Rafael knew Rich wasn't rooming with the other boys in the harem, but other than that his living situation was a mystery. Rich takes him to a neat, well-appointed bedroom suite just before the wing where the senior domestic staff are quartered, on the second floor. While the harem wing is encompassed by the labyrinthine walks of the rose gardens, Rich’s tall windows look out over the tidy red brick courtyard with the marble fountain of a stately muse crowned in roses, the urn in her arms overflowing into the pool around her feet. The room itself is as finely appointed as the mansion’s usual guest rooms: an expensive-looking gilt-framed painting of women in colorful togas spinning thread together, a grand bed big enough to hold even Rich’s broad frame and a fine end table with a bowl of fresh fruit and a tall bottle of amber bourbon, an ornately carved dresser with an unnecessary amount of gilt, and a generous en suite bathroom. There’s even a door out to a balcony overlooking a courtyard, a sunchair and tall potted plants just visible in the moonlight.
Rich waves Rafael in, closes the door behind them and then heads into the bathroom. Rafael stares around, considers going to sit on the bed or venturing out on to the balcony, and then picks his way cautiously across the room and settles down in a titanic over-carved armchair in the corner, watching Rich's silhouette tensely as Rich washes his hands very, very thoroughly, then splashes water on his face and tips his head back, huffing out a long breath.
Rafael pulls himself in tight, keeps his head down, and tries to just… melt into the shadows, lose himself there, tries to stop existing.
It doesn't work, of course. Rich comes out of the bathroom and immediately finds Rafael, heads toward him and leans on the dresser, outside his long arm's reach but still worryingly huge and present.
“Hey, buddy,” he says, his deep voice surprisingly soft. “You doing okay?”
Rafael’s mouth is dry and he doesn't know what to say, he has no script here. He gives a cautious nod, and Rich nods back—some unconscious echo, perhaps—and then says, low and gentle, “Do you have a name you want to give me, hon?”
“Rafael Caro,” Rafael says quietly. “You can call me Rafael.”
“Rafael,” repeats Rich, the vowels gone strange in his thick northern accent, and nods again. “Cool. Nice to uh… meet you. Considerin’. So, I just, I wanna be real clear, here—I'm not Carraway, and you're not some project, and you sure aren’t my fucking toy. Okay?" He grimaces, a distasteful twist at the edge of his broad mouth, lowering his heavy brow. His disgust and rage transforms him abruptly, hardens the planes of his face and hunches his monumental shoulders. Rafael grips the fabric over each knee of his tight pants, digging his nails at the dark fabric, and manages to show no other hint of a flinch or cower at that expression of thunderous disapproval.
“Literally, actually,” Rich goes on, “I'm not gonna fuck you. I know how guys who can take my dick look at it, and I’d bet a fucking battleship that you're not one of them. I’m not even gonna touch you if you don’t want me to. If…if I got a choice about it. And I’m not gonna hurt you.”
He adds no qualifications to that statement, Rafael notices, and some strange and writhing thing attempts to climb out of his aching chest through the knotted ruin of his throat—he only sits still, waiting.
Rich says, “…Guess we got permission tonight to like, have fun. If we want. So you do whatever the hell you wanna do with that, I guess, and uh, lemme know, if I can…do anything. For you.”
He pauses, in the attitude of a man who has given a cue and is expecting a line in return.
Rafael, for his part, finds an absolute dearth of responses availing themselves to him. Carraway granted Rich the privilege to use Rafael’s body in whatever ways he pleases, tonight at the very least. Rafael may not know the man, but Rich has obviously been captive here long enough to move past the inevitable first struggles, the gnashing of furious teeth, the weeping and clawing at the trap that closed around him. Which means that it’s surely been weeks, if not longer, since he was allowed pleasure without supervision.
