It’s hard to say if the wordplay of As You Like It is any more amusing to Rich than Richard II was, but the relief of having the man near again, holding Rafael instead of flinching away, is great enough to keep him reading regardless. Although his throat grows hoarse with use, and he grows sweaty everywhere they’re touching, it’s worth it to feel Rich slowly unwind around him, breathing going deeper, steadying and slowing.

  When it seems he’s finally relaxed all the way to sleep, Rafael reads to the end of the page he was on and then stops there, closing his eyes, listening to Rich breathing slowly. He’s just begun to think of how he might untangle himself, making absolutely sure not to disturb Rich’s sleep, when one of the arms around him stirs. A huge, rough hand rises to delicately take the gilded edge of the page and turn it for him, with almost absurd care.

  “Yeah?” Rich murmurs, and lowers that hand to rest on Rafael’s stomach, petting him gently back and forth. “Don’t stop.”

  The pained, frozen shards of Rafael’s heart turn molten instead in one fond, foolish, giddy rush.

  “Of course,” he says, and manages with Herculean effort to hold still and allow Rich to touch him. Tries to recall the voice that he uses to play Rosalind, and can’t recall any such thing. “Is he of God's making?” he says, and controls himself not to stammer as Rich hums softly and turns his face, nuzzling against him. “What manner of man? Is his head worth a hat, or his chin worth a beard? Mm…”

  Rich makes a small, questioning sound, and the lingering motion of his hand pauses apologetically. Rafael shifts under it, caught with sharp longing, then gathers himself and continues. Celia was never his strongest role at the best of times, and he certainly doesn’t feel he’s giving it his best now, but Rich keeps touching him, almost absently, and even laughs at Rafael’s increasingly panicking Rosalind.

  “I would sing my song without a burden,” Rafael manages, and shifts again, losing the thread of the line. All the fear and worry he’s been choking back is fast dissolving into a hungry, driving heat, carrying his good sense away in flood. “Thou—bringst me out of, mm. Tune…”

  “‘M not distracting you, am I?” says Rich, low and rumbling, and his tone is teasing but there’s an uncertain falter again to his touch.

  “Oh, sweet distraction,” Rafael murmurs, and this time when he reaches a hand down and rests it gently on Rich’s thigh, Rich doesn’t flinch away. “A welcome guest, nnh. Distraction may come in—shed his coat and, hha, stay a while.”

  “Fuck, you’re so cute,” Rich says, and envelops Rafael’s hand with his own, pressing it down with firm encouragement against his thigh. “You said—he said, right? That we can… That I could at least still… have you?”

  “And I can have you, in turn, as you like,” Rafael says, and closes the book carefully, stretching over to rest it on the curved lip of one of the maple pots before falling back into those mighty arms. “You’ve been so very good to me, I’d think you’re well overdue some sweet repayment, and I’d pay it all tenfold and more with glad heart and eager tongue.” He takes a breath, eyes closing—lying still, open, trusting those gentle hands on his skin.

  “I’m all yours,” he confides, and squeezes, Rich’s thigh warm and strong under his palm. “Not as a possession for our jailer to bestow as a prize, but—I’m yours as you’ve allowed yourself to be mine. A like exchange of—” don’t say love, don’t say hearts, don’t, “justly-earned regard.”

  “Yeah,” Rich says, very softly, half a sigh. His hand splays over Rafael’s stomach, fingertips slipping under the hem of his shirt. “Can I…?”

  “Anything,” says Rafael, and feels Rich shudder as if he’s struck by that. Rafael gathers that away and arches into the touch. “Anything, please, your touch is such, such glorious revelation.”

  Rich makes a soft, catching noise and his other arm tightens, crushing Rafael to him. “God,” he says, choked, and nuzzles the back of Rafael's neck before loosening his grip again. “Okay, I, yeah.”

  Rafael's had so much sex over the last few days, a luxurious feast of it after a ruinous famine, but still he wants more, especially like this. He turns himself in Rich’s arms and sinks himself into the kissing of that broad, inviting mouth, kissing him as he’s wanted to all day. Rich gives a soft, thrilling moan against Rafael’s lips, and the whole mountain fastness of his body goes slumping back in his chair, surrendering. Rafael fits himself to the broad expanse of chest and stomach and arms and mouth, pressing down everywhere and increasingly impatient with the barrier of clothes.

