up around the place so she’s got enough extra time to play around with my nails. She says she likes the extra canvas space.”
Once Rich is waiting for his nails to dry, Rafael approaches with the makeup. Rich does an admirable job of holding unblinkingly still with someone else’s fingers by his eyes, and he looks just as delicious as Rafael suspected he would with those green eyes outlined in black and gold. When they’re finished, he smiles at Rafael, pleased and shy, and leans in for a gentle kiss.
“We need to go down,” says Rafael finally, and regretfully begins to free himself from the draping folds of the sheet, reaching instead for the more familiar constriction of the pants he planned to wear. Rich’s people may well have the right idea, with their drapes and wraps… If nothing else, the break from pants sized to painstakingly define each individual buttock was a welcome one.
Rich gives a low chuff, sounding every bit as pained and regretful as Rafael feels, and rests a hand on the side of Rafael’s neck as he straightens, setting his clothes back in order.
“I’m sorry you have to do this,” he says with that rough rumbling edge of distress in his voice, and strokes his thumb with enormous gentleness along Rafael’s jaw. “I’ll watch your back, alright? I’ll make sure you’re okay.”
Rafael reaches up and lays his hand over as much of Rich’s as it will cover, pressing firmly, holding him.
“You won’t have to,” he says. “I’m not afraid of what they can do to me; I’ve seen the measure of them, and they’re nothing. Passing shades. Don’t be sorry for me, Rich, there’s nowhere I’d rather be than at your side tonight.” He smiles, and Rich stares at him, eyes wide and so young, terribly young.
“But it’s my fault you have to go,” Rich says, in a shamed mumble. “It’s okay to be mad at me.”
“It’s Carraway’s fault we both have to go. I would feel so much worse, waiting here for you to return, not knowing what was being done to you, not being able to help.” He straightens his shoulders, raises his chin proudly, and squeezes Rich’s hand hard. “I’m older than you,” he says. “I’ve survived a score of nights like these, a hundred of them, and I will protect you, dearest.”
“Oh,” Rich says, startled, and his cheeks bloom pink. “Well, thanks. Okay. That’s—cool. Me too.”
“Cool, then,” Rafael repeats with a twist of the man’s own strange accent, and beckons him down to kiss his furrowed brow. “Come. Let us take our fortunes up.”
Smashwords as well as your (but not Amazon yet except for After the Storm), under the series title, Stories From The Michigan Fleet. If you missed book one, After the Storm, you can . And check out our !
