#emile devigne

"You said you didn't care where we went next. I thought you wanted to see Europa." She'd actually been excited when he'd told her their next destination.

Before, of course, he'd shared his reasons for coming here.

"I want a lot of things. A cat. A permanent address. Some decent tea." Behind him, an abrupt rustle of fabric suggested Cynthia's restlessness. "You could get me some, instead of telling me I agreed to something I didn't."

"I'm not—" Cylus gritted his teeth, turning back towards her. She'd rolled away from him, too-thin shoulders hunched beneath the disarray of her platinum hair. Guilt lanced through him; she never showed her back to anyone but him. "You could at least read the packets, just to see—" he gestured towards the table under the window where he'd set out the University's materials for prospective students, even as he realized she couldn't see him.

"It's Windfall, Cylie." Her voice could have been a wall. "I don't care how fancy their university is."

"That's why—" He paused. Breathed. "That's the point, Cyn. These IDs are the best we've ever had, and they're completely fresh. We have a chance to get inside them, and build a real history that no one will question. We can have lives, not just a series of jobs and shows. We can have somewhere to stay! And when we're ready, we can finally hit them back, from the inside—"

Cynthia sat up, a quick, fluid motion that left her facing him, legs folded under her as she claimed his gaze. "If the IDs are so good, we could go anywhere." Her fists balled in her lap, voice finally rising. "Getting into Windfall's special school won't change anything that matters. All it does is put us in danger."

"I wish you would just think—" He regretted the words as soon as he said them.

"Thinking's your job." Her eyes bored into him, bright periwinkle that matched his own. "Isn't it? That's why you brought us here without telling me why. You know I'll follow your lead, so you decided for both of us. And you're right." Her voice wavered. She turned away again, back ramrod straight as she clutched the bedspread. "So go figure out the next step of your grand plan."

"Cynthia—"

"I need a nap." With a precise kick, she levered herself under the covers, pulling them up with a snap and muffling her next words beneath synthetic down. "Leave me alone."

The city was beautiful, in a remote way. The materials he'd read on the passenger ship said the buildings' design was inspired by some of the first missions to Europa, which had found fields of glittering ice spikes. When Windfall took ownership of the world hundreds of years later—as part of their "charitable oceanic conservation mission", a naked public relations move that had won exorbitant but publicly unacknowledged trade concessions from Earth—they had modeled their city on those same striking vistas, reflected onto a much grander scale.

So as he walked along heated stone sidewalks, he was surrounded by tapering towers that could have been made of ice themselves. In reality they were some kind of flexible glass, able to withstand the tidal pull of Jupiter and its many other satellites without disruption. The low Europan gravity allowed for the buildings to reach dizzying heights; though the ground and interiors were kept at Earth-standard grav, just like any other civilized place in the Terran systems.

A group of what had to be university students stumbled past him, laughing and drunk. Rich, well dressed, carefree; like he and Cynthia should have been at this time in their lives, if the world had any justice in it. He could have picked any of their pockets without even making an effort. But the streetlamps all bore the visible eyes of cameras between fluted light fixtures, and the absence of visible security staff was its own statement. Wealthy people, in his experience, preferred their police forces unseen unless needed—but that didn't mean they weren't close to hand, ready to pounce on any perceived disturbance to their pristine streets.

And he wasn't here for that kind of theft. He'd brought them to Europa for exactly one thing, so they never had to steal or busk or beg ever again.

He turned, following a flash of dark greenery down a side street. Rich people also liked parks, and so did Cylus; chances were he could find somewhere to tuck mostly out of view of cameras and collect himself. Then he would find Cynthia some tea and pastries, and maybe by the time he got back she would have at least started to forgive him.

The park was small but pleasant. A steaming fountain radiated warmth from its center, surrounded by unfamiliar vegetation in well-maintained planters. After a short walk around the fountain to assess the likeliest sightlines for security cameras, he chose a bench set back beneath a scaly green bush. It wouldn't have been a safe place to sleep: European security must periodically patrol public places like this. But he could sit here undisturbed for a moment and try to center himself, get his bearings again.

Overhead, lightly obscured by the sheltering foliage, Jupiter loomed above the forest of towers, half-full and smaller than he'd expected from its prominence in the shipboard brochures. He'd thought it might fill half the sky, but he could block it from view by holding his fist a small distance from his face.

It was nevertheless dramatic, a hemisphere of swirling clouds mesmerizing enough that he resolved to remember them next time he was doing a hypnotic induction. They'd make a good visualization, especially here; he couldn't imagine living on Europa for any length of time without getting lost in them. The famous red spot was nowhere to be seen, but smaller vortices curled between bands of rust-orange and milky white. Sol was a distant spotlight low in the sky, beaming cool brilliance that cast long, wan shadows. Some other moon hung between it and Jupiter, a small silvery segment.

The dome between the city and the blackness beyond was a barely visible shimmer, protecting them from a bombardment of radiation and debris that Europa's thin atmosphere would do little to deflect. Or so the brochures had said. Cylus had read them over and over as Cynthia slept through the journey, distracting himself from dreading the exact conversation he'd just had.

He should have just told her. But he'd known she'd hate the idea, had thought that if they just made it here first, then maybe... His hands, unthinking, sought familiar shapes in his pockets and began to fidget, soothed by familiar motions and sounds.

He just needed a little more intel. The fake IDs they'd bought—years of carefully hoarded savings while they performed and pilfered and slept in cargo containers and unsanctioned ship-hull hideaways and portside squats—would be enough to apply to Windfall's elite university. They even came with academic histories and letters of recommendation and records of accomplishments appropriate to the privileged youths they would become. But he needed to know more about the application and interview process: not just what Windfall shared online, but what the experience was like from someone who'd been through it. It was there that his whole plan could founder. The wrong attitude, the wrong reference, the wrong word could ruin everything, and send them back on the run, their precious new identities misspent and worthless.

"Hey, what're you doing?"

Cylie's breath caught as he looked down to his hands. They were occupied, by pure, anxious habit, with two tactical-glass butterfly knives, halfway through a pattern of intricate folding and unfolding. Eyes darting up, he assessed his unexpected watchers. Another group of students, he guessed, half a dozen boys as drunk as the ones he'd passed earlier. The apparent leader, a tall white fellow with dim blond hair and new-looking clothes, had fixed him with an expression of suspicious interest.

There was no way these knives were street-legal here. He'd only gotten them through the layers of ship and port security with the benefit of long practice and their unusual materials. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Cynthia would never have made this kind of mistake.

He closed the knives with a snap, smiling broadly. "Why, just practicing some tricks! I'm a performer, you see."

"What, like the Masked Parade?" The tall boy moved closer, several others near behind him.

Cylus did not wince; no need to discuss his own history with the Parade. Most everyone knew of the traveling fleet of entertainers, which made it a convenient point of reference. "Yes, exactly."

"Huh. Show us something, then."

"Of course!" Stand back, he almost said; but that would be tantamount to admitting his weapons were real, and that seemed like a dangerous idea. So instead he opened his knives and did a quick, casual helix while remaining seated on the bench. Maybe a bit of nonchalant flash would convince them and put them off, though he wouldn't have placed a bet on it.

Most of the others looked at least a bit impressed; one, a short, soft-looking brown youth with sea-green hair, displayed open fascination, stepping closer even as the rest shifted back.

The leader didn't give ground either way, affecting boredom. "That all you've got?"

Cylie's thoughts raced, seizing and discarding ideas as he summoned his performer's smile. "Certainly not. Why, I've got some fantastic new tricks I've been meaning to try out with an audience member, actually. Would one of you like to volunteer?"

The short brown person stepped forward again. A boy, though Cylus would have guessed otherwise from his build alone. His gendermark earring had the same shape as Cylie's, an upward-pointed triangle with a circle encompassing the topmost point. But where Cylie's mark was a simple silver stud in the customary left lobe, this boy wore a dangling golden triangle crowned with a circular green gem. His eyes were the same bright color, wide and eager beneath a pair of fine golden spectacles. "I will!"

The leader rolled his eyes. "Yeah, you do that, Emile," he sneered, not bothering to disguise the disdain in his voice.

Anger smoldered. Cylus couldn't be angry with Cynthia; but he could feel whatever he wanted towards this smug young man. The sudden desire to see fear in his eyes sparked a dangerous hunger in Cylus' stomach.

He turned his attention to the soft youth—Emile—as the boy moved closer with a nervous smile. "Hi," he said, his voice a gentle alto. "How can I help?"

A little more intel... Cylus pushed extraneous thoughts away. Double checking for nearby cameras, he stood and met Emile's smile with his own, turning up the wattage until Emile's cheeks darkened with a blush. "All you have to do..." Cylus tucked one knife away and placed his empty hand on Emile's shoulder, positioning him between Cylie and the other boys. "Is stay very, very still..." Cylus unfolded his other knife with a weighty click, holding the point a careful distance in front of Emile's face. "And keep your eyes on this." The flush on Emile's cheeks spread down his neck; Cylus suppressed a sudden urge to press closer, to place his lips next to the boy's pierced ear and make his earring flutter. "Can you do that for me, Emile?"

"Yes," Emile exhaled. Several of the boys snickered. Emile remained unmoving, only the softest sigh suggesting that he'd heard them.

Cylie began to trick, rolling the knife open and closed, open and closed, around and above his hand, short tosses into the air; all a safe distance from Emile, but near enough that the other boys behind the blond-haired leader started exchanging glances.

"Now imagine, if you will," Cylus said, pulling from one of those inflight brochures, "That you are a cloud in the Jovian atmosphere. You are surrounded by ceaseless storms and shifting pressures, pushing and pulling you this way and that, this way and that..." He wove a slow-building cadence of words through the soft, rhythmic clicks of the tacglass knife as it folded and unfolded. His other hand gripped firm on Emile's shoulder, feeling its warmth against his palm. "Spiraling... swirling... ebbing and flowing... twisting and turning... at the mercy of the winds around you." His blade sped faster, ever faster; a whirlwind of glass to cover his rising panic. Why had he chosen this analogy? Everything he knew about Jupiter's atmosphere he'd learned less than forty-eight hours ago. But he was in it now; nothing for it but to keep his voice and blade in motion. "Cyclones, jet streams, ceaseless circulation..."

