by Daryl Banner
The pleasure boy sighs, then shuts his eyes tiredly. Something changes on his face. “I …” He sighs, shivers, then tries again. “I am alone. Everything … Everything is lost.”
Athan studies him for a moment. “What do you mean?”
“My pleasure bar. My riches. My clothes and money and means. It’s all gone.” Edrick’s eyes flap open, but he seems to want to look anywhere but at Athan. “I have a stash I keep in this … abandoned basement. It’s degrading to even admit.” He rolls his eyes and crosses his arms. “Some food. A change of slippers. Whatever little … scraps I could save from the bar. Rone owes me.” Edrick’s eyes turn hard as he brings them back to Athan, his tone changing. “I saved his life when he was at his very bottom. Now I’m at mine, and he owes me. Where does he stay?”
Athan parts his lips to speak, but doesn’t. Is Edrick telling the truth now, or is this just another dramatic performance?
“For fuck’s sake, Lifted boy, it’s the real reason,” Edrick barks at once, annoyed. “I am hungry. I am … fucking wearing the same robe I’ve been wearing for two and a half months since those fucking worthless Guardian raided our bar and shut us down and arrested every member of the staff—everyone I knew and loved, my family, my people—except me.” He spits at the ground suddenly. “I didn’t even know the Guardian fuckers were still around. I thought the Laughing Finger swept all the headquarters off the maps.”
“They’re still operating out of the eleventh,” Athan volunteers suddenly. “Out of Eleven Wings.”
“The hospital? Fuck, what a drag.” Edrick shakes his head and looks off, his eyes catching the light from the moon, which is nearly full tonight. “Oh, the irony. I heard nothing but my client’s pleasured bleating before Guardian burst through our doors. I was so lucky.”
“Tell me something else,” Athan blurts suddenly.
Edrick eyes him. “Something else? What something else?”
“Anything else. Tell me something personal about Rone. Tell it true. Convince me you truly helped him … and that he owes you.”
Edrick’s eyes turn soft. Then, almost gently, he says, “Rone was looking for his sister. This … Wick … was looking for you.”
“I know that. You’ve said it already.”
Edrick purses his lips, annoyed with the interruption, but carries on no matter. “After they left, I … never saw Sniff again. Sorry. Wick. But saw Rone twice more. First time, I advised he phase his sexy way right up into that City to find his sister. Second time I saw him, he’d returned after having found his sister dead. Poor, poor thing.”
Athan’s eyes shrink. Cintha … is dead …?
“He was a mess. I fed him what he wanted. It included chemical instead of food. He only wished to drink, drink, drink. I gave his cock a sucking in an … unofficial exchange of sorts. Even rode it once. Or twice. Or …” Edrick’s words begin to shake, his eyes turning wet. “I took pleasure from him even while he cried, while he … mourned. Even if he wasn’t conscious enough to say no to my advances, I still wanted him … took him. I’m bad, Lifted boy. You’ve no reason in the world to trust me, and surely none to like me either.” A tear crawls down his soft cheek. He wipes it away at once like an annoying fly. “I may have taken Rone for my own pleasures now and then, but I kept everyone else’s dirty stinking fingers off of him. I gave him what he wanted. And took what I wanted. And then he spoke of an item, a syringe … I didn’t quite understand. It was important to him. He went to claim it from the alley he’d dropped it in—the same one I found him in—and then the love of my life made his way back up to that Lifted City after a kiss upon my lips … a kiss I hardly deserved.” Edrick smirks. “Whether you believe it or not, Lifted boy, it is true. Rone kissed me like a lover. It was his goodbye, and the last I saw of him six months ago.”
Six months ago …? Athan’s heart sinks heavily.
“Please … tell me he isn’t dead.” Edrick crosses his arms again, holding them tightly over his chest as if he’s afraid his insides might fall out. “Tell me. Lie to me, if you must. Just lie.”
“I …” Athan swallows hard. He can’t have made all of that up. “I’m sorry to say that I—”
“Lie to me, damn you.”
“I don’t know where Rone is.”
Edrick seems to freeze in place. The wetness of his eyes turns to ice as he stares at Athan like he didn’t hear him.
