Rich is moving at speed; he stops outside the office door to pull a patch from the back of Rafael’s neck, and then he’s moving once again, eating up the ground with his stride, gripping Rafael firmly but never painfully.
“Oh, carry me away, earthquake of a man,” Rafael mumbles, slurring, rubbing his cheek absently against Rich’s collarbone, and bumps his face against Rich’s jaw by accident trying to sit up. Rich grips him tighter, like he’s afraid Rafael might squirm away, but all that motion makes the spinning begin again, and Rafael gives up in fairly short order and slumps against that broad chest, trying to remember what he was saying. Something about strength…
“Carry me—Hercules, like, champion of the gods…” he shudders, then realizes why and twists his hips to nudge up against Rich’s warmth, just a little. Just a small, just, polite. “Like, the—hha… Sorry. Please? No, of course—sorry.”
“Fuck,” sighs Rich, and squeezes him again, not as if he’s worried this time, but as if he’s upset. Rafael can understand why, he supposes. It’s alright though. He feels so good, and it really is alright. Everything is alright.
“I’ve been made a fool,” he tells Rich apologetically, and Rich huffs and settles him down on a bed. They’re back at the room now, it seems. That’s good. What was Rafael saying. “I’m just, just… oh, it’s so hard to think—”
“I know, babe,” says Rich. He’s bending down, wide-eyed, heavy browed. He got a glass of water at some point. “Fuck, he didn’t have to do that.”
“Just supplementing my shhir, shortcomings, I’m sure,” Rafael says, and takes the water, frowning in concentration. “If he’s, if a wolf—mm.” He was so thirsty, and he didn’t even realize. He drains the glass eagerly, then tries to resume the train of thought, dabbing wetly at his mouth with one wrist. “A predator likes… playing with its food, so.” He waves a hand in the direction of the back of his neck. “And I’m just… carrion, a corpse lying still, I’m no fun anymore, I should’ve known. Should have intense—an—anticipated.”
“Fuck,” says Rich again, and the mattress dips as he sits down on the bed, as a hand comes and rubs Rafael’s back. “Don’t—you’re not a corpse, and you’re plenty of fun, he just likes hurting you to make himself feel good. That’s all it is, okay?”
“Mmhm,” says Rafael, and sways over into the touch. He does feel softer, like Carraway said, looser and warmer. Harder and hotter. God, he’s so hard. “I can be. Can be fun. I could be fun. We could have fun.” It’s graceless, but he smiles as charmingly as he can and leans closer, lashes low and alluring, lips parted, inviting a kiss. A hand on Rich’s knee, and if it’s tight to keep him from falling over, it could easily pass for desperation. “Hold me?”
“Ah, babe,” Rich sighs, and pulls him in close, one hand stroking his chest and then patting gently. “It's okay, I got you.” He leans down and kisses Rafael soft and slow. When he pulls back, he puts a cautious hand at the fastening of Rafael's pants. “You want me to take care of that for you?”
“Please, yes, care for me, take—anything, please?” Rafael gasps, pressing eagerly up against him.
“Okay,” Rich says, soothing, reassuring, and kisses him again before laying him down on the bed and tugging his pants open to free his dick. “Okay, hon, I got you, you're okay.”
He shifts down Rafael's body, stroking his chest and his sides, kisses his stomach before taking him in that glorious mouth. Rafael clings tightly to the boundaries of Rich’s solid skin as the world finishes dissolving into heat and motion, trying to speak into the whirl, trying to tell him—there’s something so important he needs to say, but he can’t find it. Climax comes as an utter surprise, a golden slap of shock and pleasure and he finds himself laughing helplessly.
“Okay?” Rich asks in a low velvety rumble. He’s licking Rafael clean, tracing out the quivering little aftershocks of pleasure with his tongue, unerring. Rafael just keeps laughing, giddy and fearless as if this were the end of a carnival ride he’d fetched up on. It feels like that. His heart’s pounding and his every last thought is a whirl of moving light and he can’t feel his fingertips, but other portions of his anatomy he’s intently, shiningly aware of, as Rich draws the pleasure along past what would once have been its nadir and begins to spark it freshly to life.
