[Closed] Chance Encounters (Tom)

[Drezda Ecks]

Roalis 67, 2719 | Late Morning
Sub Rosa Hotel, The Stacks

.

What a peculiar couple they made, a middle aged man and a Hoxian crying in a public place — public enough at any rate. It wouldn’t matter to anyone what her sex was because her heritage would be the real shocker in this situation, her features marking her distinctively as one of her stoic people. As for Tom, well… men didn’t tend to put on such emotional displays, certainly where anybody could see them. His tears would be deemed effeminate, his sentimentality a weakness that would have made other men frown and turn away. Perhaps if he’d been exceptionally drunk, it might have been shrugged off, an embarrassing behaviour that could be attributed to the copious amounts of alcohol he’d imbibed but even then, people would prefer to pretend that it wasn’t happening. In Anaxas, what the two of them were doing would make them stand out to any casual observer. It actually might have been enough to shock.

Drezda was unhappy to be crying but she knew that it was a flaw within her to feel as intensely as she did and allow such feeling to bleed out onto her countenance where anyone could read it. However, her companion’s tears unsettled her more. It wasn’t the fact that he was a man — honestly his masculinity had never been something she’d thought considered and this was hardly the first time she’d seen him get weepy in this way — but rather that she had provoked this within him. The diplomat regretted saying and doing whatever had brought that pain out in the raen, the recent confidence that he’d shared the most likely culprit and he would never have-

It seemed impossible not to view herself as the root as his tears by forcing him to confront something from his past and yet she had found herself unable to let matters lie, feeling the need to goad him, to make him feel worse. She hadn’t expected him to say that he’d become a better person since he’d first killed so what had she really been trying to achieve?

You want to feel as if you aren’t the only one who’s fucked up, her mind suggested matter-of-factory. Did she really feel it necessary to drag it out of him though? Could she not have left it at the fact that he was technically dead and only inhabited the shell she saw before her because he’d killed its former inhabitant? Maybe the fact of Tom’s very existence wasn’t fucked up enough for her, after all, he’d only done what he needed to ensure his survival — and sanity if her mother was to be believed. So did she really want to know that he was somehow on her level or did she just want him to feel as bad as she did?

Questions, questions, so many questions. The diplomat wasn’t entirely certain that she’d like to know the answers to them.

“You didn’t have a huge amount of choice when it comes to posing but unlike me, you are not a failure,” Drezda pointed out. “You’ve certainly been passing yourself off rather well. I, on the other hand, am getting rather worse at it.”

She sighed, making some effort to tease her hair back into place now that her questing fingers had discovered the cloud of loose strands. Speaking of being a failure of a politician, she wondered if she should tell him of her intentions to resign. They weren’t entirely solid in her mind yet and she didn’t know that now was the time to discuss such things. Oh they were sharing but this… didn’t seem right. However, the fact that she no longer wanted to be a politician was connected to the fact that she’d changed.

Her companion was volunteering a response to the question that she shouldn’t have asked, providing her with insight that she didn’t deserve to know. She was slow to draw herself out of her own self-centred misery, a frown pulling her mouth downwards as she listened to him. The Hoxian didn’t know the right thing to say, didn’t know if there was anything she could say that could be right. Should the young woman reach out and touch him? Would physical contact help?

Maybe she would have remained frozen in indecision if he hadn’t mentioned the bottle, her black gaze whipping to his face, intense.

“Don’t! Don’t crawl into the bottle. It won’t… help,” she told him, reaching a hand out across the table, moving to set it firmly on his arm. She hazarded a smile, glad that she couldn’t see her face right now because she imagined that it was grotesquely false, probably not even close to the real thing. She tried though.

“Do you know, I wouldn’t have cared before. I didn’t used to care about anybody else before, not really so perhaps I have gone soft,” she told him, laughing lightly, self-consciously. The diplomat would drag her hand back across the table, fingers trailing over its surface as she returned it to her lap. Her teeth rolled her bottom lip back and forth, humming thoughtfully to herself. She swiped her cheeks with the back of her hand once more, before making another attempt to stand. This time she was unsteady but her legs held her, especially as she had the table for support.

“I… can’t imagine what it’s like, Tom. What you go through, what you’ve been through in the past. My life… well, it would have been rather different. I won’t pretend to understand how you lived or what you might have had to do — felt that you had to do — but I- Maybe I understand what it’s like to see a stranger in the mirror. It’s not the same, I know but I- You aren’t alone in that.”

It was a quiet, pained admittance, an effort to provide some penance for what she’d asked him before as well as trying to offer some commonality between them. She knew what it was like to feel lonely, as she had felt as if she was the only Hoxian who had something inherently wrong inside of her by allowing emotions to control her too much. She had felt like an island and while they would always be different people who had been forged under quite different conditions, maybe they didn’t have to be entirely solitary if they put the effort in; they could be part of an archipelago.

“I would appreciate your company. I think… my mother will understand but I- She’ll be disappointed, but she’ll understand. That won’t be new for her,” Drezda explained sadly, moving around the table and holding her arm out to him once more. He could take it and escort her upstairs as he had escorted her down in the first place. She'd welcome the support right now as well.

“I can’t go and explain to her but I can ring down to reception and have someone deliver a message to her and bring some food for us. She… will occupy herself. We were supposed to go to Brunnhold Library but I… I wouldn’t have been much use to her anyway. I don’t think it’d be any real loss…”

Was she trying to convince Tom or herself?

“I’m going to have to go upstairs anyway so I suppose that I can rescue you from your weeping and you can save me from moping on my own. I’m sure that someone will think that it’s a great scandal, the two of us disappearing upstairs together not to emerge again but well… the joke will be on them, won’t it?”

Her lips quirked up in a more genuine smile this time, the notion of the two of them getting up to any sort of shenanigans laughable given that they were both gay and neither was the other’s type. The fact that they were the only ones who knew that made it all the more amusing given the rather prudish Anaxi setting they were in.

“Shall we? Do you uh… mind if we go to your room? Just- I don’t want to have a run in with my umah yet if I can help it. And if you have a bottle… well, I’m not adverse to one drink…”

If I stick to one… she added silently.

.

[Tom Cooke]

Sub Rosa Hotel • The Stacks

Bearably Early on the 67th of Roalis, 2719

P
assing yourself off rather well. A twitch went across his face, and he shut his eyes, jaw tightening. He knew how she hadn’t meant it; he knew what he felt, the knot in his chest. It was all muddled in his heart. Better, worse – what did they mean to her?

His eyes fluttered open. Her hand was on his arm, pale against the dark fabric of his sleeve. His eyes jumped up to her face.

He had seen Drezda smile before. There were cold smiles, haughty smiles, smiles with just an edge of the coy, before she’d known she couldn’t ply him. There were cruel smiles. There were shy smiles, watery smiles, smiles like shared jokes. There had been laughter, messy and flush-cheeked, white teeth and smudged black eyeliner.

This was a different sort of smile from all of them. It made lines on her face where there weren’t often any; he wasn’t sure what to make of it.

He was afraid to smile back, because he knew it was a gift, willingly offered, but he didn’t think he had any to offer in return. Not with this face; he knew all of its smiles, and there was no shape he could pull its lines into that were not Anatole’s.

