Rafael wakes with a headache and a hot, sour burn in the back of his throat, and sits up gingerly. The office is still lit, but the sunlight outside doesn't spill in through the window anymore, and Carraway and Rich are gone. Carraway's big chair is tipped over on its side, and there are three bottles in the waste bin.
A full bottle sits in the middle of Carraway’s desk, and Rafael thinks, tries to think, that maybe it’s meant for Rich, for taking home, for Rafael to take home for Rich to have later. If it’s not, it’ll just be Rafael’s mistake, his punishment, he can take that. He can take the bottle.
Walking is a lot easier to intend than to accomplish. Rafael heaves himself to his feet and promptly reels back against the couch’s arm, moaning softly: his head throbs, his stomach sends up warning flares, and the room whirls around him like a carnival ride. He was never any good at holding his liquor, and although he's certainly suffered through plenty of patches and pills since last he tried, even at his most acclimated he doubts he could have kept his feet with half a bottle of strong whiskey in his system.
He makes it to the desk one careful step at a time, scoops the bottle up in both hands, and holds it close to his chest as he picks his way uncertainly back out of the office. The doorframe’s an awful challenge, catching repeatedly at his shoulder, but then he’s free and he can trail a hand against the hallway wall as he shuffles determinedly back towards Rich’s bedroom.
He has to stop before he's halfway there because his head is spinning, and he leans against the wall and breathes until the dizziness fades enough that he's sure he won't lose control of his stomach or fall over. The mansion pitches and rolls around him, hallways unspooling madly, and it takes forever and a day before he’s reached the sanctuary of the bedroom. It’s with a sense of desperate, half-frenzied triumph that he thumps the bottle down on the bedside table and collapses, valorously, to the cool clutch of bedsheets.
Even here, though, it isn’t over; he’s brought the poison with him, the sickness and the storm. He’s alone, wretchedly drunk, ruined... He loses himself in the throbbing of his head, his pulse slamming behind his eyes in waves, tempest tossed, pounding into the rocks of the coast…
He’s drifted halfway into sickly dreams when the door opens some unguessable time later.
“Hey y'all, anybody home?” says a voice—Connor’s voice, Connor, and when he pulls a pillow off from over Rafael's face the afternoon light through the window is so sharp and blinding that Rafael cries out in weak protest and curls in on himself.
“Lord almighty Chrissakes alive,” Connor says and goes to pull the curtains, cutting the sunlight to a silvery glow that merely throbs like burning coals instead of setting Rafael’s aching eyes entirely ablaze.
“Raf,” says Connor, and a warm weight settles on the bed by him. “—Fuck, you smell like a whole storefull’a liquor. Where’s Rich?”
“He’s,” Rafael mumbles, and blinks hard, trying to focus, not to just blurt out some tearful nonsense. “He’s, gone, Carraway—Rich was—” He tries to sit up and has to freeze in place, swallowing convulsively as acid boils to the back of his throat.
“He’s so drunk,” he says plaintively, forgetting himself, and looks helplessly to Connor, hoping he’ll understand when the words keep slipping away from him. “He had so much, and, and he still wanted more—”
He can’t say more. He doesn’t have the strength, can’t find the words or put them together to say what he means, and Connor waits a moment for him and then sighs.
“Nothin’ we can do about that right now,” he says gently, and his warm, sturdy hand takes Rafael’s elbow, rolls him to one side as he tries to slump back. “Here, c’mon, do the recovery position. Never lie flat like that when you’re wasted. I don't have half the stuff 'round here I'd want to fix you up if you went and aspirated, and I just bet you're a queasy drunk, huh?”
Rafael grumbles a bit at Connor’s remorselessly unpoetic dialogue, sulks when he’s abandoned to his dissatisfaction, and has almost drifted back to sleep when Connor returns with an armful of things that he sets down on the dresser.
“You need to get somethin’ on your stomach,” Connor says firmly. “I brought you some bread and water. But we’re gonna start slow.”
“I don’t—I’m sick,” Rafael says, swallowing hard. “Please don’t.”
“Okay, that’s fine, let’s get you to the bathroom. C'mon, up.”