Athan goes on. “I really don’t. I …” He shifts his weight onto the other foot. “I thought … I thought maybe you knew where he was. I thought maybe something you said might’ve …” Athan shakes his head and shuts his eyes, unable to make any more sense out of his feelings, his whole face going red. “I’m … I’m sorry.”
Suddenly, Athan feels a touch on his arm. He opens his eyes to find Edrick standing right in front of him, the pleasure boy’s hand on his forearm, his soft, wet eyes on Athan’s.
“And … what of your Wick?” the pleasure boy asks sensitively.
Athan fears the boy already suspects the answer, hence the way in which he just asked the question. He finds that he is, surprisingly, unable to answer it.
Instead, Athan takes a different approach entirely: “Come back to the ninth with me, Edrick. We might have a place for you.”
0242 Sedge
Sedge Arwall.
Is unquestionably.
Incorrigibly.
Undeniably.
In love.
With Athan Broadmore.
Sedge watches him from across the room, his eyes so crushed with longing that he might literally melt them away into goo. But then he wouldn’t be able to admire the beautiful shape of Athan. He wouldn’t be able to see his smooth, silky, short golden hair. He wouldn’t be able to watch the cute way his mouth moves when he speaks, or the dimple that sometimes appears when Athan smirks or coughs or lets on one of his polite smiles. He wouldn’t be able to see his big strong arm as the Broadmore boy extends it, offering some other person a handshake.
And it’s the worst kind of pain, to love someone so dearly you know you will never have. Athan is a man grown, eighteen years, and Sedge is but a child.
I just want to hold him. Sedge watches as Athan eats at the other end of the table with his new friend, some slinky, pretty boy he brought back from the eighth. Even the way Athan chews food is so, so, so, sooo cute. I just want to hug him and never let go. Sedge’s eyes are glued to the Broadmore boy, watching as the boy takes a sip from his glass, then nods politely at someone nearby, then offers another helping of food to his new friend. Athan is so giving. Athan is so caring. Athan is so good.
I want to be good.
Sedge sometimes turns into a pile of goo and hides in the deep crevices of Wick’s room. From those crevices, he watches as Athan Broadmore sleeps. He’s not really sleeping, I know, but he pretends to sleep the way the Wick boy apparently slept.
How sweet. How beautiful.
I want to sleep right there next to him.
Would Athan let him? Would Sedge be so daring, so bold as to ask the Broadmore boy if he could cuddle with him and sleep along with him one of these lonely nights? Every night is lonely, so any night will do.
One night, when Sedge is feeling especially brave, he slips his shapeless form into the crevices beneath the very part of the floor that Athan sleeps upon. Sedge blends in between the floorboards as best as he ever has, seeping between the cracks and waiting for the Broadmore boy to return from the pits of the eighth.
He waits and he waits. He waits for three hours, twenty-two minutes, and who-cares-how-many seconds.
And then Athan appears at the door. Sedge knows this because he’s made tiny eyeballs at the very end of his grossly stretched, thin-as-a-crack-in-the-floorboard form. He watches the beauty that is Athan Broadmore as he strips off his sweaty red sleeveless hoodie, kicks off his shoes and socks, peels off his tattered jeans that hang at his hips, and then finally drops his sweaty underwear. Each article of clothing gets delicately folded—Oh, Athan
has such adorable Lifted manners, just like me, just like me—and placed gently in the corner of the room.
Sedge watches Athan’s naked, beautiful form like a work of art. He is a piece of art like they have at the Glassen Viewery. He could be one of the living pieces of art, like that one artist who painted beautiful men and women’s bodies like canvases and posed them upon pedestals. I hope he still does art; I’ve found him the perfect muse. Sedge watches in adoration as Athan stands at the window, his perfect butt cheeks, tapered, muscled backside that spreads up to his wide shoulders, and the back of a cute head of tousled golden blond hair in perfect view.
Then, when Athan finally tires of whatever sights he’s enjoying through the window, at long last, he gently lowers himself to the floor. He gently balls up the red hoodie—the only item of clothing he didn’t fold and stash away—and then lies down and rests his head upon it.
