Sol turns out to be as good as his word: he apparently earned his patrician’s title on a dueling scholarship at a prestigious university, and kept his skills up afterwards in order to maintain his standing with the very peak of Manhattan’s upper crust.
For more than half a century, the most dignified and noble pursuit of the world’s wealthiest young scions has been attempting to dismember one another with medieval Italian longswords. The Third Flower, Il Tierzo Fiore, is the perfected art of an even older historical reenactment tradition of very intelligent people with a great deal of money carefully working out precisely how pre-industrial warriors might once have used swords, then determining how they might have employed even better swords to cut each other to pieces more beautifully.
At least the aristocracy has the money for it. One of Sol’s dueling scars arcs all the way around his bicep, the sign of having gotten his arm sliced down to the bone. He would have been glued back together with a great deal more care and attention than a bit of nanocream from a soldier’s spare kit. Rafael and his troupe, who frequently didn’t even have nanocream, only ever crossed wooden blades, or cheap and carefully-dulled steel with a bark exponentially more impressive than its bite.
All this could have spelled out disaster, but Signore King proves to be a surprisingly fair and patient teacher. He’s the graduate of an utterly different education, martial and merciless compared to the playful showmanship of Rafael’s experience, but to their mutual relief he’s got a vocabulary for technical motion that Rafael understands well and follows with relative ease. To block, thus, efficiently; to strike, thus, quickly and directly; to riposte, thus, silently. Nothing flourishing, nothing loud, nothing grand, nothing clever. Just brutal, efficient speed and balance, drilled into the bone.
Again and again, Rafael watches Sol’s dueling scars shine in the sunlight, gleaming bronze polished by sweat. The cut that must have bisected his bicep, the long licks across his corded forearms, the myriad nicks over his knuckles. The one small, tempting little line laid only an inch below one ear, at a diagonal, where anyone could lean in and lay his mouth…
Frustratingly, there is nothing remotely sensual in the way Sol hits him with his sword when Rafael misses his mark.
Rich watches them, leaning back on the edge of the fountain and occasionally heckling Sol to win away his own portion of the man’s attention, until eventually Rafael glances back and sees him looking away, one hand raised, waving over a short, sturdy figure.
“Thought I might find y’all here,” says Connor, and hops up on the edge of the fountain next to Rich, taking in the scene with interest. “What’s goin’ on today? Daddy Rome finally find someone who likes gettin’ hit with expensive sticks?”
“Rafael’s an acrobat, did you know that?” Rich demands. “And he knows how to swordfight, like Sol! What crazy tricks do you do that you haven’t mentioned?”
“I can speak elephant,” says Connor at once. “Kill a chicken in two seconds, strip a rifle in a minute, and deliver a hundred live lambs in a good week. Once pulled a beach towel outta a python with my bare hands. And I been told I got a way with a bowie knife.”
“Stop screwing around, Connor,” Sol sneers at him, but Connor only shrugs, utterly unbothered. “You’re so full of crap I could sell you to the street sweepers.”
“Hand to God, all that was true,” Connor says, grinning.
“You speak elephant,” Sol says. “Big noses, belong in zoos, elephants.”
“I know a little, too,” Rafael volunteers, then regrets it as soon as Sol glares at him. But Connor turns to look as well, with an encouraging smile much akin to Rich’s, and Rafael is compelled to go on, “My troupe ran the southern and central territories. Roving elephants are something of a hazard.”
Connor laughs, crooks one arm and sweeps the other to sign, “You like big bulls?” with a very meaningful nod at Rich. Rafael hesitates, contemplating the man’s inviting, challenging smile, and then returns the much more universal gesture—with great elegance and ceremony—of a middle finger, which seems to only delight Connor further.
“Elephants,” Sol says again, as though there might be some mistake.
“The young bulls go’n hump on trailers sometimes,” Connor says cheerfully to Rafael, instead of either dignifying Sol’s horror with a response or signing any further innuendo. “That ever a problem for you folks?”
“Once,” Rafael admits. “I was thirteen and it was the funniest thing that had ever happened in my life, until I saw my mother also laughing.”