That he might wait on Rafael’s word to touch him is a baffling generosity in and of itself. It’s obscurely shocking, as the realization begins to slowly solidify that tonight might not be a trial at all. Might even be… an echo of some happier time. Two orgasms in one day, what a bounty. How petty his joys have become, here…
Rich is waiting; patient, but with a growing quirk to his thick, Hastings-red brows that looks very much like worry. Rafael has been still for a few seconds too long, taking no care to play any emotion across the mask of his face. He shifts, drawing up smiling gratitude.
“That’s very kind of you,” he manages, in a tone of meek courtesy. “I appreciate your consideration.”
That broad, pale mouth skews sideways—not quite a smile, nor a grimace. Something pained and rueful, perhaps.
“Yeah, well. I try. So.” Rich gestures self-depreciation again, then rubs his massive hands against his tree-trunk thighs, looks Rafael over again, eyes bright and sharp, reading him. Assessing…what?
“Rafael,” he says, like he’s tasting the syllables, and says nothing else.
“Rich,” Rafael says back, and earns a brief, pleased smile. There’s another moment, a taut pause as Rich continues to just look at him—Rafael turns away from that thoughtful, unnerving look, and seeks about for some means of conversation, scrambling.
“Mr Carraway mentioned—his office, tomorrow,” he says haphazardly, and makes a show of picking at his clothing, laying it in order. “And you have data rings, I see, as well—what is it you do for him?” Apart from the obvious. It certainly wasn’t in the capacity of any employment that Carraway had the man sounded and whimpering in his private rooms. “You must have… some measure of his confidence, for him to grant you freedoms like—”
The words choke in his throat as he dares to glance up; Rich is grimacing again, flexing his huge hands, regarding the rings as though they’re nothing more than streaks of filth that he missed in his washing-up.
“…Unless they aren’t to your liking,” Rafael says, as diffident a tone as he can manage with his heart fluttering frantically in his throat. “I apologize.”
Rich gives a rumbling huff in his chest, a truly inhuman noise, and clenches both fists, making a sharp gesture of abjuration. “I’m s’posedta have implants,” he says, terse and low suddenly, that strange accent creeping more heavily into his rumbling voice. “I have implants, neuralware adhesions, but. I’d be outta here if he let me run around with my whole brain online, and he knows it, so Carraway did… did some shit. Cut me off. But I guess his last secretary was some poor landside dumbass tryin’a scrape silver off his accounts, and he’s gone now, so if I play nice, let Carraway play Admiral, call him sir and move his numbers around for him, he lets me have a little bit of processing power back. For bein’ such a good fuckin’ boy. And I get to not go absolutely bugfuck screaming crazy.”
“…Implants,” Rafael says. That word, at least, he knows, although he has trouble crediting it to be true. Rich seems not to note the question couched delicately in the word, because he just chuffs again and waves an angry hand—taking care, even in his frustration, to direct it away from the corner Rafael has found himself in.
“He’s takin’ a five hundred out to go fishing!” he says, in tones of complaint. “Any captain worth their coat—” He pauses, apparently noting Rafael’s expression of deepening confusion, and sighs, reaching up to rub gingerly at one temple. When he goes on, his accent has lightened again, clearer and more enunciated, words picked out with care.
“…He’s not using me right,” he explains. “Underutilizing me, I mean. Like he’s sailing a…a whole battleship around, just so he can sit around with his feet up on the railing and his pole out.” He gives a bitter huff of laughter. “I was an Intelligent Systems Technician, before he chopped my head up. The fleet—the Michigan Fleet, where I’m from, it’s a coordinated network, it’s all interrelated mechanical intelligences, with human input as necessary—” he taps meaningfully at his temple. “But all Carraway figures I’m good for’s some light data handling, shit you could do with a tablet. I could’ve done all the work I’ve done since I got here, in a day, when I was eleven. If I had—If I could just use my whole brain again…”
His voice breaks sharply at the last, the plaintive crack of a boy half his size, and he looks away, scrubbing the heel of one enormous hand over his eyes.
He says, with shaking composure, “So. Anyway. That’s what’s up with me.”