Emile's body relaxed under Cylus' hand on his shoulder. A glance at the rest of his audience found their eyes wide; falling, finally, under his spell. Even the leader was quiet, eyes fixed on the movement of Cylie's knife.

In an alchemic instant, Cylie's panic transmuted into confidence, the unshakeable certainty that had bluffed him through countless performances, and out from gunpoint more than once.

He had this. He had everything he needed right here.

"You find yourself pulled inward, into an oncoming storm. You are spun, swept, stretched, swallowed. You fall inward, ever inward, unable to resist." Faster. Faster. He usually used his knife trainers when working this fast. A single wrong motion and he'd lose a finger, along with everything else he was fighting for in this makeshift performance.

But he wasn't afraid. Exhilaration flooded him, adrenaline beating through his veins. He surrendered to his earlier impulse, shifting closer to Emile, the easier to keep him steady. Or to feel him. The boy's back pressed against his chest; a perfect fit. "And then, at the center of the storm, for a single instant, you are..." He leaned in, close enough to inhale Emile's scent: an understated botanical perfume whose elements he didn't recognize.

Brushing the shell of Emile's ear with his lips, he laced his whisper with command: "Still..."

Emile's breath stopped, his body perfectly motionless.

"Until—" Cylie's blade slashed.

Red erupted.

The group of boys staggered back, gasping and cursing, the blond boy nearly tripping over one of his fellows.

"You are lifted anew!" Cylie concluded with a showman's finality, using a flick of his knife-hand to swirl the red silk scarf he'd conjured during his false strike. "And the dance begins again!"

He'd intended to step out into a flourish, but Emile had slumped back against him, trembling. So instead he shifted sideways, sliding his empty hand from Emile's shoulder down to his waist, suddenly aware of soft curves beneath fine cloth. Bracing Emile's back, he guided the lad into bowing alongside him.

When Cylus straightened, Emile stayed bent.

Well, that was fine. Cylie dropped the red scarf across the back of the lad's neck, ends trailing long to either side, tracking the other boys' eyes as he reinforced the frightful illusion he'd evoked. "So! Who wants to volunteer for my next trick?" He beamed, locking gazes with the leader of the little pack.

"Nobody," the boy spat with unconvincing derision, still backing away. "We've got better things to do than humor some random Parade knock-off." As they retreated, Cylie's triumph and relief were soured by irritation: at the boy's jibe, but far more at his own receptiveness to it.

He clamped down on the knot of emotion. For all he knew, they might be off to report him to the nearest security officer, and he didn't want to have to stash his knives to avoid confiscation. It was time to be elsewhere.

His eyes flickered to Emile; still bowed and scarf-draped, knees trembling. "You can stand up now, you know," Cylus said, tucking his knife back up a sleeve. "And your friends left in a quite a rush. You might want to hurry if you're going to catch up."

"Oh," the boy said, straightening at last, cheeks still flushed dark. His speech was slow, still half-entranced. "They're not my friends. l mean, I don't think they are. I only just got here a couple days ago, we're all starting at the University, and my sister said I ought to make some friends. So I asked if I could go with them after convocation. But they weren't... Very nice."

Cylus reached out to reclaim his scarf, studying Emile's face as red silk slid free. The trace of melancholy that had marred Emile's dreamy expression smoothed, and a shiver passed through his body.

Interesting.

Cylie murmured something conciliatory and reached out, making to adjust Emile's outfit as though the scarf had tugged something awry. There wasn't much to straighten; just a small pair of lapels crowning a tight-buttoned vest that flared at the waist, panels angling down to his knees, over a billowy, cream-white shirt—real silk, judging by the feel.

Emile relaxed into the gesture, and Cylie took advantage of the opportunity to examine him more closely, fussing performatively with the rest of the outfit. The waves of his soft, sea green hair were shot through with deeper blues, expensively dyed or permacolored. His gold-and-emerald mark hung from a lobe still swollen, perhaps with recent piercing. His outfit complimented his hair, featuring similar blues and greens. Soft trousers with damask panels of green vines embroidered up the outsides were cuffed mid-calf to reveal tight, cream-colored stockings and tooled leather shoes. Besides the notable earring, he wore a wide bracelet studded with stones that Cylus recognized with a start as sapphires.

It was unlike any clothing he'd seen on Europa so far; or ever, really. It was archaic, and flamboyant, and it screamed of wealth and a sheltered upbringing.

There might be something more to gain here. He wished now that he'd changed into something besides his plain gray travel clothes; but Emile's expression held only guileless interest.

"Well, what a coincidence!" Cylus refreshed his smile, noting Emile's deepening flush with satisfaction and no little pleasure. "I'm looking to make some friends myself. Emile, was it? I'm Cylus, but my friends call me Cylie. Do you happen to know any good places where I could get a bite to eat?"

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Next chapter >

Chapter Links:

Act 1: One Evening on Europa

1.1: Cylus: At the Mercy of the Winds

1.2: Emile: A Pattern In Your Rash Decisions

1.3: Cylus: Amateur Behavior

1.4: Emile/Cylus: In The Absence Of Gravity

1.5: Emile: An Expert At Standing

1.6: Cylus: In The Vulnerable Vicinity of Flesh

1.7: Emile: A Cool Touch

1.8: Emile/Cylus: Anywhere is Good

1.9: Cylus: Forever Changed

1.10: Cynthia: Enough for Now

1.11: Valerie: Her Finger on the Pulse

1.12: Cylus: Out of Reach

Act 2: Fractures

2.1: A Gentle Dawn (Europa / Bel)

2.2: Caught In The Net (Bel / Guest)

2.3: Distractions (Luhifa / Emile)

2.4: Axioms (Cylus)

2.5: Meltfall (Bel / Guest / Emile)

2.5.EX Hands Free (Bel)

2.6: Not Just A Weapon (Cynthia)

2.7: Watch It Again (Bel / Emile)

2.8: Someone Else To See (Emile)

2.9: Close Enough (Clio)

2.10 Clarity (Cylus)

2.11 Value Assessment (Emile / Saoirse / Servant)

2.12 Making Time (Saoirse / Emile / Bel)

Story-level content notes:

Expect lots of flirtation and ambient horniness, which I won't be tagging at the chapter level because it's gonna be everywhere. This story also includes:

T4T (trans x trans) and T4C (trans x cis) romances that can and will get messy; do not expect happy endings any time soon, and know that some romances will not last.

Relatedly, given that we have a majority queer/trans cast, we have instances of: 

Sad/upsetting things happening to queer/trans people

Queer/trans people making bad choices and/or committing outright reprehensible acts

Queer/trans people imperfectly navigating boundaries/negotiations/relationships

Lots of kinks, which will be tagged when they are actually enacted on physical bodies but won’t necessarily be tagged when discussed or thought about except in particularly vivid instances. These include but are not limited to:

Dominant/submissive dynamics

Biting

Knifeplay 

Bloodplay 

Hypnosis

Voyeurism (with and without intentional exhibitionism by the voyeured-upon parties)

Orgasm denial

Intoxication (including occasional drunk or drugged make-outs which are therefore inherently of dubious consent; tags will include additional info about tone and dynamics)

More to come!!

I'll maintain, expand, and link off to this list as the story grows and additional characters, kinks, and dynamics arise!

"It's just my eldest sister. I... haven't written her back for a couple days, and normally we message all the time. She's the one who told me about this place, actually!" Before he'd left home, Valerie had compiled a detailed list of her favorite spots in the City. He'd never guessed her recommendations would come in handy so soon. But Callisto's Café was perfect. The decor was spacious yet intimate: open areas partitioned by curtains of translucent, patterned fabric that evoked seaweed, punctuated with softly illuminated hanging glass art in abstract, vaguely aquatic shapes. Tables and booths were numerous, ranging from capacious to cozy enough for two, like the sheltered nook he and Cylie had found near the back. He even spotted several Devigne vintages on the high shelves behind the massive bar.

"You're at the University, right?" Cylus poured them each a glass from the carafe of ice water the waiter had left when taking their order. "I imagine that's keeping you busy."

"Well... yes, but it's not just that. I... ruffled some family feathers recently." Your choice of timing, location, and company for this transition demonstrate a concerning lack of forethought, a deviation from our previous discussions on this matter, and a violation of the Devigne family rules of conduct. I have attached them for you to review prior to your matriculation, Mother's message had continued. Do not forget to update your commcards with your chosen name. True to her word, Lyonesse Devigne had linked the document she and Valerie co-managed on family protocols for online and offline behavior, highlighting the portion about publicizing major life changes. It covered several pages, including security concerns and mitigations, press release review processes, and approved media channels. She'd also included the address of a commcard printer in Europa City, not that Emile had made it there yet.

Cylus studied him with amused interest. "You seem like a proper young man. Hard to imagine you doing too much ruffling. What got you in trouble?"

"An... indiscretion. During my Reterra last week." Emile stalled with a deep drink of water, wincing as frigid cubes threatened to tumble out onto his face. He much preferred his family's practice of chilling beverages prior to serving them. "Have, ah, you ever been?"

"To Old Earth? Haven't had the pleasure. What's it like?"

A smiling server arrived with their wine, leaving Emile time to consider. His eyes lingered on the cascade of red liquid into their glasses, a sight familiar as home, as his memory ranged over the two weeks he'd spent being ferried about Old Earth with a collection of other well-off visitors from across the galaxy.

