by Pixie Unger
“Some board games would be good,” I hazarded.
Erika snorted. “Yeah. I want a sex swing and you want to play Scrabble! That’s just us in a nutshell.”
“Well, maybe not Scrabble,” I conceded.
----
It wasn’t like shopping. It was like walking through an airplane hanger full of other people’s stuff; it felt like stealing. They had everything, alright, but none of it was sorted. Some still had the tags, but most of it had belonged to someone before it got here. And there was miles of it, all spread out in rows on the floor.
Even Erika’s enthusiasm dampened.
Some of it had been vaguely sorted by shape or sometimes by colour, only rarely by use. We had made it most of the way down the first row when Erika sagged. “We should just go.”
I stood still for a moment and tried to think. “I can’t look for stuff for a house before we know what the house will be like or if there will still be stuff in it.” I took a deep breath and continued, “But everything is here. I’m going to keep looking in case I find anything that was mine.”
Erika just looked at me in horror. “I just …. I can’t. I gotta go,” she announced before she fled.
I could understand that. I hadn’t known her before I got here. I couldn’t help her, I might walk right past her favourite thing in the whole world and not know. I walked and walked, up one row and down another, followed by two worried-looking orcs. In the end, I hadn’t seen anything that I could definitively say had been mine.
“Like nothing?” Romeo asked when I told them I was ready to go.
I just shrugged. “None of it looks like mine. Mostly I’m just amazed at how much there is.”
“Can look again tomorrow,” Romeo suggested. “Lots more.”
I winced. That didn’t make it better. Shaking my head, I replied, “I just want to go home and eat and rest.” I thought some more. “Do you know when Iago and Tybalt will be back?”
“If you need them, I will get them,” Mac declared.
As we walked from the building, I wondered what would happen if I did try to get them to come home. Surely the warden wouldn’t approve of them abandoning their posts because some defective human was worried. “I don’t want to distract them if they’re at work. You guys don’t get much time to do that anymore.”
They shared a slightly cagey look and I decided I really wasn’t mentally prepared to deal with whatever that was right now. I was busy being surprised that it was already dusk. “That took longer than I thought.”
Romeo did something weird with his hand, then when I looked at him, he very slowly reached for my shoulder, only to have his arm knocked away by a furious-looking Mac.
“It’s okay,” I explained. “I’ll tell you if you need to stop.”
Romeo was a lot more brazen this time. I half expected him to stick out his tongue at Mac, he looked so smug. Mac just looked worried. That was how I ended up walking home with Romeo’s arm around me while I held Mac’s hand. Orcs stared at us, but orcs always stared at me or any human not in the compound. I hate to say I’d gotten used to it, but I kinda had.
We ended up sitting on my bed, lit faintly by keeping the bathroom lights on. “I hope wherever we end up has more electricity,” I murmured, watching Mac win at cards. I wondered if I could catch him cheating if I was paying closer attention, but I didn’t really care that much.
“What were you looking for today?” Mac asked carefully.
I shrugged. “I don’t even know. Something familiar, I guess. I’m not even sure what I had before you got here that would be of any use to me now. It was weird seeing all that stuff that belonged to people and the people are just gone.”
“Nothing you miss?” Mac whispered.
I looked around the room. It was almost like a zoo enclosure. It looked like a human habitat, but it wasn't. The dressers were as hollow as the fake snow cliffs we had built for polar bears. “Fluffy towels. I miss the really soft and fluffy towels. And a good hairbrush, not just a comb.”
“I made you sad,” Romeo mumbled, setting down his cards.
I looked up at him. “No. I’m just sad. This isn’t anything you did.”
“Erika,” Mac suggested.
Romeo shook his head. “No, not her either. Sad before Erika got here.”
I tried to figure out how to explain it when I didn’t really understand it myself. “I’m still trying to figure out how to make this all work. I really was just looking for cuddles last night.” I became aware of his look of panic even as I was saying, “but that was really nice! And all of that made me realize how lonely I was.”
“Less lonely when we have a house with Erika,” Romeo suggested.
“Erika doesn’t wash my back in the shower,” I pointed out. Romeo looked smug; Mac looked at the window. “Do you think the others will be back tonight?”
That made Mac focus on me again. “Do you need them to sleep?”
I shook my head slowly. “I'm not going to wait up for them. But the three of us could sleep in this bed if we were cozy.”
Mac’s eyebrows went up. “Cuddle?” he asked, his voice carefully flat.
I blushed a little. “Just cuddles,” I mumbled. “I’m not going to take advantage.”
Neither of them showed any sign of understanding there, but Mac asked, “On the covers or under the covers?”
“Under the covers, but not under my clothes,” I offered. Then I wondered why it felt like an offer and not a firm rule.
“Will you be more sad in the morning?” Romeo asked.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. Yes, I probably would be, but it wasn’t worth making a big deal about it now. I was just tired. Today had just been exhausting. “I need a new sleep shirt. My other one needs a wash,” I remembered.
I swear Romeo chuckled under his breath at that, but Mac gave me one of his.