Rafael makes a plaintive, involuntary noise as he’s brought to his feet, then staggers for the bathroom as fast as he can. He barely makes it to the toilet in time, and then there’s a miserable, nauseous interval where everything he ever swallowed makes its displeasure known.
“At least—at least something gets to escape this fucking place,” he mumbles, and Connor laughs and rubs his back. Rafael’s absurdly glad to have pleased, even as the convulsions continue. God, he’s going to strip his throat raw, he hates this part, he’ll be hoarse all tomorrow. He’ll have to beg off rehearsal…
“You can take a sick day, hon,” Connor says. “No one’s gonna make you go on stage like this.”
“Tell Gabe he can’t have my part, he’s twelve,” Rafael says stubbornly. “Ngh. Hellfire.”
“You’re kinda cute when you’re cussing,” Connor says. “Who’s Gabe?”
Rafael raises his eyes, looking at Connor in puzzlement. “Gabe,” he repeats. “Gabriel. He’s. You know. He’s twelve? No, wait, wait, I remember, no. He’s older by now. He’s… what’s twelve plus… times eight? No, plus—fuck, I hate math. Why am I in charge of so much math now? I’m an actor.”
“You’re piss drunk, is what you are.”
“Exactly,” Rafael agrees unhappily. “It’s absurd. You should be—Sol should be doing the, the Carraway—the office things. He’s a man of… offices.” Rafael’s very tired all of a sudden, and in the wake of purging everything he’s ever consumed he feels absolutely desolate.
He rests his face on the cool rim of the toilet and confesses, “Sol’s perfect. I hate him. Sol should get my part tomorrow.”
“That’s fine. You about done?”
“Mm-hm.”
“Okay, let’s wash you up and get you back in bed.”
“I’ll stay here. And decay.”
“No you won't. Up, up, up…”
Rafael is rinsed, dried, and dumped back in bed, despite his best efforts to get everyone to go away and leave him alone to the ravages of his crippling headache. Then Connor makes him sit up and eat a slice of toast and drink enough water that he feels like he’s going to be sick again, before he actually deigns to allow Rafael to use the bed for its intended purpose, which is lying down and hating absolutely everything that’s ever happened to him until he falls asleep.
When he wakes, aching, the light reflecting through the window has the golden hue of evening. Rafael opens his eyes enough to note this, then squeezes them shut again, because the light makes his head throb even more abominably. By the feel of it, the drunkenness hasn’t worn off yet, and he’s sullen and miserable and lost. Rich left, Rich just abandoned Rafael and went off because Carraway waved a bottle of bourbon at him. He cares more about chasing a bottle than giving even a single thought to Rafael, and he’s a wretched cheating scoundrel, and Rafael has fallen from love with him. He’ll never love again.
He tries to explain this to Connor when Connor shows up again, and Connor mutters, “Lord have mercy,” and makes him eat buttered biscuits and drink more water. Rafael doesn't think he cares much for Connor anymore, either.
“Aren't you the cutest little grumpus in the whole wide world,” Connor says with blistering condescension, and makes Rafael drink yet another glass of water.
Rafael storms off to the bathroom, pisses like several racehorses in succession, then stalks direly back to bed, lies furiously down, and stares balefully at the wall. He does not at any point deign to acknowledge Connor, whom he now hates forever.
“You wanna use your rings to maybe watch something?” Connor says hopefully, in defiance of the evidence.
“Hark at the wind,” Rafael mumbles into a pillow. “How it blows with something very like a man's voice, yet signifies nothing to no one.”
“Is that a yes?”
“Get fucked,” Rafael clarifies. He can’t focus and his head howls like the devil himself and it’s not fair that he’s drunk and hungover concurrently and yet utterly bereft of Rich, who left him for liquor. And a romp with anyone Carraway might have set him to. Probably Sol. Rafael had said Sol could have his part tonight but he hadn't meant it.
“Alright, Romeo, alright,” Connor sighs, patting his shoulder. “You drink more water when you wake up, hear me? Best thing you can do, since I ain’t got painkillers for you.”
“Mngh,” Rafael says.
