[Closed] This Man in My Skin

[Aremu Ediwo]

Afternoon, 29 Loshis, 2720
Dzit'ereq to Idisúfi

Iquwi glanced back up around the time Tom came to the term crankshaft design. His gaze flickered to Aremu. Aremu shifted, and then inclined his head in the tiniest of nods.

He didn’t know what he’d meant it to say. This one, he supposed, you can talk to. This one is well enough. He thought of Jean, and his careful retracing of the words he’d thought to let out again and again, and – at the end – the weight of the ache in his face, and the way he’d taken what Aremu had offered, whatever he had thought of it all in the end.

It didn’t, quite, feel like a lie. You can talk to this one he knew for truth. What were all the truths implied by it, the little bits and pieces? There are Anaxi who understand, he thought of saying, who treat us like men. There ae Anaxi galdori who – he thought of Niccolette, then, and felt strange about thinking it a lie.

The nod had been enough. Iquwi had waved back at the handful of imbali he had been sitting with – Axuewa not among them, Aremu noticed. He wondered where she studied, and with who, with her long, careful desert vowels.

“Not in the least,” Aremu said aloud. “We’re headed to Idisufi, Iquwi, if you have a few moments.”

“Yes, ada’xa, sir,” Iquwi fell in with them, on Aremu’s right side.

They had both seen it, by then – the stump and the prosthetic Aremu had fitted to it, the one to which he could strap various tools, because he’d used it for the work they’d done modifying the engine for display. The three of them together had taken it apart and put it together once more, careful and deliberate, following the plans, and Aremu’s hand and wrist had been in the midst of it.

“The Bellini-cycle engines, sir,” Iquwi began, straightening up a bit with his hands behind his back.

By the time they left Dzit’ereq Iquwi was deep in the midst of his explanation, walking next to Tom, his hands gesturing as if he could shape the engine out of mid-air. They walked the three of them through the damp rain-misted air of the campus, Aremu listening with a faint, fond smile, unsure whether or not to feel guilt. He didn’t think himself wise enough to give advice or guidance; he tried to think of how he himself would have seen a man of his age when he had been Iquwi’s, and he knew better than to pretend.

“For example, sir,” Iquwi was saying, bright-eyed, as they made their way though hedge lined paths to one of the large courtyards between Dzit’ereq and Idisufi, walking carefully along slick sandstone, “even a slight difference in fuel efficiency on an airship could make an enormous difference in the feasibility of shorter hops. That is – sir – the larger ships in particular use so much fuel to rise and descend that for many passenger ships anything less than a day is very expensive, which they say is why a trip of a day, sir, is often not much cheaper than a trip or two or three days, sir.”

Aremu did not think Iquwi had ever flown in an airship; he had never asked the boy. He knew Iquwi had grown up in the midst of printing presses, and had learned the ins and outs of them in the heart of the Turtle; he knew, too, something of how badly Iquwi wanted to fly.

“And that’s why really you can say it’s just improving what’s already there,” Iquwi finished, bright-eyed, as they came to a halt outside of Idisufi. “Sir,” he added. A little tentatively, he grinned at Tom, his white teeth just a little crooked, all of him damp and cheerful and enthusiastic.

[Tom Cooke]

The Walk to Idisufi • Thul'amat

Afternoon on the 29th of Loshis, 2720

T
he walk through the courtyards – back along unfamiliar paths – through walkways lined with greenery and sandstone walls, past glimpses of other pieces of the piecemeal – passed in a blur. He was catching up; they moved slowly on the wet stone. But he was outpaced by Iquwi’s bright voice, and scrambling to keep up.

At first, he was craning himself to look at the lad over Aremu’s shoulder. He’d the ramrod straight back of somebody trying to look his best; his hands were clasped in the small of his back like a little professor. They couldn’t seem to hold themselves there. Then what he saw were Iquwi’s hands flashing past the vivid purple of Aremu’s amel’iwe, tracing designs he couldn’t picture or imagine. They reminded him a little of Aremu’s, with the little beginnings of familiar calluses. Something about it tickled him, and he found himself throwing in questions, clumsy as they might’ve been.