  Rich clings, shuddering against him, and finally breaks off the kiss with a sound very like a whimper. “Can, can I—get my pants? You don't have to do anything, I just—”

  “I don’t have to,” Rafael agrees, “but I dearly wish to.” He slips back to his knees, finds the cruel constriction of Rich’s jeans and eases them open. The noise Rich makes is so lovely, so piteous and grateful—so relieved. Exactly as he should be, as he deserves to be. There’s lotion back somewhere in the bedroom, Rich has used it on him in the past, but to contemplate leaving him alone like this even briefly seems like the basest form of cruelty.

  “May I?” Rafael says, and strokes a thumb along the straining length of Rich’s arousal where it’s still trapped against his thigh, the expensive fabric of his briefs gone tacky and taut, the flesh beneath hot to his touch. “Please?”

  Rich's eyes widen on him, cheeks flushing deeper pink. “Sure? I, yeah, knock yourself out, man!”

  “I’ve had to prepare you for another man’s appetites all these past days,” Rafael murmurs, stroking back and forth, enjoying the anticipation. “I should like to sate my own.”

  “Oh, god,” Rich moans, and the thick length of his dick jerks eagerly under Rafael’s touch. “Please, anything?”

  “Anything and everything,” Rafael agrees, a little ridiculously, and peels the tacky fabric free, letting Rich’s shaft rise up between them. He’s had more than enough time to get thoroughly acquainted with Rich’s dick, but it’s different now that he knows no one’s watching, that this isn’t for show. What heat he raises with his hands and mouth is his to claim, what enjoyment he derives from service won’t be tempered with shame. This is all his, today, Rich is all his today. He ducks his head and takes the blushing crown between his lips, kissing gently, and feels a golden thrill as Rich quakes for him.

  “Fuck,” Rich gasps, hips twitching, and one huge hand settles lightly on Rafael's head, shaking faintly as it strokes. “Please, yeah, feels so good…”

  Rafael paws at the waist of Rich’s jeans, impatient, and nearly chokes as Rich shifts abruptly underneath him, pulling his jeans and briefs down his thighs all in a rush that has the hot column of his dick surging up into Rafael’s unprepared throat.

  “Sorry,” Rich blurts out, “sorry, haah, shit, are you—”

  “I’m fine,” Rafael says, sitting back and swallowing hard. “Finish the job, would you? Let’s see each lovely inch of you.”

  Rich ducks his head, that rosy blush of his spilling down his throat, but he strips his pants off. Then, with a shyness that has Rafael’s heart pounding and his mouth watering, he takes his shirt off, too, and leans the whole magnificent span of himself back against the armchair as if unsure of his reception. It’s intoxicating, to find someone so easily charmed by a little poetry and earnest affection.

  “The ghosts of all Romans should weep, that they never saw a monument as noble and lovely,” Rafael murmurs, and trails his hand up one massive pylon thigh, so fair in the sunlight it bounces the light up again like snow. He takes hold of the base of his pale, pink-crowned erection. God, his fingers can hardly meet around the circumference, it stuns him every time. “Your form renders such ancient wonders of the world as nothing more than poor rehearsals. They could stand you outside the Parthenon and you would shame every marble god ever imagined.”

  Rich opens his mouth and closes it again, hips shivering, and Rafael watches in delight as his blush spreads down his chest. “Come on, man,” Rich mumbles, looking away, “I'm not—that's—fuck. C’mon. Be serious.”

  “I have been and am,” Rafael assures him, squeezing gently, and Rich moans, hips rolling. “Such beauty deserves a sweet sincerity of word and deed—if you don’t trust my tongue the first way, I’ll be happy to put it to the second.”

  Rich lets out a shuddering breath and rocks up into Rafael's grip again. “Oh, shit. The way you talk’s so—fuck, so good, you’re so—but please, just don’t tease me anymore?”