“More?” Rafael asks plaintively. He needn’t stop anymore, after all, has no need to wait. “I could, you could press me further, pour me out—a flood of gold and ivory, anointed, I—I mean. If you like. Please?”
“Alright, then,” Rich says, sounding amused, but not like he really gets what’s so beautifully funny about all of this. Rafael tries to explain as Rich turns his mouth back to spinning each and every atom of Rafael’s body faster, but he doesn’t think he manages before he comes again.
“That do it for you?” Rich asks. His voice isn’t dark velvet, really, it’s something rougher and more precious: open road, asphalt. “Think you could take three? Wanna take you apart, baby, you look so good like this, I love it.”
“Please,” Rafael says again, and lets Rich finish transforming him into nothing less perfect than light.
–
Scene 12: Garrison gymnasium.
He wakes up slowly, curled in a bundle of blankets and pillows. It’s evening, and he’s confused and heavy. Eventually he pushes himself up to look around, but the room is silent. Rich isn't there.
Rafael frowns at the door. He wants Rich, wants the great warm bulk of him to cling to, moor himself on. If he's not here, he must be out there. Rafael will have to go find him.
He gets out of bed, goes and washes his face, and leaves the room. He's not sure where he's going at first, just heads through downstairs by reflex, wandering dreamily about the staff dining room—and then there's Connor.
“Hello,” Rafael says, waving vaguely to him. Tries to recall his manners, charm and courtesy, and manages, “Good morrow, good sir, can you say where Rich has hied himself to?” Which is incorrect, fit only for the stage or some distant renaissance faire, but at least he’s managed manners of some kind.
“Saw him a minute ago, yeah,” says Connor. He looks like he’s been jogging about, pink in the face and wearing a tank-top, but he also has a very large muffin in one hand. Rafael stares at it, then gathers himself back to the task at hand.
“Whence?” he says. “And… why?”
“You mean where was he goin’?” says Connor around a bite of muffin. “Uh, I think he was gonna go sweat it out with some’a the other bulls over in the barracks.” He sighs in brief, happy preoccupation. “I’d head on down with you, only Red caught a couple too many big boys shootin’ looks at me and now if I even poke my nose around he fluffs up like a broody hen and tries to nest on me.”
“Ah,” says Rafael, because his swimming mind has parsed very little of that. “He’s. A fine cock, a, a very, mm.”
“Uh-huh,” says Connor, half-laughing, and looks Rafael over keenly but not unkindly. “Well, any road, nice to see you come around talkin’ to folks. Whatever kinda cock he is, he’s got you up for breakfast and outta bed and that and a bible’ll buy you dinner.”
“…Quite,” Rafael hazards.
Connor only keeps smiling at him, the saint. “You headed down after him, then?”
“Yes,” Rafael says—immediately, emphatically. He’s never before had an interest in making the trek across the grounds to the barracks, but he finds himself increasingly forlorn without someone warm to hold onto. “I… belong somewhere, now. I’m going to go to him.”
“Aw, well good,” says Connor, and to Rafael’s complete surprise, all of a sudden there’s an arm wrapping around him, a warm body pressing up against his side. “Glad t’see you perked up a little. Don’t you go working yourself sick, now! Red’s a big boy, en’t his fault but he’ll run you ragged if you let him.”
It’s purely instinct, really; Rafael is being embraced, a warm and soft touch, and it feels nice, and it seems right to show his gratitude. So it seems only right, in turn, to put his own arm around Connor’s shoulders, tip his chin up gently, and kiss him.
The kiss is very nice, too, and the muffin was apparently blueberry, which is a pleasant taste compared to some kisses Rafael has had. He breaks away after a moment or two, pats Connor vaguely on the shoulder, and says, “Well… I’m away then.”
“Sure?” says Connor, who looks startled but highly amused. “Yeah, arright. Tell Rich I said ‘hi.’”
Rafael waves in gracious acknowledgement and begins steering the drifting components of his body toward the back door.
