I'm Stunned and Sick

 Darlins, I don't even know what to say. I don't understand my own country. I don't understand how the election went down the way it did. I don't know why people decided to vote for someone so hateful over someone so hopeful. I don't know what this is going to mean for the US, or for my family. We're pretty standard American fare, but my husband works at a government department that this man has sworn he'll get rid of. He researches the sorts of things that are important to combating climate change, yet this man says climate change is fake. I likely won't ever need to worry about having an abortion, but my daughter is seven. She can't just stay in our blue state for her whole life, and who knows how long the status quo there will last?

I'm shaking, and crying, and scared. I have to try and keep it together for my kid's sake, but I'm genuinely very stressed for the future now.

If you disagree with me, don't let me know. I don't want to deal with that today. If you're feeling the same things, honey. I'm so sorry. We've got to find our people where we can and hold on tight.

Hadrian's Colony: Chapter Eight, Part Two

 Notes: Let's get down to business! Also, stiff upper lip, my fellow Americans, we'll get through this no matter what comes next. I'm so fucking ready for the election to be over, but also, PLEASE VOTE!

Title: Hadrian's Colony: Chapter Eight, Part Two

***

Chapter Eight, Part Two

 

It was so hard to stay steady. All Kieron wanted to do was leap up and confront the woman who’d been both so much, and so little, to him as a child. It wasn’t as though he had a flood of positive memories associated with her; she’d barely ever visited him in the creche, and then when he joined the older recruits in the capitol, she’d given her father free rein to treat Kieron like everyone else—or in his case, even worse.

But she’d saved his life. She’d put him on a ship and gotten him and the other survivors out of there before the end. She’d clasped her hands on his shoulders, the closest thing to a hug she’d been capable of back then, and squeezed hard before walking away. For all their complex relationship, for all her myriad faults and Kieron’s dramatic overcompensation, she had been his mother, and he’d loved her.

Now she was the person who’d shot first, shot Catie, unforgivable even if she didn’t realize the ship was sentient. Now she was holding a gun that could kill the son she’d saved. Now he’d learned she was alive, damn it, alive after all this time spent wondering and mourning and looking back.

Kieron wanted to throttle her. He wanted to wrap his arms around her and hold her close. He opted for leaning back in the chair a little harder, so Doubles’ spinning stabilized. “Carlisle,” he said with a nod.

“That’s Captain to you.”

“Not my captain.”

“Clearly not, or you’d know how to behave.”

Ouch. After a childhood spent disappointing this woman with his behavior, that hit home in a way it wouldn’t for his alter ego. And she seemed to see it, arching one grey eyebrow at him knowingly.

“So you know you’re a bad crewmember, then. Maybe you were left behind deliberately, hmm?”

“I was, but not for the reason you’re thinking,” Kieron replied. “Most people would prioritize the life of a child over that of an adult, after all.”

His mothe—no, Carlisle, she was just Carlisle to him right now—narrowed her eyes. “There’s no way you brought a child to this place.”

“You presume we had a choice when we did it.” They’d chosen very deliberately, in fact, but she didn’t need to know anything even close to the truth. Fuck the feeling-out phase; Kieron needed to stop sparring and start working toward a compromise that would end up with everyone living. “We were due to rendezvous with the rest of our exploratory party on the other side of the planetary cluster, but we had a mechanical malfunction that led to us crashing here.”

Carlisle scoffed. “No one wants anything to do with this planetary cluster, not even the Drifters. The Central System gave up on developing it a long time ago.”

“Doesn’t mean there aren’t still people out there who could have a use for a home base that’s close enough to System space to get the conveniences and far enough away to avoid most of the notice,” he replied.

“And you expect me to believe that’s you?” She looked him up and down. “No one goes in for development like this without a damn good reason. For some it’s religious fanaticism or modification cult, for others it’s Naturalism or some other ingrained sickness. You look pretty healthy to me.”

“I never said it was about me, did I?”

She stroked her chin thoughtfully. “What’s wrong with your kid, then?”

She’s smart. “She exists,” Kieron replied with perfect honestly. “And she’s not supposed to be able to. A lot of people would like to take her apart and figure out what makes her tick, and I’m not going to stand for that.”