It took more coordination to get everyone into bed than I expected. The guys were clearly torn between wanting me in the middle and not wanting to box me in. I wasn’t as afraid of that anymore, but I couldn’t pinpoint when that had happened. In the end, I just slid to the middle of the bed and told them to turn off the lights when they tucked in.
After a moment, the bed dipped on one side and someone slid in next to me. I realized it was Romeo when he put his arm around me and asked, “You still tell me before I need to stop, okay?”
I nodded in the dark, then felt like an idiot and spoke so that Mac could hear me. “Yes. I’ll tell both of you when I need you to stop.”
That was when the bed dipped on the other side and Mac slid in. He must have been huddled on the very edge of the mattress because the bed wasn’t that big compared to the size of them, yet somehow he wasn’t touching me at all. “Slide over so you don’t fall off,” I chided him.
“Can I touch?” he murmured.
It was weird, Romeo would have sounded nervous. He had sounded nervous when he asked me. Mac sounded completely unphased, which did not seem to match his earlier hesitation. As I thought about that, I realized my silence had gone on too long.
“Yes.” Then I added, “Mac? Is that your doctor voice?”
This time it was his turn at awkward silence until Romeo asked, “Why you think that?”
“Why do you think that?” Mac corrected, possibly asking for himself.
“Because you were really uncomfortable when Romeo put his arm around me earlier, but now you don’t sound bothered at all. I just wondered if you were keeping calm so you didn’t scare me,” I explained.
Romeo propped himself up on his elbows, “You— Are you scared?”
“No. You aren’t being scary yet.”
“If we are scary, you will say?” Romeo continued, asking the same thing as earlier in a different way. I wondered if he was expecting a different answer.
“Yeah. I’ll tell you if I get scared,” I assured him.
“I don’t want to scare you, Mina,” Mac growled as he slid a scant inch closer.
/> “I know. And I don’t want you to fall out of bed,” I added pointedly.
He got the hint and wiggled a little closer. “Still bigger than you. You are not prey, though.”
I nodded, trying to relax against Romeo who was still half-sitting up. When that didn’t work and he showed no sign of laying down, I rolled over onto my stomach and curled into what a first aid class years ago had called recovery position. I was starting to drift off, but there was no sign of them settling in.
Eventually Mac spoke. “Mina? Want my metal gone?”
“Hmm?”
“I have metal in my skin. Do you want me to remove it?”
“It’s your skin,” I mumbled around a yawn. “It has to be your decision.”
“But do you like it?” he pressed.
“It’s part of you and I’ve gotten used to you.” It wasn’t just him, either. None of them were as scary as they had been that first night. “All of you.”
“Tybalt is still an asshole,” Romeo grumbled.
I snorted and laughed. “No, he just needs to grow up a little. You need to help him with that.” I remembered what I had gone into his room for last night. “I don’t think he has learned to be a responsible adult yet.” I yawned again. “Bet he never had to share his toys,” I mumbled as I felt sleep catching hold of me.
Mac put his fingers against my back, one on each side of my spine. Then he carefully drew them down my back, tracing where the line of implanted studs would be on him. It was strangely nice.
----
I woke up when someone got out of bed, but I was hugging someone else who was still warm, so I pretty much fell right back to sleep.
Eventually I woke up with a pattern of barbell piercings pressed into my cheek. I sat up a little to watch the look of adoration on Mac’s face morph into horror.
I sat up rather more quickly and looked around in fear. “What’s wrong?” I asked.
I felt a finger gently stroke my cheek.
“I hurt you,” Mac whispered, sounding appalled.
I frown. “No? You didn’t. Why?”
He stroked my cheek again. “You are marked.”
I sat up and touched my cheek. I could feel the sort of pressure marks you get from your underwear or the wrinkles in your pillow, but it didn’t hurt. “Give me a moment,” I muttered, and headed to the bathroom to look in the mirror. “It’s fine,” I assured him, giving them a rub. “It’ll fade when I’m moving some more.” I turned to head out the door to find him watching me from just outside it.
“Do orcs not get that?” I asked.
He shook his head a little. “Skin is thicker on us. Humans are fragile.” He fell silent, but kept watching me.
“What?” I demanded, then immediately felt guilty for snapping at him.
“I was told I had to take out the metal so I didn’t hurt you with it. I didn’t,” he explained. “Now you are hurt.”
I rolled my eyes. “It doesn’t hurt.”
“It looks like I hurt you. Like I marked you on purpose.”
I shook my head. “You didn’t. If you don’t want people to see, then we just hang out in here for a little while until it fades. Who told you to take the piercings out?”
He threw me a noncommittal shrug.
“Go sit on the bed,” I suggested. “You can tell me how you ended up with that many piercings in the first place.” That earned me another shrug, but I wasn’t happy with letting that slide. “You don’t have to tell me,” I offered, “but I bet I think it’s something worse than it is if you don’t.”
He smiled a little and shook his head. “Our stories make you sad.”
I narrowed my eyes and tried to think of the worst possible explanation I could come up with. “Were you tortured and they welded you back together instead of getting you care or something?”
He didn’t reply, but his face went very still.