“I’m sorry,” Rafael says, and finds he actually means it. If nothing else binds them together, he can at least recognize the grief of having a part of yourself summarily excised, carved away with no warning or chance for appeal. “That’s terrible.”
Enormous shoulders lift and fall. “It is what it is,” Rich says bleakly. “And what it is fucking sucks. Everyone here’s got about the same shit story, I think.” Again, he looks Rafael over; again, that intent green gaze, trying to look into him, again those massive mobile hands, shaping a language he doesn't recognize.
He says, with stiff delicacy, “When he said I oughta fix you… I mean, tell me to fuck off if you don’t wanna talk about it, but him and his asshole first mate are the only guys ‘round here I’ve seen who need to get fixed, so, if you know what he meant—You can tell me what’s up with you, or not. It’s fine.”
Rafael isn’t so sure. He sorts through the vast array of everything wrong with his life, and manages to come up with, “I’ve been here for nearly five years. Carraway prefers his meat fresh, I’m afraid, and he’s long since chewed all the flavor out of me.”
Again, that broad, striking grimace. Rich rubs the back of his neck, nose creased, mouth skewed. “Fuck,” he says. “Well, damn. That scans. Do you… want him to reel you in, again? Pick you, I mean? I dunno how I could help with that, but…”
“No,” says Rafael immediately, forbiddingly, and then, “Yes. I don’t know.” Rich is looking at him, head a little on one side, that look of intent calculation; Rafael forces an airy wave and a laugh, but even the act is faltering and pained. “If I could be…of interest, again,” he starts, and is mortified to hear his own voice waver and painfully catch. Sloppy, absolutely amateur. His heart is a crumpled, weeping thing, crawling for any shadow to hide in, mortified to be seen—still, the show must go on.
It requires a few moments of blank composure before he can draw his mask back together, and he knows that it’s noted. Still, it’s with a light tone he says, “I would like to be of interest to someone. To anyone. Although I’ve been alone for—” No, he can’t linger on that. “I’m not fit company anymore, I’m afraid. I’m sorry.”
Rich looks deeply concerned, and his act is much less convincing than Rafael’s when he says, “It’s—that’s okay, man. It’s okay. And it’s okay if you’re not okay, shit. Five years. I’d be dead in the water, I’m already so damn bored all the time…” he gives a shudder that would be small on a normal man—on his body it puts Rafael in mind of a mountain’s snow shifting, stopping just short of an avalanche.
“I can show you some accounting, if you want,” Rich says, decisively. “You could come to the office with me tomorrow. It’s not exactly a day at the park, I mean, Carraway’s there and he works about a quarter-credit per shift, but…it’s something to do.”
Rafael hasn’t had anything to do but stare at the inside of his own skull in so long. Impulsively he says, “Yes, please,” and finds himself smiling. “Yes, I think I’d like that.”
“Well, good. That’s tomorrow figured out. You wanna—uh. Hm. I guess if you’re gonna be bunking with me, you better go get some clothes and things. I could see about squeezing another bunk in here somehow, if you don’t wanna share? I don’t kick or roll over, but I get cuddly. And I guess I snore, but getting another bunk’s not gonna help with that, so. Whatever you wanna do.”
Rafael glances around at the room: it’s not large, and made even smaller by the king-size furniture necessitated by Rich’s superhuman frame.
“We could share the bed for tonight, at least,” Rafael suggests cautiously. “If we’re to redecorate, we might as well attempt the task after a night of… semi-adequate sleep.”
Rich huffs in amusement, but relaxes. “Alright, cool. You go get what you gotta get, I’m gonna wash up.”
“You wouldn’t like someone to, ah. Wash your back?” Rafael dares to ask. “If we’re to get… acquainted…?”
He doesn’t miss the way Rich’s breath stutters in his throat, or the way he briefly, convulsively licks his lips. This man wants him, or at least his body, and that flash of desire is as intimidating as it is thrilling.
