Scene 17: Compound grounds.
After their late lunch, there's no more time or breath for further uncomfortable revelations. Rich resumes his endless daily quest to do every possible chore around the compound, with Rafael following at his heels. He polishes tall windows above the reach of the baseline cleaning staff, walks to specific points in the mansion to perform some arcane functions on his screen that he assures Rafael are to “keep the place-mind sharp,” and performs his daily function as pack elephant for the groundskeepers.
He stops briefly by the boys’ dormitories, to find Connor recently released from Sandgren’s “reward” and grimly anticipatory of Carraway’s inevitable games of teasing and torment. He's too sore and stoned to get any further than an uncomfortable sprawl across a random parlor’s brocaded armchair, but in relatively good spirits and grandly tolerant of Rich’s concern. Rich goes and tucks him into Sol’s bed, and Sol performs his own careful examination and then breaks out a pack of cards and bullies Connor and Andy both into a slow and indulgent game of Go Fish. Satisfied with this arrangement, Rich nods to Rafael and they both hie forth once again.
The sun is well on its way to setting when Rich finally stops going from one section of the compound staff to the next to check in. Rafael hasn't been jogging behind him for two hours straight, quite, but not enough less to make him feel any less ragged.
“About time for my evening workout,” Rich says, checking the time with his data rings, and glances at Rafael uncertainly.
“Lead the way,” Rafael says. “I'll use that cousin of yours as a balcony, and admire your exertions from a stationary position for a change.”
Rich snorts at him. “If you need a break you gotta say, buddy, I’m not a mindreader,” he says. “I don’t wanna look over my shoulder at some point and see you passed out a couple passageways back.”
“I'll be sure to mention if I'm in danger of passing out,” Rafael says dryly, and at Rich's exasperated look adds, “I can't be constantly begging you to slow down! I simply need to improve my stamina to keep up. I'm doing better than I was already.”
“Okay,” Rich says, sighing. “If that's how you wanna play it.”
They head out across the grounds to the weight room, the evening light tinting everything with a golden glow. Rich leads the way inside, and Rafael sticks close as they thread between loud, jostling towers of Hastings. He meant it when he told Rich he would be fine, but it’s possible he overestimated himself. Now that he isn’t drugged out of his mind, it’s considerably more unnerving to walk among them.
Rafael is prepared to steel his nerves and tolerate it, but when he looks up at Rich he finds the man looking back at him, as he always seems to be. Rafael has grown so used to nothingness, so accustomed to his own invisibility, it keeps taking him by surprise to realize that Rich is paying attention to him. Wants to know what he feels and what he’s thinking, and watches him.
He pulls up a smile, but Rich is already slowing, putting a hand on his shoulder.
“Hey,” he says, leaning down, lowering his voice under the noise of the Hastings around them. “You don’t have to stay, okay? But—if you do, I’ll keep you safe. Don’t worry about them.”
Rafael's heart throbs warmly, a sweet ache that leaves him breathless. “I won't, then,” he says, pressing into Rich's touch. “I trust you.”
Rich gives him a pleased, startled smile before leading on.
“Hey, cousin!” Nitro says when she sees Rich, and then her gaze goes beyond him to Rafael and her eyebrows lift. “Hey, your buddy came back! Still brave enough even off the high, huh tough guy?”
“Rich assures me he’ll protect me from any ruffians who might offer trouble,” Rafael says demurely. “You’re quite welcome to assist.” She seems amused by him, which is a state of affairs he’d prefer to continue.
Nitro chuckles and scoops Rafael up in her arms, which only gives him a tiny heart attack, almost not worth mentioning. “Well, go on, cousin, get to work!” she tells Rich, and he does.
The workout goes well, from Rafael’s perspective. When he’s sober, being held by a giant Hastings he doesn’t entirely trust is more stressful, but he copes by doing his best to entertain her, which seems to work. By the time Rich is finished, Rafael is sure Nitro would apologize sincerely to Rich if she snapped Rafael’s neck by mistake, so that’s progress.
Seeing Rich against his more massive, dangerous relatives again brings up questions, though. On the way back to the house, Rafael tries to figure out how to put any of them into words.
“It seems strange that he put you to work in his office,” he ventures, finally. “Carraway, I mean. I’ve never heard of his prisoners being put to work before, and certainly not involved in his company.”
