Chapter Text
Part I:
Citizen Omry Kupp
It was too hot to sleep with any ease, and, just as Omry began to doze, Mr. Pentet in the bunk above began fucking his spouse.
Mrs. Pentet was an O-citizen, a very small one, and even skinnier than Omry. When the Pentets had arrived at the apartment block, he had thought she was a child until he had heard her firm, no-nonsense adult voice.
Sazak the drunk had taken one look at her on her husband’s arm and snorted. He had demanded Mrs. Azar assign the Pentet to one of the rooms in the front, but there was no space there. The Pentets were told to bunk with Omry, Sazak, the Telinns, and greasy-fingered Rechen in the backbuilding beyond the yard. Now they fucked nearly every night, Mrs. Pentet whimpering happily as her husband's heaving made the big set of bunks shake.
Little Effe Tellin woke up and began to cry at it.
"Shut him up," snarled his A-father
His O-father whispered, "Yes, Carr," before there came the suckling sound of the baby being brought to his breast. The other Telinn children were too wise to make noise, and soon the humid room subsided into nothing but Pentet's grunts and his wife's stuttering moans.
Omry tried to tune them out, despite the way his bedframe heaved. He had the bed directly below them. To his left was Sazak, snoring away, and to his right was Rechen. Omry curled instinctively away from the latter. There were linens stretched between each bunk for privacy, but they rarely deterred Rechen, who had fixated on the O-citizen in the bed next to his for some time.
"Psst," he said now. "Pssst. Omega."
Omry flinched.
Rechen had crawled into his bunk a few times now. Sometimes Omry kicked him away successfully. Sometimes not. This was not because they were evenly matched. Rechen was toying with him, he understood. Like many of the A-s and nulls Omry had met in his life, if Rechen wanted to fuck Omry, he would, and had. Two days ago he had pinned Omry's hands over his head, shucked up his nightshirt, and forced his hard cock into Omry's cunt, making the act so fast and vicious that Omry scarcely had time to cry out before the pain was joined by the sticky flow of cum into his body. Rechen had snickered, breath hot on Omry's neck, and patted his head once before burping and climbing out of the bunk.
Omry had approached Mrs. Azar afterwards, but she had only made a derisive noise.
“How did you encourage him, Citizen Kupp?” she'd hissed, and poked without preamble at the brand and scar on Omry's neck.
She was suspicious of O-citizens who weren't properly bonded or branded.
She wouldn't be much help. Omry wasn't certain who would be. Miss Doveck, a kind O-Citizen who worked in the office at the factory, had told Omry to approach the People’s Housing Committee and ask to be reassigned to new housing, one of the modern blocks if he could get it.
What else can you do? she'd advised. And, until then, bear it.
Now he closed his eyes tight.
He heard the snick as Rechen ripped the linen aside, and then the other man’s bulk settled into his bunk with a grunt. Rechen's oily smell filled his nose a second before the bigger man snickered and a knobbly knee downed in wiry hair was forcing apart Omry’s legs.
Thick fingers ran through his hair.
"Like moonlight," Rechen grunted. "Pretty little Mr. Kupp. You like my cock?"
Omry turned his face away and shook his head, refusing to look at the man.
This earned him a painful pinch to his stomach, after Rechen had shoved up his nightshirt.
"Stuck-up bitch," Rechen said amiably. "Who do you think you are? Prince Ismerie? Not with that squint, you're not. So accept it. I'm going to fuck you."
This was evident. Omry could only shake his head again. He tried not to think of the last time, of how sore he'd been all day and how the fucking had roused his own sweet-hot O-smell, and how Mr. Vasden had asked: Is there a grand announcement we should be making, Citizen Kupp? Perhaps an engagement? No? Then why do you smell freshly-fucked? while the other factory workers had snickered.
Rechen's weight settled on him, pressing against Omry as the other man's fat cockhead prodded at his pussy lips. Omry was dry, which would not help with the soreness, but he couldn't help that. He didn't want to be wet for Rechen. The most he could do was try to let his body settle into that dull, faraway calm he'd once been able to achieve.
It was harder, now. Before Rechen had moved in, it had been about five years since Omry had had to suffer a man regularly raping him.
"That's it," Rechen breathed out, his rank breath catching Omry in the face. He thrust in, and Omry bit back a squeal at the pain. His cunt was too dry. And Rechen was so heavy he couldn't breathe.
He began to thrust in and out, spearing into Omry. It hurt, that hard flesh bruising into his soft flesh, forcing him open. Omry felt his face wet, but didn't make a sound. He had faced worse, he told himself. This was only for now. Tomorrow -- no, not tomorrow; tomorrow he would have no time; and the day after tomorrow was his ration-day -- but the day after that, yes. The day after that, he would go to the Housing Committee and he would ask to be reassigned to a different apartment block. Miss Doveck had told him what to say. How to explain.