The lad was walking on his side by the time they broke out of Dzit’ereq and into one of the central courtyards. He couldn’t’ve said where or how it’d changed, or when he’d drifted over; he’d lost track himself, swept up in the bastly words.

“... fuel – efficiency, ada’xa?”

He didn’t try to keep track of the path, either, though they wove through courtyards he’d never been in before. There was greenery, though he knew it wasn’t Ur’dzuxas; he’d looked up once at the grey sky through a canopy of tangling branches, and a handful of droplets had scattered across his face.

He wondered once if the idea of Ur’dzuxas – of ised’usa everywhere – applied outside of Ire’dzosat; the thought made him feel strange, remembering the brush of Tsofo’s long-fingered hands over a whorl of broad glossy leaves. He couldn’t keep thinking of it, not with Iquwi’s words to hold onto, spilling out into the rainy air brighter and bolder.

He looked over at Aremu once, and caught a small smile on his face. It didn’t look bemused, exactly; or if it did, it was soft and uncertain. He half expected to see Aremu reach up and rub the back of his neck with his hand, or clear his throat softly. He looked back over at Iquwi when they flowed into the walk to Idisufi, back into the brush of fields and chattering.

They were between hours, and it’d been raining in fits and starts, but there was still a decent enough crowd. They stood at the bottom of the steps up to the library, and a young arata bustled by, an armful of books bundled haphazardly under a cool blue amel’iwe.

“Huh,” he said, raising his brows. “I’ve always wondered why,” he said, scratching his jaw again. “Sometimes it’s more expensive to get across Anaxas than it is to get to Thul Ka from Vienda.”

To Brunnhold, he’d known at least not to say; the thought of saying it with Iquwi’s bright dark eyes on him was almost unbearable, even though they all knew where he came from. Even the man he used to be couldn’t’ve made any other claim.

Iquwi grinned at him all the same, and he found himself – grinning back. “Aren’t most things?” He thought of the Edu’tsurus and of Dzeudo, and of piecemeals. “Besides, it’s dam–” He darted a glance at Aremu. “It seems to me a very useful improvement,” he enunciated instead, raising his brows, “ada’xa. I look forward to the sixth.”

When Aremu’d spoken of helping with the exhibition, he hadn’t pictured him working with students this young, bubbling out suggestions and questions. The thought pleased him and ached all at once, Aremu showing some bit or other of an engine to a lad or lass, patiently explaining. Is it worth it, he wanted to ask, for that? It still hurt, he thought, thinking of the lad he'd seen with taped-up spectacles; it must still hurt.

The ringing of the bell was like a jolt through him, and seemed to galvanize the whole walk. He bowed deeply when Iquwi went, still grinning after him.

He turned back to Aremu, and his smile, while still polite, was a little less thin, a little more lopsided. “Ah, ada’xa – if you have a few moments,” he said as smoothly as ever, “to accompany me in, there are a few matters I should like to discuss.”

[Aremu Ediwo]

Afternoon, 29 Loshis, 2720
Dzit'ereq to Idisúfi

Iquwi’s shoulders lifted with pride at Tom’s compliment, his dark eyes bright. “Thank you, sir!”

The bell chimed; Iquwi’s gaze snapped over his shoulder, and his eyes went wide.

“I’ll see you on the three,” Aremu said, finding a smile in himself. It wasn’t hard.

“Of course, ada’xa!” Iquwi said, almost indignant, as if Aremu had implied he might not be there. He bowed very deeply. “Good to see you, ada’xa, very nice to meet you, sir!” He took off, scrambling in his sandals over the wet sandstone, joining the crowded flow of students back towards Dzit’ereq. Aremu watched no more than half a moment, turning his attention back to Tom.

That was kind of you, he wanted to say. Thank you, he wanted to say, too. He didn’t know what of it showed in his eyes. Jean and Iquwi were a reminder, Aremu thought uneasily, of how exposed they were, of how dangerous even a brief lingering look might be, here on the front steps of Idisufi.

More than with his words, he wanted to thank Tom with his hands – his lips – and that was so impossible it seemed to ache through him.