As the server retreated, leaving two generous pours and the bottle behind, Emile spoke again. "It was beautiful, what I saw of it. They flew us over all the most famous preserves, mountains and forests and grasslands and deserts... like nothing I've ever seen. But they don't take you down into them, which makes sense given the regulations, but I felt so... removed." They'd flown over some of the old ruined cities, too: drowned, or burned, or starved, in the long, bleak era when Terra's population had dropped from billions to its remaining few, heavily regulated millions. The others on the tour had regarded the ruins with the same mild excitement they'd shown for any of the natural wonders, which had left Emile feeling quietly uncomfortable. He sipped the wine to distract himself from the complicated knot of feelings in his chest; it tasted good, mellow and warm with an undercurrent of spice. "But the ocean!" His heart soared and twisted at the memory. "We spent three days on a boat around these remote islands, which was amazing. Have you ever heard of snorkeling?"

Cylus hadn't. Before Emile realized it, he'd finished his glass, waxing rhapsodic about the experience. He'd been one of few on the trip who knew how to swim, and never more grateful for it than when stroking through rock arches and exploring strange stony landscapes below the waves.

But then he paused, sorrow surging through him. "It's so sad, though," he said, voice sinking to a whisper. "It used to all be alive, you know? You can see the echoes of it; shells and skeletons and dead reefs. I've seen vids of how it used to be, before the last mass marine extinction and the resulting... conservation efforts. Now, at least where we were, it was so... empty." Even some of the fallen cities had looked more alive, green with plants reclaiming spaces humans had been forced to abandon.

Silence fell between them for a moment, Cylus studying him over a half-empty glass. "Anyway," Emile continued, a wave of self-consciousness rushing him forward, "We ended up in New Singapore, which is where Brenn and I..." He hadn't meant to mention Brenn. But the experience felt tangled inside him, and he ached to talk about it to someone who wasn't a member of his family. For all he knew, Cylie and everyone else at the University had seen the post already, like the leader of the boys he'd fallen in with after convocation had. Maybe all his prevarication was for nothing. "We... connected, and then got gendermarks together. Then a picture of us got posted on Now, and went... a little viral. And that's how my family found out."

"Ahh," Cylie nodded, refilling Emile's glass without evidence of recognition. "Are they strict about that kind of thing?"

"Not about gendermarks or anything weird like that. My eldest sister got one younger than me. And my third-sib..." Emile recalled Dion's reply to Lyonesse's stern message, perfectly calculated to draw their mother's ire. Dion had taken a series of pictures at a club, surrounded by scantily clad celebrants with left ears pierced but empty. All their gendermark earrings hung from the ornate tunnel plug stretching Dion's left lobe: an assortment of triangles, diamonds, and circles overlapping in various orientations. Dion's note had read: Congrats, little brother! I wanted to follow your example but couldn't decide which gender this time. Think I should hold a public poll??? "Well, they change marks often. It's that my family is..." Once again, he teetered on the brink of dropping his surname; once again, he swallowed it. "...kind of private."

Obfuscation always felt awkward in his mouth. He hadn't thought twice before sharing his family name with the other members of his Reterra tour group. But he'd discovered how the very presence of that name drew conversations into inexorable orbit around the world Emile had spent his whole life deciding, with great reluctance, to leave. And then Brenn, who'd seemed more interested in him than his name, had... Well. Mother seemed sure Brenn had sold the image to the outlet that published it, but maybe someone had harvested it from a more private gallery. After all, Emile hadn't told him to keep it secret or anything.

"Does that mean I shouldn't ask anything more about them? I confess I'm terribly curious now, but I wouldn't want to get you in more trouble."

Cylus' teasing tone made Emile want to keep talking, despite everything. "Well, I'm the youngest of seven..."

Another member of the waitstaff appeared as if sent to spare Emile from his own incipient folly, carrying a plate of the flaky pastries that were the café's specialty. "What about you, though?" Emile asked as he cut one of them open, salivating at the scent from within. The first bite, chased with a sip of wine, sent his eyes rolling back in his head for a moment before he collected himself. A spring-harvest white from home would have been Emile's choice to accompany fish, but the red Cylus had chosen earlier matched better than Emile had expected with the vivid seasonings, creamy sauce, and finely chopped celery and lotus root rounding out the fish pastries. He swallowed, cheeks warming to notice Cylie watching him, and remembered to finish his question. "What's your family like?"

Cylus had a twin sister, it turned out; they were traveling performers, which sounded terribly romantic to Emile. He'd always wanted to see the Masked Parade in person, and Cylus said that he and Cynthia had even traveled with them for a time. Before he could ask more about that, though, Cylus shared that they were visiting to decide if they wanted to go to the University too. When Emile volunteered that he was only just starting there himself, Cylus had leaned forward with obvious interest, veering their conversation into the minutiae of the application and admissions process.

By the time Cylus seemed satisfied with that topic, they'd finished the bottle of wine and half a dozen of the buttery, spicy fish rolls. Emile had grown up sipping at his parents' table and had body mass to handle his drink, but by now even he was starting to feel altered.

Though he had enough self awareness left to attribute some of that feeling to how Cylus' eyes kept lingering on his.

"So, Emile," Cylus asked as he refilled Emile's glass from a freshly arrived bottle, "What made you decide to go to Europa University?"

Emile couldn't help thinking back to convocation that afternoon, and the dean's opening address. Yours are the minds that will guide the future of this system, and perhaps this galaxy. And we at Windfall's Europa University will be with you every step of the way.

Emile hadn't come to Europa to guide the future of the galaxy. Right now he was struggling to guide his own eyes, which kept wandering along the curve of pale hair at the edge of Cylus' jaw. "Well... my sister Valerie... she went here. Did really well. She's amazing. She helped convince my parents it might... I don't know, awaken something in me? Not like that​," he groaned when Cylus snickered. "My mother literally just..." He'd almost said sent me of our family rules of conduct, the sort of comment almost as bad as dropping his family name. "... Reminded me to behave, after the whole... gendermark incident."

"What kind of misbehavior is she worried about? That kind of 'incident' doesn't seem like it'd come up too often, except maybe for someone like your third-sib." Cylus' tone was light, but his gaze held a sharp edge of interest.

That edge sent pleasant shivers through him; words spilled before he thought better of them. "They... don't love either of my longer term sweethearts." Xiomara, too threatening; Marc, from the wrong class. "And on top of that, our family... entertains a lot of guests, and I was supposed to help out. But I kept... Entangling with the guests. Sometimes more than one... on the same night. At the same time."

"Sounds like a perk more than a problem, if you ask me." The warm lack of surprise in Cylus' smile filled Emile's body with champagne bubbles, as did his lack of dismay at Emile's mention of other lovers.

"It wasn't always sex, even!" Emile continued, buoyed by that lightness. He really ought to ask if Cylus was making an advance. "I like... talking with people." Despite what his array of sexual encounters might suggest, Emile had often been told that he was flirting when he hadn't intended to, and equally often his own attempts at flirtation passed unnoticed. He was worse still at recognizing when people were flirting with him. It all ran together in his mind, a blurry continuum of interaction that seemed to have clear demarcations for everyone else. "But Mother's always telling me to think more about others' judgments. How they might harm me, or the family. She's been in PR for a long time, since before any of us were born. I guess it's hard for her not to think about it. But I'm not good at living that way. I just want to..."

The world seemed to contract around the two of them, a bubble of warm stillness.

"I just want to connect," Emile said softly, meeting Cylie's eyes for an instant before averting his gaze into the depths of his wineglass. "With people, and with the world."

Memories swept through him. Home: the tannic taste of first-harvest grapes, seeds slick against his tongue; the warmth of an apple tree trunk against his back as he tinkered with a damaged drone harvester; the scent of crushed green as his father culled unwelcome evidence of their planet's lingering wildness. Xiomara's firm touches; Marc's gentle, enveloping embrace. And more recently, the weightlessness of water; the dance of sunlight on stone; the feeling of earth between his fingers and the sting in his earlobe and the weight of Brenn's arm slung around his shoulders.

His hand fell away from his wine glass, palm upward on the table between them. "So I... I'd really like to know whatever you'd like to share about yourself," Emile finished, self consciousness creeping in again. "Because I also like to talk about myself, apparently. Far too much."

The touch of Cylus' fingers on his hand brought his eyes back up with a jolt. Something in Cylus' expression seemed... open, in a way it hadn't before. "Alright, then. Do you want to hear about the time my sister and I performed on the promenade of Vega Station?"

Emile, savoring the warmth of Cylie's hand against his, wanted nothing more.

The conversation flowed from there, melting into an easy exchange of stories and reflections. All of Emile's were from home: enough interesting people came to Devigne's Paradise that, without naming names, he managed to at least keep up with Cylie's array of far-flung adventures: from an asteroid colony in a distant system, to the crowded streets of Titan, to a harrowing visit to a volcanic planet on the verge of reclamation. As Emile listened, he remembered how Cylus' hand had closed on his shoulder, earlier; the way those fingers had curled against his waist while he was doing tricks with his knives. How fast those transparent blades had spun, how close, while Cylus wove words into the most beautiful shapes...

Across the table, Cylus' mellifluous voice paused.

Emile jolted, realizing he'd practically fallen into a trance; lost in the rhythm of words to the point he'd stopped absorbing their content. "Oh my goodness, I'm so sorry," he gushed, searching for Cylus' expression in the dim cafe light. He needed to clean his glasses; pulling his hand back and retrieving a cloth from his breast pocket, he did so frantically. "I, I drifted away, there! You have such a wonderful voice." No, that was too forward for having just utterly lost the thread of conversation. "I, uh, please, would you be so kind as to repeat the last bit of your story?"

Fumbling spectacles back onto his face, he blinked to find Cylus laughing softly, something new in his eyes.

Something warm, and wicked.

"You're sweet." Cylus drained scarlet dregs from his wineglass without releasing Emile's gaze. "Being flustered looks good on you."

Without thinking, Emile picked up the wine bottle, angling it above Cylus' glass in unspoken offer. Cylus' smile widened, head inclining approval. Emile's next words spilled from his lips as inexorably as the pouring wine. "You're beautiful. Anything would look good on you." Only the truth. Cylus' dress was plain, the same flat gray trousers-and-shirt that Emile had noticed on a number of people in both the Terran and Europan spaceports. Perhaps some widely available matter-printer pattern? Regardless, those plain garments did nothing to diminish the force of his appearance: delicate features, soft-swept hair, and those slender-fingered hands, which had moved with such precise confidence. His skin looked untouched by sunlight in a way that Emile had never seen before leaving home, almost worryingly pale. But paired with his platinum hair and those striking amethyst eyes, Emile found the full effect eerily beautiful.