“You’re both screwing with me,” Sol says, over Connor's gleeful cackling. “You got elephants down here.”
“Yup!” Connor says. “My momma and most of my folks work with the Elephants of Eden, the Nashville reservation. Diplomacy, outreach, veterinary, you want it we got it.”
“Real ones. Like from Africa.”
“Naw, African elephants can’t hack it so good ‘round here,” Connor says, and subtly changes registers, accent slipping even further South than usual, an academic delight at odds with his usual unthreatening charm. “But when the whole planet went to shit there was a whole lotta zoos and circuses that folded, and the Asian elephants like shit warm n’ wet n’ fulla kudzu, so. Welcome to the South, you yankee snob, we got elephants. There's good evidence stacking up that they're formin’ an American subspecies, too, they’ve been goin’ for smaller and smarter bulls than their cousins back in India for a couple generations now, plus a bunch of family lines in Georgia are collaboratin’ with this human team of geneticists for linguistic forebrain modifications—they wanna send their kids to college, same’s anyone—”
“I hate this place,” Sol says flatly. “Elephants. In college. Christ.”
“Why not?” Connor says. “New York’s lettin’ sour li’l bunnies in and handing ‘em swords!” He laughs at Sol’s glare. “Jussayin’, only the good fuckin’ Lord gets to judge folks he en’t ever met. You never saw the old ladies kick a gator half an acre for eyeballing the babies and then drag the corpse over fixin’ to bargain you for the rest of your whiskey. You oughta! Might fix you.” He sighs reminiscently, then turns to Rich.
“Anyhow, Big Red, you get my goods yet?”
“Yeah, right here,” Rich says, and passes the candy tin to Connor. “There you go. Just lemme know when we’re low again. How’re the boys doing?”
Sol turns away from their practiced debrief and raises his sword again, gesturing imperiously for Rafael to get back to work. Rafael tries his best to keep up as Sol drills him, to be present and attentive and good: Sol is a true professional and as passionate and intense as anyone Rafael’s ever seen. Lit up with the joy of getting to do what he loves with an appreciative audience, he’s breathtakingly ferocious and heartbreakingly gorgeous.
Even with all the will in the world, though, it’s not much longer before Rafael’s arms are shaking with fatigue and he can’t hold the sword high enough or strike anywhere near true. He’s already done so much today, and he’s so tired, with the morning barely started.
“Enough,” he says finally, although it comes out so softly he doubts anyone can hear it. “Enough, I’m—spent, that’s enough.”
“Right,” Sol says, stepping back with a crisp salute. “Well, you didn’t do that bad, really. For a showboat.”
“Sol, stop being a dick!” Rich calls over.
“What!” Sol demands, throwing up his free hand. “I said he did alright, for Christ’s sake!”
“Yeah, I guess you said that too, sort of,” Rich says, but he’s smiling now, fond and exasperated. “Well, anyway, I think it’s about time for breakfast. You guys coming?”
“Nah,” Connor says. He seems unimpressed by the swordplay, but has been sizing up both Sol and Rafael with the lazy interest of a man used to discerning if he might take other men—in whatever way becomes necessary. “This time’a morning on Sunday everybody’s gonna be stacked like pigs on a trough, and if Garnet doesn’t try to talk me ‘round to Jesus again tonight it’s only on account’ve how he does it right there at breakfast in front of God ‘n man and my goddamn grits. Breakfast’s too early for all that.”
“I keep saying I’d pick his whole bed up and move him outta your berth if you want,” Rich says with a grimace of distaste, and Connor snorts and pats his hip.
“Aw, bless your heart. I got him handled. He tries to make nice with me again about how goin’ to school in Atlanta Territory’s basically like whatever cross-burnin’ White Pines horseshit he was up to out in old Georgia, I’ll just hogtie him and kick him under the bed for five minutes’ peace.” He hops up and stretches, and he’s not nearly as sculpted as Sol, but Rafael would be lying to deny a moment’s distraction at the sight of sturdy thigh and arm muscles quivering with tension, padded as they are.