Connor pats him a few more times and leaves. Rafael lies in a desolate sprawl on the bed until he falls asleep again.
–
Scene 24: Rich’s quarters.
When Rafael wakes again, in the dim early morning, he's crushed to a broad, sturdy chest, flattened beneath an arm like a tree trunk wrapped in damp leather. His first thought, private and to himself, is that it’s damnably unfair how utterly uncomfortable Rich can be to lie on. His second is a strange and shameful relief—Rich is back, and abed with him, holding him again—and third comes a sighing annoyance at himself.
There’s no call to let himself be emotional about this situation; Rich smells as strongly of drink as Rafael must have when he staggered back yesterday. The obvious conclusion to reach is that he returned to his bed and collapsed into it, found Rafael’s insensible body and cuddled up to it like a stuffed toy. And of course he returned, Rafael should have known he would—Carraway may play with his boys until well into the night, but he never keeps them in his bed beyond that. Especially as he was yesterday, tired and twitching and consumed with thoughts of war.
Rafael’s fourth thought, laggard on the heels of the first three, is that he desperately needs to shower, brush his teeth and empty his bladder, and the prospect of getting up to do any of those things makes him feel awful. Even the early sunlight through the window turns his stomach. God, hangovers are the worst. This is terrible.
Rafael untangles himself with as much care as he can, studiously avoiding putting his knees anywhere too tender, and Rich mumbles something Rafael can’t make out and then rolls over with vast and ponderous slowness, groping out until he finds one of the many pillows and crushing that to him instead.
Rafael bravely brushes his teeth and then showers in the dark, washing away the worst of the clammy sweat before gritting his teeth and forcing himself to turn the shower cold. It’s a slap in the face, but it at least makes him feel slightly less like roadkill.
He’s at a loss for what to do, and Rich is still snoring with a by-now familiar piercing whistle courtesy of his prominently-broken nose. Rafael weighs his options carefully and then steels himself and goes to the garden.
Sol should rightfully be well into his sword drills by now, but he is conspicuously absent. Connor is as well; the whole garden is grey and wet with dew and definitely empty. Rafael stares around at it, feeling unaccountably betrayed, and then sighs and drags himself away yet again, this time toward the distant wing of rooms where Carraway keeps his captives.
Connor’s door is open when Rafael arrives, and the man is awake and stomping around looking uncharacteristically irritable, while his roommate Garnet complains at length about his ill use by Carraway last night. Connor brightens at the sight of Rafael. Garnet does nothing of the sort.
“Drink some water about it then, chrissakes,” says Connor, cutting Garnet off in the middle of whatever he was saying, and closes the door behind them in the face of Garnet’s affronted scowl.
“He called Garnet last night, then?”
“Him and Sol, to set on Rich,” Connor says, and shakes his head. “From how Garnet's carryin' on and Sol's been holed up in his room, all three of them got the heavy stuff. Ol' Fido must’ve been in an awful fuckin’ mood if he wanted all three of ‘em—"
Rafael should be attending, it's important—but the jolt of incredulous terror, hearing their captor named with such cavalier disrespect, has him pricklingy aware of the lack of walls and a closed door to muffle Connor's far-too-carrying voice. Rafael glances casually up and down the hall, checking for doors open a crack, just enough to listen, and sees none. Not that it's any guarantee Stefan doesn't have his ear pressed to the door…
Unconcerned, Connor chatters blithely on. "Garnet's the kinda made wrong that likes what he hates and hates what he likes, and seems like Carraway sniffed it on him the second they bumped into each other." He grimaces distastefully, the telling expression of a man who has heard entirely too much about the topic firsthand. "…But Red's a long road too sweet to play big scary tweak takes what he wants unless he's doped to hell and back. Seems like everyone on all sides got the same treatment last night. Lord, what a mess.”
Well, that explains why Sol wasn’t out in the garden practicing his swordplay. He took Rich’s dick, that entire monumental span, Sol did, that taut, athletic little body somehow managing to… to encompass…
“Will he… he’s not badly hurt, is he?” Rafael asks, a trifle distantly.
