m

Then the air shifted.

It wasn’t a sound so much as a ripple of attention. Heads turned by increments toward the entrance. Olivia tracked it without moving her neck. A man had arrived late—unforgivably late, by D.C. standards—and the room was rearranging itself around him. He wore Tom Ford like a casual afterthought, the jacket unbuttoned, no tie. His beard was trimmed with the kind of precision that suggested he’d done it himself three minutes before walking in, and the arc reactor visible beneath his shirt wasn’t a fashion statement. It glowed. A soft, cerulean pulse.

Tony Stark.

Of course. The keynote speaker. Olivia had skimmed the guest list, noted his name, filed him under “manageable chaos.” She’d been wrong about that second part, she realized now. The chaos wasn’t manageable. It was gravitational.

She watched him work the room without moving. He shook hands without letting go, leaned in too close, said things that made old white men laugh nervously. Every woman in a twenty-foot radius adjusted her posture. Even the ones who pretended not to.

“You’re staring.”

The voice came from her left. Abby, her right hand, appeared with a fresh glass of champagne Olivia didn’t need.

“I’m assessing,” Olivia said, voice flat.

“Same thing, with you.” Abby’s smile was a flicker. “He’s heading this way.”

Olivia didn’t react. Her pulse did something stupid, a hard thump against her ribs that she refused to acknowledge. She turned, just enough, and found Tony Stark ten feet away, his eyes already on her.

Not scanning the room. Not looking past her to find someone more important. On her.

“Ms. Pope.” He said her name like it was a private joke they’d been sharing for years. “You’re harder to get a meeting with than a head of state. I checked.”

“You didn’t try hard enough.” She let the corner of her mouth lift. Not a smile. A warning shot. “My office has a phone.”

“Phones are boring.” Stark closed the distance. The scent of him—sandalwood, something sharper underneath, ozone maybe, from whatever that thing in his chest actually did—touched her before his hand did. He extended it. Not for a handshake. Palm up, an invitation. “Dance with me.”

Abby made a sound like a stifled cough and evaporated into the crowd.

Olivia didn’t take his hand. “I’m working.”

“You’re breathing. That’s the only prerequisite.” His eyes flicked down to her left hand, the one still holding the champagne. “You’ve been nursing that glass for an hour. You’re not a drinker. You’re a watcher. So watch me while we dance.”

The logic was absurd. It was also disarming. Olivia set the glass on a passing tray and gave him nothing. “The last time someone told me to watch them, I was cleaning up a congressman’s sexting scandal within forty-eight hours.”

“Sounds like a slow Tuesday for you.” Stark’s hand remained extended. “I don’t sext. I have too much respect for the medium.”

A laugh. She almost let it escape. The muscle under her jaw tightened. “You’re trying to charm me.”

“Is it working?”

“No.”

“Liar.” He said it without malice, without the smug certainty she expected. Just a simple, warm observation, the way someone might comment on the weather. “Your left eyebrow does this thing. A micro-expression. When you’re deflecting, it twitches. Did it just now.”

Her eyebrow, traitor that it was, remained perfectly still. But something lower—a flutter in the pit of her stomach, unwelcome and undeniable—responded.

The band started a new song. Something slow. A saxophone curling through the ballroom like smoke.

Stark finally lowered his hand. But he didn’t step back. If anything, he stepped closer, reducing the distance between them to something less than professional. The glow from the arc reactor threw faint blue shadows across the lapel of his jacket. “Okay. No dancing. Talk to me instead.”

“About what?”

“About why you look at this room like it’s a chessboard and you’re the only one who can see six moves ahead.” His voice dropped, just for her. “About why you’re bored.”

Olivia’s spine straightened. She didn’t look away. “I’m not bored.”

“You’re so bored you could scream. But you won’t. Because screaming would be messy, and you don’t do messy.” His gaze traveled her face, not lecherous, but cataloging. Like she was a blueprint he was memorizing for a reason she couldn’t guess. “I know the type. I am the type. Except I scream. Usually at people who work for me. But I’m working on it.”