It will help, he wanted to insist, looking into her intent dark eyes. It’ll help for tonight. When you start to get drunk – you know it as well as I do, Drez – there’s almost a numbness –

Anatole’s face was a mask, so he wasn’t sure why he could feel the muscles pinching up around his eyes, and the hot prickle of more tears, and his lips twisting sour.

Then she spoke of going soft, and laughed, and he couldn’t help it. He laughed too, and grinned shyly through the tears. He patted her hand before she took it back.

He half-rose himself, seeing as she wasn’t so steady on her feet, but she kept her balance. So did he; he pushed in the chair behind him and stood listening to her. Some of the tightness in his chest eased. Like the answer to a question he hadn’t asked.

She had answered, he supposed, many times before. He thought of her painting her face in the mirror in her boudoir, with him sitting behind her on the bed. He wondered if he should’ve seen it, the look he knew so well, of someone looking in the mirror at a stranger’s face; he tried to remember.

It was different, of course, like she said. She didn’t have to look in the mirror and see Anatole Vauquelin, leastways. But he wondered what she thought she should’ve been seeing. Was it the rhakor? Was it the lack of rhakor? Was it the make-up, or the face underneath it?

Did she see the lass that had forced the truth out of her mother? Did she see the woman she'd been in Vortas, the woman who wouldn't've cared? It was his body, at least, that had changed first; he had known his enemy from the start. Or at least, he'd had a scapegoat where he'd needed one, and a name to call the stranger in his soul.

“Thank you,” he said. She moved round the table and offered her arm, and he took it, comforted again by the solid warmth of it looped through his.

He was quiet, after. He nodded once; he didn’t like it, leaving Tzacks in the lurch, but the relief of not having to go back was overwhelming. He didn’t think either of them was fair hungry, either, and having something sent up later seemed like a good alternative to going out, or having nothing at all.

He furrowed his brow at one drink, but then cracked a smile. Scandal! “Those bastards, they don’t know the half of it,” he shot back. His voice was still hoarse; he knuckled the last tears out of one eye. “They don’t know anything.”

The light was brighter through the drawn drapes, now the morning was getting on. It was still a gentle sort of light; pinprick glitters of dust-motes drifted here and there in the soft grey. The glass doors to the balcony still stood ajar, and the drapes ruffled in the breeze, shifting the shadows.

It was cooler up here. Like the letting out of a sigh.

The washstand stood where it was, where Drezda had cleaned it up so carefully earlier that morning. Tom usually liked to cover his mirrors; he got the urge, even now, to toss something over it. He wondered if Drezda would mind, given what she’d told him, then shook off the thought. He didn’t have to look at it, at least.

He tossed the keys on the bed as he came in. It was still a messy tangle of sheets, the foot of it scattered with books. Some closed, some half-open. Gilt lettering on one caught the light – In the Garden of Stars, Tsud pezre Asúsedi – and another was a two-page spread, a wood-block print of a woman walking alone in a great canyon, casting a long shadow.

He left the door open, reckoning Drezda’d shut it behind her. “Excuse the mess,” he grunted, “again.”

His voice was still a little hoarse. He glanced over at the nightstand, at the empty bottle and the glass on its side. Like hell, he thought. Just one; they’d keep each other from drinking more, he felt sure.

And what if they didn’t? Who the hell cared? They’d both been driven to wits’ end today. Would one quiet afternoon of drinking in good company hurt?

He went over to the cabinet near the doors to the balcony. He crouched, then grunted with irritation. “There’s a red, courtesy Sub Rosa,” he said, coming up with a bottle; he set it on the desk nearby, then found a couple of glasses in one of the upper cabinets, along with the corkscrew. He squinted at the label. “Some kind of Nassalan, from 2709. Hell if I know. If that’ll do for you?”

He looked at Drezda with a raised eyebrow; if she didn’t object, he’d break the seal with the corkscrew and ease the cork out. It burbled, dark and rich, into one glass and then the other.

He handed a glass to Drezda, then paused. “Toast?” He smiled wryly; he couldn’t help that smile, either. “Do you remember – that night outside Incumbent Madden’s? That’ll’ve been Ophus, but it feels like years.”

[Drezda Ecks]

Roalis 67, 2719
Probably After Midday
Sub Rosa Hotel, The Stacks

.

How odd her life had become for her to willingly allow a man to escort her a considerable distance not once but twice within the space of an hour. Of course, she’d had men lead her places before but it had always come with some reluctance, an unwillingness to touch them and a tendency to escape as soon as possible. Yet she was fine with having Tom do it and it was actually strangely comforting, something wonderfully reassuring about being linked with him, very different fields overlapping and mingling.

The funny thing was that while she did allow her mind to drift to others that might see them, notably the others that they’d so recently been dining with, she was more anxious about their general sense of judgment rather than what they might think of her choice of companion. No, the Hoxian was far more worried about her blotchy face being spotted, head bowed and tucked in close to the raen so that he could aid in her concealment. The young woman had commented on what others might suppose of the pairing but frankly, it had already passed out of her mind as they trotted upstairs, the fact that her companion was a man hardly occurred to her; she hardly thought of him as such.

En route to his room, she spotted a member of staff, breaking away from his grasp to say a few words about passing a message to her mother and having food sent up to them. It was a brief conversation, the only matter of true importance that her mother be informed and she ensured that that was conveyed; the food could be delayed for all she cared and made sure that that was known.

Soon, she was back to her companion, as they slunk into his room with the intention of secluding themselves away. The diplomat seemed to sense it as soon as she stepped in; she’d probably be in here for many houses despite what she’d said about a single drink. Her first priority was the thought of washing her face, an uncomfortable grittiness having settled on her cheeks, tighter now as it dried out so that she drifted towards the washstand almost at once. The state of the room hardly registered for her at all so that his words earned a brief quizzical sound from her.

“I really hadn’t noticed,” she responded airily, already well on her way to making herself at home, her focus on the mirror that would reveal whatever state she was in.

The Hoxian winced visibly, taking in the sight of her face in glimpses — sections. Flaws jumped out at her, small details that didn’t add up to the whole picture as in truth, she didn’t tend to see her overall visage. The glass before her was smooth, whole, perfect but what she saw when she gazed into it was more akin to what one would see if it was shattered, giving a disjointed view of Drezda Ecks.

She was blotchy cheeks, spots of pink and red of various sizes splattered haphazardly. She was smeared makeup, an off-colour version of her own skin tone dribbled down, melted in trails that were too thick, cutting through spots of red and the blue-purple shadows that bruised the skin beneath her eyes. She was red rims around her nostrils, tiny blood vessels burst in minute spider web patterns under them in red and purple, a wet shine when she sniffled. Bloodshot sclera. Skin aggravated on her bottom lip. Too pale lips except for the blood flooded segments where she’d bitten them. Skin that was tired, beginning to show the tracings of fine lines around her eyes, the shadows at the corners of her mouth as they began to sink in gradually. Hair frizzing.

So many issues, so many ugly awful little pieces. Vile. She couldn’t see it in its entirety and see that overall, she was beautiful. Overall, it wasn’t that bad. Instead, the diplomat splashed water on her face, massaging the salt from her cheeks and then she was clean or as clean as she was going to be. In spite of that, the Hoxian didn’t look away, just zoned in on the bags beneath her eyes, probing them, stretching the skin to see the extent of it and trying not to moan.