  “No fear, lovely boy,” Rafael murmurs, abashed. Of all the times to get carried away with his own cleverness… “I'll care for you as you deserve,” he promises, and folds down to busy his mouth with a better purpose than self-indulgent wordplay. He sucks and strokes and works his mouth down around the colossal span, minding his breath, relaxing his throat, intent on flooding Rich with as much pleasure as he’ll take, wringing it from him with a fierce determination. Enough teasing, enough toying, he wants Rich undone for him, and only him.

  And Rich obliges: it can’t be more than a minute or two before Rich shakes under him, dick pulsing and spilling hot and sharp into Rafael's mouth. Rafael’s jaw hasn’t even had time to ache, and as startling and sudden as the timing is, he swallows easily enough, wrapping a hand around the jolting base of Rich’s dick to coax out every last spasm of helpless pleasure.

  “Oh, god,” Rich finally sighs. “Baby, fuck, that was so good...” Huge hands caress Rafael’s scalp, his neck, his shoulders, and finally urge him off his prize. He withdraws, swallowing a last few final times, and is pleased with himself to find that his jaw isn't even dripping, he managed Rich’s climax that neatly. Rich’s dick is pink and wet and looks well-satisfied, listing back against his thigh, and Rafael indulges himself in stroking it with one hand, as if it were a pet to be thus tenderly coddled. This earns him an earthquake rumble of laughter from Rich himself, and then he’s swept up in strong arms and kissed soundly.

  “Thanks,” Rich murmurs, pulling away to nuzzle under Rafael's jaw. “You're so great, man, I really…” He pauses, breathing in. “I'm really sorry I growled at you,” he mumbles into Rafael's neck, and goes on before Rafael can speak. “I'm sorry I flipped out like that in the first place, it was dumb. I just…” he shrugs awkwardly and sighs. “So, what can I do for you? You want my mouth?”

  Even if Rafael isn't sure what exactly set off the panic attack, he's quite sure it wasn't due to foolishness or ignorance. Unfortunately, any protracted discussion thereof might very well kill the mood, and it's clear Rich wants nothing more than to move on.

  “If you're willing,” Rafael says, “I'd like—” he rolls his hips, grinding once against Rich's stomach, “just, to kiss you, and, like this?”

  “Yeah?” Rich says. “You know you don't have to settle, I can—”

  “No,” Rafael interrupts him, “I know. In all truth, I'd like it. Just to—make time with you, just easy and simple, like—like thoughtless youths might, together.”

  “Yeah?” Rich says much more softly, a flush rising in his cheeks again. He smiles almost shyly. “Sounds like fun,” and he leans in to kiss Rafael again. A moment later he chuckles against Rafael's lips.

  “Mmh, what?” Rafael says, breathless.

  “I actually don't know how it goes, screwing around like teenagers,” Rich admits with a crooked smile. “I was such a sulky little asshole when I was young, I never got along with anyone my own age long enough for them to give me a shot. But god, if I'd run into you back then I wouldn't have even made a pass. I was smart enough to know when someone was out of my league.”

  “Smart enough to be a complete fool, then,” Rafael retorts, and kisses him again. “Who could hope to surmount the league of Hercules, even in his youth?” He nuzzles Rich's jaw, grinding slow and luxurious against him, and wonders who might have. There must have been someone who saw through Rich's youthful foibles to the sweetness beneath.

  “God, you’re such a flirt,” Rich laughs, and kisses him like he doesn’t mind at all. “You really comfortable like that, or you wanna get your pants off?”

  “Oh,” Rafael says, briefly torn. The role of thoughtless, horny teenager seems to call for clothes tugged hastily aside at best, but he is starting to chafe. “It's only fair, isn't it,” he says, running a finger along Rich's radiantly fair collarbone, marveling at the sunlit shine against his fingers. “You revealed yourself to me, it's only fair that I do the same.” He pulls back and sits up, hands going to the hem of his shirt. “Yes?”

  “Yeah,” Rich says, attention rapt, “I mean, if you wanna, yes please.”

