Chapter Text
The Sunday Friend is visiting (it being a Sunday) and, their business concluded (there’s no more exciting way to describe their trysts), he has been talking for a while: about the meeting he just came out of in La Delta, about ze price stabilité, about his plans for the coming week, in short, about himself. The young man occasionally known as Martin Martinaise is well used to this, and yet can’t help but feel tired. He sucks on his cigarette, trying hard not to let his listlessness show in his face or posture, and glances out of the window.
Outside, it is a sunny day. Summer is coming to Revachol, but the heat is not too stifling yet, a breeze from the sea providing refreshment. It’s a good day to be out and painting, but alas, the young man must sit here. Idly, he watches a passerby ascend the stairs from the first-floor balcony access door, pass his window and sit a little ways away on the crumbling railing, facing the ocean, inhaling the breeze. After a minute, he fishes a book out of a bag he has with him and begins to read.
The Sunday Friend has moved on now to griping about his coworkers, swirling a glass of the mid-range wine he brought. He can afford better wine, surely, but Martin Martinaise doesn’t seem to be worth it.
(“And my personal assistant, Charlene, she’s really been slacking lately… one has to wonder at such lack of work ethic…”)
The young man continues watching the reader on the balustrade. The wind ruffles his mid-length, dark, flowing hair, and he absentmindedly tucks a strand of it behind his ear, not looking up from his large book. Something in there makes the reader smile softly to himself, rendering his whole face lovely in the sunlight.
And, well. The man known to some as Martin Martinaise doesn’t mind older men, oh no, quite the opposite really. But suddenly he is gripped by a yearning for youth, for life, for vivacity and loveliness in the sunlight, and he’s suffocating in here. He wants to grab his sketchbook and pencil and commit what he sees to paper. There is a quote in his mind from something he read once, he knows not where, something about there being ‘something better in life than this rubbish, if only he could get to it – love – nobility – big spaces where passion clasped peace, spaces no science could reach, but they existed for ever, full of woods some of them, and arched with majestic sky and a friend…’
A friend! Ah, to have a friend, a real one, without this stupid burden of euphemism…
The reader marks his page and stretches out on the balustrade now. There is such enviable relaxation in the lines of his body. The Smoker wants to go out to him, ask what he’s reading, share a cigarette maybe. Meet somebody, just for the sake of it. He does not. He’s fenced in here, with the Sunday Friend and his talk of his personal assistant and his piss-and-vinegar wine.
When the Sunday Friend eventually leaves (“Oh my, time sure flies when you’re having fun!”) he has to pass the reader on his way downstairs. Oh, no, the Smoker frets for a second, inexplicably, but the Sunday Friend pays no mind to the reader save for a brief nod, the barest of politeness. The reader, in turn, sits up and looks after the Sunday Friend with an expression of open distaste. Does he not like strangers? Is he homo-phobique? The Smoker sighs and draws the curtain shut.
Things truly begin – beginnings are messy, but later it will be said that something most certainly began here for Steban – with a knock on Steban’s door.
When he opens, he finds himself faced with a slight young man, about his own age, whom he, if he were into bandying Wirrâl-terminology about in daily life, would describe as Welkin-like about the face. In his arms, the young man holds a mid-sized cardboard package.
“Hi,” the young man says, thrusting the package forward. “I’ve got a package here for an… Esteban Encalada-Bernal?”
“Yes. That’s me. Steban.” He points at himself to elucidate his point. “What is this?”
“I don’t know, the mailman gave it to me.” The Welkin shrugs. Feline-eyed Welkin. Open-shirt-Welkin. “It doesn’t say an apartment number on the label here, so he just dropped it off with the first person he saw. Which happened to be me. I’ve been going door to door for the last half hour to find who it belongs to.”
“Oh.” For a moment, the annoyance at having his mail misplaced and a sense of working-class solidarity with the mailman (who is probably just overworked and rushed and doesn’t even come out to Martinaise that often) do silent battle behind Steban’s eyes. In the end, he just takes the package. The handwriting on the address label is his mother’s. She does sometimes forget to put the apartment number. “Thanks.”
“Not a problem.” The young man smiles, a pale and diffident kind of smile.
(Ethereal Welkin.)
(Exploited Welkin.)
Steban nods, inexplicably flustered, and shuts the door. Only then does it occur to him that it might be appropriate to repay the favor somehow. Maybe some kind of finder’s fee?
He sticks his head back out. “Hey, do you want any…?”
The hallway is empty. The Flighty Welkin has already left.
“Who was that?” asks Ulixes from the bed, where he’s stretched out with his textbooks and notes, cramming for their next exam.
“Upstairs neighbor. The one I told you about, the one with the…” What is a politically correct way to say this? “The one who associates with this man who I’m pretty sure works for the Moralintern.”
Ulixes, now, has no qualms about saying things as they are. “The sugar baby? Hm. What’s that he gave you?”
“Care package from my mums.” Steban sets it down on his writing desk, grabs a pair of scissors and starts sawing it open. “I don’t know that we should use the term ‘sugar baby’. It makes light of an exploitational capitalistic relationship.”
“Exploitational? Associating with people like that at all is petit-bourgeois reactionism, at best.” Ulixes reaches into the package, newly opened. (The contents were always going to be shared with him.) “It’s tacit approval of Moralism and its actions. Oh, yum, she packed that special coffee blend. And those custard pies she makes!”
“Yeah. To the pies, not the tacit approval.” Steban unwraps one palm-sized tart from its foil wrapping and takes a bite. “Think about it, he’s redistributing wealth, in a way. From the Moralist oppressor into the hands of the people, that is to say, himself.”
“Having a rich guy fund one’s lifestyle isn’t praxis,” Ulixes argues, slightly muffled by his mouthful of custard. “If anything, it makes him a class traitor.”
“Sex work is a legitimate form of labor.” Something about the conversation feels… off. Ulixes seems uncommonly… acidic about the whole thing. His objectivity appears clouded, though Steban can’t for the life of him say why.
“Ah, but Nilsen writes in Precepts that prostitution will disappear in the communist world-state.”
“He writes that because he views prostitution as the ultimate expression of the unfreedom of the proletariat. Which brings us back to my point.” Steban begins to stow the contents of the box away on his shelves, everything in its place. “And we don’t live in the communist world-state yet.”
“Hmph,” Ulixes says, as much of a concession as they’re going to get to today.
“Also, I’m pretty sure Nilsen was talking about women. (And being kind of sexist, at that.) Which… well, in this case, the Moralintern man could probably kiss his career goodbye if word got out that he’s having homosexual relations with some guy in Martinaise, right? In a way, then, my upstairs neighbor is excising control over his fate. Weaponizing the, er, inherently subversive nature of his sexuality… within the framework of class struggle.”
“Hmph,” Ulixes repeats.
“Inherently subversive only to reactionaries, of course,” Steban hastens to add. “I know that being gay is normal.”
Ulixes glances off to the side and says nothing. The light glints off the lenses of his glasses, obscuring his eyes.