Her companion had gone to root for alcohol, consulting her opinion on if the type and vintage he had found would suffice. Did he really think that it mattered to her what it was? Did it matter to him? As long as it was palatable and strong enough then it would do her. Anything that could slide alcohol into her bloodstream to dull things so that she didn’t feel so intensely, didn’t hurt, didn’t care. But surely there was less to forget now, less from which she wanted to distance herself and it was true. But now alcohol was like an old friend, ready to take her in its warm and pleasant embrace and allow her to relax, and take the weight of responsibility off for awhile. It wasn’t as if she’d had many friends like that in her life — or any. Drezda knew that she must have had friends at some point, some bosom buddy that she actually trusted and wanted to be around instead of… some of the relationships that she’d formed. What was in the bottle though, it would never judge, it would never feel neglected or be cool towards her after a long absence where she seemed to forget its existence. The diplomat didn’t need it, not really, it just… helped to smooth out the edges of the world so that they didn’t jab her quite so cruelly.

Drezda was caught up in the ugly fragments of her identity but she kept a vaguely interested eye on his movements courtesy of the glass before her. The soft popping of a cork and the seductive glug of liquid from the bottle were loud to her ears, amplified it seemed as the hair on her body stood on end, a warm flutter in her field even as she continued the probing of her own skin. The redness had gone down now but there were still signs of the passage of tears, fingerprints traced over the surface.

Her attention truly perked up at the mention of a toast, a giddiness surging briefly through her, saliva seeming to puddle under the tip of her tongue and then she paused, dreamy now, reflective as he mentioned that fateful party, which seemed so long ago. The party where this- whatever this was between them had truly begun.

“Ophus...” she murmured, head cocked, her reflection showing an expression of wonder before she turned from the mirror. “Yes, it really does feel… like a lifetime ago. Yet it’s less than a year and so much has changed.”

She moved to accept the glass of wine, a generous measure but the Hoxian wouldn’t be complaining. She forced herself to actually complete the toast with her companion instead of bringing the rim straight to her lips.

“A toast to… possibly the only good thing that has ever happened in that man’s presence — a chance for the two of us to come together. Never thought I’d say this but cheers to Incumbent fucking Madden!” she remarked drolly, raising her glass.

“If that man hadn’t been his typical, charming self then I wouldn’t have left his home in the manner I did then you wouldn’t have pursued me and we wouldn’t be here together now — a pair of misfits! Cheers indeed.”

Without any further ado, the glass found her mouth and lost an alarming amount of its contents as it was tipped back. Generous it had been but a quarter of it was gone already. Her dark eyes narrowed minutely as she hummed in quiet disapproval. Oh yes, this would go very well, this promise to herself to have but one glass.

“I wonder what would have happened if things had gone differently, do you ever think of that? Imagine what might have been if we hadn’t connected the way that we did that night? And yet so strange that we did!” she mused, a fingernail tapping the glass rim as she seated herself neatly on the unmade bed, one hand pressed into its surface behind her as she leaned on it.

“I was so very broken that night — so lost! Though I suppose that you knew that. I don’t know what I might have done if you hadn’t come out to me and even then, there are so many things that could have gone differently.”

She shook her head, shivering delicately as if Alioe herself had trailed a finger across the flowing sand of her life. Drezda took another drink, a sip this time.

“You made quite the impression. Even then I knew… you weren’t him. Oh I thought at the time it was a change, something wrought by backlash but… different. He would never have followed me out, even for the opportunity of getting me alone.”

The woman gazed into the burgundy liquid, lips tugged downwards as a finger traced the wet rim, and gave rise to a quiet melody from the glass. Her dark gaze rose, eyes shining and vulnerable beneath dropped lids as she looked at him sombrely.

“Why did you follow me out that night, Tom? I didn’t give you reason to think that your company would be well-received.”

.

[Tom Cooke]

Sub Rosa Hotel • The Stacks

Bearably Early on the 67th of Roalis, 2719

H
e’d seen her looking in the mirror, in the corner of his eye, as he poured the wine. He had seen a muscle jump in her face – a wince. He’d wondered again what she saw there; he kept wondering, even as she took her wine glass.

He knew what he saw. She was becoming familiar, in her way. He had seen her in her parlor Uptown, powdered pale, symmetrical as her rhakor; he had seen her in her parlor with sick soaking her dress, cheeks smeared with runny kohl, spraying spittle and whisky-breath. He had seen her go from one to the other, face bare and curiously young-looking, putting the pieces back together intently in the mirror.

The glasses clinked. “To Incumbent fucking Madden,” he snorted, draining as much of his glass as she had hers.

Wasn’t bad; it was a Nassalan, he reckoned, for better or worse. He reckoned it was what it needed to be, for the both of them. One flooding drink, he thought, like hell.

He knew what he saw now, well enough to recognize it no matter what it wore. Her cheeks were clean; there was the ghost of a shadow still clinging to her eyelids. There were no tear-tracks, but there was a puffy, tender look about her face. It was another in-between, not quite one thing, not quite another.

“To a pair of misfits,” he murmured more quietly after her, watching with slightly raised brows as she went to sit on his unmade bed. “Cheers.” He leaned on the counter and listened to her, frowning and swirling the Nassalan round in his glass.

Even then I knew… you weren’t him.

The back of his neck prickled. Him, he heard again in his head; him. Him. He tapped his fingertip on the bulb of the glass, sucking at a tooth. He glanced down at the glass, and the hand that held it, and glanced away. Him?

It wasn’t rational, and he knew as much; it scarcely mattered, the you, drowned out as it was by the him. He wouldn’t’ve – not even for the chance to.

Tom felt suddenly as if there were a third person in the room with them. He darted a glance at the mirror. It was a dim grey screen, giving out on the messy bed and the slim shadow that sat on it. The nightstand with its glittering scatter of ging, the hazy, shadowed corridor to the bath.

“I don’t know,” he mused. He wasn’t smiling anymore, and there was a thickness to his voice. “You were the first person who saw…” Trailing off, he took a long drink.

There wasn’t much more than a dark red drizzle in the bottom of the glass, slipping round as he held it up to the light. He squinted at it, frowning.

He glanced furtively at Drezda, then set his glass down on the countertop. It barely made a click. Just as quiet, he took off his jacket. He moved to the washstand from the side, so he never had to stand in front of the mirror. He draped his jacket over it, then moved round carefully and adjusted the hem, so not an inch of the mirror was a risk.

Clearing his throat, he padded back to the counter. Casually, as if he’d done nothing worth noticing. He snatched up his glass again, drained the dregs, and then poured himself another with a few cheerful glugs.

It was easier to meet Drezda’s eye as he moved over to the bed. The galdor’s fingertip traced the rim of her glass – a soft hum of a sound, like a bell in a breeze – and he found he could smile at her. He didn’t think of what the smile might’ve looked like; he didn’t dare. It was all so tenuous, and he was terrified to lose it, swallowed up by him.

“You left your coat, and it was cold out. And if I’d stayed another moment, I’d’ve started swinging fists.” The smile brightened into a grin. He sat himself next to her, among the scattered books.

Fuck it, he thought. His hip ached. Clicking his teeth irritably, he bent to take off one shoe and then the other, then hauled himself back, sitting cross-legged.