  Rafael peels his shirt off, enjoying Rich's hungry gaze on his skin, then gets off the armchair to finish stripping. “Is this more to your liking?” he asks, sweeping a hand down his own narrow frame, bare to the all the world and especially that part of it comprising Rich himself. He’d once maintained a certain musculature, however slim—despite several days of Rich’s heaping portions and Sol’s draconic training regimen, the body beneath his hands is far from what he’s accustomed to. “I…I know I’m far from any sculpted paragon—”

  “Fuck yeah,” Rich says, eyes hungrily following the motion of Rafael’s hands, and then blinks and says, “Uh, I mean, no, yeah, no man, c’mon. You’re so gorgeous ‘s unreal. C’mere.”

  Rafael climbs back on his lap and Rich holds his hips and kisses him like he wants to devour him.

  “Who—who was your first?” Rafael asks, panting, remembering his curiosity after a minute of increasingly giddy kissing and groping, Rich's hands roaming hungrily across his ass and thighs. “Who, mm, who was the first man in all your Fleet that realized what a, what a wonder—what a prize—you must have been?”

  Instead of a bashful smile or even a rueful look, Rich tenses, mouth twisting aside, and gives a tight, constrained shrug. “He's not—let's not talk about him, he’s not worth—remembering. I did a lot of stupid things for a lot of huge assholes when I was young and hungry. But the first that was any good?” He softens to the smile Rafael had been expecting, warm with memory. “Basil Wright. One of my new IST crewmates just after I got reassigned from this real shithole posting, just a little younger than me—he was only twenty back then, this was, oh, a couple years ago. We’d been eyeing each other up for the whole week, and then he went and made this completely incoherent, drunk pass at me at a fish fry, it was the cutest thing. We went and had so much fun after that, I didn’t know sex could be that much fun until then.

  “You’d love him too, I’m sure: he’s such a sweet guy, completely brilliant, and he's super cute, too. I mean not gorgeous like you, but just, really cute, and he’s just always been so good to me, so much fun, I got so lucky…” Rich's smile wavers and he takes a breath. “Sorry. So. What about you, who was your first good time? I bet you had a lot of fun as a teenager, if you were anything like this pretty.”

  Rafael’s heart is aching all over again, and he’s not even sure from what part of any of this. First good time, for pity’s sake. The first time Rich had sex he enjoyed was a drunken hookup with a coworker who was nice to him, a few scant years ago, and now he’s here, and—Rafael breathes out, rolls his hips against Rich’s stomach, searches for calm. Searches for something genuinely good and sweet to offer, memory for memory, past the brutal disaster zone that comprised a great deal of his teenage years.

  He says steadily, smoothly, warmly, “There was a handsome young bookbinder, when I was eighteen and just starting to surface from the fetid swamp of adolescent angst. Our troupe hired on to a renaissance faire for a whole summer. Five months. It was the first time I’d ever known anyone I was lying with long enough to fancy myself in love. He had the most beautiful hands and he picked me violets and clover and dandelions to braid into my hair, and at the end of the summer he gave me this exquisite little journal, with the same flower petals pressed right into the pages. To remember him by. And so I did.”

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  “Oh,” Rich says softly, and strokes Rafael’s shorn scalp. “That sounds so nice, man. I’m happy for you.”

  At least one of them is. Rafael hadn’t thought of his bookbinder in years and years. He’d tucked the memories away, the smell of mown grass and cookfires and leather and paper, and cheap cherry-scented lube they got from the gas station down the road, and a blond boy with a funny triangular summer tan down his pale chest from the loose peasant shirts he always wore unlaced down the front, and a chipped tooth in his easy smile, who asked him to keep in touch, and Rafael hadn’t.

  “It was a good summer,” Rafael says. “I think—I’ve had as many good summers as I haven’t, on the whole. That’s as much as anyone can ask for, isn’t it?”

  “I’d ask for more,” Rich says. “Might as well ask, right? Next summer, let’s—we could make some demands, let’s hold out for that. Yeah? Next summer’s gonna be great.”

  Rafael laughs, and it doesn’t even come out bitter. “Yes,” he agrees. “Alright, yes, next summer, we’ll—what would we do, then? Have a fish fry? Is that what you do for a good time, in that Fleet of yours? Go fishing all day, party all night?”