“Oh, uh.” Rich snorts. “Yeah, no. I volunteered for that one. The second week after we were here, I'd figured out we, we weren’t goin’ anywhere,” his voice hitches and he pauses, gathering himself, then pushes bravely on. “And I just, I couldn’t handle just sitting in my room or wandering around with nothing to do, so I told Carraway I could work for him. He made it pretty clear if I tried to pull anything like his last secretary, I’d be shrimp chow, but. I think I’ve done okay.”
He holds the door open for Rafael, who steps inside, stunned, and submits himself to Rich’s habitual meticulous foot-cleaning. He had assumed that Rich was press-ganged into his position and was simply making the best of it, although thinking back, he doesn’t recall being told that outright. Still not an unreasonable assumption, he doesn’t think, considering the man seems to get little reward and an outsized share of idle torment in payment for his labor.
“And he simply took your word for it?” Rafael says, and Rich gives a soft huff of a laugh.
“Hey, he’s the one who’s always bragging how he can smell lies,” he says. “I told him landside money’s pretty useless to me, since I get my competition boards on sponsorship mostly. Even if I ordered one in, the biggest thing to board on ‘round here’s that little stupid fish pond in the back, on account’a how I’m this inland sex slave right now. I guess I convinced him.”
Very little in that speech seems safe to comment on. Rafael nods, digesting it with difficulty, and then hazards, “...Competition boards?”
“Oh yeah, hoverboards, I do hoverboarding competitions. For fun, mostly, I’ve only won like, honorable mentions and stuff, but I did get enough attention to attract some sponsors.” Rich rubs the back of his neck with one hand, smiling ruefully. “I’m gonna be so out of shape when I finally get back to it. Take me a whole ‘nother year to train back up.”
There’s not much reassurance Rafael can offer to that. He speeds his stride to put a sympathetic hand on Rich’s elbow instead, and says, “You must be hungry. I think you’ve earned a hot shower and a generous dinner,” and Rich brightens as though he’s been granted a reward and eagerly leads the way.
Dinner is something of a lonely affair. Rich eats an enormous amount, as ever, and tonight Rafael is startled all over again to find himself eating ravenously as well. Only as he starts to slow down does he look around the sparsely-populated dining room and notice two other boytoys sitting at separate tables. One has tanned skin speckled with blue-green bioluminescence, and is, unnervingly, already watching Rafael when he glances over, although he quickly drops his gaze. The other man, who Rafael thinks has some Asian heritage, shows no sign of awareness that there are eyes upon him; he eats quickly, scowling at his dinner plate, scratching irritably at an irregular, reddened patch of skin on one shoulder where some drugged patch must have recently been removed.
Rafael holds his tongue until Rich has cleared away their plates and is leading the way back out into the mansion again. Then he says, “Who were the other men at dinner? I’m sorry—you’ve told me the names, I ought to know…”
“Hey, c’mon, belay that,” Rich says, and knocks his knuckles with phenomenal gentleness against Rafael’s shoulder. “Uh. The glowspot mod is Stefan, and the baseline guy is Asher, he’s not so bad. We’ve made conversation a couple times when he was feeling brave, he likes broom sports. Fleet does great at broom and balance sports. But Stefan’s… I’d watch out for him if I was you. He’s the kinda guy who’d cut your line in a storm.”
“Ah,” Rafael says, and leaves it there.
Rich leads the way back through the south wing to the biggest harem parlor with the great bay windows, and Sol shows up shortly thereafter, sleepy-eyed and wobbly on his feet, his long elegant ears gone disturbingly slack and uncoordinated. Andy and Connor don’t show; the former already abed again and the latter thoroughly exhausted by the appetites of both Sandgren and Carraway in a single day. In their absence, Rich draws Rafael and Sol each under an enormous arm in a green velvet window seat, and allows Sol to fumblingly direct him through the compound’s Cinema Classics compilation and draw up some ancient movie.
It’s a musical set in New York, and there’s something terrible in the man’s face, as he presses under Rich’s arm with his hazy eyes locked on the screen, that makes Rafael’s chest tight enough to splinter.
“Rough day?” Rich asks gently over the sound of the movie. He shifts just enough to cup Sol’s hip and pull him in closer.
“Yeah, there was—he got—toys,” Sol mumbles. “For me’n Connor, all’a these new… these big, y’know, they were… big. I’m still feelin’ it, still feels, y’know, everything’s all, mm.”