How to beg, if he had to.
Now the entire bedframe was shaking harder than ever. Omry's breath stuttered as he was fucked. He tried to ignore the hot tears in his eyes. Rechen had been going shallow, but now he was forcing his way in deeper. Although his body was heavy and sweaty, his cock was worse. Burning-hard and damp with precum. Omry's skin was sensitive where it blunted and forced in, his cunt-channel bruising, everything down there searing with splitting pain.
The snoring in the bunk next door abruptly stopped.
For a split second, silence. Then Rechen thrust in again, with Omry whimpering and biting his knuckles to keep from screaming. Pentet began again to thrust as well, his wife's moans sounding much happier than Omry's little halted breaths.
"PRAISE TO THE TRIUMPH OF THE PEOPLE!" drunken Sazak began to roar, falling into the anthem of Verenka. "OH GLORY TO VERENKA, THE NATION THAT IS FREE! GLORY TO EACH CITIZEN, TO ALL WHO STRIVE FOR UNITY--"
"Fuck!" Carr Telinn began to shout, and the baby at his spouse's breast began to wail as well. "Fuck! Curse you, Sazak, and you, Pentet, and curse the day we were assigned to this fucking house of whores and madmen--"
As he cursed and cursed, the entire bedframe shifted with the weight of Sazak, a massive man, exiting his bunk. Omry squeaked as Rechen gave a shriek, for now the weight on Omry's back was dragged off. His sore cunt was suddenly empty, feeling like a bruise the second after you touched it. Between Rechen and Pentet's yells, he heard Sazak say, near-joyously, "Happy day, citizens! I am correcting your misstep! Didn't you hear? The Coalition of Free Citizens has offered all men a future of blissful! Fucking! Sleep! In these joyous shared apartments! Time to go to bed! You too!"
With each word there came the sounds of kicks and yells, and Mrs. Pentet bursting into tears and the Telinn baby wailing its little heart out.
"All to bed now!" Sazak cried happily, as he beat Pentet and Rechen into quiet. "All to bed! We can fuck our omegas tomorrow! Glory to the Citizen-Leaders! The more things change, citizens, the more they stay the same!"
-
In the morning, in the dark before the sun rose to scorch Verenka with all-too-brief summer, they all ate at the long table in the yard under oil lamps, with Mrs. Azar attending to the radio dial. In silence, they slurped up tureens of beet-broth and listened to the address by Citizen Faasen, who was the Speaker-Member of the Citizen-Leaders.
There were four Citizen-Leaders who commanded the People's Leadership Committee, which in turn commanded all the other People's Committees in the Coalition. These Leaders were Faasen, who was handsome and kind; Kirill, who was clever and kind; Laszlo, who was fierce and kind; and the gentle and fatherly Ivan Virta, who was good down to the bone. Omry normally enjoyed listening to any of them, matching their voices to the strong-featured statues that had gone up in what used to be Salona Square but was these days called the People's Square.
But today Omry was tired, hurting, and quite blind in the poor light at this hour. So he just focused on the watery, vinegar-and-sweet soup in his bowl, letting Leader Faasen's words wash over him without quite hearing them.
"Since the fall of the Oppressors, the Triumph of the People is upon us," crackled this Leader. "We have risen, citizens! We all rise together! This past month, in the city of Skolka, our good Ivan met with a group of starving A-Citizens, O-Citizens, and Nulls, who were suffering greatly from many injustices! Thanks to his guidance, they were able to uncover and end the local reign of no fewer than fifty traitorous loyalists to the Salona Dynasty!"
"Glory to the Leaders," Mrs. Azar said breathlessly. Even from his place in the back of the yard, smushed between Sazak and Mrs. Pentent, if Omry squinted he could just about make out her whole skinny body quivering in delight.
Several citizens sitting near her echoed her, plainly more out of habit than anything else.
The Leader crackled: "Also under the guidance of Leader Ivan Virta, new kindergartens were built in the province of Dalnius--"
"Glory," Mrs. Azar said. Omry could not tell her expression. But he could guess that she must be now staring severely at all of the children who were of kindergarten age but did not seem sufficiently grateful. Jorna Telinn, a conscientious little boy of four, gave a squeak now as if to confirm this.
“And the principles of Science have dawned at the People’s Central Medical College, where one of our Citizen-Doctors has succeeded in transplanting a heart into a dying man, and saving his life! This wonder of medicine has tripled the envy of the Oppressed Nations for our state, and was only possible because of the wisdom of Leader Bosque Kirill and the dawning of the People’s Coalition!”