When the Smoker meets his downstairs neighbor again, it is a moonlit night. Both young men loiter by the pier-side entrance to the Capeside apartments, both vaguely aware of the other trying too hard to appear inconspicuous.
“Do you have a light?” one asks.
The lighter clicks twice. Twin inhales, twin plumes of smoke.
“What are you… up to out here this late?” Steban asks eventually, awkwardly.
“I could ask you the same question.” The Smoker smiles a thin smile behind his hand. “Me, I’m soliciting.”
“Oh? So am I.”
The Smoker raises an eyebrow. “You’re cruising?” ‘Too?’ goes unspoken.
Steban winces, eyes widening. “No! Er, no. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Sex work is… work. Legitimate work. If anything, I think there should be a union. I’m just… not. I’m looking for people to join my reading group.”
“A reading group?” This gives the Smoker a moment’s pause. Why on Elysium would someone go cruising for book club members? Unless they’re discussing quite the controversial literature there. And since it can’t be a weird sex thing, not with this guy, that leaves only… “Is this about politics?”
“You could say that,” says Steban, carefully, flicking ash off his cigarette. “Are you… interested in materialist theory, at all?”
The Smoker snorts. “I’m an artist, darling.”
Steban glances at him askance. Much of the earlier awkwardness is evaporating. “What is that supposed to mean?” he asks.
“Perhaps that I’m pursuing more exalted things than mere earthly politics,” the Smoker says with a little smirk, because it’s fun to tease.
“Interesting that you of all people should say that,” Steban says, and the Smoker half expects a homo-phobique barb of some kind, until Steban adds, “All art is political, is it not?”
“Is it?” the Smoker asks, a thread of tiredness sneaking into his voice. His Sunday Friend contaminates his space with politics enough, and he’s weary of it. “What if I were to paint the simple view from my window, for no other reason than that I find it to be beautiful?”
Steban shrugs. “The willful absence of statement is a statement in and of itself. And ‘beautiful’ is a socio-political construct.”
The Smoker gives him a once-over. “And what if I were to say that you are beautiful?”
(It’s the easiest of compliments. The Smoker is quick to see beauty in all aspects of the human form, and here, he barely has to strain himself. Steban could stand to be a little less scrawny, and he’s slightly ashy in a way that shows he doesn’t go outside enough, but there’s something here. The black, flowing hair, the rakish stubble. Is it a concerted effort? Is this here a young man who asks himself every morning if he looks enough like a romanticized poet-revolutionary today? Or is he too cerebral to take notice?)
Now, his shoulders rise, discomfited again. “Look, there’s no need to try it with me. I don’t have any money.”
Ah. Things are adding up. Young, poor, a student, lives here of all places, thinks sex workers should unionize, secret political theory book club, the stink-eye he gave the Sunday Friend the other day. It’s almost enough to win the bingo twice. “You’re a communist, love, of course you don’t have money.” He sighs, exhaling a stream of smoke. “I don’t want anything from you. But it doesn’t cost me to be nice.”
“Hm. That’s true.” Steban looks off to the side, then turns back and says, “I’m going to… go now, but, um… I just realized I don’t know your name.”
Ah.
The Smoker affects an airy sigh. “Oh, what’s in a name…?”
He gets an uncomprehending “Huh?” for his trouble.
“I work hard, you know, to cultivate this aura of mystique.”
“So you… don’t want to say?”
He flicks the spent cigarette away. “Quite.”
For a moment, Steban looks confused. Then he shrugs it off, smiles and says, “I’ll just call you my comrade, then.”
With that, and one hand raised in farewell, he disappears into the night.
‘I’ll just call you my comrade, then.’
“Oh, fuck,” the Smoker thinks.
On his way to the Frittte to buy cigarettes, the Smoker runs into Cindy, loitering in her usual spot. A casual acquaintanceship connects him to Cindy, nourished mostly by the fact that they live near each other and are both artists, different as their techniques may be. Sometimes, when she sees him come home from the university with his notes and art supplies in his tote bag, she’ll mock him for his ivory tower art education, which she of course is much too anti-establishment for, but sometimes he leaves old textbooks around her room ‘accidentally’, and they’re never or only very belatedly returned.
Today, they share smokes and chat about their latest pieces. Eventually, the Smoker asks, “Cindy… no reason to it, but do you know anything about the… guy who lives on the first floor?”
Cindy scowls. “The old drunk?”
“No, no. Guy our age, lives in that very whitewashed apartment, with the long-ish hair and the dreamy eyes? Calls people ‘comrade’?”
Now Cindy’s eyebrows shoot up. “You mean Steban?”
“Yes! Steban.”
Cindy shrugs. “What’s there to know? He’s a mega-bino. Does a book club.”
“I didn’t see any glasses.”
“Doesn’t need them. His bino-hood is in his lungs. Dreamy eyes,” Cindy repeats with a snorting laugh. “Do not try to score there. First off, he’d have no idea what to do with you. Second off, Uli is gonna freak.”
“Who?”
“Ulixes. His book club buddy. Joined at the hip, those two.”
“They’re boyfriends?” The Smoker feels faint disappointment, but not too much. The presence of a goalie does not mean one may never score. Then he shakes his head about himself. This whole line of questioning is ridiculous. He barely even knows Steban. No grounds for a crush here, surely, just because he’s around, the same age and handsome.
Cindy grins. “They’re something. Uli wants Steb, that’s plain for anyone with eyes to see. He’s another skinny bino, but he’s feral deep down. He’ll shank you in a dark alley at night if you move in on his man. Steer well clear.”
“Hm,” the Smoker says. “Well, boyfriend or not, I’m not sure I can afford to invest emotional real estate in that guy.”
“What the fuck does that mean?” Cindy asks.
“Well, he’s just…” The Smoker makes a helpless hand gesture that is somehow meant to encompass the whole life that necessity forces him to lead, and on the other side all that Steban is. “He’s just too bright, you know?”
“He’s not wholly stupid, I guess,” Cindy says.
The Smoker finds himself forced to elaborate. “Not bright like smart. Bright like… staring at the sun.”
It’s clear that Cindy still has no idea what he’s talking about. “Well, don’t do that.”
“Yeah,” the Smoker says, but he’s not happy about it.
One day, hanging around by the window – he has been doing this increasingly often lately – the Smoker thinks he spots the notorious Ulixes. At first he thinks nothing of the unfamiliar young man with the serious bespectacled face waiting by the back door, but then Steban comes out to greet him, they share cigarettes and walk off together. The presumed Ulixes rests a hand on Steban’s shoulder as they go – proprietary. He doesn’t seem ‘feral’ to the Smoker, but perhaps it’s well-hidden.
Steban looks down at the hot-plate with a frown of consternation.
Said hot-plate is usually used to make coffee in the meeting room, but sometimes, when the mood strikes, Steban will cook on it. When there’s money left over for fresh ingredients, and time to go to the market. When he misses his mum’s cooking, but can’t think of a good reason to head all the way out to Villalobos. When he’s trying to impress or cheer Ulixes, who appreciates Mesque cuisine, but won’t ever say it because he’s afraid of looking culturally insensitive. Ulixes is usually over when Steban goes to the trouble to prepare a meal from scratch, which isn’t something he often does for just himself. Today, though, Uli’s off in Couron visiting family. He even told Steban this, but he plainly forgot, and now he’s made way too much food.