Cylus snickered, breaking Emile from another momentary reverie. "Really thought you were about to drop a line, there." When Emile blinked, confused, Cylus leaned forward, lowering his voice. "You know, 'anything would look great, nothing would look even better'?"

Emile flushed, shifting with sudden awareness of how wet he was. "I mean, I'm certain that's true, but I, um, didn't think of it and also I wouldn't want to be impolite..."

"Don't worry." Cylus smiled over the rim of his glass, licking a trace of red off his lips. "You've been very polite. Lucky for you..." Pressure ghosted against his calf. Emile nearly jumped from the padded booth seat. "...I'm not." The contact firmed, sliding upward: Cylus' foot, teasing the inside of Emile's knee.

Emile's breath sped.

Cylus' foot stilled, maintaining a light contact that felt like it was drawing all of Emile's blood down towards it. "Now, if I promise I won't consider it rude," Cylus swirled his glass, scarlet liquid dancing in lazy circles, "Would you like to try your line again? If you really want to be proper," Cylus' long lashes lowered, periwinkle shadowing into indigo, "You can work in a please."

"Please," Emile breathed without further thought. "Would you..." The touch against his knee intensified, pressing outward. He let it move his leg apart from its opposite, cheeks burning hot. Cylus' eyes seemed to swallow the world as that pressure shifted to Emile's inner thigh.

Emile let the first words that reached his tongue come tumbling out. "Please would you show me how those knives work?"

Cylus' touch on his leg froze.

Between heartbeats, Emile lived and died a hundred lifetimes. Why that question? Why not the line Cylus had offered him? Everything had been going so wonderfully...

This time, Cylus' laughter was no soft, seductive thing, but a burst of amusement that shocked Emile's heart into beating again. "You..." Cylus just managed to set his wine down without spilling it, bending over the table and muffling a delightfully undignified series of snorts and gasps with one hand. The touch on Emile's thigh vanished, and his whole body lamented its departure. But Cylus' overflowing mirth replaced its command of his attention.

Emile's face split into a grin so wide it hurt. In that moment, he would have said or done anything in his power, if it meant he would hear Cylus laugh like this again.

As Cylus regained control of his breath, Emile seized the wave of exhilaration and rode it through his next few words: "And also please tell me we're flirting and I'm not imagining it because I also would love to see you in anything you want, including nothing. If that's something you'd like too. P-please."

That set Cylus laughing again, which felt so good that Emile found himself able to sit comfortably with the near-agonizing fact that Cylus hadn't actually answered him yet.

"Oh," Cylus managed at last, wiping his eyes with the same red silk scarf he'd conjured earlier. "People underestimate you, don't they, Emile?"

"Sometimes," Emile admitted, suddenly shy. "You too?"

Cylus smiled and slid out of the booth in one graceful motion, standing and extending a hand towards Emile. "Well, I can't do either of those fascinating things you requested here, can I? I don't suppose you know anywhere that's good for a more... private conversation?"

It was only after he'd paid and followed Cylus out the door that he realized Cylus had deflected his last question with two others.

That counted, Emile told himself—hand exquisitely enfolded by Cylus' warm, dexterous fingers, the street air cool against his flushed face— as the best kind of answer: the kind that trusts the listener to figure it out themself.

-----

Next Chapter >

The rest of his table was empty. Not a single person had gotten close enough to him the entire evening to ask if he was alright. A few had wandered near, standing in clusters and waiting to see if he would acknowledge them, murmuring among themselves while casting glances his way. But he’d barely looked up from his comm except to watch the lecturers, wearing the expression of someone who wouldn’t remember a word they’d said tomorrow as plates from the evening’s meal piled up around him untouched.

As the boy looked down at his comm for the hundredth time, his soft features folded in transparent distress beneath his gold-rimmed spectacles, and her heart squeezed with empathy.

It was very distracting.

“...why our position as Windfall-premium-preferred partners could assist your trade conglomerate with negotiating priority shipping through the Proxima Gates. Is there... something interesting happening behind me, Luhifa?” Simone’s tone dropped to a conspiratorial murmur, her golden eyes flashing with amusement in the low light. Their flawless metallic sheen would have required several expensive rounds of gene-modding, or one very expensive one.

An instinctive Ah, I mean no disrespect leapt to her lips, but she pressed them shut before the words could slip free. The types of people she was here to form connections with didn’t apologize for their social blunders, they owned them. If she wanted to play on their level, she had to act like them.

Offering a sly, confident smile, she leaned forward, closing the distance between them and trying not to let her relief show when Simone mirrored the gesture. She dropped her volume to match Simone’s, though the other table was too far away for them to be overheard. “I’m glad you noticed. That boy with the green hair, at the table behind us... what do you know about him?”

Simone’s eyes gleamed with the eagerness of someone about to share particularly juicy gossip, replying without even a glance over her shoulder. “Rumors say that he’s a Devigne. The same one who was...” she lowered her voice a bit further. “...in the feeds a few days ago.”

A Devigne?

Luhifa hadn’t kept up on the feeds this week—she’d been networking her ass off, and alternating between calling her family and Clio in what little time she had left over. But the name alone made her eyebrows lift in surprise. “In that outfit, I would guessed he was a Persean prince.”

Simone nodded. “Retrofeudalism is popular beyond the Arm, it seems. With a Devigne making his University debut in that look, I expect it’ll be all over campus before long. Do you think I should update my wardrobe?” She swept a hand down, inviting Luhifa to take in the view: an asymmetrical top that left one olive-skinned shoulder and her midriff bare, and deceptively-casual low-slung pants that clung to her hips.

Luhifa silently thanked the Stars that she’d already found an opportunity to mention her girlfriend, Clio—her beautiful, exclusive, mech-pilot girlfriend—because she wasn’t sure how well she would have fielded Simone’s obvious flirtation without good reason to demur.

She shook her head, tight curls bouncing against her cheeks, and gave a wide, friendly smile. “Oh, please, no! If you update your look, I’m gonna have to do it, and I won’t be able to stand the frilly sleeves!”

She refrained from mentioning that the clothes making up what her father had dubbed Luhifa’s University Look represented a substantial investment from her family. Tonight’s flowing, pale turquoise pantsuit matched the gendermark in her left ear, a semi-circle of lab-turquoise crowning its downward-pointing golden triangle. The same gold shone from the stylized geometric holo-tats on the opposite side of her face, and gleamed from carefully woven highlights in her dark brown curls.

She, her father, and a rotating cast of fashion-focused cousins and elders both Mbo and Kinkaid had spent months curating this and the other dozen mix-and-matchable outfits hanging in her dorm room closet. After her tiny personal starcraft, initial tuition payments, and a spending allowance she was rationing like water on a deepspace run, the Look had swallowed the remaining profits from the first six months of operating the family’s third and newest star-freighter: only a decade old on purchase, and much better suited for regular gate-travel than the first two.

Thankfully, Simone laughed at her remark, shaking her head. “It’s all the buttons that’d get me.” A brief quirk of her eyebrow. “I don’t like being held back.”

Probably she was just one of those people who liked flirting for fun. Luhifa resisted the urge to work in a second remark about how she and Clio were exclusive, instead nodding along with a smile.

Before she was forced to figure out where to take the conversation from there, the lights dimmed around them. Across the room, another lecturer was climbing the stairs onto the stage.

This was her chance to conclude her and Simone’s conversation without having to talk over the evening’s—thankfully—final speaker. Not that other students hadn’t done as much, but there were instructors among the crowd as well as students, and Luhifa needed to be conscious of her impression on them as well.

Putting the ever-growing roster of distractions from her mind, Luhifa fortified her courage and went for it. “I’d love to talk more later, Simone. Here—” Reaching into the outer pocket of her purse, she fished out her card-case and withdrew one of the gold-lettered black rectangles essential to every version of the Look: her very own commcards. Luhifa Mbo, Mbo-Kinkaid Shipping and Trade,each read. Like she was in the same class as Simone and her peers.

Which she was, technically. She was even reciprocal, for as long as her family was able to keep up with her tuition and expenses.

As the more dutiful students in the crowd offered a round of half-hearted applause to the speaker, expensive golden eyes considered the card Luhifa offered for a moment that seemed to last an hour.

But just as the nervous tumult in Luhifa’s stomach threatened to start crawling up her throat, Simone plucked it from her fingers with a breezy smile, fishing out one of her own and proffering it like it was nothing at all. “I’m actually going out to the Lex with some friends after this. Want to come?”

Resisting the urge to squeeze her fists in triumph, Luhifa accepted the card and modulated any hint of over-eagerness—or the tiredness she felt beneath—out of her response. “Sure. I could do with a drink after all this.”

Simone snickered, but otherwise allowed Luhifa to turn her attention to the sharply dressed man on the podium.

“Waste Not,” the lecturer pronounced, before dropping into a convivial tone. “You’ve all heard those words a lot this week, haven’t you?” He paused, waiting until a desultory chuckle limped through the crowd. “But there’s no better summary of Windfall’s essential mission, and no words will serve you better in the many challenges that you, as young leaders, will face in the years ahead of you.”’

It was... technically a different talk than the ones earlier in the evening. But it was close enough that it prickled on her skin. Windfall really had a brand; every single speech she'd sat through this week had included the “Waste Not” motto at least once. Ma had warned her, having flown in Windfall space most often, but it was another thing to see how thick they laid it on.

She busied her hands with tucking Simone’s commcard into her card-folio, which contained six other new cards from tonight alone, plus over two dozen more from the last week. The little book went back into the outer pocket of her purse, chosen as carefully as the rest of her clothing: designer, from one of Vega’s luxury brands, made of black vat-leather with gold-plated hardware that matched the rest of her outfit.