“...Work to do, anyhow. Gonna get this back, put it to use. I’ll see y’all around.”
“I need coffee,” Sol says. “And a shower. Meet you there.”
Rafael nods exhaustedly. He’s still trembling, his thighs and knees gone loose with fatigue, and he’s aware of everywhere his sweat-slick shirt is stuck to him. He hands his practice sword back to Sol, who tucks both blades neatly and professionally under his arm and strides away, hardly ruffled.
“You guys were gorgeous,” Rich says, coming over and putting a tentative hand between Rafael’s shoulders. “Just—wow, fuck. I’d love to see that again.”
Just like that, Rafael is ten feet tall and made of molten gold. He smiles up at Rich and enjoys the press of the hand against him, the way Rich’s thumb sweeps up along his neck. The warmth of the day is rising with the sun, though, and after a few seconds he has to regretfully step away from the heat of the man’s touch, plucking at his sweat-sodden shirt.
“I need a shower,” he says in explanation, although Rich didn’t demand one. “Truly, the wretched glaring eye of the heavens looks harshly on this absolute thrice-damned hellscape men once called ‘Kentucky.’”
“Oh,” says Rich, bewildered. “Yeah?”
“I mean to say, it’s very hot here.”
“Oh!” says Rich, enlightened. “Yeah! Gotcha. Uh…” He looks up the towering face of the mansion toward their room on the second floor, distant as the forsaken moon, and then back down at Rafael. “Can I, I could carry you? I don’t wanna be condescending but like, my old brig buddy—my best friend, I mean—he always rode me around like I was his own personal deck-hopper, so. I really don’t mind. I’d like to.”
“Go ahead,” Rafael says graciously, because if he has to chase after Rich’s long strides at this point he’s going to collapse.
“Cool, thanks,” Rich says as though he’s been granted a treat, and scoops Rafael up in the crook of one arm like a particularly long-legged cat before striding smoothly off across the lawn. Startled, Rafael sits on Rich's forearm as elegantly as he can manage, leaning against his shoulder. He would've assumed he had too much leg for this particular carry to work, but apparently not. It’s a startlingly smooth ride, although it becomes somewhat more unwieldy when Rich begins to pass through doorways, turning carefully sideways and maneuvering their combined mass delicately through.
He carries Rafael straight to the bathroom before setting him on his feet to smile down at him, looking flushed and… if not eager, then hopeful. A huge and well-trained hound who knows not to bark for a treat, but can see one held just out of reach.
Then he clears his throat and gives himself a little shake, and says, “Okay, I’ll just be, uh. I’m gonna…” and excuses himself hastily to the bedroom.
It’s for the best he isn’t there to observe—or to help, for that matter—but it would certainly be less damnably difficult for Rafael to wrestle his wobbly, overwrought body out of its damp and clinging clothing with an enormous manservant to dance attendance on him. He strips as capably as he can, and then hoists his protesting body into the shower.
Everything is going according to plan until he turns on the water and some arcane minutia of adjusting the spray provokes a vicious, seizing cramp in one of his thighs.
Grabbing for something to support himself ends up knocking a bar of soap and an industrial-sized bottle of shampoo onto the floor of the shower, narrowly missing Rafael’s foot as he doubles over and hisses a few choice curses. Out in the bedroom, something thumps and then there’s an urgent knocking at the door.
“Rafael?” Rich’s voice says anxiously. “You good in there?”
“I’m, yes,” Rafael says, and spoils his airy tone by loudly and clumsily shoving the curtain out of the way to sit on the side of the bath. “Aaahh.”
“I’m coming in,” says Rich, and fits himself into the bathroom like an elephant into a trailer, one cautious limb at a time. When he sees Rafael on the side of the bath, clutching his thigh, his green eyes go wide and worried and he hurries across the room to hover, resting a hand on Rafael’s back.
“I’m afraid I’ve… overdone it,” Rafael says through his teeth, and rubs a hand at the jumping knot in the muscle of his thigh. “Years of idleness somehow failed to prepare me for Signore King’s rigorous training.”