He took another long drink of the Nassalan, then rested it against the rumpled fluff of a pillow nearby. Easy, he thought, easy. He took another drink anyway, halfway through his second glass. He could feel it settling in him like warmth in something frostbitten; like a starving man, it was hard to pace himself.

He’d been sick from it, that morning. It’d been so long since he’d had any; it’d been weeks. And he’d thought, for a few miserable hours, that it wasn’t worth it, not even for this feeling. But the headache was dissipating, and that awful tightness in his chest, the one that never quite left, was loosening.

It was easier to put a name to what her question’d made him feel; it was easier to honor it, to take it and spin it into an answer worthwhile. He owed her that, he thought. “I liked you,” he said easily, shrugging. “I liked what you said. About the Madden lass, and all the rubbish Uptown. I didn’t know about raen, back then; I didn’t know what the hell was going on. You were pissed, and I liked that.”

He took another drink.

“I was chroveshit angry, drunk, and – scared,” he said carefully, holding the glass in his lap and looking down at it. “So flooding terrified. Alone in this – thing.” His lip twisted; he shut his eyes. “I didn’t know how you’d take it, him running out with your coat, but I had to try.”

He opened his eyes and took another sip. In the corner of his eye, her glass was almost empty; his was getting there. He twisted halfway round, reaching for the bottle.

He was about to pour more when he saw it, glinting off the bulb of his glass. Two dark spots, the shadow cast by a cheekbone. Vague, but just vague enough, like a theater mask; he couldn’t see anything in the eyes. Just a sharp, narrow, lined face. A suggestion, a caricature.

His hands were shaking. He got the urge, sudden and wild, to fling the glass against the wall. He controlled it; he pushed it down. He took a deep breath, and set himself back to pouring Drezda another glass.

Then he paused. With a soft laugh and a shrug, he offered her the bottle, setting his glass aside.

“My company was better-received than I thought it’d be.” He studied her face. “I don’t know what you saw – I still don’t – but I’m grateful. And I meant it, when I said I wish I’d told you earlier.”

[Drezda Ecks]

Roalis 67, 2719
Probably After Midday
Sub Rosa Hotel, The Stacks

.

The thought of tiptoeing around the conflict of identities didn’t occur to her, even though a need for delicacy when she talked about Tom and Anatole in the same context should have been apparent given previous conversations. It was easier for her to see them as two separate people these days, despite their identical appearance. Drezda hadn’t encountered many twins in her life but she had encountered enough of them to know that even those that were identical had many differences. She’d had known twin girls in Frecksat and she had come to know them sufficiently well to recognise one from the other at a glance without having to be in range of their dissimilar fields. They’d had distinctive demeanours and contrasting personalities, so many little quirks that marked them as other from each other. Even the things that they had shared in common such as a mirroring of movements or speech patterns diverged subtly. In hindsight, it was perhaps more amazing that she could have told them apart given that their rhakor had been stellar, even at that young age; she could recall wondering if they had practiced it with one another.

The galdor and raen were akin to Rjza and Jeksi in her mind, obviously separate individuals entirely. Of course, she had the luxury of having known one and now the other, and with the Dax twins, they had known that they were separate entities because they had had their own bodies. She didn’t actually consider it properly from Tom’s perspective at all until she saw him move to cover the mirror, taking the opportunity to take another large drink to hide the fact that her eyes had fixed on him in surprise, albeit briefly.

“You were the first person who saw…” that’s what he’d begun to say before. How had he intended to finish that sentence? She’d been the first person who realised that Tom was in that smarmy politician’s skin or she’d been the first to truly see the difference?

The glass had only just been pulled away from her lips but she brought it back hastily enough so that she didn’t wince, grimacing instead as copious amounts of wine slid down her throat; it wasn’t really meant to be gulped down, lacking the smoothness of spirits.

Bash grant her strength, she’d been an utter fool before, hadn’t she? She’d told him that he was passing himself off well out on the terrace and gods, how that must have stung! The diplomat might be fully aware that Anatole and Tom were different people, had even been aware of such digression even before his nature had been spelled out to her but how many people still didn’t have a notion? Not of him being a raen of course, many people were ignorant of that fact, not knowing that the dispossessed souls existed, but how many of them had actually failed to see the difference? Sweet Lady, she’d never thought and yet she knew what that was like, having someone fix their eyes on you and fail to see you, considering you in the light of another instead. How many times had she found those in Hox that superimposed her mother onto her when they realised her origins? It wasn’t quite the same obviously but she hadn’t thought-

The monic particles in her field gave the impression of shuffling past each other in discomfort as the aura shifted to the soft grey-tinged blue of contrition. She needed to apologise, to reassure but she didn’t know how to do so without derailing things and possibly making him feel more miserable about the whole affair. Drezda would simply have to keep schtum for the moment and hope that some opportunity would present itself. In the meantime, she had alcohol.

When he came to sit beside her, the young woman did her best to dampen the emotion in her field, as if keeping it smooth and calm would hide what was going on in her head given how restless her fingers were and the pace of her drinking. The nearness of his presence beside her, making the mattress shift and sink a bit more beneath her did provide an unexpected distraction though, a new emotion that she had to suppress. The Hoxian couldn’t quite put her finger on it but she was oddly embarrassed to have him there, even more so when he took off his shoes and settled himself more comfortably, spots of colour returning to her cheeks as they warmed.

More reason to avoid his gaze, more reason to stare into her almost empty glass as she traced the rim, the sound growing higher as the contents dropped.

Before he’d said that he didn’t know why he’d followed her out, the admission of ignorance simply a way of buying time as he came up with a real answer. It was practical really — straightforward. She hadn’t had a coat with her and she’d needed one, and his temper had been running high so being chivalric had been a worthy excuse to step out. The diplomat had almost said that the idea of him punching people was an amusing one before she realised that that would have been extremely unkind considering...

Considering. Yes, she was going to be doing a lot of that from now on, it seemed. Considering every word that came out of her mouth in case she said something that would remind him of what he was physically, even if internally, he wasn’t the small, ageing golly man that he appeared to be.

Drezda started chewing on her lip so that she wouldn’t down the shallow burgundy liquid that swirled sadly around the bottom of the ample glass.

When Tom announced that he had liked her back in Ophus, the diplomat’s head jerked in his direction. She hadn’t had a chance to think about it, she’d simply reacted, a puppet that had had a string pulled violently and abruptly. Her eyes were wide, brows arched up high in incredulity. He’d liked her? Was he serious? How could he have- He hadn’t known her! Although Tom knew her better now and surely he didn’t like her now. Then again, they were sitting here together drinking in the middle of the day when they both could have been doing other things and sharing more than alcohol. That did seem to suggest that he liked her or something.

What had she said all those months ago? Frankly, she couldn’t recall the specifics of what she’d said to him when they were alone in the house together when that ersehole Madden had left them behind. She couldn’t recall much of what she’d said to Incumbent Madden either when he’d still been with them. The raven-haired woman had bits and pieces from that night, a disjointed recollection of all that had gone on. What she recalled most keenly had been her own misery and her struggle to keep herself reasonably together. She might not be able to recall precisely but she knew herself well, could fully imagine what unvarnished comments had issued from her mouth while she’d been in that humour. She could recall more about her conversation with the girl in fact, had a sad, guilty remembrance of finding the innocent thing attractive but what had really struck her was-

Oh yes, that was right. They’d both had that distaste of the man whose face Tom wore, even Niamh Madden visibly shaken by Anatole’s presence because of her lecherous nature. Except that it hadn’t been Anatole. But he’d known, hadn’t he? He’d known how the women in that room had looked at him, what they’d expected and so he hadn’t known how she’d take his pursuit. Damnit, she’d even made reference to what the ersehole had been like when she’d commented that he wouldn’t have followed her out even if it meant being alone with her.