The commcards within represented less than half of the nearly hundred contacts she’d made so far at University. Arguably the most important contacts, but she still intended to follow through on the rest. You never know which seeds will sprout, her relatives who tended the land back home liked to say. Water wide, harvest thoughtfully, and share bountifully, and more will fall upon the soil around you before you know it.

Thinking of family sent a pang through her chest. Among her card-less contacts had been several other students from the Scattered Worlds, including one from a different large family group on E-12. While she was certain they were all here on favor, it had been a profound relief to let herself, for just a little while, slip into the kind of slang she might use at home or on a run with her family. Even if each of the family-groups and the Worlds had their own dialect of Universal, they all shared a certain distance from the smoothly standardized speech that predominated across the rest of settled space.

Except in the Arm. But they used accents and eccentric terminology on purpose, as one of the many ways they set themselves apart from everyone else. Just as they used their fashion.

Her eyes stole to the boy again.

His face looked like... Da. When he was about to push himself through another long run, when what he truly needed was to spend a month at home with his sibs and nibs. Tending the connections that sustained his genuine, charismatic warmth, which had won him enough friends to assemble the backbone of E-12’s first inter-system trading company.

She squeezed her eyes shut in silent, sudden prayer, the distance of her family a knife in her chest. Void-the-Vastness, Stars-the-Beacons, please, please hold them gently and guide them safely.

At least Clio’s finally, finally just a moon-hop away...

“Favor, we all know, is a gift that we give to each other,” the lecturer was saying. “A form of community, if you will. Indebtedness strengthens the bonds between us, encouraging us to bring forth bounty not just on behalf of ourselves, but on behalf of us all.”

Windfall’s words aren’t all bad, Ma had told her. It’s the actions you want to keep on your sense-map.

Void and Stars, all she wanted was to crawl into her ship-bunk and half-sleep, half-rewatch about seven hours of Fated Hearts while her cousins snored around her.

“So I hope that all of you—whatever your current relationship with Windfall—will remember this in your dealings with each other, and imagine the bountiful futures you might build together. Thank you all, and may Fortune favor your endeavors.”

She did not sag in relief as the speaker bowed and left the stage to polite applause. She wasn’t done yet, after all; Simone was beside her, swiping through comm-messages, her invitation hanging between them.

Whatever “the Lex” was.

Angling her comm—a ring model, casting a holoscreen over the back of her hand—away from Simone, Luhifa swiped in a quick search. The closest match was “The Lexicon”, a nearby bar with a mix of high reviews—praising the strength of the pours—and mediocre ones, citing high drink prices and an invariably noisy student crowd.

Right. Okay. She had enough left in this week’s budget for a drink, even two if the situation demanded it. She could always hit one of the public matter-printers for some vitamin roll, skip a few dining hall meals and pass it off as her being busy, rather than wanting to save a few creds for the next time she needed to keep up appearances.

“Messaging your girlfriend?” Simone was giving her bedroom eyes again.

Her smile felt heavier on her lips. She dismissed her comm screen. “Just checking in with family.”

Simone winced. “Ugh, that sucks. Sounds like you could use a drink, yeah?”

Luhifa blinked, Simone’s reaction so baffling it took her a long moment to process it. Why would it... suck... to check in with family?

Simone’s must be very different than hers.

Maybe that’s why she was coming on so strangely. Maybe that’s how her family had taught her to engage with the world. To keep people a little on edge, a little off balance, in hopes of gaining some advantage.

Some people lived that way. Ma had warned her about that, too, and she’d seen it herself in her years doing runs with the family, though never from anyone who had so little need for advantage as Simone.

“Absolutely,” she stated. As she stood, her eyes strayed to the sad-faced boy, still sitting even as the rest of the room began to wander towards the exits.

On impulse, she altered her course, ignoring Simone’s shocked expression as she crossed to him. “Hey,” she said, waiting a moment as he emerged from the depths of his distraction. “You want to come out with us?"

Some thought completed in his head; or hit a wall. He stood abruptly, nearly knocking his chair over.

"Yeah, sure!" He exclaimed, with obviously forced cheer. "Let's go!"

The "Final Draft"—house cocktail of the Lexicon—involved half a dozen spirits over too much ice. As the group they’d arrived with moved through loose conversation around a handful of standing tables, Luhifa watched Emile—they’d exchanged first-name introductions on the walk—down his before she was even halfway through her mango-vodka-soda.

He chatted brightly as he drank, acquainting himself with the rest of Simone’s crowd. At first they’d all, even Simone, regarded him with thinly veiled nervousness, but he seemed a practiced conversationalist: asking questions; expressing interest in the answers; sharing brief, low-stakes anecdotes of his own before shifting focus back to others. His smiles were frequent, and looked sincere.

But she’d done her share of social performance when she wasn’t feeling it; was doing it now, in fact. And as Emile’s glass emptied, she noticed his attention faltering: a lost conversational thread, an accidental repetition, a forgotten name. Several conversational partners withdrew in turn, clustering around nearby tables and whispering among themselves. One of them showed the rest their holoscreen, displaying what looked like it might be the tabloid post Simone had mentioned earlier.

Once again, it was distracting.

Inviting a Devigne along unasked had been a big enough social swing for the evening. Her objective now should be to cultivate her connection with Simone, currently tossing around some tidbit of salacious celebrity gossip with one of her friends. Luhifa had never been much for that kind of chat herself; it always felt strange, talking about people she didn’t know as if she did. But as she searched for some suitable remark, Emile set off towards the bar alone, wobbling as he disappeared into the crowd.

A voice spoke from memory: her cousin Malla, the first time he and the rest of her older cousins had gotten her drunk. One thing you gotta remember, Lu, is you don’t let your friends tox alone. ‘Specially in a crowd.

Luhifa sighed, excused herself, and set off after him.

Despite his flamboyant dress, it took her nearly a quarter of an hour to find him: pinned against the wall around the corner from the bathroom with someone putting their hands inside his clothing. It looked... hypothetically consensual, but her approach sent the other scurrying, which didn’t speak well of their motives. Emile looked blearily disappointed, but smiled when he recognized her, following her without protest.

She parked him in a booth and went to retrieve a glass of water from the bar. On her way back, she passed near the door—

“Excuse me, miss?”

"Hey, Emile?"

He looked up from the holo-display above his comm; still no message from Cylus. The beautiful, friendly Black girl—Luhifa, that was her name—had returned, something he thought might be pity in her expression. He dredged up a smile. "Hi," he managed without his voice wobbling.

She slid into the booth across from him, gold highlights glinting in the tight coils of her black hair and the geometric patterns on the side of her face. Her eyes were a bit wild, but friendly. She slid a cup of clear liquid across the table between them with the same measured gentleness Marc used with the more anxious horses in the Devigne family stables. "You drink a lot?"

He could not help loving her in that moment; for checking on him, for being kind, for reminding him of Marc. Even though that memory itself hurt, bringing to mind everyone else he missed.

Resisting the urge to look at his comm again, he gulped from the glass, tasting only water. Swallowing, he tried to answer without sounding pathetic. "Well, there was always lots of wine around at home."

"Wine and spirits can really hit different, huh? My older cousins always warned me to take it easy when I'm drinking something new. Took me a couple of real rough hangovers to figure out they were right." She pitched her voice a little lower. "Anyway, someone's looking for you, over by the door."

His heart lept in his chest. Could it be, somehow...?

Hope deflated as he followed her gaze. The waiting person was not Cylus; was no one he recognized, a broad man noticeably older than most of the bar's other occupants.

"I can tell him off, if you want. But one of the upperclass girls said he’s an instructor, one of the nice ones, so he's probably okay."

"S'alright. Thank you." Standing without leaning on the table was a little daunting, but he managed it. "Thank you," he repeated, feeling inane and inadequate and somehow like he was in trouble.

“I’ll come with you,” she said; not an offer so much as a statement. Emile felt a flash of guilt; but gratitude was stronger.

The broad man made no secret of watching as they crossed the room, and Emile scolded himself into studying in return. The visitor was neatly dressed in simple, dark clothing, wearing fewer layers than most others Emile had seen on Europa. He stood nearly as wide as he was tall, an imposing pillar of a person who looked capable of lifting and breaking a wine barrel over his knee. His face was pale-skinned, clean-shaven, with thoughtful dark eyes and neatly trimmed hair streaked with gray. His presence was an island of stillness in the chaotic bar, and he wore a calm, unruffled smile as students milled around him, many stopping to wave or exchange a few words.

Emile tried to collect himself, falling back on the formal manners he'd been drilled on for his family's many Important Visitors. Running a self conscious hand through his hair, he squeezed through a knot of chatting youths and came out closer to the large man than he'd intended; close enough that he couldn't have bowed without knocking into the man's imposing chest.

So he cut the gesture short into an awkward bob that he regretted immediately. His greeting came out breathy, his chosen name tasting unfamiliar on his own tongue as he bit back the ingrained instinct to offer a full introduction. "I’m Em-Emile, at your service, sir—professor."

How the older man heard his words over the crowd, Emile had no idea; but he inclined his head in response. "Gerasim Lagunov, but all the students call me Sima. Thank you for a moment of your evening." His gaze moved past Emile, to where Luhifa had emerged from the crowd behind him. “And you also, Miss.” His voice was a warm, deep basso that calmed Emile, like wading into a still lake. His accent was noticeable, smooth and almost familiar, though he couldn't place it.

Emile exhaled, found a more confident register. "A pleasure to make your acquaintance. How may I be of service?"

As Lagunov—no, Emile was a student too, Sima—opened his mouth to answer, a roar of drunken cheers erupted behind Emile. It crested, then broke into a cacophony of laughter and shouting. Emile's hands clapped over his ears; he was in "quiet and alert and polite" mode and the sound shocked him physically.

Mortified, he pulled his hands down, face scalding. "Sorry," he managed. "You were saying?"

Sima's smile was subtle, serene. "Might we step outside?”

The professor gave her a courteous nod before leading Emile out of the bar, and seemed pleased when she followed them.