“Of course, sir,” Aremu inclined his head and shoulders in a neat bow.

He trailed into Idisufi after Tom. It didn’t surprise him that Tom knew where to go, not by now. It didn’t hurt either, not quite, not as it had before. He was not the keeper of Thul’Amat, Aremu told himself. In all those years he’d told about, there had not been a single imbala allowed on the campus. When Dzit’ereq was founded, imbali were still under a program of exile, children sent alone into the Turtle or down the river to the islands.

Aremu thought of Iquwi and the boys he’d been sitting with, of the bright-eyed imbali from the Turtle with his passion for engines, and of himself, and the long, aching nights in Idisufi. He didn’t know what it meant to pave a way; he didn’t know what it meant to open a gate or a door. He had never thought of it that way, when he’d done it; he’d thought only of prying the edges of it open, this door they had promised him was unlocked, and scrabbling himself through, ached and bruised, sore and tired. He hadn’t known – hadn’t thought – that the door might be easier for the next, and the ones after; he had only known what he needed to do. What he needed to proclaim, Aremu thought, somewhere between fond and a little embarrassed.

Tom led them to some of the private rooms. Aremu stood back, his hand gently clasping his wrist behind his back, out of the way, as the Anaxi secured a key to one of the study carrels. He inclined his head and neck in a bow to the librarian, staying well out of the man’s way as he followed Tom – Incumbent Anatole Vauquelin, as he had written in the ledger – down the hallway.

There was the soft click of the key in the lock, a few polite words about how they had just a few matters to discuss between them.

Aremu went inside with a polite, differential bow; he stepped past the doorway, over to the desk next to the narrow slit of a window. He adjusted the small curtain on it, half-glancing outside, twitching it to cover the gap; he turned back to Tom, and he smiled, leaning his hip ever so slightly against the desk.

There was, Aremu thought, as always, too much to say: about Jean, about Dzit’ereq, about Iquwi. None of it burned in him quite like another desire.

“I missed you,” Aremu said, softly, instead; the words spilled out, and he felt as if he’d been holding them in since Tsed’tsa, since he’d first seen the gleam of Tom’s hair beneath his green umbrella, through all the walks and conversation, through the pendulum’s slow tracing of its lines into the sand, all the trees and rain and damp. He smiled, a little wider, and then wider still, letting something slip away off his face, straightening up off the desk.

[Tom Cooke]

A Private Study Room • Idisufi

Afternoon on the 29th of Loshis, 2720

I
missed you too,” he breathed, grinning.

He’d written it between the even dark lines, Incumbent Anatole Vauquelin. He hadn’t looked back; he hadn’t looked back at Aremu once, though he’d seen him in the corner of his eyes as he’d stood waiting in the hall, a long, dark face pitted with shadows, a vivid purple amel’iwe and hands tucked behind his back. He’d felt his eyes, anyway, on the pen-tip scratching across the paper.

It wasn’t quite his hand-writing, or the handwriting he used for notes. It was easier to write one man’s name quickly with care, over and over; he was used to the twirl of the A, the quick maneuver of the q. He’d thought Aremu might have looked at him differently somewhere between the ledger and the study room.

He’d wondered, too, if it had hurt to say that name to the lad, that name he’d once called a lie.

The apology died on his tongue when Aremu came away from the window and leaned on the desk. Light whispered up soft from the lamp, catching the slope of his cheekbone and glittering in his eyes, glimmering silky in his amel’iwe. He eased off the desk, and the smile spread warm across his face, warmer and warmer.

He felt the thin smile fall away. It wasn’t another thin smile underneath it, as he’d feared, and it wasn’t nothing, either; he didn’t know if it was him, if it was whole, but it was something, something, something.

He unbuckled the satchel at his side and reached into it, and he rustled out the bundle of cloth, unfolding it one soft furl at a time. “I, ah – I’m a fool,” he fumbled, a flush spreading across his face in spite of the grin.