Clock the Circle, Anatole Vauquelin was really haunting this conversation, wasn’t he?

Keeping the guilt and the shame and the heavy regret from her field was becoming exceptionally difficult, and she didn’t know that she was succeeding any more than she was keeping it from bleeding onto her face. No matter what she did though, the woman could never hide her eyes. She’d never been able to shutter them the way that the rest of her people did so that one glance provided a perfect window.

She would have avoided his gaze but she looked up again in surprise as he moved to hand her the bottle, onyx eyes shifting from it to the man in question and she reached out hesitantly to accept it, feeling a further flush of heat, her heart beating too fast as she inadvertently brushed her fingers with his.

And then it clicked.

They were sitting on the bed together, he’d made himself comfortable, they were both really rather close and walls were coming down, and that odd sort of embarrassment suddenly made sense. When he’d perched beside her and taken off his shoes, she’d been struck with expectation — not embarrassment as she’d thought. It had hit her and on some unconscious level she’d grown uncomfortable with it because he was a man and she didn’t have an interest in men and-

Now that it was staring her so obviously in the face, she couldn’t deny that she’d responded as if they were about to go to bed together in spite of the obvious evidence that he was- that he wasn’t-

But she’d managed to forget that he was a man, hadn’t she? Had even managed to forget that he wore the face of someone who had once repulsed her.

It was a wonder that she didn’t drop the bottle there and then, any hope of rhakor or even more typical golly polite suppression being maintained disappearing faster than a pirate airship. Her field wobbled, a whirlwind of emotions that were indecipherable because even she didn’t know what was going on.

The hand that had taken the bottle had come back with speed as if the touch had scalded her, fingers bone white around it as she hugged it briefly to her chest. The other hand still held the glass, its contents sloshing back and forth in time with her trembling. She downed the remainder and then bent to set it down blindly, the soft clink muffled by the cushioning of carpet. Before she’d even sat up properly again, her fingers had clasped the bottle’s neck so that she could upend it, drinking directly from the container.

The alcohol was welcome, the amount that had glugged out burning the back of her throat and leaving a slight burn in her nostrils, evidently having come close to coming out her nose when she’d tipped her head back. It was a good shock to the system as well, the galdor coughing a bit when she tugged the bottle away, turning somewhat away so that she wouldn’t cough all over the vessel she held. Her eyes watered, her face was flushed and she was still unsure what was happening.

Gulping in air, she turned back to him, passing the bottle, something almost wary in her movements as she considered him.

“I… I-I-I don’t know what I see. Not him. I s-suppose that I see, well… uh… you because I-” she broke off, biting her lip as she considered that admittance.

What did she see? What did she see aside from those eyes that watched her closely and managed to be utterly different from the politician that she’d known. She bit her lip harder, dealing with an overpowering urge to start crying all over again.

“You’re nothing like him, Tom…” she added quietly, eyes wide and vulnerable and shining with the threat of further tears.

He just needed to take the bottle and not-

She didn’t want him to touch her. She didn’t know how to handle that right now.

.

[Tom Cooke]

Sub Rosa Hotel • The Stacks

Bearably Early on the 67th of Roalis, 2719

T
heir hands brushed on the bottle.

She yanked the Nassalan back like she was wringing a fowl’s neck, a bloom of color in her cheeks. She held it close, cradled it to her chest; he thought to say something, but he didn’t know what. What comfortable forgetfulness he’d eased into was draining out of him, replaced by a flush of white-hot embarrassment. Of shame.

There was nothing to say, as she tipped the bottle back. He watched her throat – one swallow, two, three; she was guzzling it – his eyebrows were high on his forehead, his mouth ajar. He blinked and fixed his face when she dissolved into coughing, shivering loose more wisps of her hair.

Tom knew their hands had brushed. He paid attention to such things; mostly, so he could prevent them from happening. He knew he had misstepped, and there could be no comfort.

Drezda’s face was puce, her eyes glittering. Tom couldn’t’ve put names to all he felt swirling through her field. It was a riot, almost worse than it’d been out on the terrace.

One thing he had felt when he sat, and he couldn’t make sense of it. The shift wasn’t quite blue; it had a taste of slate, of sad morning skies, of dusk shafting through an empty room. It felt like a sorry, maybe, or like being sorry for something. He glanced over her shoulder, to the covered mirror, then back at her face.

She was looking at him, when he did. The back of his neck prickled. His face prickled; he was suddenly terribly aware of all of it, aware he was in his shirtsleeves, aware of the bed. I don’t know what I see, she stumbled out, dark eyes wide. Not him.

He looked down at his hands in his lap, at the comfortable fold of his legs, at his sock-feet. In the corner of his eye, she was passing him the bottle, wine sloshing gently. Assuring him he was nothing like him. Tom blinked, blinked again, shut his eyes. He had to take the bottle, he knew. He felt paralyzed.

Very careful not to brush hands, he took the bottle. “It is what it is, dove,” he murmured, clearing his throat. Just as careful, he unfolded his legs, scooted to sit with her on the edge of the bed.

Of course. Godsdamn him. She knew what he thought of himself. And here she had been looping her arm through his, holding his hand, sitting close to him. How must it have felt?

Grotesque, he thought, it must’ve been. He didn’t much like being the recipient of pity. He couldn’t think how to say, You don’t have to feel guilty; you don’t have to play at being comfortable around me, either. I understand. It’s mine to bear. It’s my –

Slow, cautious. “We have a word in Tek,” he said, after a moment.

He looked up at Drezda, and found the tightness in his chest easing. “Qalqa,” he pronounced, husky soft through the Qs, lilting on the L. “It means work. Hard labor, usually. That’s beside the point.” He smiled, raising an eyebrow. “It has a connotation; sometimes, it means more than just a job. More like… onus.”

Fancy golly Estuan. Take a shot every time, Auntie, he thought, not without a bitter twist. He took a swig of the Nassalan, clearing his throat and frowning. It was getting lighter than he liked bottles to be.

And it was funny to drink some fine Bastian wine like Low Tide, anyway. Funny to be drinking it with a galdor like Drezda, too. Uzoji, oes; maybe even his rosh, though he’d never had the privilege of drinking with her. But he felt a burst of warmth for Drezda, with her perfect-painted rhakor and her Vienda manners, who could drink like a docker in the Dove.

Well, close enough. He thought of her coughing. He was hesitant to give her back the bottle, and he held it in his lap as he thought how to go on.

“Covering mirrors, startling at the sound of my voice – it’s hard, but it’s my qalqa. Filling the space Anatole left, figuring out how to live in it. A docker is proud of his hook, even when his hands get twisted from the work.

“I was thanking you for giving the Anatole you saw the time of day,” he said gently, “not demanding to know how much of him you see, how much of me, how – we’d never sort through that.”