“You’re joking! Please tell me that wasn’t what happened!”
“That isn’t exactly what happened,” he agreed.
“Someone did that to you?” I gasped. “Why not take them out then?”
“Someone cut me. A lot of someones cut me. I just decorated to … “ he trailed off, helplessly. “So the scars would be mine, not theirs.”
He was right, that did make me sad.
“The ones down your spine...” I was speaking slowly as I tried to remember. “...they didn’t have scars with them.” Suddenly, I was wondering about his dick.
He nodded, “I got those first. The others came later.”
“But you want to keep them, otherwise you would have taken them out when whoever told you that, right?”
He looked up at the ceiling to consider that. “I don’t know. I don’t want them if they hurt you. If they make you sad. I don’t want anyone to see those marks on you and think I did them on purpose. I have done them on other orcs on purpose before. Even when they didn’t want them.”
I winced a little at that. Piercing seemed better than giving someone an unwanted tattoo, but it was still a huge step up from just drawing on them with a pen or lipstick.
Mac reached up and cupped my cheek, stroking it idly with his thumb.
“Would you take off your shirt so I can see?” I asked.
He gave me a teasing look. “Would you?”
I snorted. “I guess the joke ‘I’ll show you mine’ transcends species.” Mac just looked confused. “Or maybe not,” I hedged. “Can you explain what you meant?”
He looked at the floor and whispered, “Will you take off my shirt?”
“This shirt?” I asked, plucking at the hem of my night shirt.
His eyes widened for an instant. “If you like. Or the one I’m wearing.”
That made me laugh a genuine giggling laugh and earned me a smile from Mac. He pulled off his shirt and sat up a little straighter. The piercings swirled around him. They captured the slash scars but continued where there were none. He was right though, you saw the body modification and it helped you ignore the scars. I tried to mentally subtract all the metal. He was still built, but without the metal, the slash scars would be part of a much bigger pattern of scarification.
I realized he was watching me to gauge my expression. I gave him a smile to reach out and run my hands over his chest. The little ends from the barbells felt odd under my hands. Almost as though they were snagging on my fingers rather than letting my hands glide. I could trace the metal bar under his skin.
“These aren’t very deep,” I noted, “Aren’t they at risk of getting pulled out?”
He was watching me with his pupils wide and his breath was caught in his throat.
“Oh.” I let my hands fall.
He caught and held them for an instant before letting go. “We will not hurt you. I do not believe you will hurt me.”
That was when Romeo knocked on the door. “Breakfast is here.”
I nodded and took a step back, passing Mac his shirt. “I should get dressed.”
He shrugged, pulled on his shirt and left. I realized that if breakfast was here, Erika would not be far behind. I was regretting that. I still needed some time alone to think.
I was getting dressed when it hit me. I had a lifetime of conditioning teaching me that you only dated one guy at a time. You only married one man. It was cheating to sleep with someone else once you picked a partner. I was struggling with the idea, while they had the same lifetime of conditioning that they needed to share a partner.
If they even got one.
That was also weird. The expectation was that you would find a partner and get married. It was one of those things, pre-contact, that was just what you did. The idea that the default was being a bachelor was different. I wondered if they had a word for spinster? Then I wondered what happened if you were a lesbian.
I realized I had been staring at my shoes for a while. Time to put them on and go eat.
----
The orcs really pushed us at breakfast, wanting to know what things w
e did in our spare time before the world fell apart. Erika admitted she used to play the piano. I laughed and said that at least my high school band time spent on trumpet was vaguely portable. Neither one of us was particularly interested in picking up our instruments again. The guys didn’t seem to find this helpful.
Finally, I just broke down and asked, “What are you expecting? Are you looking for useful things we can help with?”
They all looked at Mac, who coughed. “Iago would be better at explaining, but humans need small jobs to make them happy.”
I frowned. Erika looked confused for a moment before she figured it out. “Do you mean a hobby? Something to do for fun?”
There was some cautious agreement to that.
I just shook my head. “I hate to rain on your parade, but that isn't going to work. We barely have electricity. If someone wants a gaming system, how will you manage that?”
Erika considered that. “That may be true, but sewing and baking would be useful.”
I thought about it. “You would need to have gardeners, spinners, and weavers first. Plus someone to take care of sheep or know what to do with flax or whatever.”
She nodded. “Like, really, a music teacher would be so awesome, if we could find intact instruments. Maybe not a piano, but guitars or drums or something.”
“I can play a little guitar,” I admitted. “But I had a phone app to tune it and I’m not great at playing by ear. I would rather have a library, to be honest.”
“You said there was one in the school,” Erika mused.
I rolled my eyes. “Yeah. Heavily censored and for high school kids. If you want to read vampire books, I’m sure you can find something. I was looking for the mystery section and there was a single shelf, maybe ten books all together. But they had six copies of Lord of the Flies.”
“Hmm,” Lucky made that soft noise to draw attention to himself. “Some of the humans are going to build their own houses. We can do that, if you like.”
Erika just laughed. “I have zero skills for construction. And besides, Iago and Tybalt are out looking for houses for us, right?”