But the young Hastings’ breath steadies, his mouth firms, and he says in very even tones, “You don’t wanna squeeze in with me, man, I’d turn around and throw you right off the deck by accident. I’ll take first shift, you can go get your stuff. Then you got somethin’ clean to change into.”
It’s a very careful, considerate dismissal, but a dismissal nonetheless. Rafael nods as graciously and agreeably as he can manage.
“You’re entirely correct, I’m sure.” He plucks uselessly at his sweaty shirt, then pushes himself up out of the armchair, doing his best not to shiver at the deep, tender ache left by Rich’s fingers. “Mm. Well. Then I’ll be back shortly.”
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Rich is transparently staring at the place Rafael’s stomach was revealed—he looks away again at that with an abrupt jerk of his head and turns to the bathroom. “Do what you gotta. Smooth sailing, hon.”
Smooth sailing. Brief as the journey will be, it’s nonetheless fraught with peril, but it startles Rafael all over again to have a Hastings acknowledge as much with well-wishes. Foolishly warmed, he takes his leave.
-
Halfway down the hall it hits him all at once, and Rafael has to step into an empty parlor and just… breathe, before his legs can give out from under him.
Get acquainted. A pet project. As long as you want him.
Carraway has a new boytoy the size of any two of his other toys put together, a soldier mod with neural implants, the kind of genetically and technologically enhanced superhuman to whom data-rings are barely a pacifier, muscled like a draft horse, like a demigod. And Rafael is now his… what? Diversion? Plaything? Comfort toy? Stress ball?
Friend?
It would be much easier to look at this objectively if he wasn’t still so affected by the soft, sensual ache from Rich’s fingers stretching him open, or the remembered warmth of Rich’s hand enveloping his shoulder, or the memory of a pink tongue against pale lips, reflexively hungry for him, for more of him. Rafael wants to plan, to assess his situation—but Carraway has changed him over the years. Has turned his body against him, transformed it into a stupid, selfish, persistent creature largely outside Rafael’s control, and right now it’s hard to cling to any sort of composure when all he can think about is a huge hand stealing cautiously along his thigh and how good it felt when he came.
All night to get acquainted.
If he can’t trust himself to be objective, then he needs another source, Rafael decides, and firmly tamps his treacherous desires down, as deep as he can push them. As daunting as the prospect of emerging from his room was in the first place, the idea of speaking to his fellow boytoys seems a hundred times more perilous. But needs must.
Equally daunting in the dark after dinner is the circuitous route Rafael has to take simply to reach his old room, slipping warily from shadow to shadow, listening keenly for any sign of another soul walking the halls. At best, it might be staff on their nightly rounds; at worst, Sergeant Sandgren or the master of the house himself might be roaming, ready to hand down some arbitrary punishment for the crime of doing something other than waiting quietly in the appointed box to be played with.
Rich’s room is only a single floor up and a room or two along from Rafael’s previous housing, but either through poor design or by intention, the harem and staff floors have been decisively separated for as long as Rafael has been held captive. His course bears him in entirely the opposite direction through several dark halls, then down a flight of stairs, and then back through the heart of the mansion before he can finally slip into more familiar climes.
At the gateway to the wing, of course, like the guardian den of a dragon, is the small, dark room where Sandgren does his loathsome work of discipline. There’s no sign of the man inside tonight, no lights or sounds of pain. Rafael still slips past the room at half a run, and doesn’t slow down to catch his breath until he’s made it to more familiar territory.
The wing where Carraway houses his ever-changing collection of captives is as quiet as the rest of the mansion. The ornate light fixtures cast a golden glow down on the thick, soft carpeting, illuminating the portraits of people who might once have meant something to some former owner of the estate. The main portion of the wing is in the style of some high-class dormitory, a long rectangular loop of suites with brass name plates made up for the current occupants. It’s always been two boys assigned to a bedroom suite; they are each set to watch one another, though for cruelty, kindness, or simple expedience, Rafael’s never been able to decide.