It would’ve been easier to clear the air, drunk. Still, he’d had just enough. It was easier to find the shape of the Problem with words, all its edges wine-softened. “If this” – he gestured at himself, at the bed, grimacing briefly – “if you’re uncomfortable, I’d rather you say so. It’s my qalqa to pay attention to those things. We work with what we have, eh?”

He looked back up at her, and tried another smile.

“Drink with what we have,” he added gently, a tentative joke. He passed her the bottle, careful to keep Anatole's hand where she wouldn't have to touch it.

[Drezda Ecks]

Roalis 67, 2719
Probably After Midday
Sub Rosa Hotel, The Stacks

.

There was no hiding that something quite intense had occurred within Drezda Ecks and it was really a stretch to say that it had been internal to her at all. Even without the field to take into account, her emotions had definitely escaped the boundaries that her body should have imposed. With the field… well, Circle help her, there was no way that he could have missed the maelstrom, even if he hadn’t been able to make any sense of it. The best the man would be able to do was guess and given that he would never in his wildest imagination — the Hoxian suspected that the man had a great deal of imagination to work with — identify the true cause, there were only so many conclusions that he could draw.

In light of what they’d just been talking about and her near flinch from him, of course he would draw a negative one. She could see it in his face, something frozen there as his gaze returned to hers from…

The covered mirror.

Oh Bash grant her strength! She’d made things so much worse, hadn’t she? And she hadn’t meant to but she’d managed to hurt him possibly far worse than before, made him think Circle only knew what! That was what made it more horrible; she had no idea what he had taken from her response and poor Drezda had no notion how to explain it to the raen without sounding insincere because of how ridiculous it would sound.

She was a lesbian, for goodness sake! She was really quite exclusively attracted to women and Tom knew that, just as she knew that he was attracted to men. She had no idea what this feeling was but it couldn’t be what she suspected it was and if she couldn’t properly identify it to explain it in her own head then she didn’t have a hope of explaining it to him. She could try but truth be told, the diplomat felt terribly ashamed by whatever this was.

At last he took the bottle while the Hoxian sat in indecisive misery. He shifted position so that he wasn’t as comfortable as he’d been before, not as relaxed. Her mouth bowed, the chaos in her field settling into something more readily identifiable: frustration.

“It is what it is?” she echoed so quietly that it would be a wonder if he caught her words at all, the barest upwards inflection the only real indication that it was a question. What was he saying? What was what it was? Whatever he was talking about was something that he considered to be self-evident. They were definitely on different wavelengths here, especially as she couldn’t even imagine what wavelength he was on. Clarity, that was what she needed — what they both needed.

Her hands fell into her lap, clasped tightly together as if in fervent prayer, staring at her white knuckled fingers. She feared that she would have to be the one to broach things and she didn’t know where to begin; Drezda hadn’t ever had to deal with this sort of thing.

But he spoke again and she turned slightly towards him, becoming aware of the frizz of strands at her temple, the minute loops irritating her beyond all reason. As Tom spoke about Tek, she reached up, fingers tiptoeing back from the offending area, pinching hair and tugging it in an attempt to tidy it up again, guiding it back to the point where it was tied. She tucked it under the tie, trying to keep those gathered locks pulled taut and then tried to tighten the area around the tie; it puffed back out again at her temple and she huffed out a frustrated breath.

Nothing wanted to go right for her this morning, not even something as small as this. She’d have to pull it free, let it flow down her shoulders and honestly, who fucking cared? Hadn’t she just drank straight from the bottle? Who was she trying to kid beyond herself?

While he took a swig from the bottle, she puzzled over the reason for bringing up 'qalqa', an uncomfortable prickling moving across her skin, the creeping sensation of premonition. It was weak, it was uncertain but she knew that he was building up to something, something that he would think to be well-meaning given what he presumed her earlier response meant. Drezda already sensed that it was going to hurt, whatever it was, the degree of misunderstanding between them sure to be vast and entirely her fault.

While he set the bottle in his lap, perhaps — understandably — not in the humour to share with her, the Hoxian reached back and tugged her hair free. Dark strands slithered down to kiss her shoulders, the young woman feeling oddly exposed almost at once in spite of how it covered her. She tended to wear her hair down but right now, she felt more vulnerable as if she had removed a layer of armour. In this instance, it was safer to say that she had removed a layer of performance or given up trying to maintain it; her ability to present a suitable face was failing miserably.

As he continued speaking, the woman winced, shaking her head, and finding it difficult to meet his eye, not because he had struck close to the truth but rather painfully far from it. Gods, he thought that she’d been showing disgust because she still saw Anatole in him. He was the Incumbent in shape and that was it, and even that she had managed to forget somehow. Perhaps her mind had done it to protect her, unable to reconcile this man that she knew with that awful lecher that had previously been, and so it had disassociated them utterly.

And what a mess that was causing now.

When he went to pass her the bottle, she resisted its allure, purposely wrapping her hand around his to push it down so that he wouldn’t let go of it, transferring it to her like a baton. His fingers beneath hers were something of which she was acutely aware, the skin soft, loose, pliable, more liable to fall into folds than her own, even at the bent knuckle. She couldn’t fail to notice but she pushed that awareness down now, forced it to a place of low importance while she stared him full in the face, leaning closer so that he’d have a harder time losing her from his field of vision.

“Thomas Cooke, you listen to me. You don’t- He doesn’t- It sounds ridiculous but I genuinely forgot. I don’t- It’s rare that I’ll see him in your face—that I’ll recall that you have the same face—and it always comes as a surprise. That’s the truth. Th-the entire truth.”

Her gaze flickered closed, the young woman looking slightly askance as something pained crossed her features. She’d just had to stutter, hadn’t she? It would have been so easy to lie about this, or rather lie about what she was keeping back, pretending that it didn’t exist at all. Instead, that hesitance, that guilty slip that had added an echoing syllable to her speech had made everything that had preceded it seem like a falsehood.

Her hand on his released, the young woman sighing as she allowed it flop into her lap, too restless to keep it there. Fingers tugged back through those errant strands at her temples, still flyaway in spite of all of her hair being freed. They needed to be brushed smooth but for now, Drezda had to settle for combing them with her fingers. When that was done, largely ineffectual, her hand moved to grip his chin instead so that their gazes could join unwaveringly.

“I can’t imagine what it must be like for you. I can’t imagine looking in the mirror and seeing- When you’ve had your own face, one that was familiar to you and now you… now you find yourself gazing at a stranger…” she trailed off, lines appearing around her brows as she pinched them together.

“Well, perhaps it isn’t entirely strange to me, I don’t… I don’t recognise myself anymore. It’s like f-finding yourself looking through the eyeholes of a mask b-b-but being unable to find the edges to t-take the clocking thing off! And it’s- It can’t be the same and-and I’m just… making it… about me. Again...”

Her hand fluttered slowly back down to her lap to pluck at her skirt even while her field took on that miserable cast once more, the monic particles around her pulsing faintly, a sluggish heartbeat. It seemed that she could taste her regret, sharp on the tip of her tongue, a foul aftertaste left behind as it slithered down the back of her throat, leaving it feeling almost parched. Shifting her tongue to make saliva and trying to swallow it did nothing to shift it, her awareness of it only seeming to grow more acute with each pained gulp. Now her fingers moved for the bottle, fumbled for it, desperate to get ahold of it to wash her sin away.

