Chapter 33

As soon as Carraway has left the office, Rich staggers across the room and snatches up his shirt from the couch. He attempts to fix it sidelong around his hips and only succeeds in pinning the raw, tender dark length of his dick against his stomach, growling softly at the sensation. Clutching its brief cover to himself, he reels unsteadily to the door and catches himself heavily against it.

“Can…? Can you?” he asks, and rubs at his flushed, swollen lips for a moment before making a vague, faltering gesture from Rafael out towards the hallway.

Rafael hurries over to join him, heart in his throat, and finds himself ushered gently out before Rich.

“I can’t, I’m so… fffucked up, right now,” Rich manages. “Can’t carry you back.” Rafael looks up at him, the way all the massive power of this beautiful man has been disjointed by lust, and swallows down his own measure of desire.

“I can walk,” Rafael says, “I’m not the one worn thin, dear heart. Here, I’ll lead,” and takes one of Rich’s sweaty, hesitant hands. It’s trembling against his own, and Rich swallows hard and sways towards him as Rafael steps away and pulls. It’s difficult to ignore the taut press of his arousal between them, constrained only by the brief span of his shirt fabric, or the uneven panting of Rich’s inhumanly broad chest, the glitter of his pierced pink nipples as he pants after Rafael like a starving dog…

Focus, Rafael thinks, marshalling himself. He can have Rich’s mouth again, his hands again, when they’ve made it back to their berth. He turns and tows Rich briskly down the hallway, the long stride with an extra spring off the back foot that very nearly matches his own pace to Rich’s natural gait. It’s just a little uneven, now, with Rich clasping his hand like this, following along on loose knees and shaking thighs, and Rafael himself is starting to chafe. But they manage a tolerable speed.

The hallways between Carraway’s office and Rich’s berth have never seemed so dauntingly long, or overwarm, as when they catch themselves up against a corner. For a moment Rich is pinning Rafael up against the wallpaper, his stiff erection sliding up against the small of Rafael’s back and Rich cupping Rafael close back against his chest for a greedy, wet, gasping press of his mouth against the slope of Rafael’s shoulder.

“Fuck, you’re so pretty, so, the sun, your skin…” he breathes against Rafael’s ear, and sucks at the edge of Rafael’s jaw, the thick weight of his dick sliding down against Rafael’s ass, his hand rucking up Rafael’s shirt, sliding across his stomach.

Rafael whines soundlessly, nearly unraveled by the shock of pleasure and the heady thrill of Rich’s unguarded, unrestrained need.

“Our room,” he manages, an airless little whisper. “Rich, nnh, please, not here…”

“Fuck,” Rich growls, all depth and teeth, and his hand slips away from Rafael’s stomach, letting him stagger free. “C’mon.”

They make it back to their room in a breathless scramble, and pull one another onto the bed in a tangle of arms and mouths and gasping little endearments. Rich’s dick rubs up between Rafael’s thighs for only a few slick, stuttering thrusts before the man is clutching Rafael crushingly tight and coming again with a low, rough-edged sob.

“You too, baby, c’mon,” he mutters, squirming and rolling them over, and Rafael finds himself grinding gracelessly against Rich’s come-slickened stomach, Rich’s huge hands stroking him all over, Rich’s hot mouth sucking eagerly on his tongue. Everywhere the slick thrill of sweat and come and the deep, commanding scent of a huge man kept ferociously aroused all morning, clutching on to him, needing him. Rafael abandons himself to the frantic, clumsy pleasure of their mutual desperation, and works his way to climax in very short order.

There’s a few moments of panting, sticky, prickling quiet, and then Rich gives a great shuddering sigh and sits up slowly, sliding Rafael off to one side.

“Fuck,” Rich mutters, and grabs the bottle off the bedside table, taking a few deep swallows before lowering it. “You okay?” he says, sounding almost coherent again, and takes another swig before putting the bottle down, then touches his fingertips wincingly to the dark pink blush of his lips. “I’m… still. I’m still. This stuff. Fuck me…”

“I’m well,” Rafael says, worried all over again for Rich now that his own upwelling of desire has been satiated for the moment. “I’m sorry. That was—would you like…?”

He holds out an arm, inviting, and Rich turns and lowers his shoulders and puts as much of himself as he can fit into the meager span of Rafael’s arms. He lays his great head against Rafael’s and just breathes, his vast sweat-sodden chest rising and falling, his heavy cheek pressed against the side of Rafael’s head.

