Stories From The Michigan Fleet

Chapter 56

Scene 9: Omar and Stefan’s quarters.

Rafael is in the dining room a few days after the tumultuous visit from the elephants, picking over his dinner and watching Rich lean through the delivery window for an animated chat with somebody in the kitchens, when Sol shows up at the door looking uncharacteristically harried, ears pinned back. He looks around, and then walks directly toward Rafael.

“You,” he says, “you’re brown and baseline. Come talk to Omar.”

“What?” says Rafael. “Omar—why?”

“Because I’m too damn pretty and all the boys get shy around me,” Sol says acidly. “The hell you think? Some of the boytoys aren’t crazy about me since I pulled a sword on a guy and he got killed, and Omar’s jumpy as anything even when some crazy bullcrap hasn’t just gone sideways. You’re the best of us at talking, anyway, I need you to talk him down.”

“Oh,” says Rafael, flattered and concerned in equal measure. “But—wouldn’t Connor—”

“He’s still sleeping off whatever the boss did to him last night.”

“Rich—”

“—Absolutely isn’t coming,” Sol says. “Everybody knows Omar is piss-scared of soldier mods.”

“What happened?” Rich says, looming over them like a concerned thunderhead. “There wasn’t work today, did Carraway do something—did he hurt somebody?”

“I don’t know!” Sol snaps. “Because Shakespeare won’t hurry it up! All I know is he took Omar out on one of his drives and something happened. You—stay there. You, get moving.”

Rafael obediently gets moving. Everyone seems agitated as he follows Sol through the mansion; household staff talking in uneasy murmurs, soldiers visible through the windows crossing the yard outside in tight groups like roving packs of hunting dogs, weapons in hand. Rafael puts his head down, heart pounding, and walks faster.

Omar’s door is open when Rafael arrives. The other boys aren’t quite blatant enough to gather outside it and whisper, but there’s a tense murmur of conversation in the air, and the doors are open up and down the hallway. Every room Rafael walks past watches him with wary, staring eyes.

Omar has been moved into Domingo’s old room. Stefan, the room’s other occupant, is thankfully not present. Rafael doesn’t know what trouble they could get into for talking in their private rooms, but he’s willing to bet that Sandgren could find an excuse if Stefan ran to snitch on them. Sol stops at the door, pushes Rafael through, looks challengingly up and down the hallway, and closes the door firmly between them.

Omar watches him warily from the bed. He’s a beautiful man, of course, of a color close to Sol’s, with fine, dark curls and a pianist’s lovely hands—he’s motionless now, except the ragged rise and fall of his shoulders. His eyes are wide and half-focused, drifting and darting, and the air of the room smells of smoke and sweat.

“Are you alright?” Rafael asks, as gently as he’s able, and Omar gives a shaky nod. “Are you hurt?”

The man jerks one shoulder in what might be a shrug, then winces. There are bleeding abrasions along one of his shoulders, and the flimsy fabric of his clinging white shirt is torn along his side, under a great smear of dirt and blood.

“You’re with that Hastings,” he says hoarsely.

“He’s not here,” Rafael says, and Omar relaxes slightly. “We should clean your arm. What happened?”

“Uh. The car, it… flipped. Crashed.” Omar runs one hand shakily over his springy curls, his eyes distant again. His Gulf Coast accent is soft and musical, just enough of a bayou lilt for a lovely flavor but not enough to obscure his enunciation. “I bit my tongue. Wish I’d still had, uh. His cock. In my mouth. Maybe I could’ve—ha. Don’t tell Stefan I said that. He’s such a goddamn rat…”

“He’s not here either. Let’s get you to the bathroom, alright?” Rafael ushers the man to his feet, herds him gently onwards. Omar obediently strips his shirt off, then just stands at the sink and shakes again. Rafael gets the water running and lathers a washcloth. The smell of blood still sits ill in his mouth and nose, churning his stomach uneasily, but compared to the bites Rafael has seen since coming here, it’s not so unmanageable.