A beat of silence passed between them. The kind that had texture.

“You think you know me after two minutes,” she murmured.

“Three and a half. I’m counting.” Stark tilted his head. “I know you’re the woman who fixed the Calloway situation last spring before it became a headline. I know you haven’t taken a vacation in four years. I know you wear heels that cost more than most people’s rent because they make a sound. A specific sound. It tells people you’re coming before they see you. Power in the warning.”

Her jaw loosened by a fraction. She hadn’t blinked. “You researched me.”

“I didn’t have to. You’re the most interesting person in this room, and I have a radar for interesting things. It’s calibrated.” He touched his chest, right where the reactor sat. “Literally. It beeps. You’re setting it off.”

Olivia’s fingers curled at her sides. She imagined stepping back, creating distance, retrieving her armor. But her feet stayed planted. “What do you want, Mr. Stark?”

“Tony.”

“What do you want, Tony?”

There it was. The flash of something real behind the performance. His eyes, dark and impossibly focused, held hers. “I want to see what happens when you stop being bored for five minutes. With me.”

Around them, the gala continued its oblivious rotation. Waiters wove through with canapés. Somewhere, Senator Calloway was probably still talking, still digging a hole. But that emergency had faded to white noise.

“I have a job to do,” she said. The words came out with less conviction than she intended.

“You have a phone in that deceptively simple clutch. You can do your job from anywhere. I know. I invented half the technology in it.”

She almost smiled. God help her, she almost smiled. “You’re insufferable.”

“Accurate.” He stepped back, finally, and the loss of proximity hit her like a door opening in a pressurized cabin. “I’m staying at the Hay-Adams. Suite four-twelve. If you’re done being bored, come find me.”

He turned before she could refuse. Before she could do anything but watch the line of his shoulders as he walked away, the casual confidence in his stride.

Abby materialized at her elbow. “So. That happened.”

Olivia didn’t answer. Her mind was a cascade of calculations: the risks, the optics, the sheer impossibility of a woman like her crossing a line like that. Tony Stark wasn’t a distraction. He was a detonation.

But her fingers, still curled at her sides, were tingling. The spot on her palm where he might have touched her felt electric, as if the charge from his chest had jumped the gap.

“Calloway?” Abby prompted.

“Handle it.”

“And you?”

Olivia finally lifted her gaze from the path Stark had cut through the crowd. The exit doors were still swinging slightly. The Hay-Adams was four blocks away.

She thought about rules. The ones she’d built her life around. The ones that kept her safe, kept her sharp, kept her untouchable. She thought about the sound of his voice saying liar. The way he’d looked at her not as a strategist or a fixer or a weapon, but as a woman holding her breath underwater and refusing to admit she was drowning.

She thought about what it might feel like to exhale.

Abby was still waiting.

Olivia reached for her clutch, checked her phone—no new crises—and began walking toward the doors.

“Olivia,” Abby called, a note of warning in her voice. “What do I tell the senator?”

“Hope you’re a harvest god,” Arepo said, and set up an altar and burnt two stalks of wheat. “It’d be nice, you know.” He looked down at the ash smeared on the stone, the rocks all laid askew, and coughed and scratched his head. “I know it’s not much,” he said, his straw hat in his hands. “But - I’ll do what I can. It’d be nice to think there’s a god looking after me.”

The next day he left a pair of figs, the day after that he spent ten minutes of his morning seated by the temple in prayer. On the third day, the god spoke up.

“You should go to a temple in the city,” the god said. Its voice was like the rustling of the wheat, like the squeaks of fieldmice running through the grass. “A real temple. A good one. Get some real gods to bless you. I’m no one much myself, but I might be able to put in a good word?” It plucked a leaf from a tree and sighed. “I mean, not to be rude. I like this temple. It’s cozy enough. The worship’s been nice. But you can’t honestly believe that any of this is going to bring you anything.”