“Boss,” Doubles interrupted, his arms going limp. “I’m feelin’ kinda sick here.”

“Just a little longer,” she said, not looking away from Kieron. “So you and your crew made an emergency landing here, you say. And one of those crewmembers is a child.”

“She’s my daughter,” Kieron emphasized. “Family.” He watched Carlisle weight whether what he was saying was true or not, let her spin out scenarios that had her do everything from killing him here and now to helping him and his ship get off-planet. There was a lot of space in between those two extremes, and Kieron needed to be on guard against a bad deal. He began to rock his chair idly, and Doubles groaned as the movement jostled him.

“You’re part of a larger party?”

“Yes.” People know where we are. They’ll come looking for us. You can’t just get rid of us and get rid of all your problems.

“Hmm.” She tilted her head slightly. “How about this. You use the comm on our ship to reach out to your family and reunite with them. We can help fix what we inadvertently broke and you’ll get to check on their welfare, then we’ll work on getting you off-planet.”

Kieron shook his head. “No deal. Once you have all of us in the same place, there’s no assurance you can give me against killing us all just to take the ship for scrap and denying any knowledge of our presence here if someone asks.”

“I’m not that mercenary.”

He laughed. “You are literally a mercenary. Or a pirate, I suppose, but guns like those speak to planetside engagements, not shipside. Don’t try to sell me a lion and tell me it’s a catterpet.”

“Boss…” Doubles slurred. “Think I’m startin’ to see things…”

“Just a moment longer, Doubles,” Carlisle replied. “Fine. Believe it or not, I was trying to be polite. Your ship is far too small to be useful to us, and obviously not well protected. But if you don’t want our help retrieving your family, that’s your call. We can let you comm someone in the rest of your party instead and get a timeline together for your retrieval.”

“Boss…”

“Still no guarantee there.”

“You haven’t earned a guarantee,” Carlisle snapped at him. “Not after you took out my guy and used him as bait. You’re lucky I don’t have Trapper shoot you from outside and take my chances rescuing Doubles from a fall.”

Kieron shrugged. “Bit worse than a fall going on down there.”

“Oh please, there’s no—”

“BOSS!” Doubles shrieked, and a second later he jackknifed his body in half as a reptilian launched itself up through the hole. It snagged its teeth in the back of his jacket and pulled, hard.

Kieron didn’t stop to think. He jumped out of the chair and whipped it toward the reptilian, lodging the seat under the huge creature’s right foreleg. Doubles was screaming and Carlisle was trying to grab him, but she was on one of the weakest parts of the floor. Kieron saw her consider using her gun, then rethink it; the odds of her shooting her own man in the struggle were too high, especially given that it would take more than one shot to do in this monster.

Kieron pulled his knife a moment before Doubles’ jacket finally tore free from his body, then jumped forward as the reptilian fell. He sliced through the rope while he wrapped his other arm around Doubles’ waist, then tugged him in close as he landed them on their backs the floor on the far side of the hole.

Shit, still unstable! Kieron rolled them toward the door, feeling the floor start to fall out from under them as he did. It took a strong hand on the back of his collar to pull them free of the building entirely, and then there was the barrel of a gun against his forehead.

“I ought to kill you for that stunt,” Carlisle snapped. If he’d been a little more stable, less tired or worried or not staring at the face of the woman who’d given him life, Kieron might have stayed calm when he went to answer. Instead—

“Do it,” Kieron taunted. “Fucking do it, then, and when I jam this knife through your guy’s windpipe on my way out you can look back on this as a teachable motherfucking moment, can’t you?”

Carlisle stared hard at him. Doubles wheezed in alarm at the knife pressed against his throat, his face still purple from the pooling blood. Right beside them, the creche began to collapse. Kieron didn’t blink, though, and after another moment Carlisle holstered the rifle across her back. “Fine.” She grabbed Doubles and helped pull him to his feet. “But don’t try my patience any further, Mr. Desfontaines. I expect you to trust us after this.”

“As much as you trust me,” Kieron replied.

Just as much as you trust me.

Lord of Unkindness Ch. 16

 Notes: Happy Halloween, my darlins! Let's have something sugary sweet today :)

Title: Lord of Unkindness Ch. 16

***

Chapter Sixteen

 

He feels so alive.