Omar winces at the first touch and tugs his arm away; when Rafael allows him to, and only patiently waits, he slowly relaxes again and allows Rafael to dab the wounds clean in silence, staring down into the sink with unfocused eyes.

“Why’re you being so nice to me?” he mutters finally. “You don’t even know me.”

“Would you believe I’m just a nice person?”

Omar gives a cracked, nearly hysterical laugh. “No one here’s nice anymore. We’re a bunch of rats in a cage, eating each other because we don’t have anything else to do.”

Rafael sighs, rinses the washcloth out, keeps cleaning. “Well, then, I’m being nice because I want to know what happened out there. I have to see Carraway every morning in his office. I’d like to have some idea of what to expect tomorrow.”

“I think one of his top dogs went and made a play for his head,” Omar says. “One minute everything was smooth, was just the usual driving and dick-sucking, and then it was all guns and shouting. But everyone was wearing Carraway’s colors, you know, the uniforms. Hastings are a bunch of bloodthirsty psychopaths but even I know they’re stuck with whatever orders they get. Lykoi are just animals, they’ll turn on each other as soon as they smell blood. So. They turned.”

Rafael considers this for a while, cleaning away more dirt and blood, rinsing the washcloth. Omar really needs to take a shower, he stinks of fear and sweat, but the gentle touch seems to be doing him a world of good. He’s lucky he wasn’t injured in any more material way, a disfigured face or a broken bone. He’s lucky, in fact, that he wasn’t still more intimately engaged when the accident happened: as darkly amused as Rafael would have been to find that Carraway had come limping home so disarmed, he suspects Omar would not have survived the victory.

That thought sparks another, both exciting and somehow frightening. “And Carraway?” Rafael asks, as calmly as he can. “Was he shot, wounded…? Do you know?”

“Not that I saw. Mad enough that he was swearing and growling and cutting his soldiers up with his claws, but he came through without a fucking scratch, a bruise, nothing.” Omar sniffs, shakes his head hard. “And the fucked up thing is even if it wouldn’t be any better for any of us to have some newer, younger monster take over, some big twenty-something stud who wanted to fuck us over even harder, I just, I wish! I wish someone had gotten him! I wish anyone could get him. You know?”

“I know,” Rafael says, and puts his hand on Omar’s trembling shoulder. Squeezes. Omar gives another choked, bitter laugh, and twitches away.

“So now you know,” he says, “You can stop playing nice, now.”

“I’m sure I can find some other reason,” Rafael says, offering, and sees Omar’s tight smile falter, sharp eyes flickering uncertainly over Rafael’s face. Rafael hesitates, then admits, voice low, “I know where I can find something to help these heal—I want to help.”

Omar is still for a long, tense moment. Then he steps entirely away from Rafael’s hand, shoulders tight with a familiar, painful mistrust.

“Your pet Hastings gets the meds from the local thugs, I know,” Omar says. “Look, it’s not—not that I don’t appreciate the offer. But I can’t… be around those guys. I don’t want any part of what you and your buddies are trying, like, cozying up to him, acting like he can’t just—rip your damn head off the minute he feels like it. All of you, you’re up to the same stupid game Stefan’s playing, for all the damn good it does him…”

“It is not the same,” Rafael says, sharply. “Rich is nothing like that treacherous snake, he isn’t—”

“He’s not the size of a fucking truck? He’s not literally designed to be a walking weapon?” Omar looks up into Rafael’s eyes, and whatever he’s searching for just makes his pretty face twist in frustration. “Look, man, this is between you and me, I’m not—Garnet, okay, I’m not about to wave a southern cross and make some racist stand against anyone with devil blood, but the more power someone has the worse shit they can do with it, and there’s—a lot of people out there that get born to be more than human. And look at where we are. Look at where that’s got us. These people carve the world up between them and eat it and what can we do to stop them?”

Rafael holds himself tight and quiet for a long moment, then says, as calmly as he can, “We can be kind to one another.”

Omar just gives another bitter laugh and shakes his head. “Yeah, sure,” he says. “Good luck with that.”