“Any still in you? Should I go ask if I can...?”
“No, nah. M’fine, s’good, s’just… mm. Hell. Sensitive, now. If I could’a felt like this for fun...”
Rich sighs, and rubs Sol’s side a little. “Yeah,” he says ruefully. “I couldn’t have gotten hold of half this shit for fun.”
“Little more spens—expect—shit. Christ. Expensive. Than coffee.” Sol nuzzles vaguely at Rich’s chest. “Christ my ass feels good.”
Rich gives a startled, rumbling laugh, and pats it. “Looks good, too, pal. Now c’mon, focus on the movie, would you?”
“You focus, jackass, can’t tell me what t’do,” Sol retorts vaguely, then gives a hot little sigh. By the end of the next musical number he’s asleep.
Rafael does his best to be sympathetic to the man instead of jealous over how he’s almost in Rich’s lap, being held gently in the place Rafael would like very much to think of as his own. He doesn’t want to think about just where exactly Sol is worn out and sensitive, or wonder if the sensitivity is permanent yet or if it will fade with the night.
It’s difficult to define the exact crux of the unease churning in Rafael’s chest as his heavy eyes linger on the way Rich pets the sleeping rise and fall of Sol’s back. The realization, perhaps, that the gentleness Rich has shown Rafael to this point is not just a merciful man’s response to Rafael’s state of abject destruction. Rich will be good, it seems, to anyone who will let him. And if that someone is a patrician, accustomed to his cruelty being excused as boldness and taking kindness for granted as fealty—if Sol were to turn his flashing eye and haughty sneer and the deft, deadly blade of his authority on Rich—
Ah. So this is the cause of Sol’s shovel talk, the first evening Rafael was given to Rich’s care. This bewildered fondness, this strange and self-contradicting concern. It drives a man to foolishness.
Foolishness like self-important fantasies of defending someone the size of a mountain range—and against the source of that very same shovel talk. How utterly absurd…
“You look like you’re ready for bed too,” says a deep voice, and Rafael wakes with a start and finds himself slumped against Rich’s side. On the screen, the credits are rolling; in Rich’s lap, one of Sol’s ears twitches in his sleep and his fine brows furrow and then smooth again as Rich gives both Sol and Rafael a gentle squeeze.
“I’m, mm, no,” Rafael says with an effort, and wins free of the hug to stare around. “I can still help you. What time is it?”
“Little after twenny-two hundred.”
“When do you go to bed?” Rafael asks. “You wake so early, shouldn’t you come sleep?”
“Nah, I’m not tired yet,” Rich says. “I’ll bed down around first shift. Midnight, I mean.”
Rafael stares up at him. “But you get up at five in the morning!”
Rich gives him a sheepish smile and shrugs, careful not to disturb Sol. “Soldier mods are useful for some things. I don’t need much more than four or five hours most nights unless I’m doing hard work, which, around here—” he waves a hand derisively, “kinda short supply.”
Rafael wants to ask more questions, wants to ask how much work Rich is accustomed to, if eighteen hour days don’t count as a strain, ask if he’s really alright, ask—but he finds himself yawning convulsively, and then can’t stop. The world’s gone vague and shifting at the edges, and when Rich gently nudges him onto his feet he goes willingly enough.
“Let’s drop Sol off and then get you to bed,” Rich says softly. “C’mon. You did great today, you don’t have to work yourself down to the waterline trying to keep up.”
“But I’m—” another yawn, and Rafael staggers a little, “—with you, though, my, my place—” another yawn.
“Your place is in bed, for now.” Rich nudges him forward, a broad warm palm at his back. Sol’s being carried in the crook of his massive arm like a cat, still dead asleep. “Let’s go, forward march, c’mon.”
Rafael yawns, eyes Sol’s state of repose with such blatant jealousy that it makes Rich grin, and marches.
-
Scene 18: Carraway's office.
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
The next day proceeds much as the previous few did, except for the fact that Rafael feels increasingly more capable. His legs have a low, persistent ache, but he’s growing used to that, and the soreness from his sword-fighting lesson has faded entirely.
It seems strange and pitiful to feel proud of eating full meals, or of being able to spend a day awake without catastrophic exhaustion, but it really has been so very long. He was worn practically down to nothing, and the rebuilding will clearly take time.