Ciro wasn’t dead before, but he didn’t really feel like he was living either. Stress and pain, anger and power created a maelstrom in his body that left him with so few good things that the goodness he feels now is magnified a hundred times over. His skin tingles everywhere he can still feel it—not in his fingers, sadly, although his palms can detect the warmth and smoothness of Angelo’s skin and revel in it—and every breaths is tinged with the taste of the man in his lap. He’s heat and salt and the faint bitterness of cologne long gone stale, but his eagerness is sugar-sweet and the sounds he makes are like caramel, decadent and clinging. Ciro holds on tightly, maybe too tight as he devours the sounds Angelo makes, swallowing them with his body and mind. Somewhere to the right, he hears his magic caw with pleasure.

Angelo winds a hand into Ciro’s hair and holds him still as he plunders his mouth with his tongue, grinding down with his hips. He’s hard already while Ciro isn’t quite there yet; too much sleep deprivation, too little food. But hard or not, it feels incredible to have Angelo thrust against him, to have the evidence of his desire pressed against Ciro’s battered body.

It’s almost like their first time again—Angelo was so many firsts for Ciro. They’d gotten off in the back of Ciro’s car while they were out on “official business” away from the Hambly’s tower, and it had been the most subversive and delightful thing Ciro had ever done up to that point in his life. He’d thought it was the danger, at first, that made it so good—if they’d been caught it would have ended so badly for him.

Now he knows the truth. It’s not the danger, it’s not the sneaking around and the excitement and the potential terror of the reveal. The only terror he feels now is the thought of being pulled away from Angelo for any reason. He wants to stay, he’s desperate to stay, so desperate that he doesn’t realize who’s making the whimpering sounds filling the air until Angelo kisses him firmly and pulls back.

“I’m here,” he whispers, and Ciro’s on the verge of falling apart again because Angelo is here, he’s here and he saved Ciro, has saved him twice now, and he doesn’t feel like he deserves it but he knows that’s an argument he’ll never win. Ciro deliberately chooses lust over every other feeling storming inside of him, twists them until they’re lying down on the couch and he’s on top of Angelo, longer than him but lighter, light enough that he feels a bit like one of his own birds, hollow-boned and fragile.

Whatever Angelo sees in Ciro’s face, he ignores it for lust as well, and Ciro is so grateful he could cry. Angelo twines their legs together and pulls Ciro down hard before biting the tender skin just below his ear. “Do you remember how wet you used to get for me?” he asks. “So wet I wondered if you’d come already before I even got my hands on you the first time, remember? All I had to do was run my fingers over your dick and I could jerk you off.”

Ciro remembers. He’d been so embarrassed for Angelo to reach inside his pants and bring his hand out wet and glistening; he’d bitten his lip so hard it almost bled. Angelo had used one sticky fingertip to free his flesh from his teeth and kiss him before shoving his hand back into Ciro’s pants and stroking him in his strong, tight grip until Ciro came not a minute later. He’d never said anything mocking, just used Ciro’s spend to stroke himself, show Ciro how he liked it, then let him take over.

“I wanted you to fuck my mouth,” Ciro says, and Angelo’s hips jump. “The second I saw your cock. You were wrapping my hand around it but all I wanted to do was suck you inside and let you fuck my face until you came.”

“You weren’t ready for that…”

“No,” Ciro agrees, “but I would have let you do it. I probably would have cried a little when you hit the back of my throat, but I would have loved it too.”

“Astaga,” Angelo groans. “You were so fucking new. I didn’t want to break you.”

“And now I’m all used up,” Ciro says mockingly, in part to distract him from the orgasm racing toward him after nothing more than dry humping, and in part to get this out in the open. He hasn’t been celibate. He’s fucked around, and even though there was never anything formal between him and Angelo, he feels like he should have been better. Like he should have held himself apart for the other man, kept some part of himself sacred instead of fucking random men in alleys when he needed to scratch an itch. “I didn’t wait for you.”

“Why would you?” Angelo replies, pushing Ciro back a little so he can meet his eyes. “We didn’t make promises back then.”