“I’m sorry that he haunts you, Tom. It probably means nothing for me to say it but he’s truly dead for me. I haven’t- I don’t see the ghost of him anymore,” Drezda murmured, seeking to tip the bottle back so that she could swig from it this time instead of guzzling it in blind panic and desperation as she had done before.

“No. He isn’t here to make me uncomfortable, Tom. Only you.”

.

[Tom Cooke]

Sub Rosa Hotel • The Stacks

Bearably Early on the 67th of Roalis, 2719

F
or a moment, both of their hands were tangled together round the neck of the Nassalan. She pushed it away, warm and firm. He didn’t think to jerk his hand away; he couldn’t think, being honest. Because she was closer, and all he could look at was a pair of large dark eyes, still rimmed in red and shot through with veins, and the grim, serious set of her lips. Thomas Cooke, she named him.

Tom did not think he could argue much with a look like that. He frowned, and his brow furrowed, but he held his words back behind his teeth.

The entire truth, she stammered.

Drawing the bottle back into his lap, he looked down and away. He sucked at a tooth, trying to think what to say. She didn’t have to reassure him; he didn’t much like the thought he was causing her so much guilt on top of her discomfort.

I don’t mind, really, he wanted to insist; please, Drez –

Her hand was cupping his chin, then, and he had to look her in the face again. A look of surprise, and then something like anger, rippled across his face. He blinked – several times; flutter, flutter, flutter – and his eyes were still wide as he met hers. His mouth opened slightly. Angry and confused, all at once.

There was a line between her brows. He put together what she was saying; his face went slack. He felt a prickle at the edges of his eyes, and he blinked again.

He was still looking at her when she looked down and away. He did the same, after a few seconds, down at the bottle in his lap and his hands around it. His hands? He had never thought she might look at this face and see him; he’d never thought anyone would. He wondered who it was she saw, this man who wasn’t one and wasn’t the other. Was it him?

When you’ve had your own face, she said, and now you find yourself looking at a stranger. He thought of the hair she had tried to tuck back underneath its tie, the loose black wisps. He thought of the perfect-painted mask in Vienda, the coiffed hair spilling down over her shoulder like a lovely dark river.

“Not about you,” he murmured, clearing his throat. He looked toward the shadowed corridor to the hall. “About us. I reckon you don’t have to be a raen to feel like a stranger to yourself. I’m –” A small, tired smile. “Thank you, Drez. For saying so. For all it’s worth. It’s benny to think I might not be alone in this after all.”

He thought he might’ve known the reason for the flush, the wild mess of her field. A lover had once told him that men’s eyes were like mirrors; he could imagine what Drezda saw when she looked into the mirror of Ksjta’s eyes, same as what he saw when he looked into hers. How tsuter, all these reflections stumbling into each other, irreconcilable.

The drapes in the balcony doorway stirred, billowed and snapped full. A breeze whispered through the hotel room. If he shut his eyes, he could feel it ruffling his hair, cool against the back of his neck.

Sometimes, he wanted to offer, sometimes – I don’t feel him. I feel different, like this, but I don’t feel him. I don’t feel like I’m wearing a mask. I just feel different, and not always bad.

Drezda’s field was still ruffled where it mingled with his; there was little his porven could do for it. He opened his eyes when he felt her fumbling for the wine bottle, and he gave it to her more easily, this time. He was pleased to see her take a swig – no chugging, no coughing. He smiled wryly, though he watched her with concern.

Only you, she said, looking at her lap.

Mirrors, he thought. “I couldn’t even try to tell you what I see in your face, now, but I don’t see a mask. I don’t know any of us can see each other as we really are, but –” He broke off.

Very cautiously, feather-light, he reached to brush his finger and thumb under Drezda’s chin. “No edges,” he said, “as far as I can tell.”

A smile – grim, brittle round the edges. Crooked-tilted. Very sad.

He looked down at her and nudged her playful-gentle with his elbow. “I suppose we’ve just got to live with these new faces of ours, eh?”

[Drezda Ecks]

Roalis 67, 2719
Probably After Midday
Sub Rosa Hotel, The Stacks

.

Taking his chin had been a bold move on her part, especially as it might well have been pointless; he might have pulled away rather than submitting to her touch. It had also been strangely difficult for her, the diplomat contending with the same hyperawareness that she had when she’d kept his hand on the bottle. Holding his chin in her hand held a greater intimacy though, the gesture far less casual. She had greater potential to steer him if she had wished it, even if he had resisted. Given that he wasn’t a subordinate, for him to allow her to do such a thing required a degree of trust that she hadn’t expected him to give, something that she had only earned from a few individuals over the years, and not something that she had gained in the context of friendship. So strange and troublesome and damn near regrettable considering how close it made them, their gazes locked. She’d had some effect on him, perhaps not quite what she’d intended — had that been anger she’d seen in his expression? — but he’d also had an unintended effect upon her.

Drezda couldn’t regret having touched him as she had when she’d gotten through to him, perhaps helped get her point across but it did leave her uneasy, embarrassed, confused. Still unable to tell him why she’d stuttered, why she had become so damn strange towards him but grasping his chin hadn’t made it any easier. Better to avoid looking at him and letting the wine work its magic to soothe her anxious mind. They weren’t far off from polishing off the whole clocking bottle, which was an impressive feat given that they hadn’t had anything like a proper breakfast yet. Well, Tom had gotten something down but she was running on empty. It probably wouldn’t be long until the alcohol went to her head. The sooner the food came the better.

When Tom mentioned her face, the Hoxian couldn’t help but look at him, resting the bottle against her thigh as she regarded him, her body tense. He had no doubt wondered what she saw when she looked at him, even if he hadn’t asked her explicitly. He had obviously made assumptions about what he thought she saw in him but Drezda…

She had no idea what he saw when he looked upon her face and while she was curious to find out, the diplomat also found herself afraid to learn such a thing. She wasn’t certain if she was afraid to receive a positive or a negative response. In truth, she feared a response of any kind at all. Of course, the Perceptive knew that others considered her beautiful, even if it was an exotic sort of beauty from the Anaxi perspective.

If Drezda was beautiful then it was a cold, sterile beauty, something that could be appreciated in a detached and distant way as one would regard a statue. You might be able to admire it as fine art but a statue didn’t tend to stir one’s passions. Everyone saw her as frigid and so frigidity was all that she could inspire.

And then he brushed his fingertips against her face and her thoughts scattered, eyelashes fluttering rapidly as she leaned away a little, lips parting as she stared at him, stunned. Heat rose within her, creeping its way up her neck and spreading across her face. The temperature rose rapidly, her visage feeling as if it had been set aflame within but a few moments. Surely, he could feel it billowing from her, heat breaking free from the confines of her skin to sear outwards. Any blotchiness that might have remained from her tears had no doubt been made indecipherable by the blush that had invaded.

As her initial shock abated, the young woman managed to manoeuvre her lips into the barest hint of a smile, the curve subtle and fragile looking but definitely there. She managed to return some version of the smile he gave her but she looked away as she did so, aiming it into her lap as self-consciousness won out. Her fingers moved with the intent of tucking hair behind her ear but they ended up letting it fan out to partially curtain her face instead.