When it came out, it reminded him of the color of Aremu’s amel’iwe the first day he’d seen him in Thul Ka, outside the Crocus’ Stem. It was a spot of bright orange in the small study room, all dark polished wood. It was warm from the bag, the skin thick and bumpy-smooth, and lighter than he’d remembered. He was worried it’d be bruised or soggy from the walk, but it was whole and round. Now, he felt silly holding it, red still prickling in his cheeks.

“I feel like a lad, sneaking it into the library.” Not the kind of lad I ever was, he didn’t think he had to say. All the same, he thought of the green-clad students he’d seen crackling newspaper under the desks in Brunnhold’s great old library, and the faint smells of something sweet or fried batter or even cigarette-smoke drifting over the stacks. The furtive looks, now, when he’d passed, and the rustling haste when he’d glanced over.

He closed the distance between them, not hesitating though he knew how many steps it took for his field to wash over Aremu. He held out the orange with one hand and scratched at his jaw with the other. “I, ah –”

He wasn’t sure where to start. I never thought we’d – no, he thought, he wouldn’t’ve dared call Aremu a liar; though it was more, in the end, that he’d never thought he’d come, that they’d have the chance. The whole future seemed to him a liar sometimes. You cut quite the professorly figure, he thought, I’ll see you on the three, with that macha furrow in your brow; you – no, he thought, no.

I’m sorry for Jean, he wanted to say, and couldn’t quite bring himself to it. What did you think of him? he wondered with a prickle of unease. What did you think of me, playing at being his cousin? Was it just a reminder of everything grotesque –

“I didn’t think it’d be rainy, when we saw it,” he said instead, “but I’m fair glad it was. I haven’t been on campus in the rain; it’s beautiful.” He looked down, then looked back up at Aremu, grin softening. “Bright lad, he was. You didn’t tell me you’d students working with you.”

[Aremu Ediwo]

Afternoon, 29 Loshis, 2720
A Private Study Room, Idisúfi

Aremu’s eyebrows lifted when Tom reached into the bag. The other man took out a bundle of cloth and called himself a fool, unpeeling the layers. When the last draped free Aremu saw it, a bright orange, little dimples all over. He laughed, a soft little chuckle, feeling something warm and tight in his chest, precious and tender.

Aremu grinned at him. “An old tradition,” he promised, a little rueful, thinking of hungry nights and smuggled kofi, of tsequt and whatever other fried scraps he’d managed from Tsed’tsa, buried deep in bookbags, tucked in suspiciously bulging pockets and scarcely hidden at all, eaten in quiet, inconspicuous bites or pulled apart and shared. He’d gone outside to smoke at least, usually, though it’d never been much of a vice for him, and mostly he’d gone when someone else was offering a cigarette.

Aremu took the orange when Tom offered it, turning it around in his hand; the prosthetic rested lightly against the desk, the wooden fingers just settled against it. It seems a shame to eat it, he wanted to say; he couldn’t quite bring himself to dig his thumb in and peel it, to disturb the lovely orange surface. He was always hungry, but he thought he’d be sad when it was gone, when this moment, too, slipped away, and there was no going back.

Aremu grinned when Tom spoke of the rain, a little relieved. It is, he wanted to say; it’s only this season, and all the rest of the year it’s dry and hot. I’ve always liked – he thought a little amused of the two umbrellas, bobbing along. There were umbrellas on campus, of course; there were a handful of those who carried them, particularly if they held books or some other treasure beneath.

Umbrellas were little use in the worst of the rain, when the skies opened and one could almost hear the Turga and all its little veins swelling in the distance, when the water piled and rose on the streets, when it came at you from every side, and your choices were to surrender, wet, or to hide away. Aremu had done his fair share of both, he thought, smiling a little at Tom. Today he’d’ve been glad to revel in it.

It was dry inside, comfortable; his clothing was already coming dry, the damp lifting from his amel’iwe.

“I hadn’t met them when we last spoke of it,” Aremu said with a little smile. “Iquwi and Axuewa, both of them imbali. Axuewa’s in her last year,” he shifted a little, his fingers coming off the desk and shifting behind his back. “Iquwi’s in his third.”