“This is more than I was expecting when I built it,” Arepo said, laying down his scythe and lowering himself to the ground. “Tell me, what sort of god are you anyway?”

“I’m of the fallen leaves,” it said. “The worms that churn beneath the earth. The boundary of forest and of field. The first hint of frost before the first snow falls. The skin of an apple as it yields beneath your teeth. I’m a god of a dozen different nothings, scraps that lead to rot, momentary glimpses. A change in the air, and then it’s gone.”

The god heaved another sigh. “There’s no point in worship in that, not like War, or the Harvest, or the Storm. Save your prayers for the things beyond your control, good farmer. You’re so tiny in the world. So vulnerable. Best to pray to a greater thing than me.”

Arepo plucked a stalk of wheat and flattened it between his teeth. “I like this sort of worship fine,” he said. “So if you don’t mind, I think I’ll continue.”

“Do what you will,” said the god, and withdrew deeper into the stones. “But don’t say I never warned you otherwise.”

Arepo would say a prayer before the morning’s work, and he and the god contemplated the trees in silence. Days passed like that, and weeks, and then the Storm rolled in, black and bold and blustering. It flooded Arepo’s fields, shook the tiles from his roof, smote his olive tree and set it to cinder. The next day, Arepo and his sons walked among the wheat, salvaging what they could. The little temple had been strewn across the field, and so when the work was done for the day, Arepo gathered the stones and pieced them back together.

“Useless work,” the god whispered, but came creeping back inside the temple regardless. “There wasn’t a thing I could do to spare you this.”

“We’ll be fine,” Arepo said. “The storm’s blown over. We’ll rebuild. Don’t have much of an offering for today,” he said, and laid down some ruined wheat, “but I think I’ll shore up this thing’s foundations tomorrow, how about that?” 

The god rattled around in the temple and sighed.

A year passed, and then another. The temple had layered walls of stones, a roof of woven twigs. Arepo’s neighbors chuckled as they passed it. Some of their children left fruit and flowers. And then the Harvest failed, the gods withdrew their bounty. In Arepo’s field the wheat sprouted thin and brittle. People wailed and tore their robes, slaughtered lambs and spilled their blood, looked upon the ground with haunted eyes and went to bed hungry. Arepo came and sat by the temple, the flowers wilted now, the fruit shriveled nubs, Arepo’s ribs showing through his chest, his hands still shaking, and murmured out a prayer. 

“There is nothing here for you,” said the god, hudding in the dark. “There is nothing I can do. There is nothing to be done.” It shivered, and spat out its words. “What is this temple but another burden to you?”

“We -” Arepo said, and his voice wavered. “So it’s a lean year,” he said. “We’ve gone through this before, we’ll get through this again. So we’re hungry,” he said. “We’ve still got each other, don’t we? And a lot of people prayed to other gods, but it didn’t protect them from this. No,” he said, and shook his head, and laid down some shriveled weeds on the altar. “No, I think I like our arrangement fine.”

“There will come worse,” said the god, from the hollows of the stone. “And there will be nothing I can do to save you.”

The years passed. Arepo rested a wrinkled hand upon the temple of stone and some days spent an hour there, lost in contemplation with the god.

And one fateful day, from across the wine-dark seas, came War.

Arepo came stumbling to his temple now, his hand pressed against his gut, anointing the holy site with his blood. Behind him, his wheat fields burned, and the bones burned black in them. He came crawling on his knees to a temple of hewed stone, and the god rushed out to meet him.

“I could not save them,” said the god, its voice a low wail. “I am sorry. I am sorry. I am so so sorry.” The leaves fell burning from the trees, a soft slow rain of ash. “I have done nothing! All these years, and I have done nothing for you!”

“Shush,” Arepo said, tasting his own blood, his vision blurring. He propped himself up against the temple, forehead pressed against the stone in prayer. “Tell me,” he mumbled. “Tell me again. What sort of god are you?”