There’s not much else to say after that. Rafael nods, wrings out the bloody washcloth, dries his hands, and leaves the man to his solitude.

Sol is still standing outside when Rafael emerges, and Rafael takes his tense, wide-eyed look as confirmation that a door and an adjacent room weren’t barrier enough to block the keenness of his hearing.

“One of the other lykoi?” is the first thing he says, ears perked sharply forward. “Fuck.”

“I can’t hazard a guess as to whether it was a legitimate coup attempt or just an attack of opportunity,” Rafael warns him. “But that it happened at all, and that it happened now, seems significant.”

“Has it happened before? Is this some kind of yearly lykoi sneak attack situation?”

Rafael shakes his head. “No. This is about succession. He’s never made an heir of any of his lieutenants, he’s got no blood relations, he’s kidnapped his own thrice-damned retirement planner, and Rich is a Hastings pacifist—far from acceptable to his many hungering lieutenants. Carraway may be remarkably strong for his age, but he was always going to grow old enough eventually that someone would try to supplant him.”

“And here we are. Goddamn… I think I get where Omar’s coming from, really, it wouldn’t do us any good to have a boss that was even younger and hornier, but still! You’d love to see someone finally get a shot in.”

“I heard that,” Stefan says, insinuating himself around a corner. “Plotting your own little coup, King? You really are all crazy.”

“Get bent, sleazebag,” Sol says, giving the man a universally rude gesture. Stefan puts his hand to his chest, mockingly offended, and Rafael sighs and tugs at Sol’s shoulder.

“Come on, we’ve done all we could, here,” he says. “Let’s find somewhere else to plan our usurpation.”

“Okay, but we have to decide on the hats,” Sol says gamely, and Rafael is startled to a genuine laugh. Sol pretends it wasn’t his intention at all, not even glancing over, but one long, flushed ear flicks back to Rafael and he goes on, miraculously, “When I’m running this joint, I want a nice sharp hat. That’s the worst part of Carraway’s whole deal, the man’s got all the style of a potato sack.”

“Don’t be rude,” Rafael says, and falls in by his side to take his arm, helplessly charmed. “I’ve seen some very stylish potato sacks in my time.”

“Yeah and what time was that? The sixteenth century?”

They turn into Connor’s room, and find Andy and Rich piled in Garnet’s usual bunk. Connor has a new bite; not in its usual place along his nape, but splashed lividly across the front of his throat. For all his jovial dismissal at the time, Carraway took enough issue with Connor’s suicidal charge to leave a permanent mark of his displeasure.

Connor seems in good spirits at least, as he ever does. He’s lounged across one of Rich’s thighs, as Andy shows both of them how to cut strawberries into the shape of roses. Rich is cheerfully eating the roses, though he sobers when he sees Rafael and Sol.

“Is Omar okay?” is the first thing he asks, and then, “What happened?”

Rafael summarizes the situation as concisely as he can, and if he makes no mention of Omar’s thoughts about soldier mods as he sits down close by Rich’s side to feel one huge, warm arm settle carefully around his shoulder, nobody has to know but Sol. By the way Rich sighs and nods afterward, looking tense and relieved and downcast all at once, he may well be aware of what Rafael is talking carefully around, anyway.

“I’m surprised he went out at all,” he says. “If—” he lowers his voice, glancing around. Sol looks at the door, ears twitching, and then nods at him and Rich goes on, softer. “If he knows Liam’s grandma’s looking for him, why would he risk it?”

“Well, he’s been cooped up ’round here for longer’n I’ve seen in a while, already,” Connor says, and pops one of Andy’s strawberries idly into his mouth. “We din’t all grow up on little tiny boats, some of us need some proper space to roam, and he gets real grouchy when he doesn’t get to go out to a party or something every week or so. Can’t deny I get the same way when I get stuck in one spot too long, only I don’t slap folks around for the fun of it when I get stir-crazy.”