Iquwi seems like a child to me, Aremu wanted to say. Axuewa less so; there’s an understanding in her that I don’t think he has, not yet, for all his years in the Turtle, for all he was skittish around you. I’m sorry to think he’ll have it; it seems less like growing up and more like losing something.

“Both very bright,” Aremu added. He glanced at Tom, frowning a little. “Thank you,” he said. He didn’t know if he should say it; he didn’t think he needed to, not really. He didn’t think Tom had done it – had talked to Iquwi – for him. He was grateful all the same. You didn’t have to invite him with us, but I’m glad you did. Whatever it is he has, he doesn’t have to lose it yet, and I’m glad for that too.

Aremu didn’t know if he’d ever been – innocent, naïve, whatever it was. He hadn’t felt so; he’d felt – from the end of his tenth birthday, Aremu thought, finding his jaw tight for half a moment. He had been, though, still, whether he’d felt it or not; Thul’Amat had taught him that, too, before the end.

[Tom Cooke]

A Private Study Room • Idisufi

Afternoon on the 29th of Loshis, 2720

A
remu took the orange and laughed one of those rare precious laughs. He watched him turn it over in his hands, grinning, long fingers dark against the vivid color; the lamplight edged the shadows orange, too. He wondered if he’d peel it: an old tradition in more ways than one, he thought, and the thought tickled him.

Not just yet, it seemed. Feeling even more like a student, he eased himself up onto the desk; he sat on the edge beside Aremu with his toes just brushing the floor, with his sandals a little loose.

He saw the prosthetic hand at the edge of his vision, in the shadows almost the color of Aremu’s skin. He chid himself for wanting to look again; he chid himself for more. In the corner of his eye, he saw the fine carving of the nails, the slight pressure of the stiff fingertips against the varnished wood.

It went behind his back soon enough, the glint of the lamplight off it swallowed by the shadows. He smiled still at Aremu’s smile, not unlike the one he’d had listening to Iquwi speak; he watched it curl into a small frown as he thanked him.

I wasn’t sure I should’ve, he wanted to admit, glancing down at the floorboards. I wasn’t sure, he wanted to say, he ought to get used to trusting faces like this. I’d’ve understood, if you…

He didn’t know how to weigh it, even with all her lessons. It wasn’t like a folk tale, where the mean old hag wasn’t so bad after all, or the hatcher could prove his virtue by way of gentle deeds; he knew looking into Miss Carr’s eyes in Woven Delights it wasn’t, or in the whispers and curtsies of his staff no matter how well or poorly he treated them. He’d not’ve had them any other way. She’d taught him that much at least, that it was right. Safe.

Bochi were easier to win, young or old, he supposed. Sticking your tongue out on the cable car went a long way, if you were so inclined. With duri bochi, at least, who didn’t have much reason to fear in the first place, other than the strangeness of red hair and spotted pale skin. Imbali bochi’d a broader imagination for the stakes, he knew. Not just the solemn deference of students like Iquwi, but outright fear.

They knew what went on overseas – as everyone, he was coming to discover, did.

There was a shame to it, to being from a place like that to your blood and roots, to being tangled up with it so tight you couldn’t free any part of yourself. Even in a wildly different shape, he thought Anaxas would be there, lurking just underneath it.

He hadn’t expected Aremu to thank him; he’d half-expected him to reprimand him, or at the very least look disgruntled. Though he’d thought – back then – he’d wanted the lad to open up. “Thank you,” he echoed in the end, smiling back up at Aremu. Thank you for letting the three of us all have that, for a time. “I’ll look forward to seeing ada’na Axuewa at the presentation.”

He met Aremu’s eyes, studying him. I know, he tried to say with his own eyes, with the furrow of his brow. I know.

“Thank you for Quinault, too.” He scooted to sit more comfortably on the desk. “I still, uh – I wouldn’t be surprised if he tries to get into your good graces during the exhibition. He’s a man who likes friends and favors, and calling on them. But –” He looked out over the quiet study room, taking a deep breath; he shifted and let his shoulder brush Aremu’s and rest there, lightly. “I didn’t know about his daughter. Thank you.”