“Oh Glory,” simpered Mrs. Azar, and Omry saw the movement when she clasped her hands over her beet broth, reverent.
“I wonder what poor bastard he got the heart from,” grunted Sazak, sitting next to Omry.
Omry stared at him.
Rechen, across the table, hissed, “I’m going to tell the People's Ethics Committee about your little comments, Sazak!”
Rechen hissed this often, at anyone who annoyed him. He nursed a bruise on his eye the size of an egg today, its colors wavering in the light of the lamps, dark enough that even Omry didn't need to squint to know Sazak had beaten him bloody last night. So he had perhaps more reason to report Sazak than he had for the last five men he had submitted to the PEC for re-education.
Most men grew frightened and begged his apologies. Omry would have. The PEC was necessary, crucial to maintaining order in Verenka, to ensuring the enemies of the People did not penetrate the new state and lure away right-minded citizens. They determined innocence and guilt, working under the auspices of Leader Ivan to question any Verenkan who seemed suspicious, releasing the just and entrapping the treasonous. Omry was not afraid of them: they were necessary, and he knew he was a good Verenkan who had broken no laws. But this didn't mean he ever wanted to be reported to the PEC. These days, if your papers were stamped with the sigil of questioning by Ontiev House, the PEC headquarters, people might misunderstand and think you were a traitor.
No, better not to be informed upon at all.
But Sazak only slurped his soup and smacked his big fist on the table.
“Too late, Citizen Rechen! They know me! Mr. Yertik Sazak, the poet! The People’s poet! Do you think they do not harass me? They do! I, who bled for the Coalition! But then what does that matter? Look at me now! Sitting with my fellow men and women, equals all in the glory of new Verenka! What is more equal than sharing in even my neighbor's romantic disappointments, hearing you press your case to an unwilling suitor every night, trying to wet your wick on our poor protesting Citizen Kupp?”
Here several neighbors who lived in other rooms of the apartment house let their spoons scrape their bowls and began to murmur. Rechen had little grace, but the little he did have made him physically squirm.
Omry squirmed as well, for he could guess that people were looking at him too.
Sazak continued, “And seeing your smarmy grin as you dream of reporting me! As you did with Citizen Gerunna, Citizen Domas, Citizen Koski—“
“They badmouthed the People’s Coalition!” Rechen snapped. "They were spies! Do none of you care that I have uncovered spies?"
But Sazak had already begun to sing the anthem again in his own rumbling voice, just as it came on on the crackling radio, and Rechen’s protests were drowned out. In the meantime Omry had slumped over his bowl, drawing himself in over it, wishing he could simply melt into beet broth or manifest into a radio crackle.
Anything to not be in this body, with its smell of a warm O- just fucked, its poor squinting eyes, its sore little hole. And its red, mortified face.
He owed Sazak for pulling Rechen off him. But he could feel his humiliation at how the drunkard had chosen to joke.
It was not a romance. It was a rape. There was no suit to press — Omry had no A-spouse and had no wish to seek one. He wanted most of all to stay alone and unbonded, free of anyone who might ever try to force themselves on him.
-
Before work, as the sun was rising, most of the residents of the apartment block went to the communal baths down the street. Omry, however, normally went at night. Only on this day he had plans after work, and also he stank and hurt and needed to wash, so he followed his neighbors to the baths instead of sticking to his usual schedule.
He usually went to the pool for O-citizens. This was one of the new innovations of the Coalition. The O-pool was small and easy to navigate, tiled in bright yellow and pea green, with spouts that Omry had determined were shaped like frogs. It was his favorite place in the entire City of Irik, this warm, quiet haven, damp and calm, built for the People by Kirill, the brilliant Engineer-Member of the Citizen-Leaders. Omry always marveled at how he could gain entry to its hot waters and clean, single-person changing rooms just by presenting his papers and letting the attendant record him in the ticket book.
But in the mornings the O-pool was always packed, and today it was more packed than usual. Today many of the other evening bathers had also come to the baths before sunrise, as that night there would be a public concert of patriotic anthems to celebrate the anniversary of the fall of Salona palace. As Omry stood in line to be added to the ticket book, he heard a number of other O-s chattering excitedly about that. Evidently few citizens wished to miss it, and so many had adjusted their normal schedules to account for it.
So there was no room in the O-pool. When Omry made it to the front of the line, the attendant waved him instead towards the main pool, a massive structure tiled in teal beneath a glass roof. It was packed with O-Citizens, A-Citizens, and Nulls, and patrolled by PEC workers to ensure healthy and correct behavior. Overall, the room was loud and confusing, the smells of so many citizens together overpowering. Omry had to pause for a moment to orient himself, squinting and trying to make out a place to leave his things.