“Sol? Yeah, reckon he’ll come through, but after a ride like that he's gonna be walking bow-legged for a day or two. Carraway won’t let Garnet get off unless it’s on one monster dick or another, and Sol’s too proud by half to let the guy do for Rich and not step right up next in line. But Lord, I’ve sure seen enough of Big Red’s business end to know that's not the kind of caliber you just walk off.” Connor gives a wistful sigh. "I tell you what, if the old man ever let me have a lick'a real fun around here…"
Rafael tries to work through the rising surge of commingled lust and jealousy that the thought of Sol and Rich together brings, and can’t quite manage. They would be gorgeous together, two works of art by entirely different sculptors fitted into a whole all the more compelling for its contrasts…
“You’re thinkin’ about it, huh,” Connor says, obviously amused. When Rafael refocuses, Connor’s grinning at him sidelong and making a universal gesture with both hands. Rafael responds with a grand and flourishing gesture of his own, and Connor gives the bright and careless laugh of a man who has been presented with many a middle finger in his day.
“You must be feeling better, if you’re awake enough to cop an attitude,” he says, and hooks his arm through Rafael’s. “C’mon, Romeo, let’s get some breakfast. Nothing else is happening.”
The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
Breakfast is surprisingly nice. Connor is good company: lively and talkative, warmly upbeat and entertainingly catty, with a wealth of stories to tell. The sights he's seen in his travels, and how they compare to Rafael's—the strange animals he's tended to, run from, eaten, and the even stranger people who've requested his services through the years.
It's intensely bittersweet; Rich is lovely, but his life has been so strangely narrow, and Sol and Andy are consummate New Yorkers, convinced of the unique superiority of their grand silver city. Connor has seen the great, strange, monstrous face of the glorious wide world, and every so often when he or Rafael falls silent at the end of a tale, the restless longing in his eyes rings Rafael's heart like a bell.
The meal lasts longer than it would have, without Rich there to spring up with to-do list in hand. As the morning creeps on, though, and the man fails to appear, Rafael's attention is increasingly split.
“Sounds like he was real fuckin’ wasted,” Connor points out when Rafael glances hopefully over to the door one time too many. “Even at Rich's size, it’s gonna take him a while to get back on his feet.”
“He’d hate to miss breakfast,” Rafael says, heat blooming across his cheeks to be read so easily. “And he mustn’t miss work.”
“Carraway’s not gonna work today,” Connor says. “If he drank half enough to tip a big bull like Rich over, he'll have plenty enough hangover to keep him in bed till noon. It's Sunday, anyhow.”
“He called us in last Sunday,” Rafael says. “And even if he doesn’t…”
“Rich’d wanna be up,” Connor says, and sighs. “Yeah, alright. Let’s go.”
Waking Rich from his drunken stupor takes an intent and combined effort. When he finally achieves some species of awareness, his first mumbled question is, “Trimmer? What’d, where’d you go?” Then he opens his eyes and blinks blearily from Rafael to Connor, and Rafael can see memory return painfully to him.
“Oh, hey,” Rich says with an attempt at a smile, and closes his eyes again.
“No, you don’t, Red,” Connor says firmly. “You sit your ass up and drink this water, and then we’re gonna get some breakfast in you and you’ll feel better.”
“Nuh,” Rich mumbles.
“Yes,” says Rafael sharply, surprising himself, and surprised even further when Rich blinks his eyes back open and looks chagrined by his tone. Rafael flounders for a moment, then finds that voice again, that mask of a chiding elder brother, and says sternly, “It’s time for you to get up, Rich. You’ve been abed long enough.”
“Okay,” says Rich miserably, and pushes himself up, swaying slightly, putting a hand to his head with wincing delicacy. “Fuck. How much did I have?”
“Too much, and yet more after, I assume,” Rafael says, and puts a hand on his back, ignoring the unpleasantness of the clammy fabric under his palm to rub comfortingly. Rich leans into the touch a little too heavily, almost knocking Rafael sideways, then catches himself, recalibrates. With delicate caution, he brings up a hand and rests it on Rafael’s back in turn, leaning his face against Rafael’s side, breathing roughly.