“God,” he sighs eventually, and nuzzles Rafael gently before lifting himself delicately away, looking towards the whiskey bottle again. “Fucking—Sandgren. Hate him so much, n’Carraway just lets him get away with whatever he wants, it’s sick.”

“I know,” Rafael says, inadequate as it feels, and raises a hand to tentatively stroke along the back of Rich’s neck, the slick pale slope of it. “Sandgren knows he wouldn’t be worth fearing if obedience could turn him aside, if he only punished us when we earned it—if he had his way it would be against the rules to breathe, so he could exercise his cruelty whenever he liked.” He breathes, forces the anger down where he can control it again, where it doesn’t color his voice. “I know, it wasn’t fair.”

“I know it’s dumb,” Rich says in a low, shaking voice, each word carefully composed, “but I can’t stand—Omar wasn’t doing anything wrong! And all I did was be there, I wasn’t, I wasn’t bad. It’s so hard to be good here but I’m trying and Carraway doesn’t even care. If it’s not what he wants. When he wants it.”

He growls, low and grating, and then squeezes Rafael again. He rasps out, this wounded boy with the voice of a monster: “I wish we could just be good. Somewhere worth the work. Wish it helped anything about this crazy place.”

“Oh, beloved,” Rafael sighs, and embraces Rich in return with all his strength. “It does. You do. Never doubt it.”

They sit holding each other, trading sweetnesses back and forth, until Rafael feels himself stirring to Rich’s touch once again, and forces himself to pull back from their tight clasp.

“I believe we’d both feel better after a shower,” he says, with careful lightness. “Why don’t we do that? Come along. You’ll feel better once you’re clean and covered, and that damnable sensitizer might wash off.”

“Yeah, good idea,” Rich sighs, and levers himself with a heartbreaking lack of grace off of the bed. “I think I’ve had a boner for six hours by now, it’s starting to really hurt.”

The shower is grandly-sized, but even so it proves an exercise in great care; Rafael does his best to avoid brushing Rich anywhere too sensitive and sore, and Rich in turn moves with fragile, fumbling caution, and manages somehow not to elbow Rafael right out of the spray.

They’re all but finished when Rich says, “I know we were, I’m supposed to be getting you ready, for me, but I don’t think, today, maybe—I’m such a fucking mess, I’d just—want, more, than I should have, right now.”

“No, of course not,” Rafael says, through the reflexive thrill of heat. Rich opening him up, losing composure, begging to fuck him—no. Best not. “Rich, I wouldn’t expect it, not today.”

“Okay,” Rich says, hangdog and relieved. “‘M sorry.”

“Well, you mustn’t be,” Rafael says, and tugs him down for a reassuring kiss on the cheek, then a longer and more thorough kiss to the mouth which swiftly devolves into a long, thoughtless spell of kissing and grinding and hands on dicks and mouths all over, until finally Rich falls back against the shower wall and sobs through a final, grateful release, utterly spent.

It’s a shocking measure of how badly worn the day’s exertions have left Rich that he consents to an afternoon nap with hardly a protest. They curl together in bed, Rafael held close to Rich’s chest, and the man goes still and quiet for nearly an hour before waking them both with a jolting, full-throated snarl.

“You’re safe,” Rafael says, heart thundering with shock, and “I’m here,” and then some matter of time later, “Oh, no, dearest, that’s quite alright, that’s, mm, that’s, yes,” as they mutually discover Rich’s heightened sensitivity hasn’t entirely abated, and whatever nightmare shocked Rich out of sleep has no more power to discomfit either of them. Rafael presses close and cups Rich’s hands to his own stirring flesh, as Rich sates his eager mouth on Rafael’s body once more.

Rich lies abed for a startling fifteen minutes afterward—but unsleeping, and after a long, quiet period of breathing and shifting and settling, he gives a rough grunt of disgust and levers himself upright.

“Rich?”

“Yeah, no, yeah,” Rich says, and gives a strained smile over his shoulder as he dresses in a t-shirt and wrap, his eyes darkly haunted. “You can keep napping, that’s fine, you earned it. I just gotta get some real work in today, or I’ll go crazy.”