Like anyone who grew up poor in Revachol, he abhors food waste. There’s no fridge or freezer in his apartment though, either. His first thought is to share with Cindy, but she’s gone too, something about having ‘things to check out on the coast’.
Maybe, a thought occurs, his mysterious upstairs neighbor would appreciate some free food. It would surely be a very… comradely gesture. Impossible to be misinterpreted.
(Misinterpreted as what, even?)
He takes the stairs to the topmost floor two at a time, so that there’s no time to talk himself out of it. Hey, if the guy’s busy with a… Steban blushes to think of it… with a man in there, he’ll just not open the door, right?
He does open the door, and he’s alone. He’s wearing a robe that shows off most of his torso, and smoking. “Ah,” he says, and there’s something… both resigned and amused in his voice that Steban can’t interpret. “To what do I owe the pleasure... comrade?”
It sounds… different the way he says it.
“Will you have dinner with me?” Steban blurts out.
“Oh…” the mysterious young man says, “I’m not sure if…” and Steban realizes that that came out wrong.
“Not… I… look, I just have too much food and no one to give it to. I don’t mean anything by it.” He cringes internally at his own lack of eloquence. What is it with him lately? His rhetoric feels… diminished, somehow, and he’s starting to suspect that it has something to do, in some strange way, with that cop stealing his Saramirizian lounge jacket.
The Mysterious Comrade looks amused now. “Oh, well, if you don’t mean anything by it. Dinner it is, I suppose.”
By the time they get down to Steban’s apartment, Steban feels a bit nervy about this whole idea. He doesn’t usually have guests in here, except for Ulixes who practically lives here, so it’s different. The Mystery Comrade seems pleasantly surprised as he looks around, so the apartment seems to pass muster, though. “Your place is very… clean,” he says.
“I like a clean space,” Steban replies and goes back to attending to the hot-plate.
“That sets you apart from most university students I know,” the Mystery Comrade remarks with a smile.
“Most university students weren’t raised by a cleaner,” Steban says and gets two plates off his shelf. “My mums… my mother had me help her clean offices from when I was five years old. So it comes easy to me now.”
It’s true: he tidies his apartment on autopilot, not ever needing to engage higher brain functions. It makes him feel a sense of – completely illusory, of course – ownership of the little space.
The Mystery Comrade has moved on to examining the shelves. “Is that Kras Mazov?”
“Yes.”
“Beautiful. Who drew that poster for you?”
“I myself did.”
“You’re talented.”
“I’m not an artist like you are. I just copied what I saw in a book.”
“Hmm. I like that you have plants here. Livens up the place a little. These are actually… very nice.” The nameless young man touches a gentle finger to the leaves of one of the plants. “How do you manage to keep them alive in this environment?”
“Ah, well,” Steban replies, fidgeting, finding himself uncommonly tongue-tied. No one really ever asks him about his houseplants. For some reason – he’s not in the habit of broaching the topic with the uninitiated – he hears himself say, “I like to think I’ve been helping the process along by inundating them with my plasm.”
His upstairs neighbor snatches his hand away, putting it on his cocked hip instead. “You jizz on these plants?”
“That’s… not what plasm is.” Trying to mask how parts of himself want to sink into the ground and perish, Steban hands the Mystery Comrade a loaded plate. “Here. You can have the desk chair, if you want to sit. I can explain to you about plasm, too.”
He’s still busy doing that as they eat when a key turns in the lock. There are only very few people who have that kind of access to the room, so… “Cindy?”
“No.” It’s Ulixes. As always, something in Steban lights up at seeing his friend. The world is a bit more complete with Uli here.
For his part, as he surveys the room and his gaze catches on the Mystery Comrade, Ulixes looks… well, Ulixes is not very emotive, face-wise. But for a second, before his expression shutters, there’s something querulous flashing there. “Ah,” he says. “You must be…”
“The upstairs neighbor,” says Steban’s upstairs neighbor quickly. “I’m sorry, this is probably your dinner I’m infringing upon?”
Ulixes shakes his head. “No, it’s fine. I wasn’t planning on being here.” Below the politeness, the two of them are sizing each other up, almost like there’s going to be some kind of fight. Steban has no idea why that is.
Still trying to defuse the tension, he says, “There’s some left over. Anyway, I thought you were going to be in Couron all evening.”
“I thought so too. I tried. But I couldn’t stick around… you know how my family gets.” Ulixes sighs and sits down on the bed.
The way things are so complicated with Uli and his parents always makes Steban feel weirdly guilty that he and his mums and abuela get along so well. He never knows how to console his friend. His first impulse is to give him a hug, but he’s never sure if Ulixes would want that. He doesn’t really touch people, ever.
“Plus, my mother tried to cook again,” Ulixes adds, scowling. “Gottwaldian cuisine should be considered a form of torture. Nothing like what you make.” He shoots Steban a kind of look that Steban has a hard time deciphering, and the Mystery Comrade, observing it with interest, makes a noise like he’s trying to stifle a chuckle, for some reason.
Ulixes’ head swivels around to him, eyes flashing behind his glasses. “What,” he snaps.
“Oh, nothing, nothing,” says the Mystery Comrade, hands raised. Still, they both seem to be in communication about something that is going on here… something in the air.
They eat quietly. When he’s done, Ulixes sets his plate down and stands. “I’d best get going. It’s a long way out to the ED.”
The Mystery Comrade immediately jumps up too. “Yes, I’ll head home as well.”
For a moment, Ulixes seems to be struggling internally with some unseen demon. Then he says, “Oh, by all means, you don’t have to go on my behalf.”
The Mystery Comrade meets his eye straight on. “I think it’s best if I had an early night.”
“You’re both welcome to stay as long as you like,” Steban says, puzzled at the weird tension.
“Thanks, but I really have to catch the last bus out.” Ulixes’ hand twitches, and for a moment it looks like he’ll make some gesture, maybe go in for the hug after all, but then he doesn’t. He aborts it to an awkward little wave. “See you in class tomorrow.”
“Goodnight,” the Mystery Comrade says and heads for the door as well.
Some impulse makes Steban linger by the door after it’s fallen shut. From out in the hallway, he hears the voice of the Mystery Comrade say, “Listen, before you go, I just wanted to tell you… I am not a threat to you.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Ulixes replies.
“Oh, we both know very well what I'm talking about.” A sigh. “Look, you don’t have to confirm or deny anything. Just know that I’m not getting in your way. I started spending time with him because I wanted a friend, okay? A real friend, not… a client. It gets lonely here. The men that visit me, they’re not…”
A little pause. “Not…?” Ulixes prompts.
“Not much for conversation.”
Another little pause. Then Uli says with sudden vehemence, “It shouldn’t have to be this way!”
“Well, it is,” the nameless young man replies.
“Well, it won’t always.”