“Oh yeah, wild,” says Rich, and shifts closer, reaching out to rest a few huge fingertips over Rafael’s hand. His eyes keep drifting down, persistent and hungry, and he continues to draw them stubbornly back up to Rafael’s face again. “That looks—do you need—? I always used to rub my, my friend’s feet…”
“Yes,” Rafael says between his teeth, before the man can stumble his way through the offer. “Damn and blast.”
“Okay,” says Rich, voice hushed, and edges closer behind him until the breadth of his chest can support Rafael’s back. He smells like the outside still, warm skin and sunlight on the rose garden, and his enormous arms reach very carefully around to nudge Rafael’s out of the way so that both hands can envelop his entire thigh, working firmly into the center of the hurt.
It aches fiercely at first, and Rafael clings to the arms around him and breathes harshly between his teeth. Rich murmurs a constant low rumble of comforting nothing in his strange, slurring accent, and the pain slowly softens, warming and loosening. The sensation mixes and melts at the edges; Rich’s voice turns rougher against the back of Rafael’s neck, soft lips and hot breath.
In recent years, the opportunity has been so vanishingly rare to be held like this—to be helped and comforted so intently. Rafael allows his head to fall back on one enormous shoulder, closes his eyes and breathes as the pleasure begins to overtake the straining, cramping pain.
“There, babe, yeah,” Rich is murmuring, when the iron band of pressure around Rafael’s ribs begins to relax enough for him to breathe and listen again. One of his huge hands has settled on Rafael’s hip, thumb shifting back and forth past a hip bone, and the other one has loosened to slow, steady stroking, rubbing the line of the muscle up and down and back up again. His voice a low rumble, he murmurs heartbreakingly earnest and ungraceful praise—”Fuck, you’re gorgeous,” and “You were amazing out there,” and “I got you, Raf, you’re okay.”
He doesn’t need poetry or wordplay; every word finds Rafael’s soul like a long-awaited raindrop in the desert. He could no more stop himself from twisting around for a kiss than stop the sun from setting. He finds the hard edge of Rich’s jaw, then his cheek, then Rich makes a soft, shaking noise low in his chest and lifts Rafael into his arms to kiss him properly, hungrily. Not groping or demanding, not pinning him in place, but stroking at his back, smoothing away the chill of bare, wet skin, cradling him close.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
It does nothing for Rafael’s exhaustion, being held so close and so warmly, but Rich doesn’t seem to mind when the strength of his limbs falters—no matter how much of Rafael’s weight rests on those enormous arms, he shows no sign of strain.
“Your hands teach gentleness the meaning of its purpose,” Rafael murmurs, convulsive and helpless, and nips at Rich’s lip, delighting in the way the huge chest he’s fetched up against hitches. “Strength the greatness of its—Oh, your hands…”
“Fuck,” Rich gasps, and pulls abruptly away. Rafael almost topples after him, startled from his rapture, and his heart cowers in bewildered hurt; then Rich steadies him, pets his back and sets him to rights on the edge of the tub. When he steps away again, he’s breathing hard, one broad white hand pressed over that delicious mouth as though he’s only barely restraining himself from returning to Rafael’s side.
The damp white fabric of his shirt has turned all but transparent, a flimsy veneer over the unreal marble statuary of his chest, and he reaches down and palms wincingly at the notable tent disrupting the drape of his kilt, eyes falling briefly shut and flushed lips parting on a low gasp.
“I’m sorry,” Rafael says, and forces himself to look anywhere but the way Rich’s hands touch himself, as lingering and reluctant to stop as Rafael is. Damnation. Carraway makes it at once so easy for a man to forget himself, and so disastrous if he should. “I—I forgot myself, I’m sorry. Ah, to perdition—this eager flesh—”
“It’s okay,” Rich says, out of breath and flushed and still more concerned with Rafael’s distress than his own frustration. “It’s okay, hey, no. We got carried away, but we’ll be, we’re fine.”