It’s warm outside, a pleasant, golden evening, and even the white stone of the courtyard isn’t too hot under Rafael’s bare feet. He strides across it purposefully, is briefly distracted by how glorious the warm grass feels under his feet, then firms his resolve and cuts across to a side-building, near the outskirts of the compound. He knows where the barracks is. Sandgren drags new prisoners there during his own cruel orientation, making a show of letting his guards memorize the unfortunate’s face. As though he needs to, when the invisible leash of electrified cuffs and collar bind them all more surely than cage bars.
Fortunately, Rafael needn’t go inside the barracks itself, since there’s a pair of very large men loitering near the entrance who both look up at him, and then at each other, and then back at him as he comes nearer. Neither of them are Hastings: one white, but tan and sun-lined, and the other Black, although nowhere near as dark as Rafael. Still, Hastings or not, they both look intimidatingly large from close up, and Rafael slows uncertainly out of their arms’ reach.
“Hello,” he says, and then scrambles and corrects, “Good evening,” because it pays to be polite. “I’m looking for Rich.”
“You from the house?” says the Black soldier, with a glance up and down.
“That’s one of the boss’s boytoys, dumbass,” the white one says, and waves a hand at the faint constriction of the collar at Rafael’s throat. “Hell if I know what he’s doin’ down here though, they don’t usually run errands. Who the fuck’s Rich?”
That’s disheartening. Rafael frowns, blinking slowly, then tries again. “Rich,” he repeats, and when that fails to garner any recognition, “He’s very large. A Hastings. Green eyes?”
“Hastings have red eyes,” the Black soldier says. “It’s kind of a notable goddamn feature, son.”
“Some’re hybrids,” the white guard says. “Sometimes they get weird, like, half-breed kids. Mutts. They look half-normal or half—some other kinda tweak, just the color’s wrong. Hell, you see Black Hastings around sometimes, and even they're still snow-fuckin’-white.” He shakes his head in distaste, oblivious to his audience. “Freaky.”
“Yeah, right,” says the other guard, cold and terse enough that even his blithe companion can’t pretend not to notice. Not that the noticing elicits any remorse. He only dismisses the matter with a careless shrug and a roll of his eyes.
“I’m just saying,” he says, as white men have said for Rafael’s entire life thus far, and quite probably as long as they have existed. Rafael finds himself sharing an unexpected moment of sympathetic eye contact with the Black soldier.
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“The boss send you down for this guy, or what?” the Black soldier says, with a bit more warmth and concern than before. “He gettin’ a little personal reward or something?”
“No,” says Rafael. Even through his warm haziness, he suspects it would be less than dignified to admit that he mostly just wants to pile himself into Rich’s lap and cling to him.
“I am here on… personal affairs,” he says instead.
“Well,” says the white soldier, “all the Hastings go take over the weight room every night round about now.” He jerks a thumb over at a smaller annex behind the barracks. “You lookin’ for one of ‘em in particular, that’s somewhere to start.”
“Hang on,” the Black soldier says, and actually puts a hand on Rafael’s shoulder. “Are you going to be okay, son? They get pretty rowdy in there, and they’re not—uh. They’re not nice folks.”
The white soldier laughs mirthlessly, but holds his hands up in exaggerated surrender when his companion shoots him a look.
“Thank you,” says Rafael, and hurries away before either of them try to delay him further. He hears the men behind him start to say something, discussing him, but he has no patience for them. His goal is in sight.
There are loud voices coming from inside the weight room. Rafael steels his sinews, draws himself up and pushes inside.
If the soldiers outside the barracks looked big, they’re nothing compared to the crowd in the weight room. Rafael tries briefly to count and then gives up, staring. It’s a small, sweaty room and it’s full wall to wall with icy-pale skin and blood-red hair and… undulating tattoos, plastered over a lot of rippling muscle. Two women approximately the size of the Colossus are wrestling on the floor mats, stripped down to sports tops and growling at each other, a thunderous kaiju rumble that makes the floor beneath Rafael’s feet vibrate. Most of the men and women don’t seem to care that someone just came in, but one man near the door glances back and stares down at him with mad, rust-red eyes.