A quiet laugh from the Mystery Comrade. “You cheer me a lot, you two. Maybe both of you will be my friends?”
“Maybe,” says Ulixes. “Though you haven’t told me your name yet.”
They’re walking away towards the front door. If the Comrade gives an answer, it is too faint for Steban to hear.
Steban and his friend (boyfriend? Maybe) worm their way into the Smoker’s life so gradually, one day it seems like they’ve always been there. Their books accumulate around the apartment, and the Sunday Friend remarks with forced amusement at the sudden presence of subversive literature. Steban gripes at the state of the communal bathroom once too many (probably thinking nothing of it, the dear) and the Smoker offers him the use of his shower in the mornings. The kitchen, too, starts seeing more, if erratic, use whenever Steban deigns to cook. Ulixes, hesitant and standoffish at first, has started bringing coffee in and sometimes tries to teach the Smoker basic Mazovian theory. The both of them are turning up, more and more often, in his sketchbook.
One evening, after some convivial drinking, the Smoker shows them the painting he has made of the Sunday Friend. He has brought all his knowledge of art history to bear on this one, plus the fancy canvas and acrylic paints he bought on the Sunday Friend’s dime, and styled him in the pose of a pre-Dolorian philosopher, draping reams of rich fabric in royal colors and lush strokes of the brush onto the man’s unimpressive body, in his right hand a scroll of collected wisdoms, in the background a banner emblazoned with the sigil of the Coalition. The result is as ridiculous as the man himself.
“I call it Everything is Normal on Earth,” says the Smoker.
“Heh!” says Ulixes.
“Yes, I see,” Steban adds, grinning.
The Smoker, quite tipsy, lets himself beam. He’d hoped they’d see what he did here.
Ulixes throws himself onto a kitchen chair and grabs a half-emptied bottle of beer. The Sunday Friend has gotten into costly craft beers lately that he has shipped in from Oranje, and they’ve been sampling his leftovers. “You’ve got to ditch that man,” Ulixes says and drinks.
“Mm-hm.” Steban nods.
The Smoker forces a chuckle. “Is it not enough that you are redistributing his beverages? Must you redistribute me too?”
Naturally, neither of them can take a joke. “You’re not his possession,” Ulixes snaps.
“Well,” Steban says, “Nilsen writes in Precepts of Communism that the proletarian sells himself every day to the capitalist class, which I guess could apply to—”
“It was a joke. For laughing at. I don’t like the man’s politics any more than you do, but the fact of the matter is that I do have rent to pay. My art doesn’t sell so well. I do what I can, like everyone.”
“We can help you,” says Steban, immediately.
Oh. He had that ready to go, huh? Not a second’s hesitation. The Smoker wonders if they’ve talked about that, about him, amongst the two of them. If he’s a kind of project for them. Their pet symbol of the downtrodden proletariat, for them to liberate and pour ideology into.
You have been made a symbol of something under worse circumstances, by worse men.
“That’s sweet of you both,” the Smoker says, “Mutual aid, yes. Communism in its purest form. Gorgeous. But what is there you can do, really? What do you do for money?”
Steban ducks his head and emits something to the tune of “mumble mumble merit scholarship”.
“I thought so.” Steban will not be rolling in it with that scholarship, considering that he has to live in that broom closet of an apartment, a long way away from the Ècole, and Ulixes, as far as the Smoker has learned, shares the attic of a rickety matchbox house in Eminent Domain with five insufferable roommates. They’re both in no position to play savior to anyone.
A certain gloom pervades the table as everyone drinks in silence.
“Oh, cheer up,” the Smoker says at last. “You might come up with something yet.”
He thinks about what else he could do to pacify them. Do you want to go to bed with me?
It should be the easiest of all questions to ask. Routine, really. Two men at once would be new, but nothing he can’t handle, especially since it’s them. He caught them giggling over his porn collection once with bashful, virginal glee. No challenge here. But… he’s not sure yet of Steban and Ulixes. What’s even going on between them? Are they dating? Are they exclusive? Just friends? Are they even gay? They’ve never said anything dicey about his sexuality so far, but that’s not the same as knowing without a doubt that they are safe. Besides…
Just be glad they’re even friends with you. They don’t want capitalist sloppy seconds. They’re inexperienced, but they do have standards. You’re spoiled goods, my friend.
He offers them his cigarettes instead and, later, watches wistfully as they descend the stairs back to Steban’s room (arms around each other, swaying slightly) where they’ll sleep pressed up against each other in Steban’s bed in a platonic and comradely manner, or fall on each other and fuck nasty as soon as the door closes, there is literally no telling.
But here’s the thing. He has some other clients… ‘friends’, though none as invested and well-paying as the Sunday Friend. The Whirling-In-Rags still needs a bartender. He could make it work through alternate means, surely, right? And on the art scene, he’s a nobody, but he’s never going to become somebody if he doesn’t at least try, one more time, to sell some paintings. He lies awake thinking, adding up sums, rent and utilities and art supplies, and wonders what money could come from where, and if it will be enough. If he interrogates where this need for a lifestyle change suddenly comes from, he sees Steban reading on the balustrade. He sees Ulixes asking how he takes his coffee. He sees the both of them pressing a book on something called Inframaterialism (??) into his hands and assuring him that this’ll make him see life in a whole new way.
“The world will not always be like this,” they whisper to him, and maybe they’re right. Something is moving, shaking, changing. Something is coming. Martinaise feels different when walking down the streets with the Sunday Friend these days, like the neighborhood doesn’t like to see the man here anymore. It might get risky, soon, to be the guy with a lover in the Moralintern…
Three days later, he runs into Cindy, painting on a wall once again. This time, though, it is not a stirring slogan or provocative imagery flowing from her brush. “ULI LOVES STEB” her graffito says.
“Bit juvenile, isn’t it?” the Smoker asks in passing.
“Yeah, yeah,” Cindy admits freely, “but someone’s gotta do something about these two.”
One evening, the Smoker receives an unscheduled visit from his favorite gendarme (which is to say, the one cop he’ll tolerate). The visitor is arrayed in one of his usual gaudy disco ensembles, and he’s sober, but says that he almost wasn’t. That he’s having a tough night and just needs to talk to someone, “Not Kim, I’ve bothered him enough.” He doesn’t want sex “I mean, if you don’t want it. Hah, I probably couldn’t afford you,” just… to talk to a person. A person who’s maybe not another cop. The Smoker waves him inside and puts tea on while Gendarme bemoans his situation, his pining for his stoic partner (the Smoker remembers exchanging a second of silent eye-contact with said partner and deciding immediately to leave well enough alone) and his doubts in the organization he works for. Really, he’s just starved for human contact and wants to be held for a few minutes, which the Smoker happily grants. He even decides to involve himself so far as to toss out a few words of encouragement, “Trust someone who knows a thing or two about ‘the underground’… your partner is not not into you.”
Gendarme is sweet, though, unlike some ‘friends’ of the Smoker’s, and asks about how he’s doing, too. He tells him that he’s well, has met new people, and – after a deep breath – that he is considering breaking things off with the Sunday Friend.