“Slap people around?” Rich says, looking alarmed. “I know he’s been getting meaner lately, but you didn’t tell me—”

“Not like Sandgren does,” Sol says, with a sharp look at Connor. “It’s nothing you need to worry about, okay, we all know you head off what you can when he gets really nasty. But there’s not a lot of us, and he doesn’t call for Raf, and I guess he’s got to feel like a top stud somehow.”

He doesn’t say it as an accusation, but Rafael flinches anyway, a hot and painful mixture of guilt and resentment rushing through him. Rich’s arm weighs more heavily on his shoulder, squeezing for a moment.

“This new civil war shit’ll ground him for sure,” Connor says. “So we better get good and used to it. And maybe if we’re all real good, ol’ Saint Nick’ll come down the chimney and stab the old man right in the neck.”

–

Scene 10: Compound halls.

No saints of judgement or accounting sneak into the mansion to spare them from Carraway, as the month goes on. Instead, compound security tightens to the point that even the most particular of saints would have trouble getting a toe over the boundary line. Soldiers come and go at all hours, the ground patrols growing ever sharper and more heavily armed. Nitro looks increasingly out of sorts when she stops to chat with Rich, her imposing marble face smudged grey under the eyes with weariness and her fine pale lips twisted with exasperation.

“No one can figure how you got a message out,” she sighs one brisk evening, sharing a flask of something toxic-smelling with Rich. “The betting pool’s going crazy.”

“Everybody thinks it was me?” Rich asks nervously, and scrubs the back of his mouth. “Uh. What message? Also, do I even want to know who distilled what, here?”

“It’s just gas-tank ethanol and sugar, you big fat baby. Athensson calls it fossil fuel, it builds character. And no, anyone who hasn’t ever talked to you has money on Sandgren. He’s been happy as a dog with two dicks over our new siege situation, he gets to be important again, he gets to relive his and the big boss’s blood and glory days from the comfort of his air-conditioned office. If Ashes Beaker packed up and went home tomorrow I bet the nasty old shit would go running after her, crying.”

Rich laughs, rough and sincere, and takes another sip of his sugared poison. “All that, and a couple of you still think it was me?”

“Like I said. Anyone who’s actually noticed you’ve got a brain behind those pretty green eyes isn’t about to underestimate you.” Nitro takes the flask back and runs her pink tongue around the rim in a crude invitation that has Rich studying the treeline instead. Amused at this modesty, the soldier goes on, “We’ve got so many trackers on your rings that it’s a miracle they don’t glow in the dark, anything you order in or send out gets scanned six ways from Armageddon, Sandgren’s even got people posted around the damn woods at night to make sure you’re not getting messages out through goddamn semaphore. I wouldn’t be surprised if we start straining your shit, just to make sure you’re not getting anything out through the pipes.”

“You know how to make a boy feel special, Nitro,” Rich sighs, and takes the flask back. “You know if Carraway thinks it was me?”

“Hell no, we figure he’s got his eye on the quartermaster but hasn’t got proof yet.”

“Ha! Okay, that’s good. Put my money on Sayegh, too.”

“What, really? You think he did it?”

“They. And hey, why not. It would sure have been easier for them to get Madam Beaker on the line than some admin clerk, wouldn’t it?”

“Well, would it?”

Rich finishes the flask off and coughs a few times, face red.

“Oh, look, that’s the end of my break, bye,” he grins, and hands the empty flask back.

“You little shit. See you around.”

On the way back to the compound, Rich smiles down at Rafael, shy but proud. “So how’d I do?” he asks.

“A little smug for a secret agent, but tolerably well,” Rafael says, and hooks one of his arms through Rich’s. “Just keep it up.”

Rich keeps it up. It helps that Carraway is so distracted, as he and Sandgren carry out a swift and brutal cull of the men involved in their coup, and shift simultaneously to a war footing. The man spends less and less time in his office in the mornings, handling financial operations, and more time in conferences with his officers, discussing choke points, countermeasures, retaliation, shows of force, and other sundry martial maneuvers which Rich is firmly disallowed from witnessing.