The occupied suites are interspersed with rooms that now lie empty and have been converted into useless little parlors and sitting rooms, each one with a different uncomfortable variation on the theme of chairs no one sits in and tables no one uses and art no one looks at and curios no one’s ever been curious about. The occupants of this piece of Carraway’s grand production are neither audience nor players, but more akin to a piece of the stage. Pretty set-dressing, and nothing more.
But there, in one of the rooms at a far corner of the wing from Rafael’s room—Rafael’s former room, now—sits the man Rafael was looking for. Perched on the stiff green velvet of a bay window seat, staring out into the swallowing darkness of the manor grounds, is Connor Campbell, the only other man Rafael might claim to know anymore. He’s a fairly recent acquisition, from just this past spring—no, it must have been winter. It’s autumn now. How can entire seasons have flown away on such heedless wings, when the passage of every hour of every day has sat on Rafael’s heart like stones?
Well. This past evening has certainly sped itself along as quickly as anyone could wish. Rafael takes a deep breath and approaches cautiously.
“Hello,” he manages, though it comes out nearly inaudible.
“Well, hey there,” Connor says, not seeming to mind this. He’s a short, freckled white boy with sweetly cherubic features and a defiantly upbeat, making-the-best-of-things sort of disposition. His accent’s a ferociously metallic Tennessee twang, the kind usually found in the mouths of militia men and backwoods survivalists—a dangerous affect to bear, here in the heart of Kentucky territory.
That savage accent, plus honey-brown curls, generous freckles, a quick sly smile, and sky-blue eyes, make him someone Rafael might once have enthusiastically pursued further acquaintance of. But his past as a traveling veterinarian and his current determination to keep practicing what medicine he can is the only concrete thing Rafael knows about him, from their first introduction. Most new additions to Carraway’s collection go around introducing themselves by name and vocation at first, trying to make friends, but even after Rafael proved himself coldly disinclined to cultivate any further social connections, this young man still pauses at his open doorway every now and then to wish him a good morning.
Perhaps that kindness might extend a little further, even at this late date…?
“I was… wondering,” Rafael forces himself to say. He clears his throat, makes an effort to project, goes on, “If you might know something of… Carraway’s latest guest.”
Connor sits up abruptly. “Rich?” he asks, shaping the name like a stake. “You seen him? Is he okay? What happened?”
Rafael is entirely taken aback. “Ah, well—he’s alright now, I left him in his quarters.”
“He was all kindsa fucked up last I saw,” Connor frowns, and runs his thumb across the soft pink curve of his lips. “Headed off Sandgren for me, the damn fool, got some kinda torture device down his dick for his troubles.”
“I—yes. I saw. I… took care of it for him.” Rafael fights down a lingering twist of heat at the memory, of horror, of warm flesh against his tongue.
From behind him, a sharp, terse voice demands, “Why did the big man call you?” with a pitch-perfect imitation of a Manhattan patrician’s authority. Rafael startles, whipping around to see a new man standing there, arms crossed, jaw high.
He’s beautiful. Satin bronze skin, finely chiseled features, shorter even than Connor but with an athlete’s taut strength in every compact line, and to crown it all he’s got a stunning cosmetic gene mod that’s given him hair like the sweep of a raven’s wing, a blue-violet and viridian iridescence to his shoulder-length locks, and a pair of long, mobile, elegantly pointed ears. His dark eyes are like black diamonds, cold and sharp and infinitely hard. His stern lips could drive a poet mad.
It shouldn’t stun Rafael, this beauty. Everyone held captive here is beautiful, and he’s seen this man in brief glances, walking by and across broad halls. Carraway, for all his many faults, has excellent taste in men, that odd young Hastings notwithstanding. But there’s something so bright and fierce about this man, all his attention and authority turned on Rafael with the brilliancy of a center-stage spotlight—it takes Rafael’s breath away, makes him feel like a stumbling amateur pushed from the wings, unprepared before the hungry attention of the audience. A ghost, a battered toy cast aside, a fading whisper in the dark. A warning. I was real once, too.