He’s got a bite mark on the broad bruise-mottled slope of his neck, an awful crescent of rust-red scabbing and dried smears of blood. Not uncommon, that Carraway should mark one of his slaves when they especially please him or the whim takes him, but it’s the first time Rafael has seen the man’s fresh and bleeding bite on someone Rich’s size. The wound looks painful, bruised and ugly, but startlingly small. Beside and below it, there are the scars of two other bites already, the pale pink faded beyond what should be possible in the brief span of his captivity. But of course, Rich is of Herakles’ make, and everyone knows that soldier mods heal with inhuman speed.
For all the good it does him. No matter the strength of a man’s arm, or the speed of his scarring, his wounds bleed just the same when they’re inflicted.
Rafael touches the wound cautiously with a fingertip, and Rich shivers and makes a noise of bleary, plaintive confusion, flinching from the touch.
“You need water,” Rafael says, more gently, and looks up to see Connor watching both of them, an expression of rueful pity on his soft, pale face. What fools these mortals be. Connor would make a good Puck, if Rafael could ever get him to take the part seriously. Unlikely though that is. There’s something incontestably fae about the man.
“Come help me, will you?” Rafael says, because there are some things Connor does take seriously, and Connor nods and comes to Rich’s other side, wincing at the sight of the bite mark.
"Oof, that'll need some fixin'," he says, and knocks a fist against Rich's shoulder, then raises it firmly before him in unmistakable command. "Up. C'mon, Red, let's go, up up up. There's a good boy, yup, there we go. Where'd you two stow the contraband?”
"The top drawer," Rafael says, and takes possession of Rich's arm again, directing his staggering feet toward the bathroom. "Under the shirts."
"A'right," Connor says. "Get some soap on that bite, Rich, I'll get at it when you're done. I can't hardly use the good stuff on the boys downstairs, the old man knows how long his li'l love-bites take to close up—but you're tough stock, en't nobody gonna think twice if your dents and dings scar up too fast."
“Yeah. Yeah, no. I’m… I don’t hurt. No one thinks I ever hurt,” Rich says with bleary despair, and startles when Rafael starts to peel him out of his sweaty, stale clothes.
He sounds more awake, although still miserable, when he asks, “Don’t we gotta—work? Gonna miss the shift. Carraway doesn’t even bother with demerits, he just…”
“It’ll be fine,” says Rafael firmly, because he’s more than familiar with what Carraway does in place of demerits, and distracts Rich by grabbing his pants and tugging them abruptly down, until Rich starts gently swatting his hands away and kicks the rest of the way free himself.
“Fuck,” he says as final commentary, and then vanishes into the shower for a time. He comes out looking much more awake, if not any happier about it.
“Seriously, though,” he says, and finger-combs his bristling red hair into some form of order. “Shouldn’t we at least… go wait in there, in case…?”
“He's more than capable of summoning us if he needs entertainment,” Rafael says, more impatiently than he means to, and meaningfully sets down a folded sheet and one of the man's least revealing T-shirts on the counter. "Did he say that you should or should not come to work in the morning?"
Rich doesn't snap back at him, only gives Rafael a hangdog look that makes him feel like an absolute ass.
“Dunno really,” he mumbles, sullen self-consciousness thickening his accent to a nearly unintelligible blur, and picks up the sheet to wind it deftly into one of his pleated wraps. “Don’ remember much.”
“Right,” says Rafael, and bites back another acerbic, unhelpful comment. “Well. Yes.”
“He said… somethin’ ‘bout today,” Rich says, frowning more deeply now, less sullen and more preoccupied, brows furrowing. “Told me to… to rem’ber to… Somethin' big was… gonna happen…”
Rafael is already watching him in uncertain concern, which is not helped when realization flashes over Rich’s face and his eyes flick up to Rafael with an expression of both mortification and guilt.
“What?” says Connor, closing in on Rich with the little tin of healing accelerant. “Here, pumpkin, kneel down,” he adds, in a surprisingly tender voice, and lightly kicks the side of Rich’s leg.
“There’s gonna be…” Rich swallows, grimaces. Stoops over for Connor’s reaching hands. “He’s gonna have a party. One of his parties. Ow! And I—he—” he stumbles on the words, eyes falling away—finishes, in an even softer mumble, “He wants Rafael there. Too. With me.”