Gendarme is enthusiastic. “Oh, good! You’re better off without that slimy bastard. That bourgeois leech is only keeping you down.”
“Bourgeois leech? You sound like my new friends.” The Smoker chuckles as he ruminates upon whether fate possibly wants to tell him something by sending all these overzealous communists his way. Reality sobers him quickly. “Ah, well, bourgeois or not, he’s still a considerable income source. Without him, I’m not sure I’ll be able to keep this apartment.”
“Aw, man, sure sucks how landlords just withhold shelter from the working class.”
“Daylight robbery.” The Smoker nods sagely.
“Can’t you support yourself through your art? Wait, no, a voice in my head just told me that’s a stupid question.”
The Smoker sighs. “If I were any kind of an influential artist, do you think I would be hanging around here?”
Gendarme frowns. “You told me you thought Martinaise was special.”
“When did I say that?”
“When we met.”
That’s uncanny, the Smoker thinks. Talking to Detective Du Bois always feels… a little off, and maybe not just because he’s a cop. It’s like he has access to some sort of invisible manual for how to do dialogue that other people simply lack. The Smoker contents himself with shrugging and replying, “Well, we all romanticize what we have to work with, huh?”
“Don’t I know it,” his opposite says. A beat passes. Then he seems to make some kind of mental leap and adds, “Anyhoo, we were talking about your art.”
“Oh, yes, well,” the Smoker says and explains to him that, as a young and poor artist who knows nobody, he’s bound to be having a hard time ever getting his art exhibited at even a moderately popular gallery and attracting any attention from potential buyers. Why would East Revacholian art connoisseurs want to buy from some kid? How would he get his art to stand out at all?
“So it’s all about knowing the right people?” the Detective asks with a scowl of distaste. “Man, what a scam.”
“Don’t I know it,” the Smoker echoes. “My Sunday Friend, when we met, promised he would introduce me to some people, but that never manifested.”
“Hmm. My buddy Trant – well, he’s sort of my coworker – he knows a lot of artsy-fartsy people. Maybe he could help you?”
“That’s sweet, gendarme,” the Smoker says and prepares for a well-meaning if useless anecdote about some cop who sometimes goes to a museum in his spare time.
“He’s always talking about his ‘contacts’ at some place called ‘Wompty-Dompty-Dom-Centre…”
It shocks a startled laugh out of the Smoker. “I don’t expect to be exhibiting at the Wompty-Dompty-Dom-Center anytime soon! Or anytime in my life.”
Gendarme grins. “Well, maybe he knows people here in Revachol too?”
A week later, the Smoker meets up with a man named Trant Heidelstam, who turns out to be an exquisitely discerning art critic and can indeed get him in touch with sponsors of up-and-coming talent. A possible future begins to take shape.
He takes another deep breath, and gathers up the courage to tell Steban and Ulixes that he is ready to ditch the Sunday Friend.
When he tells Charles Villedrouin that he doesn’t want to see him any longer, they are there with him. Originally they just meant to hang back in the apartment for emotional support, but now it’s the two of them shoulder to shoulder blocking the door, calmly but firmly ushering the Sunday Friend outside.
“Listen here, Mister Moralintern,” Steban is saying, pointing a finger at the man’s chest, “We’ve been over it now. He doesn’t want you here any longer. So you’re going to have to leave.”
“And best not come back,” Ulixes adds, fists clenched at his sides.
Oh, right, okay, they’re not calm at all. In fact, they’re both shaking like affrighted purse dogs with adrenaline. They don’t interact with powerful people a lot. This might be their first time meeting someone who’s in the Moralintern.
“Young man,” says the Sunday Friend, “I’ll do it gladly, if that’s the wish of all parties present. Only allow me to express my concern for my young friend, all alone in these hazardous times…”
As if you were ever going to protect me once things get tough here, the Smoker thinks. When the unrest comes, you would have been long gone. Back to La Delta, back to Sur-La-Clef.
“I think we’ve allowed you to express enough,” Steban counters. “And he’s not alone.”
Ulixes tosses his head. “That’s right. We’re a Collective.”
This is the first time the Smoker hears of that… but it’s cute.
Villedrouin eyes them over with not much more than detached amusement. People like him never have to feel anything real. But he does leave.
The moment he’s out the door, Steban and Ulixes exchange an Aces High.
“Uli, I think we did praxis!” Steban blurts out, still shaky, buoyed by triumph.
“Hell yeah!”
“Did you see the praxis we just did?”
That last one was at him, the Smoker realizes. They’ve turned to face him now, bright nervous grins.
Ridiculous. They make him feel so utterly fond. “Yes,” the Smoker says, smiling. “A beautiful show of solidarity… comrades. Now, I think we should reward that accordingly, don’t you?”
He stretches out his hands to them. Unfortunately, their grins have been replaced by utter confusion.
“Reward?” Steban asks.
“We don’t expect rewards for mutual aid,” Ulixes says a little stiffly, like the Smoker has offered him something gauche.
“Well then, let me mutually aid you right back.” As there’s still zero understanding in their faces, he elaborates with a little sigh, “I was wondering if you two wanted to have sex about this.”
Immediately, Steban’s gaze snaps to his shoes. Ulixes blushes a bright scarlet.
Ah. Of course.
Five minutes later, the Smoker has succeeded in beckoning them to the bedroom. They just sort of stand there now like awkwardly placed lamps.
“I, erm,” says Steban, plucking up some courage from somewhere, “I must say, I don’t, I haven’t… haven’t ever…”
“Me neither,” says Ulixes.
“Mh, yes,” the Smoker replies. “It was almost not noticeable. Don’t worry. You’re in good hands with me.” He doesn’t have a thing for ‘deflowering’ anyone (now, turning men, on the other hand…) but he’s been someone’s first before. He knows to go gentle. That there’s two of them, now, that is a bit trickier, logistically. He doesn’t want to come across as having a favorite. Then again, maybe there’s an opportunity here…
Oh, yes. He smirks as an idea begins to form. Time to make these two realize some things about themselves and each other.
He claps his hands. “Alright, boys. Shoes and shirts off, please.”
They disrobe with revolutionary speed.
“Now sit on the bed. Yes, just against the headboard there, next to each other.”
He watches them scramble to sit, but doesn’t make a move to join them. After letting a beat pass, giving them time to build up anticipation, he says, “Ulixes. I’d like you to touch Steban.”
Ulixes blinks behind his glasses, looking a bit deer-in-the-headlights. “M-me?”
“Why, yes. That’s what you always wanted, isn’t it?”
Ulixes shyly puts a hand on Steban’s.
“Fair enough,” says the Smoker, observing with fond amusement how the simple, innocent gesture is already making Steban’s breath quicken. “Now put your other hand here…” He demonstrates on himself and Ulixes mirrors the movement, resting his hand on the side of Steban’s neck, “…and lean in and kiss him.”