“I -” said the god, and reached out, cradling Arepo’s head, and closed its eyes and spoke.

“I’m of the fallen leaves,” it said, and conjured up the image of them. “The worms that churn beneath the earth. The boundary of forest and of field. The first hint of frost before the first snow falls. The skin of an apple as it yields beneath your teeth.” Arepo’s lips parted in a smile.

“I am the god of a dozen different nothings,” it said. “The petals in bloom that lead to rot, the momentary glimpses. A change in the air -” Its voice broke, and it wept. “Before it’s gone.”

“Beautiful,” Arepo said, his blood staining the stones, seeping into the earth. “All of them. They were all so beautiful.”

“Oh, poor god,” she said, “With no-one to bury your last priest.” Then she paused, because she was from far away. “Or is this how the dead are honored here?” The god roused from its contemplation.

“His name was Arepo,” it said, “He was a sower.”

Sora startled, a little, because she had never before heard the voice of a god. “How can I honor him?” She asked.

“Bury him,” the god said, “Beneath my altar.”

“All right,” Sora said, and went to fetch her shovel.

“Wait,” the god said when she got back and began collecting the bones from among the broken twigs and fallen leaves. She laid them out on a roll of undyed wool, the only cloth she had. “Wait,” the god said, “I cannot do anything for you. I am not a god of anything useful.”

Sora sat back on her heels and looked at the altar to listen to the god.

“When the Storm came and destroyed his wheat, I could not save it,” the god said, “When the Harvest failed and he was hungry, I could not feed him. When War came,” the god’s voice faltered. “When War came, I could not protect him. He came bleeding from the battle to die in my arms.” Sora looked down again at the bones.

“I think you are the god of something very useful,” she said.

“What?” the god asked.

The god sat in his peaceful home, staring out at the distant road, to pedestrians, workhorses, and carriages, raining leaves that swirled around bustling feet. How long had it been? The world had progressed without him, for he knew there was no help to be given. The world must be a cruel place, that even the useful gods have abandoned, if farms can flood, harvests can run barren, and homes can burn, he thought.

He had come to understand that humans are senseless creatures, who would pray to a god that cannot grant wishes or bless upon them good fortune. Who would maintain a temple and bring offerings with nothing in return. Who would share their company and meditate with such a fruitless deity. Who would bury a stranger without the hope for profit. What bizarre, futile kindness they had wasted on him. What wonderful, foolish, virtuous, hopeless creatures, humans were.

So he painted the sunset with yellow leaves, enticed the worms to dance in their soil, flourished the boundary between forest and field with blossoms and berries, christened the air with a biting cold before winter came, ripened the apples with crisp, red freckles to break under sinking teeth, and a dozen other nothings, in memory of the man who once praised the god’s work on his dying breath.

“Hello, God of Every Humble Beauty in the World,” called a familiar voice.

The squinting corners of the god’s eyes wept down onto curled lips. “Arepo,” he whispered, for his voice was hoarse from its hundred-year mutism.

“I am the god of devotion, of small kindnesses, of unbreakable bonds. I am the god of selfless, unconditional love, of everlasting friendships, and trust,” Arepo avowed, soothing the other with every word.

“That’s wonderful, Arepo,” he responded between tears, “I’m so happy for you—such a powerful figure will certainly need a grand temple. Will you leave to the city to gather more worshippers? You’ll be adored by all.”

“No,” Arepo smiled.

“Farther than that, to the capitol, then? Thank you for visiting here before your departure.”

“No, I will not go there, either,” Arepo shook his head and chuckled.

“Farther still? What ambitious goals, you must have. There is no doubt in my mind that you will succeed, though,” the elder god continued.

“Actually,” interrupted Arepo, “I’d like to stay here, if you’ll have me.”

The other god was struck speechless. “…. Why would you want to live here?”

JD Samson starring in JD’s Lesbian Utopia calendar (2006 issue) photographed by Cass Bird.