  “If we’re lucky enough to catch something this pretty, then, yeah,” Rich says, and when he pets Rafael again it’s more purposeful. Groping, grinding Rafael down lower and firmer against the recovering column of his dick, and Rafael obliges eagerly, shifting until he’s caught Rich’s shaft against his own.

  “You could work for one of the art ships, maybe—we have plays and shows out on pontoon stages all summer, and games and things inside in the winter, and after each performance I could come by and pick you up. I’d bring you flowers and we’d go out to eat somewhere nice, and just, I don’t know, watch the stars come out. Grope each other in the back of a deck-hopper, clean up by dunking right in the water. I’ve done that, ’s so irresponsible that’s half the fun. Go home still dripping and everyone knows what you’ve been up to. I’d see you all the way back to your berth and kiss you goodnight.”

  “As if I wouldn’t invite you in,” Rafael says, heart twinging at him again. “As if anyone would let you go once they’d lured you right up to their threshold.”

  “God, you’re such a flirt,” Rich says again, and kisses him deep and hungry.

  “When thespians do it, it’s referred to as charm,” says Rafael when he’s released, and chokes on a moan at the delicious pressure as Rich’s hands pull him desperately closer. Some harsh critic is whispering in his ear that it’s a shameful waste to be as close as he is, just from the security of hands holding him close and something to move against so sweetly—but that critic can go fling himself into the ocean for all Rafael cares. It’s so good.

  He intends to hold out longer, to wait until Rich is as ready as he is, but when he feels himself too close and tries to gasp a warning Rich just holds him closer, tells him, “It’s alright, you’re okay, go ahead, I wanna see you,” and Rafael gladly and helplessly follows orders.

  Rich is murmuring sweet nothings when Rafael’s able to register words again, just like that, so hot, so good, Raf. His hands are gentle on Rafael’s back, no longer pulling him down to grind against. Rafael appreciates the sentiment, but he appreciates the pleasure more, and he takes the initiative where Rich has faltered, pressing closer.

  “Hey,” Rich says, and his hands return, holding Rafael still this time, concern writ large on his flushed features. “You don’t hafta—hha, don’t hurt yourself.”

  “It doesn’t, I’m mmh, I’m not,” Rafael murmurs, and lowers his head, as if he can hide his face from Rich’s inevitable distress. “I’ve been reshaped, you must have felt it yourself—it pleases him to play with us as long as he will, and he’s ill-suited to impatience. I…” he rolls his hips, and feels Rich shudder beneath him. “When I’m allowed, oh, I could be borne aloft on the wings of pleasure and never come down…”

  “Until you pass out, like yesterday,” Rich finishes for him, and Rafael nods. Before yesterday, it had been a very long while since he held Carraway's interest long enough to be well and truly worked to exhaustion, especially not by the man himself. He can recall nights before he was discarded, though; the last few times when it seemed the man was determined to wring something of interest from him and wouldn’t be satisfied until he found what he was looking for. Rafael must have been of some entertainment, at least, whatever depths of desperation Carraway managed to bring to the surface. But perhaps not enough, or perhaps at too great a cost of time and energy, or perhaps—

  “Would you like that?” Rich says, uncertain, and his hand slips between them, cautiously strokes along Rafael's still half-hard length, making him twitch and gasp.

  “Not, ah, not today?” he manages, and Rich immediately pulls back, looking chagrined. “No, not because—it feels wonderful. It's only, I want to stay with you today, not succumb to my own satiation and leave you alone again.”

  “Oh,” Rich says, smiling. “That’s really sweet, man. So, uh—”

  “One more won’t exhaust me,” Rafael says, and rolls his hips persuasively, gazing at Rich through his lashes, a mask of sweet temptation. “And I want you to find your pleasure as well.”

  “Right,” Rich says. His pink cheeks are flushing darker. “Cool, okay. Kiss?”

  Rafael kisses him gladly, and is kissed fervently back, Rich moaning softly against his lips. He’s so sweet, so expressive, it makes Rafael long to draw him out fully, make him cry out in astonished pleasure, work him until he’s sweaty and languid with it.