Their first kiss is a short, chaste touch of lips, barely there. Ulixes trembles like he’s touching something sacred. Steban’s eyes flutter shut and he touches his forehead to his friend’s, and lets out a sigh of someone finding something they never even knew they were looking for. Then he decides to start participating in earnest and kisses Ulixes back, this one longer and deeper and indulgent.
They’re still adorably clueless about what to do with their hands, though. The Smoker will have to nudge them further along.
So when they part again for breath, he says, “Ulixes, I would like you to touch Steban’s chest.”
“Erm,” Ulixes says. “We don’t really… go in for all that Dolorian stuff about lungs, if that’s what you’re aiming at. Dolorianism is a weapon of the—”
“His nipples.”
Ulixes stares, aghast.
Poor boy. How long has he been pining? How long has his friend been a kind of sacred ideal, and ceased to be a flesh-and-blood man that he could touch? That wants to be touched, even.
Ulixes lets his hand hover. “Do you permit it?” he asks Steban, hushed.
Steban nods. “Please, Uli.”
“Just kind of… flick, with your thumb,” the Smoker says.
Ulixes does so. Steban jerks and says, “Oh…”
The Smoker grins. Knew he’d be sensitive. Let’s have some more. “Right, leave your hand there. Now bring your mouth up to his neck and suck.”
“What? I can’t just…” Ulixes sputters, still torn between what he wants and a respect for his friend that borders on reverence, an inner voice that whispers that he can’t defile Steban with his dirty hands and mouth.
Then Steban grabs Ulixes by the sides of his face and pulls him in himself. “Do what he says, Uli.”
Being manhandled like this seems to unlock something in Ulixes. He dives into his task almost greedily, kissing down Steban’s throat, suckling and nibbling. “You’re going to have marks,” he mutters apologetically, and Steban moans, fists a hand in Ulixes’ hair, and tries to drag him further down. (It’s clear he wants marks.) Ulixes goes willingly. Further and further down he goes, leaving a trail of kisses in his wake, and the Smoker thinks he barely needs instructions anymore, maybe they’ll be just fine from here and he can just jerk off to whatever they’ll decide to do, but at Steban’s beltline, Ulixes freezes and shoots a slightly panicked look back.
“Yes,” the Smoker says. “Go ahead, touch it. Get a feel for what he’s working with.”
“What I’m working with…?” Steban sputters, but falls silent with a gasp as Ulixes palms him through his pants. From the look of it, he’s trying not to squirm or buck into the touch.
Oh, he’s worked up alright, the Smoker thinks, grinning to himself. Doesn’t take much with those two. Probably doesn’t want to look desperate.
Again displaying an astonishing amount of initiative, Ulixes reaches to unbutton Steban’s pants. “Help me out here.”
“Don’t take your hand away,” slips out of Steban. He immediately blushes as his brain catches up with what his mouth just said. “It feels… I… need…”
Ulixes looks up at him, his eyes large under his glasses. “Steban… do you trust me?”
“Always. With anything.”
Not a second’s hesitation. Goddamn, the Smoker thinks, they are in love love.
“Good. Then follow along with me.”
He squats by the side of the bed and tugs Steban forward to sit on the edge. Steban, looking slightly dazed with the proceedings, lets himself be arranged just so. Without further ado – his hand trembling only slightly – Ulixes then takes Steban’s cock out and into his mouth.
Steban keens sharply. His hand flies up to his mouth and covers it. He’s biting down.
Ulixes, not knowing what he’s doing but determined, bobs his head down. For a moment, his throat works, struggling to suppress his gag reflex. But he manages. He moves back up and, slowly, finds a rhythm.
“Very good,” the Smoker says, gently palming his own still-clothed erection. He kind of wants to go over there and caress Ulixes’ hair, guide him with his own hands, but… not yet. “Very good, Ulixes. You can just sort of… swirl your tongue around it, like a popsicle, see how he likes that. Mind your teeth now.”
Ulixes minds his teeth, but not too much. Turns out Steban likes a slight scrape upwards, it makes him huff and whimper and strain to not thrust into Ulixes’ throat. Ulixes is reaching into his own pants with his free hand and jerking himself off, moaning around Steban’s cock like he needs to make rent, drool dribbling down his chin. On every downward move of his head he tries to cram it deeper down his throat, an expression in his face of total, hazy euphoria.
“Uli,” Steban whines moments later, “Uli, I’m going to, I’m close…”
Ulixes, immediately understanding, lets out an unexpectedly gravelly noise from deep down his chest and, far from moving off, takes as much of Steban’s cock as he is able to, burying his nose in a thatch of black pubic hair. When Steban comes, Ulixes does his best to swallow it all, but can’t quite manage, some dripping out the corners of his mouth and into his beard. His hand is a blur between his legs. Panting, choking, in bliss, he comes undone, following Steban over the edge no more than a minute later.
They end up back on the bed, after, having discarded the rest of their clothes, holding each other, catching their breaths, and probably processing what on Elysium just happened to their relationship. The Smoker contemplates removing to the kitchen to give them some privacy – he doesn’t always get to cum, himself, during encounters like this, and that is fine – when they both look up at him and reach their hands out.
“Now you,” Steban says, and Ulixes nods.
Presumably, comrades don’t leave comrades hanging.
So he gets into bed with two beautiful boys who make him believe in hope again.
He’s immediately latched onto from both sides. Their hands are all over him, eager and studious. He finds himself on his side, pressed to Ulixes’ (scrawny, hairless) chest, while Steban loops an arm around him from behind. Ulixes kisses him deeply, then Steban reaches over and does the same, as if they’re trading the same kiss back and forth, with the Smoker as their intermediary. Someone – at this point it’s hard for him to say which one – at one point grasps his cock. Things are so agreeable from there.
Afterwards, coming back from the kitchen with the last of the Sunday Friend’s wine, the Smoker observes the two young men in his bed. They’re smoking their post-coital cigarettes and talking, comfortably, in low voices – not about what just happened, but already off again on one of their intellectual exercises. Communism, sociology, their schoolwork. The flow of conversation is easy, worn smooth by familiarity. The Smoker thinks that there’s a painting in this, if only he had time to capture the lines and angles of their bodies, the play of the light. His hands reach for one of his sketchbooks and a pencil. Two Ideologues, he’d call the painting.
Chapter 2
Summary:
So Steban's Electrochem was largely asleep before the events of chapter 1 - occasionally stirring in its sleep to dispense commentary such as "mmm Uli's revolutionary musk" or "Mazovian yaoi question mark". Now it is awake and absolutely bouncing off the brain walls.
Meanwhile the Smoker is panicking himself into being a bitch.Thank you to everyone who commented!!! I wasn't expecting that much feedback at all so yay
This chapter is even longer than the last one sorry :/
Chapter Text
Steban wakes in a strange bed – much larger than his own – to momentary confusion. For a minute, he feels just that, drowsy and warm and comfortable and not knowing where he is, but it’s fine, he recalls enough even through the haze of half-sleep to know that this is a place where, last night, he very much wanted to be. Then the memories of last night return in full force.