The thought of more leisure is tempting. But with that look in the man’s eyes, there’s little question of taking him up on his offer. Rafael forces himself up out of the comfort of the sheets and into clothes, gives a little flourish of an after you bow toward the door, and falls in at Rich’s elbow as the man sets off on his self-appointed rounds.

He doesn’t think he’s merely imagining the way Rich keeps close, or the brittle fragility of his determination to be of use. Rafael paces staunchly at Rich’s side, offering what reassurance he can bring to bear in word and deed and ready smile, and does his best not to feel uneasy about the way Rich has threaded himself into the workings of the compound. About what repercussions might come, if it comes to Carraway’s attention that his sweet and dutiful secretary knows the whole mansion’s comings and goings, his supplies, his orders, as soon as he gives them and regardless of who he intended them for.

It’s hard to imagine Rich as some cunning spymaster, watching him run around attending to domestic errands, watching him greet everyone from the cooks to the cleaning staff by name, watching him cheerfully lend an enormous hand to anything he’s invited to help with. He dusts chandeliers, levels an unbalanced curio cabinet with little shims, quickly and quietly cleans up the wreckage one of Carraway’s prisoners wrought on a harem parlor, and carries a great sloshing drum of floor polish from the delivery room up to a third floor supply closet. Then he puts a request for fresh flower arrangements from a more cost-effective distributor in with the quartermaster, flips a washing machine over in the laundry basement to replace the wiring, and eats a huge dinner before smilingly elbowing his way into the kitchen to reprogram a faulty broiler. Next it’s time to haul huge crates of mulch for the groundskeepers in the soupy evening heat and bicker with them about pesticides in between companionable nips from a silver flask, waving a cheerfully rude salute to his cousin Nitro as she jogs along on some arcane troop formation in the deepening twilight gloaming…

Rafael turns the situation over and over in his mind as he paces Rich about his work. Only well after night has fallen, after a round of cards with Sol and Connor, does he take Rich’s arm and draw him aside to one of the empty parlors near their room.

Rich looks baffled to be interrupted from his endless activity, but goes willingly enough, waiting with a smile as Rafael checks the hallway outside and then closes the door and draws him deep into the room away from listening ears.

“I need you to explain something to me,” Rafael says quietly. “What you said, earlier. The means you’re using to spy—”

“Track,” Rich corrects, smile falling crookedly. “Raf, really?”

“Yes, really,” Rafael says sternly. “The means you’re using to track people, then. How on earth can you have the power to know the whereabouts of even Carraway’s sergeant but no ability to order a library yourself—or call for a rescue?”

“Oh,” Rich says, and grimaces strikingly, rubbing the back of his neck with a huge hand. “Well, I mean, calling out—they got it bottlenecked a lot like they do at home, calls that cross over through the—well, it’s not a datanet like I’m used to, but—”

“Rich.”

“Right, yeah, okay, uh.” Rich waves his hands abstractedly, in a vague and grand frustration. “It’s not like there’s networked cameras in the hallways or something, is the thing. I got positioning on all of us, easy, since we’re all position-tracked.” He plucks a finger at his own collar demonstratively. “And anybody who’s using data rings—they get biometric data on you so they know whose loadout to bring up, so you show up in the system too.”

Rafael works his hands, abruptly aware of the cool weight of the rings on his own fingers. Not that it matters, apparently. He knew the collar and cuffs had some means of telling when a boytoy approached the boundary of the property, but always assumed somehow that it was as simple as an electric fence deployed to control some unruly pet. There must be some measure of control, to switch it on or off at will. It does explain how Carraway is able to take his boys out with him to his many drives and visits without incident…

“And then there’s plenty of little cameras around here, and landside corporations put a lot of spyware into the building’s hardbody screens to look and listen through them,” Rich says, and nods over toward a wall, where a large screen displays footage of a beautiful pearlescent dawn rising over a picturesque Martian valley. “So she can see people through those, too, even though none of the ad data or whatever makes it out through the data net. It’s got plenty of blind spots, and Carraway’s marked as admin, so she wouldn’t report on him to me without some serious overrides from his account—”

“There are cameras?” Rafael says sharply—and then lowers his voice, panic biting coldly at his spine. “Rich! Where—he can see us, here, he can hear us—?!”