Rafael’s strange and unfitting good mood persists until it’s time to work. Rich is jittery, tense and unhappy, though not in the way he was yesterday, and neither of them is enthused to be in the den of the beast once again, after the painful tumult of the previous morning. Rafael is just considering how he might take Carraway’s attention again, if such a thing is possible, when the door opens and the man himself walks in.
“Sir!” says Rich. “You’re early! Um.” His hands, fallen still on his screen, are trembling faintly.
“Don’t worry about it, treasure,” says Carraway, and gives both of them a long, thoughtful look. Before Rafael can gather some disarming suggestion or distraction, Carraway shakes his head and says, “Your little shadow better keep his hands to himself today—won’t you, sweetheart?”
Rich tenses and frowns on Rafael’s behalf, but bites back whatever defense he might have intended. Rafael’s heart rises in aching relief, even as the beaten dog of his body contrives an entirely genuine flinch at Carraway’s chiding tone. The relief he puts entirely away, and instead shows Carraway the beginnings of a confused, indignant alarm for a moment before so-clearly remembering himself and hiding it poorly behind resentful penitence.
“O-of course, sir,” he says, and hears Carraway give a rumbling chuckle, reassured of his power. That Rafael must take what he’s given, even when both of them know the blame is entirely misplaced. That Rich’s fear and rage have been brought again to heel.
Work is better than usual today. Carraway bides his time, watching Rich thoughtfully, and Rich takes his opportunity to work without interference and whips through tasks like a man possessed, gold-painted nails flashing with holographic glitter in the soft light of his screens. To the passing glance, he seems the peak of productivity—but for the first time since Rafael met the man, he catches the tense frustration in Rich’s broad shoulders as his trembling hands miss their mark on the keys or fumble their arcane technical gesturing.
It’s not only the man’s strange dexterity that’s suffering, it seems; when Carraway has lunch brought, Rafael eats his own small portion neatly and efficiently and then looks over and finds, to his alarm, that Rich has barely begun to pick at his food, frowning down at it with startling disinterest.
When Rafael catches his attention and gestures inquiry, it takes Rich a squinting moment to decipher his meaning, and when he does he only grimaces and makes his own gesture at the broad expanse of his stomach. Then he takes a breath, with the resignation of a man upholding an onerous duty, and doggedly begins to eat.
Carraway is far from finished with his own hearty meal, and too occupied with a soldier mod’s portion of steak sandwich to take note of his toys at the moment, but the longer Rafael watches Rich the more tense the man’s shoulders become, as though Rafael’s gaze is a physical weight. Rafael swallows his concern away, drawing up a peaceful and dutiful mask, and goes back to the work of data entry, neatly turning each crackling ledger page as he finishes transferring their contents to the screen under his hands.
It’s a mindless task, and allows him plenty of time to think. To consider, for example, the day or two that have passed since Rich finished his neatly-apportioned bottle of whiskey. Time enough for the famously rapid metabolism of a Hastings to exhaust its stores, and for Rich’s body to rebel for want of more. Rafael has seen that tremor in someone’s hands before, the jittery nerves and nausea, the wincing headache: more than one member of his troupe drank heavily when they could manage it, but in their irregular travels, couldn’t keep the habit consistently enough to entirely avoid withdrawal.
Surely Carraway can smell it on Rich, or notice the tell-tale shake in his hands. Surely he knows how dangerous it is to let his favorite toy go through this, risking seizures or worse. But then, Rich is a soldier mod, so perhaps Carraway presumes him to be sturdy enough to weather it unharmed.
Perhaps he’s played this game with Rich before, and knows from experience.
“Much better,” Carraway says at the end of the day, and Rich perks up, self-conscious and proud. He looks younger than ever like this, desperately eager to please. Carraway steps over to stroke a hand through Rich’s thick, blood-red hair, and Rich’s eyes shutter and unfocus softly for a moment before he tenses again, waiting for whatever unwanted touch might follow.
Carraway doesn’t seem inclined this afternoon, though; he pats Rich one more time and then steps away. “Treasure, I think your pretty li’l friend’s been missing you lately. Why don’t you go spend the night with him tonight?”
Rich straightens fully at that, eyes widening. “Sir?” he says.
“Go quiet him down,” says Carraway magnanimously. “Go on. You earned it.”
“Yessir!” says Rich, smiling now, radiant. “Can I… I mean, am I allowed to, um…”
Carraway gives that hateful, indulgent little chuckle, You boys, always thinking about one thing—as if the man hasn’t done everything in his power to make sure an aching unfulfillment of pleasure and need occupies their minds every hour of the day. “Sure, darlin’. Take care of him. See if you can’t ease him down some, while you’re at it.”