But while he appeared undisturbed by her presence—which tentatively increased her estimation of him—it was also clear that he hoped to speak with Emile in some degree of privacy.

Luhifa stepped back far enough to give them space, watching how Emile fiddled with his gendermark earring as they began to talk. Something in that, in how he’d stumbled slightly over his own name before the professor, made her wonder if he was new to boyhood, as she’d once been new to girlhood.

But she’d undergone her transition in adolescence, surrounded by eager and supportive family who were delighted to help her adjust. He was here alone; surrounded, presumably, by strangers.

Her comm buzzed against her finger, interrupting the thought. Leaning against the building exterior, she swiped open her message app to find a note from Clio.

Luhifa’s heart warmed at the sight of her name; then twisted. Her eyes turned up, drawn past the clouded planet overhead to the sparkling infinity of stars beyond, and the vast Void that contained them.

She should be happy. Clio was closer than she’d ever been, save during the always too-brief intersections when the family stopped at Sentrypoint Station. Luhifa would take her moonhopper to the Ocean Gate soon. What was that small distance to the airless immensity that Luhifa had spent much of her life traversing?

Though even when she’d missed Clio then, she’d never felt this lonely before. Her bunks on the family ships were smaller—and even less private—than the one in her dorm room, but she’d always been accompanied: by Ma or Da or both, and an ever changing array of cousins, elders, and youths, Mbos and Kinkaids and every gradation between.

She missed all of them.

She inhaled, murmuring another soft prayer to Void-and-Stars as she tilted her head back, blinking slowly. She didn’t want to have to fix her makeup.

Looking away from the sky and her thoughts, Luhifa glanced at Emile and the professor, Sima. Breath fogged between them, the din of the Lex a remote clamor through frosted glass that sucked all the warmth from her back and shoulders.

Reaching into her purse, she pulled out an elegant and very toasty meshwrap, a broad, slinky gold scarf that radiated warmth as it made contact with her skin. As she did so, Sima caught her eyes, head inclining in a small gesture of invitation.

As she approached, the man removed his outermost layer with a fluid shrug: a dark blue jacket of what looked like real wool, or very good synthetic. He proffered it to Emile, muscular arms bared back to the shoulder. "Valerie should be sending you a proper coat, instead of a nosy professor, if she is so worried about you. Here."

Emile looked... torn. Almost guilty. But he accepted the coat, his short, curvy frame disappearing into the broad embrace of fabric and buttons. His eyes lidded, body sagging with obvious relief; she stepped forward without thinking, ready in case his drink caught up with him all at once.

But he steadied, giving her a smile, sincere but abashed, mouthing ‘thanks’ before looking back to Sima. “You have my gratitude, professor.”

The older man didn’t correct him, didn’t force the small but significant intimacy of the nickname he’d invited them to use earlier. Instead he simply spread his hands, as if showing their emptiness. “It is nothing. I have others. If you wish to return it, my commcard is in the pocket, hmm?”

A prelude to ending the conversation, but he hadn’t done it yet. And his behavior thus far had been... clean. A caring but conscientious elder, without the excessive familiarity her family had taught her to watch out for in new acquaintances—particularly older ones in positions of power. He clearly wanted to connect with them, but in a way that felt appropriate as an instructor.

So she reached into her purse, flicked open the case, and pulled out another commcard. “Luhifa Mbo, professor. Do you know anywhere near here that serves hot chocolate at this hour? Or...” She looked at Emile. “What’s your favorite hot drink?”

His eyebrows shot up in genuine surprise, his answer falling out unguarded. “I... Well, on Earth I tried pearltea... does that come in hot? O-or,” she watched him correct himself, fold his needs smaller, as she’d learned to notice among her own family: a sign that someone used to giving care might need to receive it. “Hot chocolate would also be amazing! Or tea, or, there’s this place I went the other night, I could t-take—”

His face fell all at once, voice trailing off into a pained, hitching breath that sounded about half a second from tears.

As he gathered himself, Sima spoke into the silence, meeting Luhifa’s eyes with a nod of approval. “There is a pearltea shop that is open late, and serves very nice gelatines as well. It is a local specialty, thickened with the seaweeds from below. May I tap you the coordinates?”

She nodded, and he lifted his hand, showing a ring-comm quite different in design from her own: a simple, silvery band. She brought hers close. Touching its underside with her thumb allowed his comm to send information directly to hers, a soft chime confirming receipt.

“And with that, I will leave you to it—unless you would like a guide? But it is not far; perhaps five minutes walk or so.”

“We’ll be fine,” she answered.

“You are a good friend, Miss Mbo.” Sima inclined his head in farewell. “Goodnight, both of you.”

Emile took nearly ten minutes choosing a gelatine from the case, which he became increasingly self-conscious about despite Luhifa’s easygoing shrug when he apologized. “I’m not in a hurry,” she said.

They were all so interesting, was the problem. Slabs of beautifully arranged colors: some abstract swirls, others using precise shapes and striations to create a scene or landscape. The opacity varied as much as the color; a blue sky might allow the eye to pass all the way through, where a piped shape of cloud thickened into obscurity. Embedded in this material hung pieces of artfully shaped fruits, or spiraled sprigs of herbs, or presumably-edible glitter. Several held what looked like actual seaweed; but as fascinating as he found those, they all occupied the ‘savory’ half of the case. He’d tried a great many new foods since leaving home, and looked forward to trying many more, but...

...right now he just really wanted something sweet.

At last he chose one that looked like a sunrise, layers of mixed red-orange-gold streaking upward into pale green and gradations of blue. All those could be seen through clearly, but within hung what looked like chunks of melon, cut with jewel-like facets. A large yellowish circle—some kind of cookie?—was half-embedded in the top of the rectangular confection.

The pearltea menu was equally exciting and overwhelming. But this time he made himself pick quickly, skimming the list and asking for the first thing that caught his eye: steam-froth midnight star-milk tea with glass-jelly pearls.

It arrived looking like something the kitchens at home would have made for an important guest, or a family celebration. Deep purple at the bottom shimmered and sparkled, billowing like nebulae; it faded up into cloudy lavender that was fluffy enough to mound at the top of the cup, dusted with rainbow shinesugar. The liquid within was dense with clear orbs. They distorted the swirling purple where they pressed against the tall glass, which was pleasantly warm to the touch, despite the steam rising off the top.

For a moment he forgot himself, lost in the pleasure of regarding and savoring something beautiful.

The tea tasted like violets and milk and earthy sweetness, almost... yam-like? The cream at the top was smooth against his tongue, the shinesugar bright with a prickle of subdued tartness. The orbs came up the wide, clear straw easily, smooth and pleasingly chewy, adding a mellow starchiness. And the gelatine! The melons must be hydroponically grown locally. Papa refused to have melon shipped even from elsewhere on Devigne’s Paradise, devoting an entire basement room to growing a half dozen varieties of micromelon, and this tasted just as fresh. The gelatine itself was silken but firm, pleasantly but not overwhelmingly sweet, more yielding than the chewy pearls yet satisfyingly dense between the teeth. The cookie on top was buttery and crisp, even where it had been embedded in the gelatine.

After devouring half the confection without even remembering to make eye contact across the table, he put his fork down, embarrassment crashing over him. Looking over, he found Luhifa glancing up from her comm, smile wry but warm as she nursed a mug of what smelled like coffee. “Feeling any better?”

“Yes, thank you.” And he was; having something other than alcohol in him was steadying the world from the precipitous swirling chaos that had nearly swallowed him back at the Lex.

Now he just felt guilty, and embarrassed, wrought with a different but increasingly familiar nervousness as he realized what he must do next. Steeling himself with another sip of the warm pearltea, he produced one of his commcards and laid it on the table. “I didn’t properly introduce myself earlier, at the talk or at the bar. I’m Emile Devigne.” Better to let her know now, than put it off any longer.

But she just smiled and nodded, as if this was no great shock. “As in, top producers of luxury processed agricultural goods, right? Pioneers of mycoforming?”

Well, that was a new reaction. “That’s... that’s us.”

She pulled out her own commcard: black with clean gold lettering. “Luhifa Mbo. We ended up with a big shipment of Devigne preserves after a trading partner had an unexpected family emergency a couple years back. The profits covered their medical bills and about half the down payment on our newest freighter. The couple jars we kept were really good. Pleased to meet you.”

“You too. Thanks for...” he flushed. “Looking after me. Sorry to interrupt your evening.”

“It seemed like you were having a rough night.” In this light he could see the color of her eyes, the same dark brown as most of her voluminous hair. “You want to talk about it?”

“That... is a hell of a first date.” Luhifa allowed herself the understatement after Emile’s wild story. “And it’s been, what... A couple days since?”

“Fifty-two—um, yes. About two days since I messaged back.” His despondence was palpable. “And I know that's not actually very long, I just feel... “ She waited, giving him time to work through it. “Scared. That I messed up something that felt really... “

“Special?” She suggested when it became clear Emile’s words had run dry. Because while she couldn't help but wonder about the motives and origin of Mysterious Balisong Boy, it was clear the adventurous evening he’d shared with Emile had made an impact.

And fair enough. Luhifa still dreamed about her first “date” with Clio; a high proximity vacpac-only picnic squeezed inside the cockpit of Clio’s keysuit, hanging off one of Sentrypoint Station’s struts looking out on the accretion disc of the nearby black hole. She wasn't immune to the power of a singular shared experience.

Emile just nodded, looking down into his glass.

“If you don't mind sharing, what was the professor asking about?” She ventured. Emile looked ready for a subject change.

His face furrowed. “My... My sister. She sent him to check on me, which... I told her I would call this weekend.”

“That's weird. And she can just... Send someone to find you, even on a night out, huh? “

“It seems so." He poked at his mostly-eaten gelatine, scooping out another gem of fruit. “What's... What's your family like? Do you miss them?"

She hadn't thought he‘d ask; the question hit her like a kick to the diaphragm. “They’re... I don't have sibs, but I’ve got like a hundred cousins. And we’re close. Not everyone’s in the family business, but most of us are, travelling all kinds of places together.” She was blinking fast again. “I miss them.”