“I don’t want you to think I’m something I’m not,” Ciro insists. “I’m—I’m not a good person. None of us Hamblys are, and now I’m not even a—”

He finds their positions switched before he can finish the sentence, air knocked out of him as his back pressed down into the soft surface of the couch and Angelo presses into him from above. His lover’s eyes are bright, his expression is fierce, and he has a halo of golden tendrils that make him look like an avenging angel.

“I don’t care what you were,” Angelo snaps, angry—but not at Ciro. “I’m not here with you now because of your family, or some imaginary version of you, or what I think I might get from you. I’m here because I can’t stop thinking about you, Ciro. I’ve never been able to stop. You’re always on my mind, and it wrecked me not to know what happened to you. And now you’re here, and you want me.”

“Yes,” Ciro agrees.

“And I want you back. That’s enough.” For now, Ciro hears very clearly in the body language between them. He knows Angelo will ask more of him, but the urgency of that is nothing compared to how much he wants to come. He nods frantically when Angelo rubs his hand over the front of his jeans, sighs with relief when he pulls down the zipper and draws Ciro’s wet, shining cock out from his briefs, then chokes on air when Angelo glides down his body and sucks his dick into his mouth.

“Oh god.” Ciro gets the sense that Angelo is laughing, but he can’t focus on that, not when everything feels so amazingly good. Angelo’s tongue pressed against the base of his tip, swirling around and delving into the slit, heat and wet and pressure and so much good that he can’t help but thrust, and Angelo just takes it, he always lets Ciro in, always lets him have so much and he doesn’t deserve it but he can’t stop and—

Coming is so intense, so pleasurable, so much. It washes over Ciro like Angelo’s golden light, blinding and warm and beautiful, and he knows he’s got to sound like he’s dying when in reality this is the most he’s felt alive for far too long. God, god, god, oh god—

“Just me,” Angelo murmurs against his mouth, and Ciro can taste himself there now, taste the evidence of their shared desire like a fucking drug, and when he realizes that Angelo is jerking himself off he wants to tell him not to, to let Ciro do it, but the truth is he’s about to pass out.

He settles for wrapping his legs around Angelo and pulling him in closer, letting him see the truth in his eyes and hear it in his voice when he says, “Fuck, I love you.”

Angelo bows, bends in two like a reed in a windstorm, a harsh moan scraping past his throat as he comes in a rush. His spend stains the cloth between them but Ciro hardly cares, he can’t care about anything except the sheer relief he feels from being honest, the pleasure still wracking him from coming, and the sure knowledge that he’s about to pass out from fatigue.

Yep. It’s time to pay the piper. The last thing he sees is the fuzzy outline of his bird settling on the arm of the couch just over his head as he finally loses the fight against exhaustion.

Hadrian's Colony: Chapter Eight, Part One

 Notes: Back to the main story! Let's have a revelation I know some of you saw coming ;)

Title: Hadrian's Colony: Chapter Eight, Part One

***

Chapter Eight, Part One

 

Against all odds, Kieron did make it to the creche before his targets did. Or at least, that was what his readout said; no heat signatures visible, and Kieron was positive they wouldn’t hesitate to fire on him if they got the chance to do so. It helped that, for all his height, Doubles was a pretty light guy. It took only five minutes to carry him to the building, and it the work of just a glance to figure out a way to make sure the pirates talked first and shot later when they got here.

Kieron, now better aware of the precarious situation with the floor, stood back in a defensible corner of the room adjacent to a door where he could retreat if needed. His hostage was a different story. Kieron used his length of survival rope to tie a knot around Doubles’ ankles, thread the rope over an exposed beam in the ceiling, and then with a few heaves and a bit of a balancing act with his own bodyweight on the other end of the rope that he finally settled by tying the free end to an old chair and sitting in it, he’d taken advantage of a rather nice pit trap.

Not a second too soon. He’d just sat back into the chair when a red light appeared in the center of his chest. Kieron couldn’t see the shooter, but they had a clear shot through the front door he and Elanus had used earlier. Their ship had to be close…

How far did Catie and Elanus get? Are they okay? Did they manage to land safely?

“I don’t recommend it,” Kieron said into the com in Doubles’ helmet, one hand on his pulse rifle and the other resting on the backpack in his lap. Blobby was in there, with just enough of him poking out the top to use his recording equipment. Kieron didn’t know if any of the footage would be useable, but it was better to have it and not need it, he assumed.