[Aremu Ediwo]

Afternoon, 29 Loshis, 2720
A Private Study Room, Idisúfi

The white cloth of his pants draped over Tom’s leg and fell to the floor, ending just shy of a sandaled foot, uncallused, lightly dusted with the same pale red hair that ran over the backs of his hands. Aremu glanced down at it and then back at the other man as he sat. He felt a wave of something through him, a half-forgotten memory more than a little buried, and he looked down at the orange in his hand instead, stroking his thumb over it.

There was, he reflected, no keeping it forever. In time, the orange would rot, and they’d have not even the joy of having eaten it together. Just in that moment, he still couldn’t bring himself to dig in his thumb, and break apart the smooth orange to see the white of the pith beneath.

Aremu’s face twitched at a frown at the mention of Axuewa. Don’t ty it with her, he wanted to say, suddenly. He didn’t know which of them it was unfair to – perhaps all three. He couldn’t bring himself to offer the warning, and he didn’t know if it was right or wrong.

Tom shifted on the desk, and leaned towards him. Aremu set the orange down next to his hip, between his right wrist and his leg and eased his left arm around Tom, stroking his hand over the other man’s arm just a moment, and then settling it down behind him. He listened, inclining his head lightly. “There are worse things to bear,” Aremu said, thinking of the careful questioning, and the way the other man’s face had softened at the end.

Thank you, Aremu thought to say, for the warning; thank you for – Tom had not made Jean easier to bear, not much. He was grateful for the warning; he was grateful that they could discuss it. He didn’t want to go down the path of it, even if it might have been easier. Their time together, too, was so little, and it would be as gone as the orange – and as rotten, if he did not use it wisely.

He shifted, the other man settled a little against his side, their shoulders just together. He didn’t know if it was safe here; he didn’t know if it was safe anywhere, really, for the two of them.

I want you to know me, Tom had promised him, watching the dzum’ulusa flower beneath the moonlight. He had asked, then, the question that had come to him, about Tom’s days, what they were like; he had learned the word raen, too. Since, he had learned more, about Tom’s soul and what he wanted from himself, about the shame and strangeness he felt, some of it in words and some otherwise.

He had asked, the last time he saw the other man, what would happen to him.

“Is it hard?” Aremu asked, quietly, turning his head to look just a little down at Tom’s face, sharp-featured, with red hair streaked with gray, and with more white than it had had even in Yaris. “Bearing the weight of expectations for another man.”

He had seen him in the Vienda house; he hadn’t thought, then. He had been too frightened by learning more of who Tom was, now. He had never thought this easy for the other man; he knew enough not to think that. But he hadn’t known enough to think about the specifics, to think about what it was to sit in another man’s study, and have all you saw think you him.

Did you know him? Aremu had never thought to ask that either. Anatole Vauquelin, back when he was himself – did you know him? He had wondered at some of it, but it was all too strange to consider too deeply, and they had so little time together that he had always used his questions elsewhere.

[Tom Cooke]

A Private Study Room • Idisufi

Afternoon on the 29th of Loshis, 2720

A
remu’s thumb skimmed over his arm, warm through the fabric of his sleeve and the rumple of his amel’iwe. He nodded with a wistful smile. He looked down at his leg just brushing Aremu’s hip, stark white fabric against a brown deeper than the tan he’d worn to the hotel and the market.

The long, rich drape of the purple scarf between them, the edge of it almost touching his knee. The orange was hidden, but if he shut his eyes, he could see its brilliance against the backs of his lids.

He supposed there were, he thought in the pause, worse things to bear. Behind them, through the shut door and the shut blinds, sometimes the occasional hushed voice would come – drifting from he didn’t know how far away, in the hall outside or round the corner, or from above or below – and he hoped their own words were just as unintelligible.

Aremu’s hand settled behind him, and he wondered if he could nestle closer. There was more than one reason not to, he thought sadly. Like lying with a lover when you couldn’t sleep with him.

He wasn’t sure what Aremu’d say. He’d thought himself to wind on, to say something of the pendulum, though he had said much of what he’d wanted to in Dzit’ereq. He still had questions aplenty to ask, and more to speak on; he would for some time yet, and that was the fine thing about having shared it now.