“I... Miss mine too. And... Home. Do you have anyone waiting for you?”

She blinked. Was he... Veering into a pass? She studied him, looking for lascivious intent—which, okay, she was gorgeous, who could blame him, but he was profoundly not her type in several key ways.

His expression was open like a flower beneath a grow light, earnest and warm and curious.

“I have an exclusive girlfriend," she answered, watching his reaction, because though Emile didn't seem the type, men in particular very occasionally got weird about this.

Not that Simone had been great about it either.

“Oh!" He exclaimed, leaning forward with an eager smile. “What's her name? Is she also going to school here?"

Her concern evaporated. Behind it, she found a well of emotion she'd spent much of the week tamping down. “No. She's... She’s got GDOS, so the City’s not really doable for her without her exo. She’s working complex freight loading and unloading at the Ocean Gate. Her name’s Clio.”

Emile looked bemused. She wondered if he was going to ask about the disorder, and prepared herself to spend the next fifteen minutes or so explaining that, yes, gravity-deficit osteosarcopenia was still a fairly common disorder, something she’d had to do several times this week. She’d begun to suspect Windfall omitted this fact from its standard educational materials, which bothered her in ways she hadn’t had a chance to articulate.

“Do you want to tell me your first date story?" Emile asked instead.

Time slid by in conversation; from first dates to family business, from favorite entertainments—she also liked Fated Hearts!—to potential plans for the year ahead. Luhifa was here to study supply chain management, in contrast to his broad interest in engineering. They both wanted to sign up for the fencing club; Emile because he’d read a lot of books with romantic heroes who had elegant swordfights, Luhifa because she’d “always wanted to be a sword lesbian".

She’d relaxed a lot since they’d started chatting. Her diction eased into an unfamiliar accent: in turns fluid and abrupt, some phonemes stretched while others clipped short. She accepted a few bites of his gelatine, and ordered one of her own.

Then he looked down at the numbers reflected in the sapphires of his wrist comm, and it was half past midnight.

His expression prompted Luhifa to check hers too. “Oh, shit,” she exclaimed, pushing back from the table, “I've gotta get some sleep. I'm doing breakfast with some third year biz majors tomorrow before class.”

“I should sleep too," he agreed, because it was true. Even if the thought of going back to his room alone brought back an echo of his earlier lurching discomfort.

“What dorm are you in?”

He blinked. “Rathmore. What... What about you?”

She grinned. “Delphi. We eat in your dining hall. Wanna get lunch tomorrow?”

Walking back to and across campus together, Sima’s coat wrapped around him, they passed between trees in planters draped with strands of lights, lamps shining through their manicured branches.

Emile thought of the forest beyond the lake, how sunlight lanced through boughs and water-reeds. He and Jacqui had spent a lot of time there together; his closest sibling-in-age, she’d showed him all her favorite trees and streams and glens.

His heart ached once more; this time for home, and for another relationship he still didn’t understand how he’d ruined.

“This was nice,” Luhifa announced when they reached Delphi, standing outside. “And... look, I won't pretend it’s not a big deal to get to know a Devigne. But also...” She looked away for a moment. “I’ve made a lot of connections here so far. That’s part of what I’m here to do. But I haven’t made any... actual friends yet.“

He swallowed. “I... me neither.“

“So.” She squared her shoulders and met his eyes. “Lunch tomorrow. Fencing club. Friends?”

“Friends. ‘Night, Luhifa.” He didn’t have to force a smile as they waved farewell.

But it fell from his face quickly as he turned to walk back to his own dorm alone, burying his hands in the large coat’s pockets.

Where they met a stack of slender rectangles: commcards, like Sima had promised.

In his room—a corner single above a courtyard lined with frost roses—he fished one out as he shrugged off the coat, which fully enveloped his desk chair. Tapping on the lights in his glasses frames, he looked it over. Clean black letters stamped a white background, with the University logo and the Windfall logo superimposed behind the text in subtle silvers:

Gerasim Lagunov

Professor of Business Intelligence - Europa University

A Windfall Company

Below, a smaller block:

Club Advisor: Deepsea Diving Club; Cross Cultural Martial Arts Club; Student Fishing Society; Abstract Tactical Play Club

“Diving club?” he breathed, excitement flickering in his chest as he flopped onto his bed. A quick scan with his comm pulled up the schedule: one that didn’t clash with any of his classes, or his rehearsal room reservations at the music hall, or even with fencing club.

And new member orientation started next week.

He registered with a tap, making sure the invite was added to his calendar and his alarm system.

Already on his comm, he didn’t even think before switching over to his message inbox. He refreshed, just in case Cylus had...

No. No new messages.

He should get ready for bed.

Instead, he reached over, pulling open his bedside table drawer and retrieving the silk scarf inside. He brought it to his face, inhaling the scent he still remembered from Cylie’s skin.

Swiping open a new message window, Emile began to search for the words that would make up for whatever it was that he’d said wrong.

-----

Next chapter >

"You're so good." Cylus sounded almost reverent; then his voice lowered, teasing. "Now relax. Let your body move how it wants to while I make you feel good. What sort of touch do you like here?" The hand between his legs squeezed.

Emile whimpered, body sagging against the rail as he rocked his hips forward to meet Cylie’s touch.

—

Emile's pleasure was almost as sweet to Cylie's ears as his pain. Not that any doubts remained about whether Emile was a masochist; the way he pressed his bitten breast into Cylie's hand made it clear that Cylie's earlier overstep had, if anything, inflamed his desire.

But that opinion might change once his sobriety returned. This was Cylus' chance to make up for that mistake, and drown any lingering hesitations in more unambiguously pleasant memories. "Use words," he murmured as Emile writhed and whimpered. "I know you can, and I want to hear you."

"I like... Firm touch..." Emile answered haltingly. "P-pinches, scratching, pulling, even... Slaps, or... "

Cylie swallowed, desire knife-sharp inside his chest. How was he supposed to stop hurting Emile when he said things like that? "Anywhere you don't like having touched?" Though he enjoyed many types of sex quite well, Cylus would sooner cut someone's hand off than let them penetrate the opening he wished he didn't have.

But when it came to the bodies of others, Cylus appreciated a variety of configurations, and a selfish part of him hoped that Emile's openness to touch was greater than his own.

—

Emile's whole body felt butter-soft, melting into Cylie's hands: one teasing his aching nipple, one cupping between his legs. His voice sounded dreamy to his own ears. "Anywhere is good."

Cylus released his grip on Emile. "Turn around and put your hands on the rail." The rippling golden reflections of the elevator light off the ice cast his face in ever-shifting radiance. His eyes were open wide, shamelessly bright with the hunger Emile had scented from the instant they'd met: a ravenous potentiality with a gravity even more irresistible than that pressing their feet to the floor.

Emile turned around, placed his hands on the rail, and set his feet wide. He closed his eyes as Cylus pressed close against his back: like he had done during the trick in the park, knife whirling before Emile's eyes while he spoke a storm around them both.

But this time Cylus plunged one hand down the front of Emile's trousers, found the band of his underclothes, and wriggled inside.

—

Fortune's favor, Emile was wet. As his fingers tangled in the soft, slick hair on Emile's mons, Cylie allowed himself a mean little tug, just enough to lift Emile's groan into a gasp.

Cylus believed that Emile meant what he'd said: anywhere is good. But his old teacher's advice—make them tell you where they want to be led—rang louder in his mind. "Beg," he murmured, setting Emile's gendermark earring aflutter with his breath. "Be specific."

"Please, Cylus." Emile's hands gripped the railing. No pretension, no shame, only artless, alluring desire. "Please touch my c-clit, or my—" Cylie lifted his free hand to Emile's cheek, enjoying its heat as he tested the cleft of Emile's vulva below. The lad pressed forward with only a brief falter even as his breath caught, "M-my pussy, or my ass, anything, everything, please, I just want to feel you—"

Cylie interrupted by parting Emile's lower lips in a swift swipe, seeking sensitive flesh between. Useful, knowing how Emile spoke of his own parts; Cylus preferred different words for himself, but that didn't matter right now. What mattered was the slick, swollen bud he found, and the way Emile's body jolted when he began to toy with it.

"Firm touch, you said?" Cylie stroked over the hood, then gathered flesh between his fingers and squeezed until Emile cried out. Nuzzling his face into Emile's neck and licking where the pulse beat beneath bruised skin, he began to work Emile's clit. "Even here?"

Emile shuddered. "Sometimes," he managed, hips rocking forward. Cylus tightened his fingers until Emile moaned, the sound seeming to fill the icy tunnel.

Emile’s voice resonating around them sparked a hungry impulse in Cylie’s mind. "Your sounds are so sexy," he murmured, rolling Emile's clit as he continued to vocalize. "But it's even hotter when you're trying to speak. So talk to me about something. What's on that pretty mind of yours?” He heated his voice, pleased with how Emile arched into him in response. “Besides me, that is.”

—

Emile's thoughts whirled as the ice blurred past. “W-well, going under the ice... It makes me wonder, about the people who live down there—” Fingers flicked, driving a grunt from his lungs.

"Have you seen any of them yet?” Cylie asked conversationally, tracing a nail of his other hand along Emile's jaw and down the side of his throat. “Can they really breathe underwater?"

"I, I haven’t yet, but, yes, that's my understandin—nnng!" Another flick, sending stars across his vision, dancing over the ice they flew past. "They did mod gills, though they can still breathe air, too."

"Fascinating." Cylus gathered one of Emile's inner lips between two fingers and tugged. "It's been a couple hundred years since they started gene modding, right? I wonder what else they changed. Surely something the brochures don't talk about."

The suggestive tease in Cylie's voice flipped Emile's stomach. He'd tried not to think about it, but... "I... Can't say it's never crossed mmm—my mind." Cylus' fingers curled and stroked, combing through soft slickness and teasing his entrance. "But it seems... Rude, to f-fantasize..."