Rafael feels Connor pause, look back to him, and feels his own face become a mild, steady mask of cool neutrality as his laggard mind absorbs all that.
Rafael had fallen far enough by the wayside that the last time he attended one of Carraway’s parties, it was because he had been utterly unaware that the party was going on. He'd unwittingly gone to the staff dining room to seek out dinner, whereupon a furiously-stressed member of the kitchen staff had seen his collar and cuffs and hurried him off to join the other unfortunate party favors. The events of the night beyond that are a multi-colored blur, for which he was hardly awake and was doubtless very little entertainment. And after that…
It isn’t as though he intentionally won free through any clever or subversive trick, any calculated defiance. His fellow prisoners simply stopped knowing or caring to spread the word to him when they received notification of a party, not even thinking enough of him to feel resentment, or spite. And Carraway, of course, had long since moved on to visit his torments upon fresher victims. He's never had to clean up his own messes, or stow away his broken toys. Rafael was simply… left. Backstage, collecting dust. Abandoned to the quiet and the dark.
The revelation that he's been abruptly moved from prop storage to cast list at very little notice is a hard one to surround. The immediate nerves and uncertainty rise in a wave and clash with the bizarre thrill of excitement just to feel himself no longer irrelevant.
“’M sorry,” Rich says in low and rumbling tones like some strange, anguished beast. “He, he was gonna drag Liam out again, and he’s hurtin' him so bad just to keep him in line, and I tried to ask him not to and he said, he asked me, who he should—who I wanted to play with instead—It’s all my fault, I got so fuckin' wasted, I couldn’t think, I just…”
He glances up, catches Rafael’s blank and thoughtful mask and flinches from it, making himself small in shame and guilt. “He’s hurting Liam so bad,” he repeats, in a tiny plea for understanding. “We’ve been to three parties now and he can’t even talk after they’re done with him, and you know how to, to handle it all, and I know it’s not fair and I’m… I’m really, really sorry…”
Rafael thinks back to that brief glimpse of Liam, of the frantic and furious violence in those wild, quicksilver eyes. Carraway enjoys a certain amount of challenge, but Rafael can only imagine that cornered-animal ferocity amusing the man for a night or two, at most. And once it ceased to be amusing…
Liam had been barely standing, drugged and delirious enough to mistake even Rich, whatever they are to each other. Rafael can’t imagine that fragile little body taking much more than it already has without shattering completely. Without something snapping inside.
And, some quiet, selfish part whispers, and also: when Carraway had asked who Rich had wanted, and Rich had been too drowned in drink for any kind of forethought or artifice… Rich had named Rafael.
“Yes,” Rafael says finally, slow and careful, surprising himself with the steadiness of his own voice. “I understand.”
Rich opens his mouth as though he’s already beginning another apology, then blinks and looks up at Rafael like he’s expecting a trick.
“You do?” Connor says, looking both baffled and concerned now. “I mean…”
“Yes,” says Rafael, before Connor can make any blunt inroads along the topic of How are you okay with this or, worse, But are you okay with this? Answering without hitch or falter would be a daunting task, as hungover as he still feels, and Rich has shown a tendency to see past even the smoothest and deftest of Rafael’s masks. With the pieces already in motion, it would be pointless to make Rich shrink from him in guilt again.
“I’ve been here long enough,” Rafael tells them both, and smiles with a mask of serene certainty. “It’s preferable to his private attentions, in many ways—Carraway’s friends are graceless, groping beasts for the most part, and can only sate so many appetites under each other’s eyes and the strictures of decorum. It’s simple enough to play the character they want, allow that character to suffer all indignities in one's place, and afterward step loose from him and leave him empty on the stage.”
“…Huh,” says Connor, and gives Rafael an unexpected look, as though he said something both confusing and enlightening at once. Rafael looks back at him, raising an eyebrow in arch inquiry, and Connor goes, “Huh,” again, more quietly, and gives no other response.