“Bold of you to think I care what you recommend.” That was the woman again, cool and controlled.

“You do if you want to save your guy here.”

“What makes you so sure that I do?”

Kieron smiled. “You already had the chance to kill me, and you didn’t take it. Someone on your crew values this guy’s life, even if you don’t.”

There was a pause on the other side of the com, probably for a discussion but maybe for a scuffle if he was lucky, and then she was back. “It doesn’t look like you’ve been taking good care of him. How do I know he’s still alive?”

Kieron resisted the urge to roll his eyes. “Use your thermal cameras to verify.”

“You could fake a heat signature.”

“With what?” he demanded. “My portable heating unit? Putting him into my gear? Do we look like the same size to you? Be serious.” His patience, sorely tested, wasn’t tried further as Doubles groaned audibly and began to blink his eyes. “If you want to deal, come deal with me face to face,” Kieron said. “Don’t try to send someone around the back, I’ve boobytrapped it.” He hadn’t, but they didn’t need to know that.

“Let my man go first, then we’ll talk.”

Kieron tisked. “Oh, you don’t want me to let him go right now, I think. He’d be in for quite a rough ride.” He glanced theatrically toward the hole in the floor. “I mean, I don’t think there’s a reptilian down there right now, but I can’t verify that. There was a few days ago.”

Doubles opened his eyes all the way. “B…boss?”

“He’s calling for you,” Kieron added. “You don’t want to disappoint him, do you?”

There was silence. After a few seconds, though, the red light on his chest vanished. That didn’t mean anything, of course—those lights were nothing but toys in this day and age, a way of intimidating an opponent into giving up when you didn’t want to immediately fire on them. That boded well for Elanus and Catie getting away clean, actually; pirates usually valued what they could take more than their crews. If she didn’t want to kill Kieron outright, her man be damned, then she wanted information from him.

“Boss?” the guy called more strongly, twisting a little as he got a handle on his situation. “What the fu…”

“Don’t move too much,” Kieron called over, getting the man’s attention. “I did my best on that knot, but you know how it is when you’re in a hurry.”

“What the fuck is this, man?” Doubles didn’t take his warning to heart and began to writhe madly on the end of the rope. “Who the fuck are you?”

“I’m the guy keeping you from falling into a hole in the ground,” Kieron said.

“A croc hole? Stars, you crazy bastard, are you trying to get me killed?”

“I would prefer not to,” he said with perfect honestly, “but the more you struggle, the harder it is for me to stay seated.”

Doubles finally seemed to understand his situation and stopped moving. He didn’t shut up, though. “Boss!” he screamed, staring from the hole to Kieron with a desperate look in his eyes. “Boss, Lis, Trapper—fuck, you gotta get me out of this! I can’t go into a croc hole! Boss! Lis!”

“Calm down, Doubles,” the woman said as she stepped into the room, and…huh. Kieron hadn’t realized she was so close. Points to her for stealth, although admittedly it was helped by the chameleon armor she was wearing, right down to the full facemask she wore. She had her gun down at her side, but Kieron was sure she could have it up and on him in under a second. “It’s going to be fine. We just need to have a conversation with this nice young gentleman here.”

Kieron smiled. “Sounds perfect. Why don’t we start with introductions?” He leaned forward slightly, and the change in the chair’s balance made the rope start to swing. Doubles let out a shriek that echoed in the hole beneath him. “I like to know who I’m dealing with.”

“You’re dealing with someone who won’t hesitate to make your life short and hellish if you kill her crewmember,” the woman said, but reached her empty hand behind her head to unclasp her helmet. She pulled it off, and—

Kieron froze. It was—no—but it had to be. She was different, obviously she was different, her short black hair threaded with gray and her right eye partially cybernetic, but Kieron knew that face. He saw it in his dreams. He saw those arching eyebrows, that chin, every day he bothered to look in a mirror.

My mother. Stars, it was his mother, his—

“Lina Carlisle. Captain Lina Carlisle,” she said.

That was someone else’s name, but this was his mother. Kieron was sure of it. Still…

“Zakari,” he said tightly. “Zakari Desfontaines.”