They dispel any traces of sleep, his eyes flying wide open. Such things happened here…
Just thinking about it leaves him breathless. He never put much stock in virginity, it’s a reactionary concept, ticking that off the bucket list was always a thing that would, at some point, resolve itself or wouldn’t. Still… now that it has… and how!
“Dios mío,” he tells the faded blue canopy above his head. “Dios mío!”
He is alone. The others had early classes this morning, and evidently chose to let him sleep. There’s a note by the nameless Comrade saying that he’s welcome to use the shower and help himself to the food in the fridge, and to please lock up when he leaves, using the spare key under the rock out back. With a huff, he lets himself flop back into the pillows. The bed smells strongly of the nameless Comrade, that perfume he uses that seems expensive and that gives Steban mixed feelings, because it was likely a gift from that Moralintern lackey and seems kind of bougie to have, but it’s also just extremely good. On the side on which Ulixes slept, the pillow bears a soft scent of, well, simply Ulixes. How strange, that Steban should have spent so much time with Ulixes and never noticed how nice he smells. It makes him miss his friend with a sudden, white-hot severity. If Uli were here, he could kiss him, entwine their bodies like vines. They could…
He finds himself inhaling deeply, chasing the faint scent. Maybe he could just pull the blanket over his head and… spend some time with these feelings. The Comrade will have to change the sheets anyway.
No. He has class at noon. It’s quite a walk to the next metro station out of Martinaise, and then a long ride to campus, so he’d better get going.
He does jerk off in the shower, though, partly for the novelty of having a private shower stall available in which no moss is growing, partly because it might clear his head. It doesn’t, really. His body (he usually mostly regards it as a sort of contraption to carry his head from room to room) is fizzing like sparkling wine. He looks at himself in the mirror above the sink and sees himself tousled and flushed, covered in hickeys and… different now.
He has to laugh a little at himself. It’s all a bit ridiculous, but he’s too giddy to really mind. It’ll all sort itself, anyway, once he meets up with Ulixes. They have a lecture together in the afternoon. He’ll not feel so frazzled then. Just seeing his friend will set him right. Seeing him, holding him, breathing him in…
He practically flies to his own apartment for a change of clothes.
Once he’s grabbing a fresh shirt and pants, he’s suddenly gripped by a wave of foreign feeling. Is it doubt? Steban doesn’t usually care so much about how he looks beyond ‘passable’. He’s not vain. But now he wonders what his friend sees when he looks at him. Something pleasurable, he hopes. Does Ulixes prefer him some way or other? In this shirt or that? Should he try to do something with his hair? Fuck, why did he let that cop just walk off with his best lounge jacket…?
In the end, he doesn’t have time to worry about this at length. The Metro to campus waits for no man. Ulixes will have to take him as he is. And doesn’t he always?
(Ulixes! Ulixes!)
(Steban hadn’t known his blood could sing like that.)
He sits through his lecture without absorbing a single word, tapping his foot, clicking his pen, needing to be out of here and with his friend. He’s apparently so fidgety that it raises the ire of the person sitting behind him, who hisses, “Hey! You! Yes, you, Mr. What-about-class-struggle! Can you keep it the fuck down?”
Steban considers his options –
- “Sorry.”
- “Sorry, it’s just, I’m so in love.”
- “What about class struggle?”
- “Shut up, Veronique, you’re a liberal. Remember when they had us peer-review each other’s abstracts last semester? Well, I didn’t tell you then, but yours made me want to chuck your Gottwald School loving ass into the Esperance.”
He opts for the simple sorry and tries to sit still. It’s a blessed relief when he gets to get out and head a few hallways down to where he’s sure to find Ulixes finishing up his own lecture.
And there he is, leaving the lecture hall behind a throng of unfamiliar students, stuffing papers into his messenger bag. He looks, if anything, preoccupied.
For a moment, Steban just stands and beholds him with a stupid, aching smile. Did Dobreva ever look upon Abadanaiz and feel like this…?
Then Ulixes notices him, waves and comes over.
“Hi,” Steban says, breathless for no reason, wanting to grab his hand right here in the corridor in front of a hundred other students. He can’t seem to get that strung-out-looking smile off his face.
“Hey,” Ulixes replies, a bit more evenly. “How was your lecture?”
“I don’t know.”
“You didn’t go?”
“Oh, yes, I went.”
“Hm.” One of Ulixes’ eyebrows raises. “Okay. Do you want to grab coffee before the next one starts?”
Suddenly, the thought of sitting in the cafeteria and then yet another class seems completely pointless. Why do that, when he could instead just grab his friend’s face and kiss him and never stop? “Or we could just skip and go to mine.” He shoots Ulixes a glance that he hopes conveys his meaning.
It seems to, because Uli blushes and lets out a bashful little laugh. “Oh, I just…”
“Yes?”
“Well. This morning I was actually… a little worried. Ahem. About how you’d take it.”
“By ‘it’ you mean last night?”
“Yes.”
How silly. As if he could have possibly woken up and had regrets. As if he wants anything else but to go right back to bed with Ulixes and stay there all day, talking, reading, fucking. It’s indulgent as hell. Steban doesn’t care. “I was perfectly cognizant of what happened in the moment. I want it again, don’t you?”
Right then, there’s a crack in Ulixes’ composure. “You have no idea how long I’ve been wanting it.”
At that point, Steban decides to hell with it, and grabs his hand and squeezes, not caring who sees. “If we hurry, we’ll still catch the metro home.”
Sitting on the metro together and not touching, not kissing, but practically vibrating with the need to, is an exquisite torture. The moment they reach Steban’s apartment and the door shuts, they fall upon each other, relief palpable, only pausing their kissing to wrest their shirts off.
“How,” Steban gasps, pulling Ulixes close to him, nuzzling at his throat, “How did we spend years together and not do this?”
“It was killing me inside,” Ulixes confesses, running his hands down Steban’s sides. “But our friendship was already so good for me. I didn’t want to ruin it by suggesting more. I didn’t want it to split up the reading group.”
Man, fuck the reading group, says a part of Steban that usually sleeps somewhere deep down and out of sight. It steers him now to nudge his thigh between Ulixes’ legs, to go for his belt. Right now, you’d be fine not reading another book in your life and just doing this with him, every hour of every day. Hijo de puta, this is living!
“Steban!” Ulixes gasps at the sound of his belt buckle snapping open.
Steban looks up at him. “Too fast?”
There’s something in his own voice he doesn’t recognize. He’s not usually a creature of sensuality, of impulse, of pleasure-seeking reflex, but apparently today he is. There’s a fever-heat in him. His crotch has felt tight since the morning; the little interlude in the shower having brought only momentary relief. But he’ll curtail himself, if Ulixes needs him civilized—
Then Ulixes pulls him back in for a searing, glowing, consuming kiss. “I just…” he mutters between kisses, “still can’t believe… that you would want me…”
“On the bed, please, Uli.” Steban is already walking him backwards to it.
By the time they stumble into bed, they’ve managed to fling the rest of their clothes off. Ulixes kneels over Steban and sucks on his neck, adding to the hickeys from last night. More spots that’ll give him delicious little zings of pleasure-pain when he presses his fingers against them. He moans, tossing his head back for easier access.