He moved carefully around the big pool, between carelessly naked A-s and laughing children and their harassed mothers, taking care not to slip on the wet tiles. Eventually he found an empty spot, a free place on a wooden bench beneath a large window that would serve as a lodestar in case he became turned around in the crowd. There he slipped in between a stout O-Citizen chattering to his spouse and a slender null woman pumicing her feet and smoking a cigar. With mumbled greetings to his fellow citizens, Omry pulled off his smock and overalls, bundled these into his satchel with his shoes, and tied up his hair in a bun. The he took his sliver of rationed soap and went to the sunken steps nearby, which led directly to the steaming, crowded water.
He had to be quick about his bath, because by sixth bell he was due at the factory. But among the crush of chatter and smoke and wet, naked bodies, he caught sight of one bobbing broodingly in the water nearby, a big man round as a walrus, with a scraggle of wet grey beard stuck to his enormous belly.
Omry bit his lip. Then he waded to him.
“Mr. Sazak,” he said, squinting to make sure he had this right. “I. I owe you a thank you, sir.”
The big man did not respond. His small, calm eyes seemed to be pointed somewhere else entirely -- at the ceiling, perhaps.
“Citizen Sazak?” Omry tried again. Perhaps he had it wrong. His sight was not good. This could be another man.
But then the enormous man bobbed once, coughed, and shifted so that his whole attention was plainly on Omry.
“Our Citizen Kupp,” Sazak rumbled out. “It’s you.”
Omry ducked his head in acknowledgement.
“You should not be here,” Sazak said simply. He patted Omry’s pale bun gently with a big hand and his heavy A-scent rolled out, almost as if to remonstrate. Omry was surprised it wasn't dulled by drink, but then perhaps it was. Omry had always had a supremely good scent-sense, able to pick out even the most dampened A-. Sazak, meanwhile, gestured with a large flabby arm at the crowd of mostly A-citizens and Nulls scattered about.
“Look at this!” he said, with a growl. “Such equality! That your precious kind now are exposed to we brutes, while we can ogle you as we like! How is this better than before, I ask you?”
Omry felt his stomach twist with anxiety as he bobbed in the water.
“Citizen Sazak, please. It’s — if you talk like that, someone really will report you — and it isn’t a large matter. The O-pool was full.“
Omry could not tell, but he thought that maybe Sazak’s cunning little eyes focused in on him again. The A-Citizen gave a huff of laughter that shook his big belly.
“You are pleased with this state of affairs? Of course you are, Citizen Kupp—“
Here his enormous hand, more mitt than hand, dropped down to rub at Omry’s chin, very close to the brand on his neck. But the big man was too polite to touch that.
“You were nothing before the revolution,” he said quietly. “A slave. Ah, from this sigil the trading house of Kupp owned you. This explains the name. And this here — the little lily shape cut onto it. Sold later to a brothel?”
Omry cringed, but nodded.
“I thought the Coalition offered to tattoo every O-Citizen so marked with the glorious symbol of the Leaders,” Sazak growled out. “A way to cover your scars and brands! Erase your past! A rebirth for many of your kind! Were you too proud to take it, boy?”
Omry shook his head.
“Not proud,” he said.
But then he fell silent. He had chosen not to change his brand. Had chosen to wear his former slavery and his whoredom for his own reasons. That was all.
Sazak’s scent softened, somehow. His large workman’s fingers traced Omry’s full mouth, not as if he wished to have Omry but simply as if he were handling something fragile and small.
“You are too lovely,” he said. “It worries me, Citizen Kupp.You remind me of--ah. It does not matter. But heed me well. If I were you, I would scar up my pretty face. The old world was cruel to people like us, but it allowed beauty. This world—“
“Sir, the baths are beautiful, and a glorious gift from the Citizen-Leaders—“ Omry said desperately.
Sazak barked out a laugh.
“Salona Palace was beautiful! Before we tore it to pieces and killed the crown princes! What they did to little Ismerie--"
He broke off, his scent cresting into something ashen and horrible, that made Omry wince. Sazak patted his bun again before continuing.
"This — this is no gift, no great beauty. This is a puddle for incontinent old men to piss in as they bathe—“
“Sir!” Omry hissed, staring at the ethics workers who patrolled the edges of the pool with whistles and batons. “They will hear you! You really will be questioned!”
Sazak shrugged.
“So what?” he said. “So maybe I go to a prison in the wastes of Savus. I’ve long thought that would be my fate. I plan to die there, as swiftly as possible. Better that than to live in a world that kills beauty, Citizen Kupp.”