Rich, in turn, is left to handle the money, the staff, the grounds crew, the kitchens, as the compound’s joint quartermaster in all but name. Mx Sayegh scans each order as it’s handed to them for signature, but makes no attempt toward their habitual micro-managing, too obviously preoccupied with plotting a course through this mess that doesn’t end six feet under the rose bushes.

Sandgren is increasingly less of a presence in the manor proper, as military affairs eat up his time, but no one can enjoy the reprieve. Carraway is up all hours of the night, stalking the hallways in any mood from bloodthirsty cheer to towering black rage. Rich and Rafael have to move more cautiously in their daily errands, and the boys in the harem wing close their doors and make no attempt to go out unless called for. The games that Carraway plays with his toys get crueler by the week: he’s out for blood and tears, these nights, and what the master of the house wants, he gets.

Only Connor still strolls through the halls or runs in the gardens as carelessly as he did before, and Rafael has an inkling that the man may do it because of the danger, not in spite of it. He clashes with Sandgren every chance he gets, throwing himself into yet another petty rebellion just as soon as his wounds from the last altercation have begun to heal.

Rich is nearly frantic with the stress of it, for the first weeks, but by late December he has too many concerns to spare much energy for Connor’s suicidal struggles. Carraway’s increasingly erratic habits have kept Rich from taking dinner to Liam with any sort of regularity, and Carraway has taken to chiding Rich harshly for helping with any domestic task deemed below his station. Rich is Carraway’s aide de camp, now, not his scullery maid.

Sexual service, of course, never seems to be below Rich’s station, no matter what other duties he might be too good for. He’s on his knees between Carraway’s thighs as often as ever, if not more so; routinely subjected to pills, patches, stimulant toys, and enough liquor to drown an elephant, at their master’s increasingly demanding whim. Rich is beautiful when he’s undone, beautiful dissolved in pleasure and need, beautiful when he can think of nothing more than his body and do nothing else but kiss whatever hands might touch him. And Carraway is anything but blind to beauty, and weakness. On the periphery, Rafael learns to hold his liquor and his tongue at the same time, walk a straight line dead drunk, and format a spreadsheet with a pounding hangover.

Those scattered snatches of quiet time Carraway actually spends in bed asleep are a welcome respite for everyone. Rich meets the cleaning staff in one quiet parlor or another, talks in hushed voices, asks after Liam if he hasn’t been able to visit the man recently. Most staff aren’t allowed to interact with Liam, but they can see him at least, to tidy his padded dungeon of a room, and Rich clings to the scraps of news they bring him with frantic hunger.

It’s one such night, the cool quiet of Christmas Eve, when luck finally turns against them.

Conversation has turned, in hushed tones, to the rumors of the outside world. Increasingly aggressive scouts searching mere handfuls of miles from the mansion, guards and checkpoints and Carraway’s soldiers tearing through shipments of food and cleaning supplies, looking for more traps like the one that almost took the man’s head a month ago. Rafael has wandered away, trusting Rich to remember numbers and details better than he could, and thinking vaguely of standing lookout.

The halls are dark outside the parlor, low golden lights casting dim circles of illumination between deep pools of shadow. Rafael settles into one of the shadows, rests his aching head back against the wood of the door, and listens to the low murmur of voices within while his tired mind wanders.

It’s been some unguessable stretch of minutes, when something shifts at the corner of his eye. Rafael glances over, and sees a quiet hall, no sign of motion—and then, as he begins to relax back again, a pair of yellow-green pupils flash in the darkness, barely a stone’s throw from him, and something growls softly in the dark.

Rafael jerks upright so fast he almost stumbles, heart shooting into his throat, and then freezes in place, panting. For a moment, there are no thoughts in his mind at all—just the panicked, motionless silence of prey and predator.

“You’re out late, sweetheart,” says Carraway, and he melts out of the shadows, looming over Rafael in the nearest patch of light. He must have woken from sleep; he looks much less polished than Rafael is accustomed to seeing, dressed more like the men who roam the barracks than the master of the house. In a tanktop instead of a crisply-ironed button-down, the scars scattered faintly along his skin are visible, and the smear of a faded regimental tattoo on his shoulder, under sparse, grizzled fur. Even his hair isn’t neatly pulled back, but falls unruly around his face and shoulders, streaked with gray, and his beard is an ungroomed bristle.