“You want something, bite-size?” he says. There’s a tattoo of a winged snake being trampled by a flaming bull on his bare chest, vivid colors across tight, corded muscle. Rafael attempts to remember what he meant to say and utterly fails.
“Rich?” he asks plaintively.
“Nah,” says the Hastings, looking amused, and slaps his chest. “Headshot.”
Ah, yes, it’s tattooed on his collarbone, with a bullet bursting through the letters in a spray of stylized gore.
“No,” says Rafael with an effort, and resists the urge to step back against the closed door, feeling trapped. He tries to glance around Headshot, catches a glimpse of a shorter, softer figure turned away from him. “He’s, I’m looking for—”
One of the women in the middle of the mat gives a sudden deafening roar as she slams her opponent down on the mat and flattens her there. Headshot looks away, distracted, and Rafael takes the opportunity to duck quickly away and work his way toward that brief flash of a familiar shape. More shirtless, tattooed giants stare down at him as he threads his way through, but they look at him like… tigers tracking a mouse, something they’ve spotted on the ground, too small to be worth swatting just yet, but of a certain predatory interest.
It’s a startling relief when Rafael catches sight again of a familiar shape—moon-pale all over, no extensive tattoos, no red body-hair, lying on a big bench and lifting a massive barbell. It’s strange, especially considering how much he’s lifting, but Rich looks soft, surrounded by full-blooded Hastings. In the rooms of the mansion, surrounded by the rest of Carraway’s delicately proportioned harem, he looks statuesque and intimidating. Here he looks tender and clean, no marks on him except the three dark lines of his collar and cuffs and the little verdant bracelet of brambles and mouse. A toy Hastings, cuddly and cute and safe…
“Rich,” Rafael starts, and then yelps as an enormous pair of hands scoops him up into the most undignified princess carry of his life.
“Nitro?” says Rich, lifting his head. “—Rafael?!”
“Oh yeah, he’s yours, right?” says the enormous woman holding Rafael, and Rafael recognizes the Hastings from yesterday, the one who supplies Rich with his nanocream. She hefts Rafael in her arms as though he were a sack of potatoes, testing his weight and composition, and Rafael scrabbles for any sort of grip in mute distress as the world swings disorientingly around him. She laughs, and then leans in closer and examines him, as if she could cut him open with her red eyes.
“What’s a pretty li’l NPC doin’ down here?” she says. “You high, little man?”
“Yes,” says Rafael with dignity, and squirms. Nitro does not put him down, and Rafael subsides irritably. “They said Rich was here, and he is. Therefore.” He waves a hand.
“Raf, are you okay?” says Rich, and grunts, pausing with at least double the weight of Rafael’s entire body suspended over him. Possibly triple. “Nitro—c’mon, hon.”
“It’s cool, cousin!” says Nitro, and grins a wide, perfect, white-toothed grin at Rafael. It’s like being charmed by a very handsome dragon. With a dick tattooed up the side of her neck. “I’m not hurtin’ him, look. I’ll hold onto him for you.”
Rich gives Nitro a dubious look that turns evaluating, then looks to Rafael. Rafael meets his eyes, instead of drooling over the heavy, tensed swell of his biceps and pectorals, the huge metal weights Rich is still holding up with no apparent effort.
“You good, man?” Rich asks. “Do you need something?”
“You,” says Rafael, and squirms a little more. He’s no longer nearly as high as he was, but he feels so light and foggy all over and the feeling of being securely held in a huge, strong pair of arms is making him very… warm. He’s very warm.
He only realizes what he said a moment later, when Nitro laughs and hefts him again, and he amends, “I wanted to see you, I didn’t know where you were, and I was… feeling…”
He doesn’t want to get into what he’s feeling right now, in the arms of one of the Hastings soldiers, in the middle of a room full of Hastings soldiers.
“Aww, cousin,” says Nitro. “The little guy gets a ride and I don’t? Fuckin’ hurtful.”