“What?” says Rich. “No? No, man, nobody around here even seems to know she’s got a place-mind, and there’s way too many cameras to go through one at a time and check all of them manual. You’d hafta know how to tag somebody for her to keep an eye on. Carraway’s set to admin because he owns the property, but she was pretty much fresh out of the box when I got here, nobody had accessed her in decades.” He rolls his eyes derisively. “I mean, ‘fresh outta the box’ ‘s pretty generous I guess, if she set sail ninety percent bloatware like that she’d be on the bottom of the lake the first time you changed headings.”

Rafael stares around helplessly, finds the closest uncomfortable chaise lounge and sinks down onto it.

“But cleanup tech access came with the package when Carraway let me start working in the office,” Rich goes on. “And he’s only using me for stuff a kid could do on school rings in a quarter-shift, so I got plenty of time to keep things trimmed and running smooth. She’s a lot closer to a real ship now. If Mx Sayegh would authorize the department heads for data rings, I could get them automated shipments, streamline the restocking…”

It’s not calculated, Rafael realizes again, watching the man devolve into another impassioned and semi-comprehensible rant about the processes that could more effectively manage the maintenance of their prison. The way he’s woven himself into the compound staff, involved himself in nearly every facet of the manor’s operation. There’s nothing insincere or manipulative about it; merely that he cares, and that he assumes everyone around him cares as well.

But Carraway is not known for taking the charitable view when it comes to suspected treachery. And Rafael can manipulate and spin and soften the blow all he wants to, but if Carraway makes up his mind that Rich is a threat, there’s nothing Rafael can do to stop him.

“Carraway doesn’t track us, then,” he says, cutting off Rich’s screed on the topic of meteorological data and its uses in predicting gardening shipments. “He doesn’t see or hear us.”

“What, the cameras? Nah,” says Rich. “He’d hafta learn how to use a data stream collator and import a local script to do that.” He snorts, as though Rafael should recognize that this is a deeply improbable feat. “A guy who uses his IST to compile expense reports and make graphs and do basic algorithmic predictions isn’t gonna figure that one out on his own.”

“Alright.” Rafael takes a deep breath, lets it out and reorders his thoughts. Realizes, “…He doesn’t know that the cuffs track us, either.”

“Huh?” says Rich, brow furrowing. “No, I mean. He’s gotta, right? It’s, what, two submenus down on his management app? You barely have to browse at all—”

“And neither he nor Sandgren must ever know that,” Rafael says, with such quelling force Rich straightens his back like a scolded schoolboy, eyes widening. “By gods and great men, what monsters that would make of them… Sandgren has only Stefan to spy for him as it is, and whatever information he can browbeat from the staff, and he still manages to destroy any meager sense of safety.”

“We’re sure he doesn’t know?” Rich reaches up as though barely aware of the motion and touches the collar around his treetrunk throat. “He can’t’ve not even looked, right? I mean he toggles them off for guys to go on his stupid trips and visits and stuff with him, I figured he hadta know—”

“Beloved, I think you may be most deeply overestimating the common man’s comfort with those wretched devices,” Rafael says dryly. “I’m sure whatever damned soul manufactured these—” he plucks at his collar, “would never be so gauche as to require the master of the house, seeking a warm body to entertain him during a drive, to do more than flick a switch.”

“Yeah, but,” Rich waves a hand, half a shrug.

“I’m familiar with the sergeant, by now, for my sins,” Rafael says. “He has a snake’s guile, certainly, but not a single flashing mote of restraint; if he had the means to know our whereabouts at all times, Sam would never have managed his diplomatic liaisons with the staff, and Sol would certainly have been kept from his morning swordplay by now. And if one of our jailors knew the extent of their power, the other would quickly know as well. No. They aren’t aware, and we must by no means allow them to become so.”

“Fuck,” says Rich fervently. “Okay. No, yeah, no, I’m with you, man.” He blows out a breath and draws up his own data rings, considering the screen with narrow intent now. “…Well, I can’t do shit to block either of ‘em, but if they weren’t even lookin’ two menus down, I might as well tie an anchor to it, huh? There’s a dropdown even deeper in for rarely used—looks like neither of ‘em ever clicked into it even one time since the place-mind got booted.” He makes a few deft gestures, and then decisively closes the screen and gives Rafael a tight, tired smile.