It was a curiously juvenile gesture. Obviously she didn’t truly conceal herself and made the desire to hide conspicuous in her attempt as well, but that didn’t stop her from trying. She didn’t want him to look at her properly, and her own vision was impaired as well, albeit there was much that could still be discerned by peeking through the dark strands.

She took another drink of wine, swirling it once she’s done so in order to hear the sad swish of its remaining contents.

“Honestly? I think we’re just supposed to get on with things, Tom. I don’t think we can be expected to do anything else,” the diplomat commented. “Unless we want to have another go and get new ones again.”

Her words were delivered lightly but the levity didn’t quite ring true. As she spoke, she traced one of her high cheekbones unthinkingly, hand sliding softly down her jaw as if acquainting herself with it for the first time. When she realised what she was doing, she decided to peer down the neck of the wine bottle instead.

“I hope you know that this is almost gone, Tom, and unless you have another bottle around the place… well, we can always ask whoever comes with the food…” she mused with a soft hiccup. “It probably isn’t what they’d consider a reasonable hour for such things but I’m sure one more reason to judge us probably won’t make much difference. After all, we’re already alone in a room together and uh… well.”

It wasn’t possible to blush anymore, a physical impossibility but she’d have done it if she’d been capable. The heat certainly seemed to increase, ready to start her perspiring but her face was already completely crimson. Drezda resisted the desire to fidget, channeling the energy into passing the bottle back to him.

“We know that we aren’t um… well, like that. We’re… friends?”

She looked at him askance, head cocking curiously as she watched for his response to that. Obviously they must be… something of that sort but it had never been confirmed, not aloud.

“Are we friends, Tom? I don’t- I can’t really remember when I-”

She broke off, brows tugging together as her pupils shifted from side to side as she thought.

“No, I don’t remember when I last had a friend. I… I must have had one. Surely…”

Her lips pursed, her gaze fixed but glazed now. Bash give her strength, she couldn’t remember when she’d had a friend last and the diplomat was suddenly keenly aware of how pathetic that sounded. Evidently, this morning had become the perfect time to showcase what a miserable and lonely creature Drezda Ecks was.

.

[Tom Cooke]

Sub Rosa Hotel • The Stacks

Bearably Early on the 67th of Roalis, 2719

D
rezda was blushing.

His hand froze halfway back to his lap; he hesitated, for just a split second, before he regained himself. He clasped his hands together, looked down at them. His knuckles were very white. He couldn’t seem to get them to relax.

Half a bottle of Nassalan wasn’t much, but he could still feel himself drifting, loosening. Maybe it would’ve been a good feeling, in another Ever; maybe it would be, if he drank more. He just felt more and more sloppy, more and more confused. He was starting to grasp at the edges of it, to get a hold on it, slippery and strange though it was. But he felt hamfisted.

Plowfooted. He swallowed, a muscle working in his jaw.

He’d caught a hint of a smile, before he’d looked away. Maybe he’d just embarrassed her. With his words, oes – with all that flooding sentiment. Maybe that was what it was, after all.

He looked back up; she was smiling that tentative smile down, a few wisps of hair between her profile and his. Dimly-lit, it was hard to read. She took another drink of the red.

Then – he saw her hand wander up to her face, fingertips brushing her cheekbone, tracing down to her chin. He blinked; he might’ve winced, for all the look on her face was familiar, even through the slight flush in her cheeks. His chest ached with it. Even with the mirror covered, it was there; you could always feel it, hanging from your face like strange clay, always touch it –

And then she spoke again, and he laughed. It was frayed and hoarse, but genuine. “I’d have better luck with that than you,” he blurted, to his surprise.

He laughed again; it ended in a snort.

“You’d have to take somebody else’s,” he said, still lightly, but a little wistful. He looked out over the dimly-lit room, the dust-motes drifting, sparking in the late morning light. “Wouldn’t it be something, if we didn’t? If we could make faces for ourselves – or just be our souls. But maybe we wouldn’t like that, after all.”

There was something damned relieving about a joke. His suspicions were easing off, slow but sure, and in the corner of his eye Drezda seemed a little more – not relaxed, no, but something. Like a pot brought off the stove, boiling gone to simmering.

He smiled again, tiredly, at her hiccup. Fuck it, but another bottle didn’t sound half bad. Besides, they’d sent the note – how long was it? Should be up soon, he wanted to say, and opened his mouth, and started to shrug. Being honest, I’ve no shame left; when I leave this hotel room, all the bottles –

We know that we aren’t, um… like that.

His mouth shut, slowly.

He got that funny prickling again; she passed him the bottle, and he took it, careful not to let their hands touch. But her words seemed to twist off on another path, to cut through different brambles. His brow furrowed; he watched her. I can’t remember when I last had a friend, she said, looking down.

Tom felt it like a dart between the ribs. He found himself thinking not just of Drezda and her sister, not just of the frozen smile at the party, of all the whispers. He found himself thinking about a man with a frozen sneer of a smile, too, going through the motions for weeks at a time. He thought of a woman, straight-backed, silk with no wrinkles.

The doorbell rang.

He’d got his wish, godsdamn them both, and at such a time. He took one last swig of the bottle and handed it back with a wry slant of a smile. There was nothing but to excuse himself, to creak up off the bed and see to the door. He forgot to grab the jacket off the mirror, but he supposed, as Drezda’d said, none of it much mattered anyway.

The smells of warm bread were joined by other, fresher smells: less the provenance of breakfast and more of a hot summer day’s lunch. Cucumber, watercress, something syrupy-sweet. They were wheeled in with little ado, this time by a quiet, dark-haired human who kept his head down and politely blocked Tom’s attempts to help.

There was a less rich selection of cold cuts and cheeses. There was a pretty brass tureen, but it was cold. He thanked the natt and murmured something about compliments on that fine Gioran whisky. Once the natt left, he lifted the lid curiously.

There, the smells of cucumber and watercress and something sharp and milky. “Cold soup,” he said, glancing over his shoulder at Drezda and raising his eyebrows. “Cold soup,” he repeated dumbly.

There was smoked salmon, too, and a chilled compote with strawberries. It made sense, with the way things were starting to heat up. Even up here, you could feel it in the slanting sun and smell it on the breeze; cold soup didn’t sound like such a bad idea.

His head was full of other things, too. He turned to her, finally, leaning on the table. “We’ve never been in a fistfight,” he said, suddenly serious-looking, “or woken up clocked in some alleyway in Voedale with matching tattoos. But oes, I think this constitutes a friendship, don’t you?”

From here, through the drifting sunlight, he couldn’t read her face. He smiled, tired and sad. “I thought it went without saying, but then, I’m not much of a man for friends. I never was, I suppose.”

He pushed himself up from the table, gestured tentatively toward the spread, with the empty bowls and glasses. There was a decanter; Tom sniffed it, then poured a little white wine into a glass.

That prickling at the back of his neck again. The flush on her face. The shy smile down at her lap. Tom looked at the decanter, at the glass, but the prickling didn’t get any easier. He didn’t think they were going to drink their way out of this one.

He heard it again: Surely... Little girl, bare feet deep in the snow. His heart tightened again.

“Maybe it doesn’t go without saying,” he said, more softly. He frowned. “What do you think a friend is, Drezda?” He paused, scratching his head. “Maybe that’s something we have to figure out.”