“Thank you!” says Rich, and starts to stand—freezes, uncertain. “Can I…?”
“I think I’ll finish up here,” Carraway says, as if he isn’t just going to kick up his feet and drink brandy and call up some other unfortunate prisoner to torment. “Run along.”
Heading down the hall outside, Rich walks even faster than usual, so Rafael nearly has to run to keep up. He remembers now what Sol had warned him that first day, what he’d forgotten until now: Rich already has a lover.
“You’ll like Liam,” Rich is saying, that shining smile still on his face. “I’ve been wanting to introduce you, I just didn’t think it’d be so soon! But anyway he’s really fun, he’s smart and funny and knows a ton about plants and genetics and stuff—he designs new plants back home, makes crops that grow bigger and easier and that kinda stuff. He’s the one who told me my mod’s actually mostly SS and only like an eighth Hastings, I didn’t know before I met him. He’s got this gorgeous little agriboat called the Genesis, except he calls it the Frankenstem—there was this whole Halloween thing that got out of hand, one year, and—”
He talks about Liam, high-speed and excited and utterly absorbed in his own delight, all the way to the end of a hall, where there’s a door with a palm pad next to it. When Rich touches it, hand shaking until he forcibly stills it, there’s a brief pause before it unlocks with a heavy, thudding click.
Rafael has barely begun to follow Rich in when there’s a terrible, cracking yowl and Rich jerks back, almost slamming into Rafael as a small shape launches itself at him from the shadows. Rafael hurries around him, blinking in the dim light of the room—there aren’t any windows, just a few low lamps, and he can’t make out the man Rich is grappling with, beyond a desperate flail of fragile limbs.
“Get out!” the man is shrieking—his voice is a high, cracked rasp, wrecked. “Get the fuck out, you—”
“Liam,” Rich says, tight and low with sudden worry—he catches a wrist, then another, and the man attacking him goes still, panting roughly. He’s small, shorter than Sol and thinner than Andy, fine-boned and fragile-looking, with a pretty face twisted into a rictus mask of fury.
It's not until Rafael catches a flash of wide, wild silver eyes that he recalls the video that Carraway took, of Rich drinking wine and a gorgeous, bright-eyed man with vivid red-violet curls.
That man isn’t here now. Only a shivering, twitching creature, hands working in Rich’s gentle grip. His hair has been shorn to a dark fuzz only barely longer than Rafael’s, and his face is taut and drawn with exhaustion, glistening with sweat.
“Hey,” Rich says, very softly. “Liam, hey—look at me. It’s Rich. You’re safe now, it’s me.”
“You’re not gonna touch me again,” the man says, half a promise and half a plea. “I won’t, won’t let you.”
“Fuck,” Rich says, and carefully lets go of one of his wrists, reaching up to brush a thumb over the man’s sweaty cheek. “No, I won’t. It’s okay, I won’t.”
“Rich?” says Rafael, and flinches back as Rich’s friend whips around toward him, teeth bared in the snarl of a trapped animal, eyes wide and wet and terrified. The man eels out of Rich’s arms and lunges for him, and Rafael scrambles back just a little too slowly. A small, bony fist clips his jaw with surprising force, and he yelps indignantly.
“No one’s gonna fuckin’ touch me!” the man screams, and then Rich is there between them, herding Rafael back towards the door.
“Raf—I’m so sorry, fuck,” Rich says. “This isn’t one of his good nights, this is—I think you just gotta go.”
“Yes,” says Rafael, and backs up against the door, stomach churning. “I think—yes. I’ll. I’ll see you—?”
“See you at work, yeah,” Rich says, and settles down to his knees, not looking back, all of himself turned towards this other man. His strange accent has crept back in force, but thick and wrong and shaking, painful. “Sorry. ‘M so sorry—Liam, sweetheart, c’mere, ’s okay. Everything’s okay.”
Rafael flees with the scrambling fear of a child in the dark—from the windowless room, the wild shrieking rage, the sound of Rich trying desperately not to cry. The aching horror of it, seeing that charming little bright-eyed man reduced, for want of freedom, to little more than a wild animal. Rich’s delight at the thought of seeing his—lover? friend? husband? Rafael doesn’t know, dreads finding out, can’t stop wondering. What were they to one another before, when they were free, that Rich still shone so brightly at the thought of seeing him? What’s left of the man now behind those mad grey eyes, that holds Rich’s heart hostage to a little bundle of bones and rage?