“Alright,” says Rafael, and struggles to master himself, looking haplessly around the room for some semblance of self control to manifest itself from thin air. “I… I suppose I’ve a shower to finish. Quite a cold shower, maybe.”
“Yeah,” says Rich, and gives him a wry smile. “Yeah, no, yeah, I could do a quick dip in a cold current right now. I’ll take it when you’re done.”
Even the cold water can’t bring a sharp edge to the next fifteen minutes. Rafael forces his laggard limbs through a perfunctory shower, then stumbles out of the bathroom to slump on the side of the bed with a towel wrapped haphazardly around his hips, head nodding, as the tub creaks and Rich begins to hiss his own soft curses. The urge to lay his head down on the pillows and close his heavy eyes is overwhelming. Just for a moment…
“Whoa, hey,” says a quiet voice, and a big hand catches his elbow as Rafael startles awake. “Don't fall over, man! We gotta get some food in you.”
The dining room is as intimidatingly full as Connor predicted. Gardeners and mechanics and boytoys alike are sequestered at their various tables, eyeing each other suspiciously or pointedly ignoring each other. Rich, of course, bulls in with the same cheerful force as yesterday, picking his way deftly through the tables, pausing to wave or nod or salute. The gardeners and mechanics nod back; the house staff seem more uncertain, but a few half-familiar faces in the uniform of cleaning staff wave Rich over and make obligingly impressed noises over the designs painted on his nails.
The other members of the harem watch with the same bewildered unease Rafael feels, and when Rich turns to smile hopefully in the direction of the largest group, three men huddled defensively in a silent cluster blanch and put their heads down, one of their number moving with visible care and wincing as he does so. Well down the table from them, another collared man with pale skin and red hair of a much more natural hue than Rich’s Hastings blood-and-bone coloration defiantly holds Rich’s eyes long enough to sneer, and then busies himself with his food as well.
Sol is already sitting at the end of his own table, separate from either group, looking smugly relaxed and picking at a small bowl of salad greens. He shows no sign of watching Rich and Rafael approach, betrayed only by the flick of a long, swivelling ear, and when Rafael is deposited in a chair across from him he takes a leisurely sip of his coffee before deigning to notice he has company.
“Hey,” he says. “Took you long enough.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know you get lonely,” Rich says, and laughs when Sol rolls his eyes. “Raf, you want coffee?”
“Oh, heavens and hells. Yes,” says Rafael, stunned by his own sudden eagerness, and Rich pats his back and hies away to the kitchen.
Rafael’s exhausted arms can barely lift the cup that’s placed before him when the man returns, let alone the heaping plate of food Rich has made for him. But the coffee is perfectly hot, and perfectly rich, and the first sip draws a sigh of pure and abject relief from him. Oh, that a single morning should play the part of a full day’s span…
“You sure got over yourself fast,” Sol says, startling Rafael from his musing, and shoots a pointed look at Rafael’s enormous mug. “What happened to coffee being too fancy and expensive for you?”
“I’m tired,” says Rafael, stung, and gathers his courage to add, “Tolerating well-dressed fools who delight in their condescension fatigues me deeply, and it seems I’ve little else to do in this pox-riddled place. And thus…” he lifts his coffee, presenting it as evidence, and then buries himself in it so he doesn’t have to see Sol’s face.
“Christ in Heaven, you’re sassy when you’re all warmed up,” Sol says, but he doesn’t seem bothered. “Who knew? Listen, pal, you haven’t seen well-dressed. Our damn knockoff Lupo d’Argento up there dresses like he thinks it’s two hundred years ago and a hundred miles south.”
It’s impossible to forget at any given point that Sol is playing the part of “patrician,” but it’s startling to have his role brought so clearly to the fore. Rafael has only ever played Coni and Lupo sketches to the less wealthy audiences who delight to see the smug and swaggering white wolf cast down by blind arrogance and a cunning brown rabbit, but Sol’s sharp New York royalty accent shapes his Italian like the edge of a dueling sword. For the wealthy and powerful, Coniglietto E Lupo d’Argento is far more a cautionary tale. Beware the prey that bites you back, beware the hare that twists the trap…
Then Signore King lowers his proud chin and the hunting set of his ears and he’s only a man again, huffing through the elegant arch of his nose as he raises his coffee for another sip.