He looks at once older and younger like this. An old soldier in the uniform he once wore, his instruments of murder still on his hands even in the security of his own home. He carries himself like a man in enemy territory; his claws twitch at the slightest sounds.

…And Rich is in the room behind Rafael, deep in gossip about the man’s looming downfall, once again in comfortable fraternity with those Carraway disdainfully considers “the help.” In such a mood, Rafael doesn’t know how to guess Carraway’s response to that, if he would growl and chide or if he would punish Rich more severely, if he would hurt him.

“Good morning, sir,” Rafael says, bolstered by that unthinkable thought. “I’m sorry, you… you startled me.”

“Up to something you shouldn’t be?” Carraway says, and the words are soft and low but there’s a sharp edge to his watchful stare.

“No, sir!” says Rafael, with unhappy surprise indistinguishable from the real thing—the very idea appalling to him, startling in its novelty. Of course he would never be up to something. What a thought. “Rich—” he cuts himself off, plucks at his sleeve nervously. “He wanted to go for a walk.”

“Mm?” says Carraway, and Rafael makes a show of increasing nerves under that golden-eyed stare and then glances back at the door and steps closer, lowering his voice.

“He has nightmares,” he admits, quickly, as though guilty. He hates to give this secret of Rich’s away, but there’s a grain of truth in every good lie, and he sees the spark of recognition in Carraway’s eyes, the understanding of that excuse. “I know I’m to help however I can, but he ordered me away to collect himself, so… I followed from further back…” He wraps his arms around himself, the picture of desolation, glances back at the door again, then up at Carraway.

“Can I do something for you, sir?” he says, and feels his heart fall as Carraway looks back down at him with the beginning of familiar, amused disinterest. Rich hasn’t emerged yet, he needs more time, but Rafael’s audience is slipping away from him.

“Now, what kind of help do you think you could give me, darlin’?” Carraway says, and as Rafael stares at him, helpless, the memory comes back to him all at once like a lightning bolt. The shaking chill of Sandgren’s drugs leaving his system, the aching hot stretch of Rich taking him, and the hungry, thoughtful interest in Carraway’s voice as he said I didn’t think he had any of those pretty words left in him…

Carraway tenses, as Rafael steps closer; Rafael pauses, not needing to fake his fearful hesitation, and then glances down and takes one of the hands that’s tortured him, bows to it and kisses the deadly cold metal of the man’s claws.

“Whatever service I can render,” he says, against the razor-edge of them, and forces himself, with every shaking breath, to mean it. “To the lord wolf of Victory herself, blessed with dominion of such mighty and gilded halls…”

It hurts, changing himself to this role, forcing himself into this shape—someone who could find inspiration, love, in the monster who took his life away from him. Who could speak to the man as sweetly as he did the night he was stolen away, to not only please and appease but compose sweet words of poetry to him.

…But when he raises his head, feigning self-consciousness, making as if to think better of himself and step away, Carraway’s fingers hook his collar.

“Now that’s a pretty turn of phrase,” Carraway says, and Rafael’s heart twists and warms and burns and breaks, seared and scorched by the interest and approval in the man’s eyes.

“A pretty phrase is the least I owe you, sir,” Rafael says, and feels it becoming easier, leaning into that touch, that approval he’s been made to long for. Feels himself almost meaning it, making himself mean it. “Whatever I can do for you, to be…”

To be yours again, he means to say, he fully intends—but the words choke off inside of him, a terrible fear crushing them into nothing. Carraway is looking at him so intently, pleased with him again—he might. He might take Rafael back from Rich. He could, and there would be no stopping him, and when he tired of Rafael again as he inevitably would…

Even forcing himself to this shape, twisting himself into someone who could worship Carraway like he wants to be worshiped, Rafael can’t close away the places inside himself that Rich has broken open. He’s in love, and every form and role he’ll take hereafter will be in love, and it won’t be with this man and his short-lived and vicious desire. He can’t ask to be parted from the man he’s come to love. He doesn’t want to.