It’s madness, to be jealous of that poor creature, and yet. Rich spoke so warmly of him, and sent Rafael away to care for him. Rafael’s been getting better, he could be—better, more, he could try—
But it isn’t about ‘better’. Love has never made those kinds of calculations. If that wretched creature had been Sam, however broken, however mad…
Rafael crosses the mansion’s halls at a run and stops only in the safety of Rich’s room, sagging back against the closed door and gasping. Stares around, looking wildly for the comfort he’d foolishly expected to find, but it’s not here, not part of this room at all. It’s Rich, and he’s elsewhere, and so too is all the comfort and kindness in the world.
It’s ridiculous to feel this way, so scared and jealous and helpless. To immediately sink into this despair just because there’s no strong, sweet figure there to hold him and comfort him and speak to him kindly, but love has never felt like this before. Rafael’s spent weeks and even months with one man or another, before, when he was a traveling player with his troupe at his back and the world at his feet and every town held some new opportunity to ply his trade and flirt and preen and tumble and be gone at the end of the night, week, season.
He could move on, before. He wasn’t trapped in one place with a heart just-woken from years of deathly hibernation to the kind of spring that’s torn it from its icy cavern and left it flayed raw and bleeding before the new-grass green of someone else’s beautiful eyes and god, oh god, Rich hasn’t even fucking noticed.
Rafael goes to the bed, breathing hard, sits down there and then stands back up, strides to the bathroom, splashes water on his face, his burning eyes. Paces around the room. Sits down on the bed again. This is the kind of emotion that drives a man to write a farce, but Rafael wouldn’t even remember how to join the letters together, so vast and all-consuming is his idiocy.
After stalking around the room, out onto the balcony to stare across the grounds and restlessly in again, Rafael goes and fetches his book. He sits down and tries to read Titus Andronicus, but finds his eyes tracing one line over and over, unseeing, while his mind relives the look of delight on Rich’s face, the way it changed to distress, the choked sound to his voice as he witnessed the reduced state of his beloved.
Even the gory revenge of the play can’t hold Rafael’s attention compared to dwelling on his own anguish, and as there seems to be no reason to pull himself out of it, he just sits there, letting time flow by him. He’s too wide awake to sleep yet, too alive for his own good after all Rich has done for him, but he can sit here until night arrives and then take to the refuge of sleep.
–
Scene 19: The green parlor.
By the time darkness falls, inertia has set in. Rafael isn’t sure how long he’s sat in silence, but he sees no reason to move when sitting still for so long has fooled his emotions into numbness. He’s sitting, as he has for hours, staring at the same page of his book, when soft footsteps stop outside the door and someone knocks.
“Rich?” says Connor’s voice.
“He’s not in there,” says Sol’s voice. “Rafael! Answer the damn door.”
It’s strange how moving after so long holding still aches. Rafael slowly closes his book and sets it carefully on the bed. The footsteps outside the door haven’t moved, and Connor is muttering something to Sol that Rafael can’t quite hear.
He’s not sure why they haven’t left when it’s Rich they’re looking for, but it draws him to his feet and across to the door, which he opens wearing a mask of polite expectation.
“Hey,” Connor says. "Sittin' all alone in the dark by yourself in here, handsome?"
“Where’s Rich?” Sol asks.
Connor has a new series of bruised marks on his neck, and he’s standing awkwardly. Sol looks more irritable than usual, scratching at the reddened residue of some sort of patch on the corded side of his throat and squinting as if the hall light is too bright.
“Rich is spending the night with his lover,” Rafael says briefly. “I’m fine.”
Sol snorts and crosses his arms. “That’s a guy who’s fine,” he says to Connor, Manhattan accent thick enough to cut with a knife in his patronizing sarcasm. “Missed dinner sitting in a dark room by himself, that’s a guy who’s fine, alright.”
“I wasn’t hungry,” Rafael says, stung.
“Sure, pal, because moping doesn’t burn calories,” Sol shoots back.
“That’s pretty rich comin’ from Mr Salads Are A Dinner,” Connor says, and flicks the pointed tip of one of Sol’s ears. He’s immediately punched in the neck, and staggers a few steps back, laughing and coughing.