“He’s not even lab-standard lykoi,” he says bitterly into his mug. “Some Lupo.”
“He isn’t?” Rafael says, startled from his silence. “He consorts with them as though he is—I know he has many in his employ.”
“Yeah, no, but no though,” Rich says, obscurely. “You sure? I never saw any other lykoi around, just a lotta big baselines and Hastings. Some mixes, too, I guess.”
“Well, not here, no,” Rafael says slowly, as new information slips neatly in to reshape the face of something he hadn’t realized was incomplete. “I know he has lykoi soldiers; he brings them in for the, mm, lykoi harvest celebration? The, damn. The Lykaia, every year. I’ve noticed before that they seemed… dissatisfied, they talk of inheritance, alliances and worthiness and fresh blood. And no wonder, if he keeps all of his own kind at arm’s length and awards more attention to soldiers of other… makes, bloodlines, I mean. Lineages? Perhaps he’s disinclined to invite comparison.”
Sol cocks his head, eyes sharp, ears forward. “You picked all that up but you didn’t notice he’s not a legacy mod? He’s got an extra foot on any lykoi you could throw him at, and he’s got that,” he gestures broadly at his own face, “the gold foil look, in the eyes. Wolf eyes aren’t that color.”
“I confess it didn’t occur to me to question,” Rafael says. Now that he knows, though… golden eyes, and the size of the man… “Has he archangel parentage, then?”
A brief and shining flash of true regard brightens the patrician's forbidding face.
“Not bad, Caro,” he says, which is a windfall that could bolster Rafael’s foolish and feeble pride for a decade. “Got it in one.”
“Oh yeah, the ones from out…” Rich grimaces and waves a broad hand, as though to summarize the entire Southwestern span of the continent in a single gesture. “The ones who grow up too fast, the kid soldier ones.”
Rafael has seen archangels in passing during his travels; towering men and women with burnished golden eyes and hair, otherwise indistinguishable from any other god of war made flesh that mere mortals would do better to avoid. It was only a few scant years before his capture that he learned those monstrous and coldly beautiful creatures were likely a decade younger than his younger siblings even then, designed only to grow, kill, and die before ever reaching an age to question the theocracy for which they were made.
“Surely he’s not…” Rafael begins, and finds he doesn’t know how to say exactly what he means.
“What, a kid?” Sol says, and makes a dismissive gesture, a paired roll of his eyes and flick of one ear. “Christ knows he treats his toys like one. But no, he’s the other way around, he’s a lot older than he looks, not younger. Even though he spent his twenties getting shot at and every decade since on the kind of bacchanalian bullcrap that’d turn a normal man’s liver into a pretzel.”
“He’s got SS in him, they’re like that,” Rich says. “The big mods, the ones from like, Mexico? They’re made to be sturdy. My mom was mostly SS, ‘s why I’m such a big chunk of steelhead.” He waves an unconcerned hand down at his body, which is indeed significantly broader and heavier than the traditional Hastings look of finely sculptured divinity. “My friend Liam’s a genetics engineer, he told me when you got SS blood and it’s a generation or two back, you get different patterns of fingerprints, like all of mine are whorled except the thumbs, and after Carraway… got us…” his expression wavers and tightens momentarily before he swallows down the pain and goes on. “Liam told me the first time I got to go see him here what Carraway’s outcrossed with, and how much of what tweaks.”
Rafael allows no wince or startled glance at the terms outcross and tweak, but by the flick of Sol’s ear and the rueful momentary roll of his eyes he’s used to Rich making use of such slurs with oblivious cheer, and tolerates it better than from Connor’s blithe tongue.
“And I was his damn retirement advisor,” the patrician says instead of addressing the faux pas. “I got the genetic profile with the fiscal one, I checked the guy’s work. Archangel mixes are pretty unstable, the modifications that make them grow—if you mess with the line you usually get a lot of huge bastards who die before they hit ten. But Synergy Solutions put their mod together to be tough. That was the whole ad copy, the whole damn, the point of the thing. An SS mod can glue together a lot of parts that would go straight in the junkyard without it. So Carraway goes in the genetic lottery and comes out with a goddamn jackpot.”