“Alright,” Rafael says, and feels his own shoulders finally loosen. “Well enough then. Thank all nine hells you never mentioned it to Carraway, assuming he already knew…”

“Yeah,” Rich says, with a striking grimace of horror at the thought. “Shit.” He’s silent, staring down at the rings on his fingers; then he says, suddenly, “I know I’m down here in the brig with the rest of you. Prisoners, I mean. I do know that, I’d never rat anybody down here out. Not on purpose. I want him—them, all of ‘em—gone just as bad as you do. Just because guys like him look at guys like me and put ‘em to work, and. And I do work, and I need to work, and he’s the only work around—Fuck. Anyway, we might not have a red to blue transfer scheduled any time soon, but. Mutiny law, man. I know which side of the railing we all oughta be standing on.”

Rafael stares at him, struggling to parse a large part of that. “Red to blue…?” he enquires eventually.

“Yeah,” says Rich, “like—” he makes a gesture as though to heave something away from him.

Rafael waits to see if more explanation is forthcoming. Rich stares back at him, takes note that this was insufficient and rumbles thoughtfully, squinting with the intent focus of a man struggling to express something intuitive in words.

“Because captain’s color is red,” he says. “And the lake’s blue?” He throws again, and then mimes a splash with his hands. “Spshh. Y’know. Like back in the drowning days.”

Rafael can’t help laughing. The grim implication of the way Rich’s idyllic Fleet appears to handle this sort of situation, the earnest way Rich mimes it—the absurdity of it all, the relief of the terror in exchange for a more familiar aching worry.

“I see,” he says slowly, and gives the room one more look, finally allowing some measure of tension to leave him. “I… think I see. Well, still. Please. For my sake, be careful—better to allow Sandgren his way with one of us than to spark curiosity in either of our jailors on how you manage to avert it.”

Rich gives an uneasy huff. “Mm,” he says noncommittally, and waves a hand. “Well, so, now you know. Good?”

“Well enough,” Rafael says, relenting, and sways back against the back of the couch, tipping his face to the ceiling, squeezing closed his tired eyes. “What else must we do tonight?”

“Oh,” says Rich. “Well, I was gonna head down and see what the night shift sanitation techs needed, but… I know you must be worked flat, by now, you’ve put in a hell of a shift today without a peep. If you wanna turn in for the night you’ve earned it.”

Rafael considers the prospect of lying in bed alone, wondering unceasingly what damning transgressions Rich might sunnily reveal to the cleaning staff.

“No,” he says. “I think I’ll invite myself along, if I may.” Rich is frowning in concern, so Rafael adds underhandedly, “We’re all crew, after all, are we not?” and Rich brightens at once. With no further argument or resistance, they hie themselves forth.

–

Scene 5: Mansion third floor.

For some reason, perhaps fatigue or his lingering worry, it doesn’t occur to Rafael until the very moment Rich sweeps him forward in front of a pair of young women in Carraway’s black, brown and gold, that the night cleaners are yet more staff and yet another tense and wary introduction to suffer through. Rich has carried the majority of the weight during their errands thus far, allowing Rafael to quietly observe and make himself useful as he can, but this time Rich approaches in a manner far less businesslike and ushers Rafael to center stage.

“This’s Rafael,” he says, to the young women. “Y’know, the guy who got assigned to my berth. Raf, this’s Mary and Coco. Uh, Socorro.”

The smiles the women give him are uncertain at best; Mary is the taller of the two, vaguely familiar in passing, and appears a few years older, with mousy brown hair pinned back from her tired, white face. She looks already wary, as though perhaps she’s been accosted by one of Carraway’s fresher captives before and expects a violent outburst or desperate weeping and begging. Socorro looks even younger than Rich, no great beauty but pretty enough by Rafael’s admittedly disinterested eye, with a golden cross visible at the neck of her uniform; she’s much darker-skinned than either Mary or Rich, although lighter than Rafael, with dark, thick hair in a bob and brightly-painted nails that match the rims of her glasses. By the pained way she smiles at him—with the guilty unhappiness of a woman preparing to leave a stray dog in the rain—she’s newer to the job and the enforced distance between staff and harem.

“…Ladies,” Rafael says, and feels Sam’s broad Carolina Enclave accent warm the edges of his voice to something sweetly disarming as he reaches out a hand. “A pleasure to meet you, I’m sure.” When Socorro takes his hand hesitantly, Rafael shakes it once, firm and gentle, and then becomes himself again for long enough to bow over it, sweeping a leg and then straightening again to stand with ironclad composure.