"My, my, Emile." Cylus nestled closer, fingers dipping inside as he rocked his hips against Emile’s ass. "Fantasizing? I didn’t say anything about that. Where’s your mind going?"

—

"I just!" Emile exclaimed, bending sharply over the rail, head nearing but not touching the protective field. His generous ass squashed against Cylie's pelvis in a way that made him long for a strap. "I watch too much weird porn and I can't stop wondering—!"

Cylie snuggled closer, cupping his hand tighter and luxuriating in plush wetness. "Wondering about what?"

"Different sorts of dicks," Emile confessed, adorably woeful. "And pussies! And whatever? What if they decided to experiment? I would!"

Cylie buried his face in Emile's shoulder. Laughter freed itself from his chest, uncontrollable as a leaping flame; just like it had earlier, when Emile asked for a knife demonstration instead of sex. It fed the dangerous warmth growing inside him. "Of course. What would you want?"

—

"Everything!" Emile declared, then sighed happily as Cylie's fingers began to move again. "If I could just swap, or add, just, try out all the different ways creatures copulate... wouldn't that be fascinating?"

"You're fascinating." Cylus nuzzled Emile's hair, breath warm against his scalp. Cylie’s upper hand found the silk scarf he’d draped around Emile’s neck again earlier, gathering it just tight enough to spark a full-body shudder: his breathing unimpeded but his imagination running wild. “But I keep distracting you, don’t I? Now I want to see you drop again. Let all those thoughts I just asked you to think go.”

As those words melted into his body, Cylus found his clit once more. “Don’t worry about what your body does.” Cylie’s touch adapted to Emile's reactions, and Emile recognized Cylie calibrating, adjusting, pursuing his pleasure as surely as Emile might tune a machine. “Just let your mind go still.”

Breathe. Feel. Remember.

Time stretched around them, Cylie’s words echoing inside his mind. The world contracted to where Cylus' body touched his. Alternating between mean pinches that made him moan and small, precise strokes that coiled into a building pressure in his core, Cylie worked him higher and higher.

His mind grew soft. He rocked mindlessly into Cylie’s touch, flushed and shaking as Cylie teased and stroked his throat with silk-covered fingers.

He keened, voice ringing up and down around them—

And then, at exactly the wrong time, the elevator slowed.

Gradual deceleration became an unignorable force. For a last moment, lightness returned; and then the full, false weight of Terran gravity settled onto them both.

-----

Next chapter >

Cylie inhaled through his nose, steadying himself with cold, salty air. "Repeat the rule as you understand it."

"I don’t come any closer than this while your blades are open, unless you say otherwise."

"Do you have any questions?"

"Yes, Cylus."

"Ask."

"What would have happened if I'd moved earlier? During the trick, in front of the others?"

Cylus channeled the dark hunger bubbling under his skin, baring his teeth in a wicked grin. "I knew you wouldn't move." After a delicious hesitation, long enough that he could practically smell Emile marinating in his own juices, he added, "And I kept the knife away from you while constraining your range of motion. It's hard to gauge the exact distance of a sharp weapon when it's moving edge-on relative to you.

"So if you target your movements at the right height, and then suggest the dreaded but anticipated arrival of blood—how can you fail to imagine it, when a knife moves in the vicinity of vulnerable flesh?—it's effortless for the mind to see it where it's not."

Cylie whipped both blades out dramatically at the visual level of his own throat, pleased by Emile’s answering flinch.

Over the subsequent moments of silence, though, a wave of embarrassment swallowed that pleasure, the words he’d just spoken playing back in his head. That last bit had been... a little much, even for his showman's patter. He'd sounded more like a villain in an entertainment. Was Emile going to laugh? No, he was too polite for that.

He tried to read Emile’s expression in the dim light. Was he surprised at Cylie’s dramatic choice of words? Or worse, truly afraid, perhaps sensing the cruel yearnings seething in Cylie's stomach even now?

"Thank you, Cylus," Emile murmured. "No more questions now."

Putting him on the ground had been an unnecessary indulgence. The sight of him—a wriggle away from groveling, Cylie's silk dark at his throat, accepting Cylie's authority with submissive grace—was a drug far more potent than the alcohol in his veins.

Marshaling his willpower, he tucked one knife away and raised the other, enjoying the play of multi-colored light in the transparent tacglass. Holding the unlatched weapon parallel to the ground, he let one side drop: creating a right angle of the two handles, revealing the naked blade between. “So the spine of the knife,” he traced the blade’s back, “is the side that won’t cut you. The grip facing the spine,” He tapped the horizontal handle with the index finger of the hand holding it, “Is the safe handle, the one you can hold without worrying about injuring yourself. The one on the edge side,” He trailed a finger of the opposite hand down it, “Is called the bite handle.” Smirking, he tapped the blade with the back of a fingernail. “You can imagine why, can’t you?”

Emile’s swallow was audible, a soft, breathy click in his throat. “Yes, Cylus. Q-question?”

Beating back fantasies of teasing that edge along Emile’s skin, Cylus nodded. “Yes?”

“Is that little... thingie... on the end of the bite handle some kind of... latch?”

Fortune, he’s quick. “Good eye.” He let his tone warm with praise. “Yes, there’s a matching notch on the safe handle...”

They fell into an easy back and forth, then; Cylus demonstrating and explaining, Emile asking questions. "Are you satisfied?" Cylus asked after finishing a breakdown of openings, closures, and quick draws. "Obviously that’s only the basics, but I think it qualifies as 'showing you how they work'."

"Yes, Cylus. Thank you." Emile had remained on the ground, right where Cylus had thrown him. Admittedly the low gravity made that less onerous than it might otherwise be, but Cylus allowed himself to appreciate the sight a last time.

With a final flick, he closed and stashed the knife he’d been using, conjuring a tone of casual insouciance to mask the desire that his demonstration had failed to abate.

"Come here, then, if you want me to touch you again."

Emile crawled towards him, peering shyly up through hair still mussed from their descent, when Cylus left the bruises that must still be ripening on his neck.

Cylus felt unsteady, like there was no gravity at all. "Stop," he commanded when Emile was near enough to reach out and touch his knee. "Show me your face." And your throat.

Emile obeyed, head tilting upward. The scarf shifted, ends wafting apart and exposing the bruises: a series of dark impressions below the soft curve of his jaw, more striking than Cylie had even hoped. He wanted to mark the other side of his neck to match. Or better yet...

His mind ran wild, darker and deeper than before. He imagined tilting Emile's chin up with a knife-tip, ghosting along his jawline before making a precise, shallow cut. Not deep enough to harm; just enough to admit a thin trickle of scarlet. A little rivulet winding down the column of Emile's soft brown throat, highlighting the hollow between his collarbones, finding its way between his breasts, staining the creamy silk of his shirt...

No. No, no, no. He gritted his teeth. Tonight wasn't the first time he'd fantasized about using his knives outside the necessity of self defense. Such thoughts left him deeply uncomfortable with himself; he'd never shared them, even with Cynthia. But only once before had so many of those thoughts assailed him at once, and that...

He swallowed sudden sourness. That time had been nothing like this.

“Cylus?”

Emile’s sweet voice called him back from the threat of unwelcome memories, bringing his attention back to the beautiful boy at his feet.

He sank to his knees, placing their heads at the same level. All he could see in Emile's eyes were dim blue-green reflections. He felt agonizingly aware of his body: the tightness of his binder; the metal grating against his shins, admitting light and air from below; chill humidity threatening to condense on flushed skin; the soft sound of lapping water; salt-tang and that strange cocktail of organic smells he couldn't begin to identity.

The lingering taste of wine, and Emile, on his tongue.

"Fuck," he groaned, the rough syllable forcing free from his lips. They were too drunk for this; any of this, much less all of it. But he couldn't bring himself to try and break whatever spell was over them. "I..." One hand lifted, stroking Emile's cheek with shaking fingers as his other found the long ends of the scarf.

Before he realized what was happening, he was pulling Emile in, their breath mixing in the cool air, one heartbeat away from the kind of kiss that would shatter the fragile façade of his remaining self-control. Recoiling internally, he managed to bring Emile’s head to rest against his chest instead. Stroking Emile’s hair, he forced himself to pause, and think.

His and Cynthia's performances occasionally attracted potential patrons, offering the possibility of money and other forms of protection. They avoided cultivating those who expected sex; one brief, disastrous experiment had proven that particular exchange didn’t... suit him. Cynthia, whose self-knowledge generally exceeded his own, had avoided it altogether. But a handful of times, he’d attracted a patron who only wanted to be hurt or ordered around by a pretty person far younger than they. Such arrangements had proved more sustainable, even briefly enjoyable, though none had lasted long.

So Emile’s obvious masochistic and submissive desires weren't unfamiliar to him. During the first time he’d fallen into such a dynamic, he and Cynthia had been on good terms with a small guild of sex workers. At Cynthia's urging, he'd asked pointers from an older domme who he’d befriended over cards.

You’re creating a fantasy where you're leading them, she’d told him, but you can make them tell you where they want to be led.

"...What do you want?" Cylus managed to keep his voice from shaking. "Tell me what you want."

"I want you to cut my clothes off, and touch me wherever you want to." Emile's voice wobbled but didn't break, half-muffled against Cylie’s shirt. "B-but I also want you to be comfortable, and to feel good too, and that's, that's a weird thing to request, it's okay if—"

An anguished sound ripped from Cylus' throat. The other half of his old teacher's advice asserted itself: just don't get talked into going somewhere you don't know how to get back from.

Guiding Emile down to lie flat on his back, Cylus clambered atop him, acutely aware of where his crotch pressed against Emile's lower stomach. His cheap, matter-printed pants did not feel thick enough; he wondered if Emile could tell how wet he was.

"Close your eyes," he hissed. "And stay still."

-----

Next chapter >

Note: Butterfly knives are also known as balisongs, and are Filipino in origin, with a rich and interesting past! But Cylie doesn't know that, and Emile sure as heck doesn't either, so I pass this information on directly instead.