“I…” Rafael starts, but the moment has stretched too long. Carraway releases him, with one last thoughtful look, and steps past him to the doorway. “Sir—”

“Sir!” says Rich, opening the door in a rush. Carraway twitches back, a startled rasp of a growl rising briefly in his throat, and Rich backs up immediately, looking uncertainly from Rafael to Carraway. “Sorry, sir,” he says. “I didn’t know you were out here, I was just, uh.”

“Just what?” Carraway says, and sniffs the air, then reaches down and takes Rich’s wrist, raising his hand between them. Rich’s nails are freshly-painted, powder blue with a silver snowflake on the thumb, and Carraway frowns at the sight of them.

“I don’t keep you around to distract the help and play princess dress-up,” he sneers, and squeezes Rich’s wrist hard enough Rich makes a soft, wounded noise, fingers twitching. “Clean this nonsense off. It’s unbecoming, big strong man like you goin’ around with a little girl’s hands. Have some pride, for once in your life.”

“I’m sure he—” Rafael starts, and “But sir,” Rich starts, and Carraway growls at both of them.

“That’s enough out of both of you,” he says, and drops Rich’s wrist. “Now. Party tomorrow night. I expect you lookin’ sharp, boy. Professional.” He throws another contemptuous look down at Rich’s nails, and then stalks back down the hallway, vanishing into the dark.

Rafael steps mutely against Rich’s side, and Rich sighs and wraps an arm around him, taking the comfort gratefully. He looks tired and upset, as he always does after he’s snarled at, and Rafael would like to comfort him but the taste of the words he said tonight are still in his mouth and he doesn’t trust himself, somehow, to speak. His heart is bruised and aching, his mind spinning at his own daring. A scolding for painted nails, no more, and the housekeeping staff who would doubtless have been punished as well escaped faceless into the night. Rafael did more than helplessly change Carraway’s path by a useless half-step; he stopped the man, however briefly, in his tracks.

“Come on,” says Rich, low and despondent, and turns, sweeping Rafael along with him. “Let’s get some sleep.” He glances back over his shoulder, then speeds his stride, lips pressed thin and jaw set. “Dress-up,” he mumbles to himself, after a few quiet minutes. “Like he doesn’t play dolls with us all the fuckin’ time.”

Rafael half-laughs, startled from his dizzy contemplation, and Rich smiles bravely back. It’s a fair criticism. Rich has of late found himself dressed to Carraway’s own personal ideal of a handsome secretary: a tall wooden wardrobe was generously installed in their quarters, stocked with a supply of clothes less revealing but no more optional than any of the flimsy scraps worn by the rest of the harem. Rather than tissue-thin t-shirts that stretch unforgivingly across Rich’s pierced nipples, he now has a set of fine buttoned shirts that show off the turn of his beautifully muscled forearms and thickness of his neck. Replacing his stretch jeans are neatly pressed black slacks that tastefully flatter his ass without clinging obscenely to the weight of his dick, and there are furthermore a number of very flattering vests that emphasize the depth of his chest and the breadth of his shoulders. Even his hair has been trimmed according to Carraway’s specifications, into something harsher and more military.

He looks lovely, honestly; the very picture of a strapping young soldier mod turned sensuous and available, a beautifully groomed secretary from an especially well-budgeted piece of pornography. But it isn’t… Rich. Isn’t what he would want, and he doesn’t quite look like himself while he wears it. However finely the clothes might be tailored, and however well they complement him, when Rafael dreams of a warm and distant future Rich is under the open sky, not locked away in an office—relaxed and comfortable, wearing one of his wraps or just naked and unafraid of it, laid out in a bed with a welcoming smile that shows no trace of worry or fear.

“Next summer will be beautiful,” Rafael murmurs, “and your nails can be any color you like.” Rich doesn’t answer, but his arm squeezes a little tighter around Rafael’s shoulders.