“I’m sorry,” Rich offers again, and far from looking reassured he’s now watching Rafael like he’s a piece of fine glassware wobbling on the very edge of a high tabletop. “I couldn’t think, and he was really… different, last night, he had those claws on the whole time and he kept growling at us—”
“As dogged war doth bristle his angry crest,” Rafael says dryly, “—for the bare-pick’d bone of majesty, and snarleth in the gentle eyes of peace. With visions of the gory killing-ground painted across his lustful eyes—Yes, I’m quite familiar.”
“Yeah,” says Rich, and rubs his huge hands together uneasily in his lap, broad shoulders drawn inward. “Yeah, he—yeah.”
Mere weeks ago Rafael would have scoffed his disbelief at the thought of a Hastings soldier who would cower and cave to Carraway’s occasional spells of stalking, snapping ill-humor. But now he’s seen how Rich quails when Carraway traces his knife-like claws along the man’s scarred arms, and how Rich grew flushed and slow and clumsy with drink. The gentle eyes of peace, indeed.
“Well alright then,” says Connor, and rubs a hand over his face, his big, innocent blue eyes gone fierce and thoughtful. “I’ll have to go tell the boys. Guess that answers the question though, at least—no way he’s coming out to work if he’s hungover and he’s still having a party tonight. Y’all just…” He glances from Rich to Rafael, then finishes diplomatically, “Hang in there.”
“Okay,” Rich says quietly, and sags back down to the bed. Then he sniffs, grimaces, and heaves himself back upright. “Ugh, I gotta change the sheets, these stink…”
“I'll do it, Rich, please sit down,” Rafael says, hurrying over before Rich can begin fumbling his way through the task and tear something. Absent his usual grace, Rich’s form is worryingly blunt and heavy: he shoves the bedside table up against the wall when he leans against it, then nearly trips on the rug, then finally gives up and makes his way gingerly over to the armchair, which crackles as he collapses into it and rubs blearily at his forehead with his knuckles.
“Fuck, I feel like shit,” he mutters. “I got, there's clean sheets, bottom drawer.”
Rafael gets the linens changed, trying to get everything something like as neat as Rich might have, and Rich dozes off in the chair. Absent any further guidance, Rafael straightens the rumpled folds out of the rug, squares the end table with the wall and bed, squares Shakespeare's bust with the edge of the end table, and eyes the remains of the fruit bowl.
Rich must have eaten most of the fruit when he came back, because it’s all gone except for a few oranges, one of which was messily torn apart and then dropped into the wastebasket. Rafael takes up one of the remaining oranges and peels it, then goes and touches Rich’s knee gently.
“Liam…?” Rich mumbles, blinking awake. “Oh. Rafael? Did Liam send—? Oh.” He rubs his face. “Sorry. I was dreaming, there were oranges…”
“I peeled you one,” Rafael says. “You should eat.”
“Oh,” Rich says again, and smiles as he takes the fruit. It’s sad around the edges, but sincere. Rafael’s heart claws at its rib caging, and he smiles back.
“Do you want breakfast?” he says, and Rich gives a longing groan even as he begins to devour the orange in huge, hungry bites. “I’ll go fetch you some.”
“Aw—you don’t have to,” Rich says, sounding more awake than he has since he woke up, and pushes another few slices of orange into his mouth, fastidiously licking the juice off his fingers. “I missed it, it’s on me, I can go.”
“Nonsense,” says Rafael, and Rich settles back, pale cheeks slightly pink, and eats another piece of orange. “I’ll be back soon.”
“’Kay,” Rich says, and catches Rafael’s wrist before he can go, pulling him back with perhaps more force than he meant to, almost sending Rafael tumbling into his lap. “Uh, fuck, sorry. Just, here.”
His lips are sweet with orange juice, his hand gone painstakingly careful on Rafael’s elbow. Rafael only barely has to bend down to kiss him, even seated, but it does make it much more convenient to drop a last, possessive kiss on Rich’s forehead as he pulls away, and to hurry from the room before he can see Rich’s expression.
It remains daunting to approach the kitchens without Rich at his shoulder—and a deep relief, upon slipping inside, to see the head of the kitchen staff presiding as she always seems to be. Head Chef Byrd notes his entry at once and beckons him across the bustling chaos, and Rafael weaves his way over and gives her his most charming and deferent of smiles.