Rafael isn’t Sam, and he doesn’t know that he ever could be, even if he played the role from the depth of his broken heart, but… At the very least, he can play the role they aren’t expecting of him. A guest at their table, to share in their company and while away a pleasant evening, not a starveling dog at their feet, to worry their skirts and tug upon their conscience.

If Rich can win their fellowship, then so can he.

Rafael says, all sweet sincerity, “I must apologize if I’ve been so careless as to leave you any untoward housework, over these past few years. If I had my way of things I’d have made every attempt to clean up after myself, so as not to shame my own mother’s good name, but if our dear Sergeant Sandgren saw any of us holding a broom I’m afraid the good lord might take him away from us early with a fit of apoplexy, and we couldn’t have that. Bless his heart.”

Rich gives a startled little chuffing huff of a laugh; the cleaning staff look startled, and then Mary’s suspicion softens to an uncertain smile and Socorro muffles a giggle behind her hand.

“Socorro’s the one who’s been painting my nails,” Rich says, and Rafael broadens and brightens his mask of affable good humor. “She’s good, huh?”

“She’s a master at the craft,” Rafael agrees. “And in return you undertake the onerous task of cleaning? You poor lamb, I know you hate it so.”

This time both of the cleaning ladies laugh, and Rich chuffs again and gives Rafael’s shoulder a gentle shove. “Well, I can reach the top shelves a lot easier, is all! Are you gonna gimme shit or are you gonna help out?”

“Only direct me,” Rafael says, shrugging. “Even before my… extended vacation from all tasks of note or value, I was something of a bachelor, I may be forced to admit.”

He isn’t much needed, and in honesty neither is Rich, but the women seem pleased to have company and more hands, and the work of straightening and dusting is spread to what feels like hundreds of useless parlors, sitting rooms, music rooms, sunrooms, unused offices, and guest bedrooms that appear never to have been so much as touched. Rafael is granted a long duster, and dutifully buffets spiderwebs from the corners of the ceiling as Mary, Coco, and Rich straighten sheets, dust shelves, wipe mirrors and windows, and refresh dishes of potpourri and air fresheners.

They also gossip like a crowd of a dozen, and are endlessly amused by Rich’s blithe incomprehension of the local social norms.

“—That’s why Erin decided to go to day shift laundry in the first place,” Mary is saying, as they pick up caddies of supplies and tools and leave an empty third floor office, proceeding down the hall to a room equipped as a home theater that Rafael is positive has never been put to use even a single time. “Because Dan said he didn’t get to see her enough if she worked nights—and then as soon as she gets there she’s spending six hours a day with Ramesh, and that poor kid never stood a chance—so now she’s trying to get Dan to quit his job here and take up with some plumber outfit in town—”

“Ohh, huh,” says Rich, with the same genuine interest he’s expressed to the last five points of this ongoing drama. “Why, though? I mean, it’s gotta be hard enough to get all three of them together now, if he lived out in town it’d be even worse, right?”

Both women laugh. Rich smiles at them both uncomprehendingly, and this time Rafael clears his throat and breaks his silent observation to say, sotto voce, “I would presume she wants to make it easier to cheat on her fiance with her new paramour, Rich.”

“Ohhh,” Rich says, eyebrows rising. “Oh, like they’re exclusive and this is a below-decks kinda… Gotcha. Eesh.”

“She surely must know that he won’t leave,” Rafael says to the housekeepers, and pretends with all his might that he doesn’t feel the uncertain distance in the air. They’d all but forgotten he was there, they don’t know him—that’s alright. There’s no audience that can’t be won. He lowers his voice, conspiratorial. “Even if he didn’t suspect her already, which you know he must, seeing your lover only once every few weeks would test most relationships. You know Mr Jameson, the groundskeeper, was married when he was hired? Being away for weeks at a time, his wife assumed he was unfaithful while he was here, and she planted some manner of spy bug on him, attempting to catch him red-handed—”

“No,” says Socorro, in scandalized delight.

“My hand to God,” Rafael says solemnly. “Of course it was discovered on the security sweep when he arrived back to work, and he called her at once in front of the entire entry hall and demanded a divorce!”

“In front of everyone?” Mary says, wide-eyed, and Rafael feels the familiar warm, electric hook behind his ribs, the thrilling warmth of an audience caught.