  Rafael keeps moving against him, slow and coaxing, and kisses Rich's collarbone, his neck, his jaw. Notices the eager shiver when Rafael brushes past his earlobe, and goes back to investigate. When Rafael noses and then sucks on it, Rich gasps and moans enthusiastically, turning his head aside to offer himself hopefully for more.

  Delighted, Rafael begins to alternate kissing Rich with attending to his ears, and Rich gets louder, his hands tightening on Rafael's hips. Rafael takes the obvious cue and presses closer, and Rich groans encouragingly.

  “You make such lovely sounds,” Rafael tells him, and kisses along the man’s Herculean jaw to the flushed rim of his ear, delighting in the reactions he wins.

  “‘M glad you like ‘em,” Rich mumbles, and gasps again, hips rolling up against Rafael’s. “God, I’m—god I wish we got proper lube,” he says, and holds Rafael at bay—or steadies him, more kindly—while he spits a trifle grossly into his palm. Then he leans Rafael back just enough to slick up both their dicks, and sighs in pleasure when Rafael starts moving against him again.

  “Fuck, yes,” Rich says, stroking Rafael’s back. “God, you’re so good.”

  “And all yours,” Rafael tells him, testing, and is gratified to see Rich look down at him as though it’s a revelation, startled and amazed. He likes that, it seems; he likes a gentle touch taken to his lips and his ears, he melts easily to be told he’s lovely to look at—and he likes to be submitted to, or something like it. To be directed to lavish pleasure on a man, to be given permission and ordered and begged for more and ever more.

  For a man of such overwhelming size and strength it seems uncomplicated dominance should come to him naturally, and without self-censure, but it fits somehow among Rich’s many incongruities. I try, I really try, to be good at gentleness… He wants to be allowed to care for people, to take them over and possess them utterly, but he wants the men in his arms to come to him willing, and trusting, and grateful, and happy to let Rich care for them afterward.

  That, Rafael can grant him easily. Rich’s gentle hands and generous nature have fed something inside him that he’d thought starved to death long before, and he’s hungrier than ever for more now, as much as he can get.

  “I’m yours,” Rafael says again, more certain this time, and Rich shivers under him, a broad hand clinging and petting and clinging again on Rafael’s back. “And you’re mine, aren’t you? To spoil, my lovely boy. To ease your days, to soften your nights...”

  “You hha, shouldn’t, you don’t hafta promise me that,” Rich moans, and takes a shuddering breath, swallows roughly. “Fuck, Raf…”

  “You work so hard,” Rafael says, on an easy gamble, and sees it hit home: Rich’s breath catches, his hands tighten convulsively on Rafael’s hips, and the whole mountainous mass of his body shifts as he squirms in place. Rafael pushes forward, “You care so much for us, you pour yourself out. Let me tend to you in turn, my brave boy, let me make you feel good...”

  “Oh fuck,” Rich moans, and yields. Rafael keeps murmuring to him, how good he is, how kind, how handsome, how hard he works and how much he deserves, and Rich shudders and moans and comes apart for him, piece by piece.

  By the time Rafael is gasping and no longer able to string words together, Rich is moaning desperately, too close to notice the lack. Rafael keeps rolling his hips against Rich's great hard length and watches hungrily as the man jerks and sobs and shudders through an impressive climax, glittering with sweat, shining with it in the pouring sunlight. Rafael keeps moving, drawing him through the aftershocks until Rafael’s own pleasure crests and he loses himself in it.

  He comes back to himself slowly, hot and languorous with afterglow, to find himself sprawled damply against Rich’s sweat-slick chest. It rises and falls slowly now, deep and easy. Rafael peels himself up as carefully as he can so as not to topple gracelessly off the armchair as Rich makes an inquiring mumble, dazed green eyes opening.

  “Washcloth,” Rafael explains, dismounting cautiously, and Rich hums and closes his eyes again. When Rafael returns with a warm cloth and sets to work cleaning the man up, Rich’s deep puzzled rumble turns to a bass squeak and then a sheepishly pleased murmur. Rafael heroically resists the urge to toss the cloth aside and immediately undo his work, and turns instead to cleaning himself and gathering their clothes from the tiles.