Rafael’s been staring too long. He’s been silent too long. He shakes his head, mute, helpless, hating it.
Connor says, “Don’t mind Sol, ain’t his fault he comes off grumpy as a snake at a square dance. No one in all’a New York’s ever even heard of askin’ nicely.”
“Quit it with the folksy crap,” the man—Sol, apparently—snaps, as though this is a refrain oft repeated, and Connor smirks as though this is the exact reaction he hoped for. “You—”
“Raf,” Connor puts in.
“Rafael,” Rafael corrects, some struggling shred of pride flaring in his chest. If this beautiful, iron-spined man is going to make his entrance playing a patrician, Rafael will be damned if he’s introduced as less than an angel. “Rafael Caro. I was only—”
“Where’s Rich?” the newcomer interrupts, brushing Rafael’s words away with a violent flick of one perfectly composed wrist. He has a network of fine scars across his knuckles, the back of his hands, up along his taut-muscled arms; blade scars, dueling scars. His patrician accent isn’t just pitch-perfect, Rafael realizes with a pang of belated horror. It's authentic, the true progenitor of every menacing Manhattan Signore D’Argento Rafael’s ever seen strut about in the movies or on the stage.
Rafael had heard some months ago—summer? Spring, perhaps, it’s all slipped past him in a liquid haze—that a new captive had been brought into the fold, and that he was a furious and fearsome man who claimed to be a patrician. It was far from the first time there’d been a man still new enough to desperately beat his clipped wings against the bars, frantically claiming he was a man of means, a powerful man, a man who would be missed, and he must be let go.
If any of those claims ever proved to be true, it was not enough to free them. Moreover, men who were willing to make such a play had often been likely to make… other attempts. Attempts dangerous to be associated with, even as an onlooker.
So when Rafael had heard that the beautiful man he saw fuming and pacing the mansion halls was claiming to be a patrician, he had assumed at once that he was lying, or delusional, or both. But—gods and devils, a true patrician. No wonder rumors of his ire reached even to Rafael’s silent, timeless drowsing. And no wonder he seems not to care not a whit for whatever air of importance Rafael might attempt to greet him with. The difference between the roles of ‘rude mechanical’ and ‘charming thespian’ might be significant to Rafael, but the distinction falls far below the notice of this man’s piercing, dark eyes.
Unapologetically intimidating, in tones of ringing command, the astonishing little patrician demands, “Why’d the old man call you? What’d you do to Rich for him?”
“He’s back in his room, signore,” Rafael begins, and the patrician bares his teeth in a fierce and beautiful snarl and paces a single rushing lap of the parlor, hands working as though for the hilt of his sword. When he returns to Rafael, his ears are swept back like a fighting hare’s, exquisite face gone saturnine with frustration—but no challenges to duel are forthcoming, at least for the moment.
“Is he alright?” Sol asks. “Did he get torn up or anything? Doped? Bit?”
“Ah—no,” Rafael says, muted and low, and struggles on in the face of the patrician’s demanding stare. “I’ve some practice at… satisfying Carraway’s desires with a minimum of bloodshed. He’s, your friend, Rich, I left him safe and well. Signore.”
“Great. Fine, then. Alright.” Sol runs a hand through the raven sweep of his hair, long elegant ears flicking back, forward, back again. “Guess you’ve been around awhile, sure. You know the ropes. Caro, you said?”
The sound of his own name in an accent like that does absolutely nothing for Rafael’s shattered composure. He drops into a reflexively low and showy bow, wishing for a feathered hat, a tasseled cape, his favorite old red leather boots with the brass tacks in the heels that clicked when he stamped—anything but what he's got to show for himself, which is nothing.
“At your service, signore.”
…Nothing, and the dozen crescents of Carraway’s teeth inked across the back of his neck and slope of his shoulders.
Sol is still staring at them as Rafael rises, his fine features drawn taut, but he holds out a strong, square hand, and meets Rafael’s eyes when Rafael takes it uncertainly.