“Herbivores are more dangerous than carnivores, anyway,” Sol says. “Mr Farm Facts.”
“Okay, okay, truce, signore,” Connor laughs, rubbing the red mark of impact. In his accent, signore becomes something deeply sardonic and teasing, but he’s moving before Sol can bristle too harshly, stepping forward to loop an arm around Rafael's neck and tug him into the lit hallway. “C’mon, Coni, pop outta the burrow and let’s go play cards.”
Before Rafael can pull together words and volition to protest, he’s swept along to another sitting room, given possession of a beautiful charcuterie board and a basket of fresh cherries, and finds himself playing dealer to the most cut-throat game of blackjack he’s ever seen as Connor’s tin-can camp speaker plays a cheerful medley of Appalachian folk-funk. Connor cheats outrageously and gets his neck punched again, and Sol winds up with a handful of cherries shoved down the front of his tight little waistcoat.
Rafael finds himself smiling more than once at their repartee, and draws up the mask of blankness again and again, frustrated and confused. How can he smile when his heart is cracked and aching? How can it take effort to keep his face still when all he wanted an hour ago was to cease to exist?
Despite himself, he eases a little, softening in their presence. No doubt they’re only including him as a courtesy to Rich, caring for their friend’s unexpected attachment in his absence, but when Connor teases Sol and then winks at Rafael, or Sol glances at Rafael to roll his eyes in response to Connor’s playful jabs, it’s still inarguably pleasant.
By the time they’ve had enough of cards, Rafael no longer feels like an open wound. He’s raw, yes, he’s taken a harsh blow, but he’s yet on his feet.
“Hey,” Sol says, “you’ve got actual data rings now, don’t you? Let’s watch an actual show for once, Connor’s only got space adventure dramas on his stupid ‘pod and if I have to hear Captain Punchbeef get nasty with another alien princess I’m going to rip my ears off.”
“I get my music from Darleen in the kitchens, and she has alien-fucker aspirations,” Connor says gravely. “If he ent an eight feet tall blue guy from Venus, she’ll kick him straight outta bed. Bless her weird li’l heart.”
Sol gives a performative shudder.
“Oh,” Rafael says, thoroughly taken off guard. “All right, I’ll try.” Looking around, he goes to settle in the middle of the sofa and the other two crowd in on either side. He remembers how to access the compound media, but has no idea how to pick something, and goes scrolling through looking for anything likely.
“How’s this?” he asks, selecting the cover image for a classical Roman court drama. There’s a number of old men in togas, a rearing horse, and a pretty girl with a big sword.
“That’s the original Incitatus,” Sol notes. “I thought the recent operetta adaptation was a lot more incisive, but hey. We could do worse.”
“Well, en’t we cultured tonight?” says Connor cheerfully, and Rafael cues the movie to play.
When it’s over, Sol is drowsing on Rafael’s shoulder. Connor unfolds himself from the sofa to stand and stretch, groaning.
“Lord have mercy I’m sore,” he sighs, and scoops up the cherry basket and charcuterie board, then steps over to pat Sol’s face persistently with the latter. “Sol, wakey wakey, sugarplum. Rich isn’t here to carry you to bed, so you’re gonna have to do it yourself. Or I mean, me’n Raf can get you there, but I figure patricians don’t go for gettin’ dragged by the ankles like a sack of laundry.”
Sol growls at him but gets himself upright, swaying, his ears oddly slack and inelegant in his dissipation. Connor herds him laughingly toward the door, pausing only to deposit the last handful of cherries into Rafael’s hand.
“Dealer’s cut,” he says in explanation, and pops up on his toes to kiss Rafael’s cheek. “Get some real rest, y’hear? Doctor’s orders.”
“You’re a veterinarian,” Rafael points out, and Connor snorts and pats him familiarly on the ass with the charcuterie board.
“And you’re the kinda thoroughbred who breaks his own ankles, and lays down to die if you try to take him out in the rain. Go on, git! See you tomorrow.”
Rafael eats half of the cherries on his way back to the room, in a thoughtful, melancholy state of mind. Then he puts the rest in the fruit bowl, because Rich will probably like some fresh cherries, and puts himself to bed.
It’s quieter and more lonely than he’s grown used to in the past few days, and he falls asleep hoping uselessly for a warm weight to settle on the other side of the vast, empty bed.
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 !