  When he lifts the armful of fabric, Rich is sitting up again, watching with a calm, steady smile that at once lifts Rafael’s heart to see.

  “Lemme get those.”

  “That’s quite alright,” Rafael says, and deposits the washcloth on top of the pile. “You should rest.”

  “I gotta go inside anyway,” Rich says ruefully, and throws a sheepish look out over the empty gardens, and then up at the fierce golden eye of the sun. “They made me without uh, melnin? I’m probably singed already, if I fall asleep out here I’ll come out lobster-colored.”

  Rafael touches the great marble swell of one of Rich’s shoulders, testing, and is chagrined to see that the vivid pink he’d taken for a lingering flush of sweet exertion blanches ivory pale and tender beneath the press of his fingers, and wins a discomfited twitch from Rich.

  “Oh, dearest,” Rafael says, appalled, and Rich laughs at him.

  “Aw, hey, don’t look like that. This sure wasn’t the first time I’ve had too much fun to get inside, and I sure fuckin’ hope it won’t be the last. It’ll clear up overnight.”

  He rises, stretches, and then, devastatingly, kisses the top of Rafael’s head. Then he picks up the chair, with just as little effort as before, and follows Rafael inside to deposit it as gently as Rafael dropping the soiled clothes into the laundry. By the time Rafael has dressed himself again, Rich has used the bathroom, meticulously washed his hands, and has come to sprawl out full-length and lovely across his bed.

  “Read me some more, maybe?” he asks sleepily. “I love your voice...”

  Nothing short of brutal decapitation could keep Rafael from Rich’s side after an invitation like that. The bed is wonderfully soft and cool after the arrangement of the balcony. Rich’s side is softly warm and smells of soap and sweat, a reassuring, masculine smell, and there’s no trace of fear or threat to him anymore, not like this. Just soft, steady breathing that gains an endearingly silly edge of whistle as he falls asleep and begins to snore.

  Rafael intends to keep reading all the while, but he keeps looking aside from his verses being caught by how different Rich looks, asleep. When he’s awake, it’s the sharp green eyes and expressive red brows that catch the attention first: the animation of his face, the intensity of emotion, the broad mobile mouth, the attentive calculating gaze. Asleep, the strong jaw and heavy brows look stern, uncompromising, and the sculpted muscle of his massive arms and pectorals are as intimidating as Rafael first found them. He knows intimately now how Rich’s immense size and strength are tempered by his dedicated gentleness, so it’s strange to see him wiped blank like this, that sweet compassionate nature nowhere in evidence. Only a body remains, a crude titan, power with no purpose…

  Rafael ends up spending much of the time Rich is asleep trying to compose verse about the dichotomy between appearance and inner nature. The creative process is hindered by the fact that he’s using his new rings instead of just writing in a notebook, because he’d have to get up to fetch the notebook and he doesn’t want to disturb Rich. The practice he’s gotten in the last few days has improved his skills a great deal, but typing on a holoscreen still doesn’t come easily.

  Then Rich stirs and makes a low, saurian sort of chuff—Rafael finds it odd and a little absurd that the fearsomely predatory noises Hastings come equipped to make sometimes misfire—and blinks awake. His sleepy green eyes fix on Rafael, and he smiles, and becomes himself again.

  Oh, Rafael thinks, thunderstruck. Oh, it’s you.

  “Hey, you,” Rich murmurs hoarsely, and leans over to kiss Rafael, chaste and soft, like he didn’t notice that the universe has suddenly and irrevocably centered itself around him. “Sorry, didn’t mean to fall asleep in the middle of the afternoon.” Rich pushes himself upright with a huff and blinks at his nudity, cheeks going pink as he glances sideways at Rafael, who’s still adrift at the revelation, and furthermore doesn’t mind the view.

  “There’s no shame in resting,” Rafael says, a little slow and distant. He sits up to kiss the pink of Rich’s sun-touched shoulder, and press his forehead against the broad span of his bicep, and try to collect himself. Oh, what a fool, what a farce. And Rafael’s own surprise at the revelation is as good as a punchline; what had he thought he meant, when only today he told the man I’m yours and you’re mine?

  “You’re… worn thin,” he manages. “Who could begrudge you?”