“There was a to-do that lasted days,” he says, dropping his voice to a murmur again, and all three of them lean in. Rich’s earnest wide-eyed attention is just as delicious directed at him as he thought it might be, and Rafael basks in it as he goes on, “Sandgren demanded he be fired for it, assuming deliberate treachery, and made some very unflattering comments on his wife, his marriage, and his moral character, and Mr Jameson has been well-known to hate the man ever since. Have you never noticed he refuses to dispatch his men to trim the trees and bushes outside of Sandgren’s office? Sandgren has to go and bully the men into it himself.”

Rich snorts. “Shit, that’s why? None of the guys out in the gardens would tell me!”

“Not that anybody needs a reason to stay away from that man,” Mary says, a little stiffly, and swipes a dust cloth decisively over a shelf, then begins replacing its assortment of decorative plates.

“We clean his, uh… office, on nights,” Socorro says, and by her tone, Rafael can easily assume what ‘office’ she means. Sandgren keeps a small, unremarkable office on the ground floor of the north wing, the other end of the mansion from the boys’ rooms—but in his role as disciplinary officer his foul workroom is near enough to loom like a specter over the entire harem, a small room with heavy shutters and drawn blinds near the kitchens. Before Rich unlocked the staircase to the hall outside his room, any of the boytoys daring to leave the wing and venture forth into the mansion would risk passing by that door, and the hungry beast lurking within.

“He’s awful,” Socorro finishes, muted and small, and goes quickly back to her work, not looking at anyone. It’s a familiar uneasy air—the guilt of someone well-meaning but unwilling to provide any real aid. It burns, a stinging, biting rage much older than Rafael’s captivity here.

But putting words to it will only drive away the tenuous offering of sympathy. And they cannot afford to lose any potential ally, however fearful and unwilling.

Rafael forces a light smile and says, “Well, many of the man’s coworkers would agree with you, I’m sure. Did you ever hear about the time—”

By the time the wing is cleaned and the women return to their supply closet to refresh their caddies, it’s nearing eleven and Rafael is truly struggling—but he has the audience in his pocket, just as he wanted them, and when they settle down for a break and Socorro pulls out her nail polish, she looks shyly at Rafael and offers, “Do you want some, too?”

–

Rafael rises the next morning with nails painted the mulberry-red of stage curtains, tiny, painstaking masks of comedy and tragedy on his thumbs. Rich seems content to allow him to sleep late, but Sol rousts him from bed for swordplay, then for breakfast. From there, to errands and playing in the gardens, Connor and Rich chasing and tussling and pushing each other into fountains until the hour of work beckons.

It’s a bewildering sensation, like vertigo, to feel himself falling into a routine. Strange as it is to think, it’s been almost two weeks, and without Sandgren’s interference Rich and Rafael are left to their own devices as Carraway focuses for once on his own work. Rafael finds himself capably transferring numbers from a series of contracts into endless flowsheets, and the hours that would once have passed in a dull and lifeless blur pass instead in the thoughtful quiet of work. There are names here, businesses, cities and towns—information to be gleaned from the invoices and notices of payment overdue. Inference to be made of who may be uninvited at the next party, and whose seat at the table may be closer or even further from their host’s side.

From there, they’re dismissed, and on Rich’s errands Rafael takes cautious steps upstage, asserts a clever line here or there, takes note of the names and faces he meets. If Rich notices, he makes no sign, but his next stop is to whisk Rafael away to bed for a luxurious spell of the promised preparation, a splendid orgasm and a brief, delicious nap.

Rafael makes no attempt to assert himself among the Hastings, when he peels himself from the bed despite Rich’s assurances and follows him to the garrison gym. He attempts some trifling and self-conscious exertion of his own in the corner behind Rich’s bench, and is left alone, and considers that well enough.

And thus, to dinner, and cards afterward; stolen moments of warmth and music and laughter in a parlor looking out over a broad stretch of forest. And finally, to the side of the night cleaners again, drawn at once into their gossiping this time, folded into their conversation with hardly a hitch.

It’s a role of many responsibilities and few rewards, but. There’s something here, Rafael thinks, if he plays it well. Influence and information, a supplement to Rich’s naive diligence and digital manipulations. What could be done remains to be seen, but… whatever little they might achieve, it’s worth much more than rotting under the waving shadow of the roses.

There may yet be some grand finale in waiting. For now Rafael learns his lines, and the changes of scene, and his new role. And in the wings, he waits.