“Enough with the bowing and scraping,” he says, and shakes instead of presenting his knuckles for a kiss. “Connor’ll only laugh at the both of us and I don't have time for it. You said you left Rich in one piece?”
“Hale and whole, I assure you. Carraway was—of a forgiving temperament tonight, signore—”
“Enough with the scraping, I said,” the patrician snaps.
“You're spooking the poor fella, your majesty,” Connor drawls. “I know you never hunted rabbits in your life, but go baying at one like that and it’s your own damn fault if he hightails it.”
The patrician throws up his hands, graceful even in exasperation, and takes several fluid steps back from Rafael. Then he gestures a broad and unmistakable, Look, aren't I playing nice? at Connor, who only laughs as predicted.
“Sol,” the patrician says, slowly and clearly, through his teeth. “Down here. With you lot. It's just, Sol.”
“Sol,” Rafael repeats meekly. He is at this point even more uncomfortable than he’d feared he'd be. He doesn’t know how he was pushed into the position of needing to reassure the very men he wanted to seek his own reassurance from. He doesn't know how he came to be standing before a genuine exemplar of Roman-American nobility, nor how the man is wearing the same cuffs and collar as a traveling player and a backwoods veterinarian. Nor why he is, in fact, playing nicely.
Sol seems to take some number of those questions from Rafael’s bearing—or perhaps has simply heard them before—because he rolls his eyes and gives a decisive, dismissive flick of one scarred hand.
“I’m not landed,” he says, as though in explanation. “Didn’t have time to make any socii who’d hunt me down when I went missing. And the old man’s not in this for money, turns out, he just snatches guys for the love of the game. So no, my title’s not getting me out of here, or any of you either. So don’t get excited.”
“Ah,” says Rafael. He hardly had the chance to wonder on Sol’s account, let alone to hope for some miracle for himself. He searches for a response with distant bewilderment and manages, “Of course. I wouldn’t presume.”
Sol gives him an oddly startled look, dark eyes narrowing. Whatever he’s thinking, he doesn’t put words to; instead Connor laughs and says, “You’re a cat of a different color, huh? I bet watchin’ you and Rich go at each other’s a helluva show.”
“He’s quite kind,” Rafael says uncertainly. “He, ah, offered to be my friend as well. I dare to believe myself fortunate for the opportunity.”
“Well, bless your heart,” says Connor, with every sign of genuine delight. “Good to see somebody else ‘round here notices how sweet he is. I mean I know he’s gotta eat with a pitchfork and duck on down if the sun sets too low, but he’s not the kinda big that throws it around.” He looks Rafael up and down with an appraising eye. “But I guess none of us got here without the old man taking us out for a test drive first, so there’s not a poor fool here who hasn’t got at least a taste for the real big bulls. You’d think more of us would know from soldier mods.”
“One would think,” Rafael repeats faintly. “I need to… to pack some things, if I may have my leave, excuse me. I—excuse me.” He nods to Connor, nods to Sol as deeply as he dares, and then retreats back toward his room at high speed.
Behind him Sol demands, “So did I play it cool enough for you, you goddamn punk?” of Connor, who laughs again.
“Oh, sure enough, I’d bet the farm and half my teeth he didn't even notice you were some kinda hotshot metropolitano,” Connor says, and Sol makes an angry noise through his teeth. “Take a breath or five, sire, and try to stop breathing fire and pissin’ vinegar for half a fuckin’ minute. Ain’t like your big ol’ darlin’s gonna die before dawn.”
Rafael slips into his room as the two settle into what seems a comfortable, bickering back-and-forth. The room is empty, as always. Rafael’s bed remains unmade and empty: a simple thing, a yawning pit, a prison cell. It isn’t his anymore.
Rafael takes a few more deep breaths until the pained, bewildered scream pressing against the inside of his ribs has calmed again. Then he shucks the pillowcase off his pillow, goes to the dresser and begins to pack.