When the other man did speak, he looked up at him, studying his face and its shadows and its lamplit edges. It might’ve been a cruel question, from somebody else.

Easier with you, he might’ve said cheerfully – to someone else. Or to an earlier Aremu, even a stone’s throw earlier in Loshis. He tilted his head instead, sucking at a tooth. “Easier and harder than it used to be.” It is, he didn’t say; he thought that wasn’t exactly the question the other man was asking. “Easier in that I’m better at it; harder in that –”

He paused.

“Harder in that I’m better at it,” he went on, sagging a little against Aremu.

He could’ve said something about Jean-Yves, but it ran deeper than just one fawning cousin, anyway. He’d seen the study and the house. There wasn’t much he hadn’t seen, at least among those things he’d rather’ve hid.

“I suppose it wasn’t easy for him, but they were his, at least. He didn’t have to learn to speak like an educated politician in less than a year’s time.” And forget the kind of speaking that came natural to him, he couldn’t bear to say. He shook his head. “Sometimes, these days, I start to feel they’re mine, and that’s when I’m well and truly frightened.”

He’d meant it to be funny. It didn’t come out wry; it came out more like an admission, and he shifted against the desk, letting out a deep breath.

In the quiet, he was almost afraid to look up at Aremu, but he did anyway, because he knew better than to try and hide himself now. “There were times, even – before,” he said, brow knitting, “when I felt like they were some other man’s expectations laid on me. Even when they were my own, even when I’d – grown into them. Or taken them on myself.”

Maybe I’m taking these on, he thought. “Do you think all men feel so?” he asked.

Do you? he couldn’t. Those bright-eyed students, he thought - is it hard? It was different for a man of flesh and blood; he didn’t dare compare the two. It’s a damned heavy weight to carry, he wanted to say anyway, and I don’t even understand the half of it.

[Aremu Ediwo]

Afternoon, 29 Loshis, 2720
A Private Study Room, Idisúfi

Aremu listened. He heard and felt it both when Tom finished it, and sagged a little against him. He nodded; he didn’t quite think he could understand fully, but he thought he understood enough to hold the other man, or as close to it as they could manage, here and now.

I start to feel they’re mine, Tom said, and Aremu didn’t think he had shivered. He wanted to, a part of him; a selfish corner of him flinched at it. What else of his will you take? He wanted to ask. It was unfair, coming on the heels of Tom’s kindness to Iquwi; it was unfair, following after the orange still nestled between his wrist and his leg. It was unfair, following the nights they had spent together, and in the midst of this precious, quiet moment, which they had both worked so hard to have.

He didn’t ask; he didn’t need to. He felt the fear anyway, the strangeness, and he didn’t blame Tom for it; it was, after all, his own.

Tom looked up at him, and went on. Aremu’s hand crept closer, against his side, found his hip; he traced his thumb gently over the other man, a few soft strokes, before he eased away once more.

“Yes,” Aremu said, looking just a little down at Tom. He shifted the other man closer. “I think so, anyway, that there are expectations laid on any man which… whatever he has chosen which lead to them, overwhelm him or… feel as if…” his lips pressed together for a moment, his forehead wrinkling in a heavy frown, “they should have been offered elsewhere, or which seem to ask more of him than he could give, or which… ask you of something so apart from what you think of yourself that they seem to belong to another.”

I know what I’ve chosen, he wanted to say; I should have known where it could lead. If I ever of it, looking at Edú’tsúrus, I thought that I would be in the crash above the desert, that my last moments would be fire and flame. I didn’t think of being left behind; Uzoji never thought of leaving anyone behind.

He thought of Iquwi’s bright grin, and his own guilt. He thought of his questions, and Axuewa’s, and all the answers he hadn’t wanted to give, the truth he hadn’t wished to share and the lies he couldn’t bear to. He thought of writing to Aurelie, in Brunnhold, and all the letters which told her something of a world she would never see, kept from her by a ring of high brick walls.