  “I guess,” Rich says, and sighs. “But we never got lunch, and now I’m starving.” He pats Rafael's shoulder, then gets up and starts redressing. “When I was on the Sympatico there was’n anything I could do about going hungry, but here the food’s on offer an’ I’m just gonna sleep through it? I hate that.”

  Rich didn’t sleep through lunchtime so much as panic through it, though the last thing Rafael wants to do right now is remind him of the source of his distress.

  “At least you have your fruit bowl, to make sure you don’t starve on our way down to the cafeteria. The kitchens are never truly idle, I’m sure they’ve food enough to spare.”

  “Oh, hey, yeah,” Rich says, brightening, and fetches his fruit bowl back from the balcony, halfway through an apple by the time he returns to the room. “I’ll top this up while we’re down there. You want, uh…?”

  “Have at it,” Rafael says, waving away the offered orange—the size of his fist, but it looks like a clementine in Rich’s grip. “I wouldn’t keep you from a single bite, darling. Fat paunches have lean pates, and dainty bits make rich the ribs, but bankrupt quite the wits...”

  Rich laughs. “You have a quote for everything, don’t you?” he says. “It’s fun.”

  Rafael has to smile. “Mayhaps,” he says, and drapes himself becomingly against Rich’s chest, bracing his hands against that massive bulk. “O wall, O sweet, O lovely wall, that stand'st between thy cousins’ strength and I! O wall, full often hast thou heard my moans…”

  Rich blinks and laughs again, startled this time. He’s blushing, which puts a smug warmth in Rafael’s chest.

  Despite Rafael’s assurance that he’s fine, really, Rich whisks both of them off to the staff dining room, and steadfastly fetches a giant’s portion for himself, and a half-giant’s for Rafael, who eats until he’s full and barely clears the edges of the plate. Rich, of course, tears through the food of three men and appears much-heartened by the calories.

  “God, the food here is good,” he says, when he's finally finished. “All the stuff Carraway’s an asshole about, at least there’s no dispense cap on the mess.”

  “He knows better than to starve a Hastings, darling,” Rafael says, and he means it in mockery of Carraway’s grim, military posturing, but instead the words twist Rich’s easy, satisfied smile into something bitter and complex. A smile that doesn't suit a man like him at all.

  “I never hurt anyone for my meals,” he says quietly. “I never went bad crazy.”

  “Oh,” says Rafael, a breathless exhale of stricken shame. Damnably foolish, careless misspeaking. He finds himself scrambling for the correct mask, the right line, a dizzying dislocation from himself that he hadn’t realized was easing until it snapped back out of true with the force of a breaking bone. “No, of course—”

  “But, just, no, yeah, I mean. I could’ve, though,” Rich says, and hunches his vast shoulders, heartbreakingly young again. “I just… I do starve, y’know? On the rations that would feed two baseline men fat. It’s my stupid fuckin’ mix, when I was a teenager I just kept getting bigger, no matter how little I got to build all this fuckin’ muscle with, and even now that I’m probably done growing up I still run so damn hot. I need more of everything, longer work shifts, harder workouts, bigger portions. And there’s, there were, guys on the really bad ships—even my supervisor, the guy who’s supposed to look out for his techs—it’s not crazy to want to keep somebody like me under control, you know. So he’s happy to take—anything, any crooked deal—just to get enough—”

  He breaks off with a pained grimace, eyes on his plate as though it might vanish if he loses sight of it. “So. I had some bad years, a while back. It was wrong, what some guys did to me, and what I did because of it. But I never ate anything but fish. I’m not that kind of Hastings.”

  “Oh, dearest,” Rafael says, thick with secondhand pain and low-burning anger, and twists around to embrace Rich right there in the dining hall. Rich’s thick neck is a little damp against his arms, and his breath is unsteady. But he hugs Rafael in return.

  “You're a good man,” Rafael tells him. “I know. I know you are.”

  Rich gives a long, relieved sigh and rubs his back, but makes no further heart-rending revelation about himself. Only smiles with the wounded eyes of a far older man and says, “Come on. Let's get our dishes back to the galley.”

  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 !