“Nitro!” Rich says, and the flush of exercise across his face darkens and spreads down his neck. “God, c’mon! I'm as nice to you as I'm allowed to be, lady, and you know it.” He lowers the weights with a grunt, then pushes them back up again slow and steady. “Raf, you wanna—hha. Go sit outside? ‘M almost done.”
“Oh,” says Rafael, and sways as Nitro huffs and lets him slide down onto his feet. “I’m, I interrupted you. I’m sorry. But, no. I mean, no, I can wait. I’ll, I can watch. I mean stay. I would be more than happy to stay and see how you… fare.” He clears his throat, keenly aware of the huge hand Nitro left on his shoulder—the fingers that are brushing the bare skin of his neck below the collar. He’s never before thrilled to a woman’s touch, but the hand on him is huge and hard and rough-fingered and he’s already so dizzyingly sensitive, and there’s Rich, gorgeous and strong…
Rich eyes him doubtfully. “I mean, you can watch me lift if you want, it’s not much of a show. Nitro, just—play nice, okay? Don’t let him fall over.”
“I won’t,” Rafael protests, and then he’s being scooped back up into Nitro’s arms again, his protest totally disregarded.
…Well. It’s a good view from up here. Rich might not be a trim, toned, viciously sculpted war machine like his fellows, but the padded layer of body fat he sports gives him a distinctively massive, powerful, functional look in contrast, like a draft horse stabled among high-strung, overbred racetrack stallions. Under that lovely, sleek white upholstery, all his inhumanly proportioned muscles tense and shift, and Rafael can see every single one of them as Rich’s arms move up and down with the relentless strength of a working breed, as though he could do this all evening and into the night.
Spellbound, Rafael stares at the bunching and flexing of his heaving chest, catches himself looking, tries to look away and ends up looking at the wrestling women again instead. One of them has the other on her back, straddling her and trying to pin her arms, and it’s deeply distracting. Suggestive. It’s just, all—it’s all very much. Very much of everything.
Rafael’s dalliances in the past have usually been with a gentler and less overwhelming sort of man, the sort easily swayed by poetry and romance, but he isn’t made of stone. There’s nowhere to look that isn’t full of an overwhelming amount of muscle on display, male or female or otherwise. Good god.
“He’s showin’ off for you, cutie,” Nitro says, quiet enough Rich won’t be able to hear her over the general rowdiness of the room, and when Rafael looks back at her, Nitro is grinning at him meaningfully. “You’re not gonna leave him hanging, are you?”
“I feel… I could use some fresh air,” says Rafael, but makes no move to get out of Nitro’s grip or look away from the slow, bellows-like heave of Rich’s chest.
“Man, you’re high as fuck,” says Nitro, and peers at him. “Holy shit, you look like that time Bloodbath looted a bunch of bad shit off a drug-cutting ring we got hired to bust up. His pupils were all blown out for like three days.”
“I’m much-improved of sobriety, thank you,” says Rafael. Adds, because he resents being hoisted around like a small misbehaving pet, “Three days is a gentle let-down indeed. Why, have none of you any real experience?” in the haughtiest tone he can manage.
Nitro barks a loud, full-throated laugh at that. “Keep going, cousin,” she says when Rich glances up sharply, and pats Rafael’s bare calf with a huge rough hand. “Yeah, the big guy upstairs has got some real hard stuff, sounds like.” She stops a moment, thoughtful coppery eyes on Rafael’s face. “Pretty brave for a cute little NPC, wandering in here. Don’t worry, though, no one’s gonna want to juice your tiny balls.”
“My thanks,” says Rafael after a startled moment, although the thought gives him a brief, uneasy shiver. He’s heard darkly-whispered tales of especially disobedient boytoys being drugged to blackout compliance and sent to the barracks, though whether it’s a real danger or simply a rumor started by Sandgren for his own ends has never been clear. Not that it needs to be real to hang yet another sword of Damocles over the man’s victims.
“I’m, as I said,” he says, shaking off the dread, “I’m here for Rich, and I carried myself into this… this den of lovely beasts by my own power.” He considers the words he just put together. “No offense meant.”