Head Chef Byrd—Ms Lucille—patiently hears his pleas, hands still busily at work, and softens further at his description of Rich’s ill use and dire straits. She sets aside the meal plan she was in the process of compiling and summons a few of her lesser chefs, and Rafael is quickly loaded to capacity with a tray of foods “For what ails you,” which Rafael can only assume means “For apocalyptic hangovers.”
Rafael makes sure to affect gratitude and charm to the very extent of his abilities, and although a few of the staff roll their eyes or scoff as he thanks them, at least as many nod or even wish him well. He settles the tray in his arms, firmly ignoring the low burn that already gnaws at the muscles of his arms and chest, and sets forth once more suffused with a strange, golden thrill of victory.
Rich is still awake when Rafael arrives at the room with the refreshments—in the bathroom, splashing water on his face and scrubbing until his pale cheeks turn a fresh, bright pink with it. When he comes out and sees the tray, his face warms and softens, and he steps over to kiss the top of Rafael’s head in gentle gratitude.
“Here,” Rafael says, taking a mug off the tray and handing it to him. “Drink your tea.”
“God, tea,” Rich moans, and takes a few gulps that must drain half the mug before pausing to give Rafael a grateful look.
“It’s perfect!” he says, as though noting the exact amount of sugar he takes is some startling feat of observation. “Thanks, Raf.”
It’s nothing, really. Rafael is unduly pleased with himself anyway.
Rich works his way steadily through the mounds of food as Rafael continues to pick at increasingly small details, bringing the room into an approximation of the militant neatness to which Rich is accustomed. Rich reassures and thanks him by turns the entire time, that he’s great, that he doesn’t need to do that, once or twice offering tidbits of food with clear reluctance. Rafael would decline even if he had any appetite, and eating is the farthest thing from his inclination at the moment. He still feels entirely wretched, achy and stiff, eyes gritty and oversensitive. Between the warmth of the sunlight and the lingering malaise from yesterday’s brutal intoxication, Rafael finds himself considering the virtues of napping the rest of the day away.
“I gotta take the tray back down,” Rich says, and looks haplessly around the room with the meticulously empty tray in his hands. “And then I should, uh. Talk to Connor, I guess, and then—”
Honestly. Work ethic is one thing, but the man truly does seem to have no concept of a holiday. Rafael keeps his groan entirely internal and squares the rug, kicking the fringe ever more perfectly straight.
“Rich,” he says firmly. “Rest. We should both recuperate before this evening. I know you’re of a different make than I, but you can’t tell me you’ve shaken off last night already.”
Rich frowns at him, rubbing absently at his forehead as though it’s still aching.
“I guess,” he says, with great reluctance. “But…”
“The rest of your duties will wait until you’re recovered,” Rafael says, “and have nothing more demanding of your attention. Take the tray down, and then come back and rest. You can find Connor at lunch, surely.”
Rich huffs at him, but the speed with which Rafael’s firm look breaks him down speaks clearly to how wretched the poor man is feeling. He takes the tray away meekly, and when he returns Rafael draws him down into bed and firmly tucks himself into the crook of one of Rich’s strong, warm arms.
“I don’t need a nap,” Rich mumbles, one final rebellion, and drops his head onto the pillow, squeezing his eyes shut.
“But you should,” Rafael says, and rests a hand on his forehead, stroking it gently, laying the vivid red strands of his hair in careful order. “Save your strength.”
“I don’t need to save it,” Rich says even softer, but he presses into the touch. “I’ve got… I’m…”
He never finishes the sentence. Just heaves a vast sigh and then relaxes all in a rush, curling around Rafael and finally allowing himself ease. Rafael turns into him, wriggling up in the man’s arms until he can cradle that mighty head against the crook of his own shoulder, and strokes Rich’s hair until he’s too drowsy to move his hands.
Smashwords as well as your (but not Amazon yet except for After the Storm), under the series title, Stories From The Michigan Fleet. If you missed book one, After the Storm, you can . And check out our !