You didn’t choose these, he wanted to say, reassuringly. And yet – a politician travels, he thought again of Tom saying. He thought of the study, of the bright Hessean carpet and the books open on the windowsill, of Tom coming to meet with Yesufu. Is it self-preservation, he wanted to ask, suddenly. He thought of Tom drawing his ward on the floor of the Pendulum, and he knew it wasn’t so simple.

“There’s somewhere I wanted to take you tonight,” Aremu said, quietly, “if you can manage it. It’s quiet and dark, but it’s… I think it’s somewhere where we could be together, without quite having to be alone. I think you’ll like it; I hope you will.” He turned, and brushed his lips over the other man’s hair once more.

There’s poetry, he wanted to say, and honey-wine. He didn’t know if those would be marks in the for or the against column; there was a part of him which didn’t know how to ask. Is that what you want? He wanted to ask. Or do you wish I had a room for us instead, a place like the hotel in Three Flowers? The question – the asking – made him feel small and shabby and strange, feelings he knew didn’t belong between them stirred up from a long time ago, with no place here and now.

[Tom Cooke]

A Private Study Room • Idisufi

Afternoon on the 29th of Loshis, 2720

H
e hadn’t expected the other man to push him away. He knew better than that by now, with what they’d spoken of more than a week ago. Somehow it was still always a surprise to be held closer.

He didn’t know if something had tensed; he thought he’d felt something, but he couldn’t know. What he felt was a warm hand slip round his waist, a thumb stroke over his hip. He shifted closer ‘til his cheek brushed Aremu’s shoulder and the soft folds of his amel’iwe, though he didn’t rest his head, not all the way.

He could’ve stirred at the touch; he felt the beginnings of that leaping wind spreading all through him. But he couldn’t let it, and he didn’t, and Aremu’s hand drew away, and the candleflame flickered down. There was no urgency to it anyway, now. It was comfortable in its way, like the unpeeled orange sitting close by.

And he listened close as Aremu wove through his answer. Should have been offered elsewhere, Aremu tried, and he didn’t look up at him; in the corner of his eye, he could see the furrows of a familiar frown deepening the shadows on his face. Ask more of him than he could give, he added another piece. At the end, he nodded slowly, breathing deeply in and out.

He didn’t have to and didn’t want to ask to what other man they might belong. For either of them, either of them and their other men.

They’d never spoken of their last night on the Uccello di Hurte. He seldom thought of it, though he dreamt of it often enough: his thin pale hands scrabbling at knobs and rope, Aremu climbing out of the bowels of the ship covered in grease and burns. His chest aching from the sobs. It was that he thought of now, and Iquwi’s lively two hands fluttering through the air like the wings of birds, buoyant on aetherium.

He couldn’t understand the whole of it. But he thought of Kzecka too, strangely, and telling Aremu how it’d fit like a thing a few sizes too big. How they’d looked at him and seen a raen, and treated him so, and it wasn’t much unlike everybody treating him like the incumbent. They’re like you, the Hexx had promised.

Like me, he thought now in the quiet. Like you, he thought. Bright-eyed boch going on about Bellini-cycle engines, looking up to you, thinking, Like me.

Godsdamn.

He didn’t understand, but all the same he brushed his lips very briefly against the brown cloth of Aremu’s sleeve.

Aremu’s quiet voice caught him; so did the lips and the warm breath stirring his hair. The words most of all. He looked up, confused for a moment.

Together, but not alone.

The thought sent a prickle of dread through him at first. Among friends? he wondered, and – no, that couldn’t be. Aren’t you embarrassed to be seen with me? he wanted to ask, the question falling into his head like the bitter lash of a whip. He didn’t ask it, but it lay in the back of his mind.

“Yes,” he said, nodding, because what was there to do but trust? A smile twitched over his face, warmed his eyes. “I’ve no plans today and tonight but to be with you.”

He wasn’t sure what he saw in Aremu’s face.

He reached to put a hand on Aremu’s knee. I want to see what you want to share with me, he wanted to say, but that wasn't quite right. We’ve never had the chance, was what he really wanted to say. I remember how you looked in those bars in the Rose, all hard angles. The first I ever saw of you was a wary man. “If it’s no danger to you to take me,” he said quietly instead. “I want to go there with you.”