“Pssh.” Nitro bounces him again, presumably in a way that’s meant to be comforting. “Well, ‘beast’ isn’t the nicest thing I’ve been called, but ‘lovely’ sure as fuck isn’t the nastiest.” She glances up as someone across the room says something loud and sharp, and a few voices start growling like furious dinosaurs. “Ah—shit. Here, spot him.”
“What?” says Rafael, and then is set down neatly on Rich’s bare stomach as Nitro goes wading off into the crowd and joins the shoving, growling knot of Hastings in the corner. Rich shifts sharply, startled, and then racks the weights fast as the motion tips Rafael over, sprawling him across that broad, soft chest.
“Oh,” says Rafael, and then foolishly, “...hi.”
“Hey,” Rich says, breathless, and pats him on the shoulder before carefully tipping him back upright. “You doing okay?”
“Yes,” says Rafael. “Yes, but. But because you’re here, you’re the cause of my, um.” He doesn’t know where to put his hands, wants deeply to press in close again but is intensely aware of all the other people milling around them. Settles on putting them on Rich’s sweat-slick ribs, leaning on him as gently as he can.
“I awoke and you were gone away,” he admits more quietly.
“I’m sorry, man.” Rich frowns, stroking Rafael's side. “I figured you'd sleep longer, you've been pretty tired. I didn't mean to worry you or anything.”
“I’m not worried,” Rafael says absently. He runs his thumb along the barrel-stave arch of one of Rich’s ribs, following a sliding drop of sweat. It really is pretty that Rich doesn’t have the same vast expanse of tattoos as the other Hastings. Rafael hasn’t appreciated that enough. The others make it look so dangerous and thrilling, all that toned muscle and the intricately gruesome ornamentation, but aside from that one sweet wristlet, Rich is as pale and unmarked as if he’s truly worked from marble.
Rich sighs and it rocks Rafael. “Well, good. Alright, let's get out of here, man,” he says, and sits up, pulling Rafael into the crook of his arm as he swings his leg over the bench he was lying on and stands. He works his way around the edges of the room to get to the door, stepping around brawling, roaring Hastings, and finally steps out into the fresh twilight air.
Then he swings Rafael down and sets his feet on the ground. “Sorry, I should've asked before picking you up,” he says sheepishly.
“Yes, well,” says Rafael. “No harm done.” He fidgets with his shirt, straightening the hem, then clarifies, “I would have said yes.”
“Sorry,” Rich says again, patting his shoulder, and starts off towards the mansion, this time slowing his stride to keep an eye on Rafael and make sure he's keeping up. “Okay, I gotta get a quick shower—you look pretty awake, you think you're up for a card game after that?”
Rafael takes stock of himself.
“Yes!” he says, with an amount of enthusiasm that surprises him. “I believe I am.” He considers. “With the Hastings, or?”
“No!” Rich snorts. “Nah, I wouldn't want you around most of them for that long. Nitro's cool, but so many of those military nutjobs wouldn't know which end of a civilian is up. No, I meant with Sol and everybody.”
“Oh, then yes,” says Rafael. As they walk across the courtyard, he adds, “I kissed Connor. By accident. I hope that’s alright. With you, I mean, as well as with him. He seemed untroubled.”
“You—uh?” says Rich, stride faltering, and gives Rafael a confused smile. “By accident?”
“Yes,” says Rafael. “He’s a very pleasant man. It was nice. He says hello.”
Rich blinks at him before nodding. “Well, that's good. I'm glad! He's a really nice guy.” He pauses, then says carefully, “Uh, you didn't, I'm sure you didn't get the guy all worked up, right? I mean, if you did it's not like it'd be your fault,” he adds to himself, lower, “you're so fucking high, but Carraway never cares…”
“I was very chaste,” says Rafael. “I am, as you said, so fucking high, but not so very foolish as to ruin someone’s night.”
Rich snorts a startled laugh. “Well, cool! That's me told. Here we go,” and he pulls open the back door to usher Rafael inside.
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