And he is unknowingly resting right on top of Sedge’s shape, who embraces his heavy, muscled weight with love.
This is the best day of my life.
For the entire four hours that Athan Broadmore spends curled up in that room, Sedge enjoys every flinch, shift of his weight, and soft murmur of Athan Broadmore. Sedge fights every temptation to grow an arm out of the floorboard and wrap it around his love.
Why is Athan so sad? Of course, he lost his boyfriend Wick, that much Sedge knows, but why is he still sad? It’s been such a long time, has it not? Sedge lost contact with the little bit of family he had when the Madness fell, and he hasn’t shed a single tear. Sedge lost his best friend Ruena, and he hasn’t shed a single tear. Sedge lost his seat of power in the sky, his seat of respect aside Impis, and all the glorious silks and colors he used to wear, and he hasn’t shed a tear for any of them. Sedge is strong. Why isn’t Athan?
I could be Wick for you, he thinks as he feels Athan’s weight on his shapeless shape. If I had ever met your dead lover Wick, I could just as easily replicate his form. It may take a lot of effort, and it may be so exhausting to keep the shape, but I would do it for you. I would suffer for hours and hours, every day, and look the role of Wick. I am loyal.
Loyal.
That word hurts Sedge everywhere. Loyal. It hurts him so much.
Even if Sedge has betrayed loved ones in the past, doesn’t it still mean something to want to be loyal? I can be good if I try really hard.
I can still be good.
Even after the four hours pass and Athan stirs from his thoughts and rises off the floor, it isn’t enough time for Sedge. He mourns the vacuum of Athan’s heavy, muscled weight on his morphed body at once, desperate to feel it again. Instead, he only rests there between the cracks of the floor and watches as Athan slinks out of the room and into the bathroom next door. He hears the creaky sound of a metal knob turning, and then the spraying water of a shower that has a mind of its own on whether it’ll be cold or warm today.
Sedge is always cold.
I could fill that hole in Athan’s heart. If he just gave me a chance, I could show him how beautiful my love can be.
Sedge has a dream of his own. He sees himself kissing Athan on the lips over and over. Cute kisses. Puffy-lipped kisses. Sedge will be sure to wear all his prettiest silks, so he’s always smooth to the touch and flattering to the eyes. Dashing silks. Powder-enriched cheeks of blush and lavender, like the late Legacist Ambera’s eyes. He will be so beautiful that Athan would never look away.
And he’d give all his love to the Broadmore boy. He’d give so much love to him that dear Athan would never think on Wick again. I’ll fix him because he’ll never have a reason to hurt anymore, not with me by his side.
He might have said the same words about Ruena Netheris.
He might have said the same words about Impis Lockfyre.
But this time, he means them. He truly, truly, truly, truly means them.
I would never betray Athan Broadmore. Not ever.
The next day when Athan is gone to the pits, Sedge scours the house and turns up two photographs of the Lesser family. He doesn’t know a single one of them, but he’s learned enough to know that the second youngest is Wick. He studies the Lesser he assumes is Wick, memorizing his face and his shoulders and his hair.
Sedge takes the photo to the bathroom upstairs. He stares at himself in the mirror while he changes his face, pulling his head long and his ears out. He squints his eyes and concentrates until his hair is the right shade of brown. He tries so desperately to shape his arms and shoulders like Wick in the picture.
He has to be perfect. He has to do it perfectly. Athan deserves the absolute best effort from Sedge.
Hours he spends in front of that mirror. The entire day, in fact. Even when he hears Prat and Arrow talking heatedly downstairs, he ignores them and concentrates on the mirror.
Even when the scent of the evening’s dinner finds its way up the stairs and through the window, Sedge ignores it—and the growl of his stomach. He doesn’t need to eat until he has perfected Wick’s form at last.
And when Athan sees me, he will be so happy. He will be so happy with me, he won’t need the red jacket anymore. He can hold me in his four-hour slumbers. He can hold me and love me, and I can hold him and love him right back.