Rafael absorbs that for a few crowded moments, masking the hesitation with a thoughtful sip of coffee.
Then he says slowly, “He kidnapped his retirement advisor?”
Sol gives a bark of a laugh. “Yeah, how’s that for end of life planning,” he says with grim good humor. “I asked him if he’d figured out his last will and testament, and next thing I know I’m getting an invitation to drinks and dinner for a personal consultation and.” He jerks his proud chin, showing off the flash of dark, featureless collar around his throat. “Guess I cut too close to home.”
“Memento Mori,” Rafael says. “Or perhaps don’t, and acquire as many beautiful men as possible instead.”
He doesn’t realize he’s called the man “beautiful” until Sol raises his eyebrows and gives him a look at once startled and pleased. Rich only snorts, and Rafael hides his own burning embarrassment behind a busy attendance to his coffee cup. It needs perhaps a little sugar, and another dash of cream, and to be stirred just so.
“Anyway,” Sol says, mercifully allowing him the retreat. “He’s got enough lykoi in him to just about play Signore Lupo d’Argento,” his tone is eloquently scornful in its sarcasm, “for a bunch of backwoods nobodies, but he’s barely got the class for Old Man Lupo from a country skit. He had us all out in front of Christ and all his angels in bunny ears of all damn things, first party after he got me—everybody except me, so I’d know it was on purpose, I guess. Think I’d have been less pissed if I figured he had Coniglietto in mind, and wasn’t just playing dress-up and thinking with his dick. He doesn’t even—”
“—Coordinate the colors,” Rich says almost in harmony with him, and Sol cuts himself off and flattens his ears at the man in a show of ire. Rich only grins at him through another heaping forkful of scrambled eggs and reaches over to pluck at one of Sol’s sleeves. Sol slaps his massive wrist away like an aggrieved cat and earns a warm laugh for his trouble.
“You shut it! I’m hanging around all day every day in our lord and master’s bargain-bin juvenile slut-wear, which washes my complexion right the hell out, mind you, and you want to make fun!” He waves a hand down sneeringly at his tightly-fitting black button-up, which Rafael notes doesn’t even have the top two or three buttons, and his nearly skintight black slacks.
“Get him started and he can go all shift,” says Rich to Rafael, cheerfully unconcerned with the wrath of patricians. “This guy’s got like a million opinions about fashion, he’ll tell you all of them in order if you don’t watch out.” He pronounces ‘fashion’ like it’s some kind of salacious disease, to Rafael’s deep amusement. “He'll dress you up in a suit so fancy you can barely move, too, if you give him half a chance.”
“It was tailored for a perfect fit, you were fine, you're just a big baby,” Sol huffs.
“You knew each other?” Rafael says. Sol may be dressed somewhat above station, but surely he hasn’t the authority to order suits to Carraway’s compound, however fancy they might be. “Before—here, this place, I mean?”
“Oh!” Rich’s grin broadens. “Yeah, it’s kind of crazy—I was in New York to help represent the Fleet at this big science conference and like also make off with as much data as I could tap, and I ran into Sol in a fancy coffee shop. We hit it off, he decided to show me around the city, dressed me up fancy, we had a great weekend. It was so much fun. Then he put me up again a couple months later for the Hudson Bay prix, and it turned out that first suit was just a warm-up exercise.”
He slants that broad, glowing smile at Sol, who breaks his haughty mask to smile back at him, fiercely and beautifully warm.
“Anyway after I showed off on a board a little he ended up being my first sponsor! I wouldn't have made it to New Orleans without his help.” Rich’s smile turns rueful and complicated. “So of course, what do I do there but go up to the VIP box to see if any of the other bajillionaires up there might know where he’d disappeared to. And I met the exact guy who knew. Isn't that fucked up?”