He even lost his older brother Radley, whom Ruena had eyes for. The thought makes Sedge’s Wick-face frown with sadness. Is this what Wick looks like when he frowns? Sedge practices several times more, frowning in all sorts of ways with his new face. Then he bites his lip and makes an adjustment, willing his ears to shrink a bit. Sedge looks down at the photograph, checking his reflection for the thousandth time. It must be perfect …
Athan’s older brother is dead now. His whole family. And Wick. Everyone he knew and loved. That means Athan Broadmore’s heart is empty now, and it has all the room in the world for me to be invited in.
Oh, how love is the very best and the very worst kind of agony.
0243 Halvesand
It’s a familiar voice that stops him from turning the corner. He plants his feet and inclines an ear, listening.
“This is all a mess. This is all such a horrible, horrible mess.”
“If I wanted your opinion,” replies the ever-patient voice of his mother, “I would have requested that an envoy of Guardian combed the streets for you and escorted you to me. As it turns out, no such envoy was sent for you.”
“Oh, you … you and your jokes and your silliness. If ever there was a time for you to be serious, Ellena. Just for one moment, I’d—”
“I take the subject of my sons quite seriously,” Halves’ mother answers flippantly. “The most seriously. Now I had offered you a cup of citrus tea, and still you refuse to give me an answer.”
“You don’t even know where Lionis is! My dear, sweet Lionis!”
“I’ll take that as a no. No citrus tea. Very well.”
The sound of feet shuffling is heard. Halves doesn’t have time to back away before his mother comes around the corner and nearly crashes into him. She stops, eyes wide, and says nothing.
“Doesn’t it break your heart?” comes Aunt Cilla’s voice from the lobby around the corner. “To not know where he is?”
His mother, wearing a loose white blouse and blue pants, her hair coming down her shoulders in tangles, stares right into Halves’ eyes when she answers her sister. “It breaks my heart every day. To not know where my sons are.”
“A terrible thing. It’s a mother’s job to protect them from harm.”
Halves flinches when his mother carefully brings a hand to his cheek, caressing it. “A terrible thing,” she agrees softly.
Halves frowns. It wasn’t your fault, he wants to say, but only finds himself staring into her eyes, which seem strangely aloof and unaffected by her sister’s unwarranted berating.
“You shouldn’t have left my house at all,” Aunt Cilla decides, her voice turning to stone. “Lionis probably went searching for you, poor boy. I looked out for you better than you look out for yourself. It’s been tha
t way since we were children.”
Halves touches his mother’s shoulder reassuringly, then comes around the corner to make himself known. His Aunt Cilla, a slender woman with half the beauty and twice the hair of his mother, stands next to a couch she was likely sitting in, then rose from the moment her sister made to leave.
Upon seeing Halves, she sucks in a breath of air and slams a hand to her chest. “I didn’t know you were there!” she protests. “You appeared like a ghost, you did!”
Halves finds a joke resting in those words somewhere. I am half dead. But he has no way to convey or appreciate the humor, even if it only lives in his own head.
His aunt crosses the room at once and brings her arms to him, then realizes the difficulty in giving him a hug with the neck armor and his open-backed chestplate to contend with. After two feeble struggles of the placement of her arms, she gives up.
“Be careful with him!” his mother shouts suddenly, appearing at his side. “His neck—”
“I didn’t touch a thing I wasn’t supposed to touch!” Aunt Cilla protests, annoyed. “I only meant to hug him. After all this poor boy’s been through, it’s a shame he’s—”
“He’s no poor boy, I assure you. Halvesand has as much strength in him as—”
“Oh, enough with this. I come here to support you, and all I get is fire and spit.” Aunt Cilla makes a dismissive gesture at her sister, then walks around them to saunter off down the hall. “I will go to see this other nephew of mine, and the brave young woman who’s to make me a Great Aunt, so I hear.”
The sharp footfalls of her shoes echo as she disappears behind Halvesand. He does not make the effort to turn his whole body to witness her sour departure.
That’s when a tired-eyed man in the waiting room, who Halves didn’t notice until now, speaks up. “You … must forgive my moody wife,” he implores, leaning back in his chair. He has a great big belly, a short, clean, well-kempt straw-yellow beard, and no hair atop his head. Thin glasses rest at the tip of his nose. “She’s been a changed woman since the day Lionis left for the market and never returned.”