Sol isn't smiling anymore. He's glaring at his plate.
“If I could have warned you,” he says quietly.
“Aw hey, buddy, don't start that again, you know this whole thing's not on you,” Rich says, and drops a kiss on the glossy crown of Sol’s head. Sol makes a small, embarrassed noise, his long eartips going red, and elbows at him, which Rich seems to notice not a jot.
“Anyway,” says Sol, ears stiff with irritation. “All I’m saying is, I had a whole wardrobe back home, coordinated colors, I looked sharp as hell and so did this guy once I got through with him. You should’ve seen it when I had him fitted out perfect; burgundy, umber, cut garnet earrings. Polished him up so he could shine, right? A guy with coloration this dramatic ought to shine. I was just teaching him to put some color in his wardrobe and now the old man’s got him—” his deft hands punctuate a sharp, frustrated gesture at Rich’s entire person, “—stuck in all black again. Looking like a sad charcoal briquette, which is the good alternative to being in all white and looking like a sad iceberg.”
Rafael stifles a snort of laughter, but his smile widens despite himself, and Sol gives him a fraction of a smirk in response.
“It’s a waste of material, is what it is,” he says. “Good arm candy should be an ornament. A real patron would know how to show his side pieces off properly—”
“I warned you,” Rich says to Rafael, low-voiced and still deeply amused, and gets elbowed again.
“Shut it, you. But so, you,” Sol says, giving Rafael a searching look up and down, considering him not with the deeply empathetic gaze that Rich has had, but in a way that makes Rafael feel uncomfortably seen nonetheless. “I mean, I know theater types, I bet you’d be in some nouveau-boheme ornamentalist maximalism kit as soon as you got your hands on a thrift store bargain rack, but I could make it look good on you, if I still had my god damned mint account. And it sure as hell wouldn’t involve any stretch denim.” He sneers like the words are poisonous on his tongue.
“I think you’d be wasted even on a formal suit,” he goes on, “much less the kind of business class I can just barely wrestle Rich into, the big sad brick. I’d put you in frock coats with long tails, take proper advantage of your clean bones, and maybe nice long open vests. Your lines, you know? You're built so damn slim. Way too good a waistline to bother with a structured vest, no need to gild the lily here. Jewel colors, because I just bet you can manage any palette with that complexion, and I’d like to see you in greens if I was taking you out anywhere, but really you’d be gorgeous in a nice authoritative run of violets with a little gold. With a nice long scarf, or a half-cape. Bet you’d like that, yeah?”
Stunned to his marrow to have been attended to and read so accurately, Rafael can only nod. He shouldn’t be mesmerized, but—too good a waistline, no need to gild the lily. You’d be gorgeous. And more enticing yet, Sol didn’t even seem to notice the compliments he was paying Rafael, tossing them off as plain facts while his eyes traced Rafael’s face, lingered on his frame, his shoulders. He only nods back in brisk self-satisfaction.
Rich asks Sol a question Rafael doesn’t hear above the ringing in his ears, and Sol graciously allows himself to be drawn from the topic of fashion. Rafael sips his coffee, summoning the will to stop mentally replaying Sol’s comments, the vivid picture of Rafael he clearly had in mind. The details about Rafael that had caught his eye—caught it, might Rafael dare hope, as firmly as Sol has caught his own? Your clean bones… No, an end to this foolishness. Enough yearning, attend the present moment.
The coffee helps refocus him, as does the conversation. Now that Rafael has gotten up the courage to speak his mind to Sol without being cut to ribbons for it, he dares to make further attempts. Rich laughs at both of them, moderates when Sol ripostes too sharply, and every so often he puts a hand on Rafael’s back, grinning at him like he’s proud.
It’s hard to say if it’s that look or the huge cup of coffee sending new energy through Rafael’s leaden limbs, but by the time breakfast is over, Rafael doesn’t feel like he’s about to fall unconscious anymore. He tidies his dishes together, graciously allows Rich to heft their gathered trays with no visible effort and whisk them away, and then falls in by the man’s elbow and sallies forth to meet the day.
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 new !