His hand glides down Ulixes’ flat stomach and palms his cock, standing at attention, a skinny earnest length like its owner. Steban imagines getting his mouth on it, feeling his lover’s seed flood his throat (right here, under the eyes of Mazov on the shelf) and pants with desire. Maybe that can happen right now. Or maybe…
“Steban,” Ulixes breathes, props himself up on hands and knees. “Hold a second.”
“Mm?” Steban takes his hand off.
“Just… what do you want to do? Do you think we could try… try…” His eyes flit down the space between their bodies.
With almost stage-three-inframaterialist acuity, Steban understands what he means. “Oh…”
“We don’t have to.”
“We can, I have lube in the nightstand.” Heretofore, only used on himself by himself. That’s about to change.
“Good. Good.” Ulixes takes a second to catch his breath. “But who should do the… well, the giving and receiving?”
Because he knows Ulixes quite well by now (though this facet of him is new, still) Steban can tell that he’d be down for it both ways, each for its own set of reasons. Primarily, what he wants, what he really needs, is the closeness of it. The uniting.
He does a quick surmise of his own wants. “I would like you to fuck me, Ulixes.”
Ulixes immediately reddens. His chest flushes along with his face. It’s really fascinating to watch. So pale. “Oh… is that, are you sure…?”
Sometimes, in debate, there’s moments when nothing but plain facts on the table will do. “I want it. I want you. Don’t make me beg.”
“Never, never, Steban…”
“Don’t say never. Just not now.”
Ulixes nods and fetches the lube. “How,” he asks, uncapping the little bottle, “should we do this?”
“Face to face. I want to see you.”
Ulixes nods and tosses Steban the pillow, leaving it to him to stuff it under his hips. He feels on display like this, but it’s fine, because of who he’s on display for.
They both know enough (mostly knowledge gleaned from things the Nameless Comrade says) to be aware of the need for some prep work first. Steban watches as Ulixes dips his fingers in the lube and can’t suppress an anticipatory shiver. He never noticed how lovely Ulixes’ hands are. It will be so good to feel their intimate touch, he already knows this.
Still, if he looks at it happening, he’ll probably die, so he keeps his eyes on Ulixes’ face (all curiosity, a tiny bit of hesitancy, an undercurrent of desire) as Ulixes carefully probes him.
He gets his index finger in to the first knuckle, moves it around a bit to acclimate to the sensation, and asks, “Report back?”
“Mh,” Steban shifts a little, “It feels a bit strange. Not bad, but… strange.”
“Does it hurt…?”
“No, just takes a moment to adjust to. I think you could fit another one in alright.”
After a moment more of exploration, Ulixes does so. Growing steadily more comfortable and confident in himself, he starts to experiment with moving his fingers, in and out, at one point crooking them just so as if searching for—
“Oh!” Steban feels himself involuntarily arch his back. “That there, that was good.” He lifts his hips a little, trying to coax his friend’s fingertips back to that spot.
Exhilarated, they grin at each other. This is another thing the Nameless Comrade told them about.
“Did I find it?” Ulixes asks.
“Hell yeah. Aces High!”
For a split-second, Steban asks himself why the fuck he just said that ridiculous thing. People don’t Aces High during sex…! But then, the smile on Ulixes’ face as they slap their palms together tells him that Uli needed the bit of levity.
A moment later, Ulixes applies himself back to his task, and massages that spot until he’s got Steban helpless and overstimulated and trying to fuck himself on his fingers – only then does he withdraw his fingers and line his cock up.
He’s clumsy, pushing in. Inexperienced. It’s different than his fingers. For a moment, it’s rough. Steban clenches his fists into the bedsheets and breathes through the sudden mental image of being bayonetted ass-first.
Ulixes, too, is barely keeping it together, taking rapid, heaving breaths. Still, he asks, “Am I… is this hurting you?”
Steban shakes his head. “Just… just give me a moment.”
Ulixes stills, gives him time to get used to the feeling of being speared open. Even when the initial sting has faded (and it was not a bad sting, not at all), being so filled is intense. It makes him feel his body like nothing else before: the clench of his hole around Ulixes, the lighting of his every nerve, the rushing of his heated blood, most of it to his almost painfully hard cock. He’s so alive. Even the pain earlier just heightened the sensation. Now to think how alive he’ll feel once Ulixes is giving it to him like in a porno, not that he’s seen many…
“Uli… Uli, you can move now.”
“Are you sure? You’re ready?”
“Yes. Now.”
Ulixes does as he is bid. At first he’s slow and halting, finding his footing, pulling almost all the way out, then sinking back in, and the excruciating drag of him makes Steban writhe and punches a noise out of him that he didn’t know any human could make. It’s good, but he waits with bated breath for the moment he knows will come, the moment something will crack within Ulixes and make him abandon himself to instinct, he rolls his hips up into Ulixes’ too-hesitant thrusts and yearns for the moment his friend will stop worrying about hurting him – and then there it is.
As Ulixes bites down on his shoulder, and finally drives into him with a force Steban hadn’t known he could carry in his skinny body, he has but one bright thought: I love you, I think.
He says it out loud, after, when he’s spent and limp with bliss, “I love you, I think.”
Ulixes gives him a smile he’s never seen before and says, “I love you too,” and licks some of Steban’s cum off his hand.
The sight rekindles the fire in his gut like nothing else, and he kisses him, and they’re off again with all the fervor of youth.
It is an untold amount of hours later. Probably evening, judging by the waning light outside the little window. Steban does not care. They’ve been in bed all day, learning all the ways to touch each other. Making each other come, waiting restlessly to be able to go again, taking intermittent cat-naps to replenish their energy (passing out for brief minutes, post-coitus). They’d tried to read, but nothing could keep their attention. At one point, Ulixes made a half-joking remark about generating plasm, and it took Steban a moment to remember who Ignus Nilsen is. There’s nothing in his head now but Ulixes, Ulixes, Ulixes. (Cum-drunk, is what the Nameless Comrade would probably call it. Cock-stupid. It certainly feels like drunkenness, but so much better.) He’s going to be very sore tomorrow. No matter. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow can be just like today. They’ll never leave here again. They’ll stay in their bed and make love until they die.
Ulixes scrambles the fantasy as he stirs. “What’ll we do for dinner?” he asks.
How endearingly absurd. As if they’ll ever need food again as long as they have each other. “Mmh? I don’t want dinner. I want you.”
“We haven’t had anything to eat since the morning.”
And barely even that, but Steban doesn’t share that thought with Ulixes, instead sucking a new hickey onto his neck. He hums distractedly and hopes it will be answer enough.
“We could just order Semenese if you don’t feel like making anything,” Ulixes continues that line of thought, for some reason.
“Walk all the way to the payphone just to order food?” Steban huffs listlessly. The whole conversation is boring him. Going outside means unsticking himself from Ulixes, being two discreet entities again, and he doesn’t want to. He probably couldn’t even hold Ulixes’ hand outside. It’s not illegal in Revachol, being two men together, but it’s not widely accepted by the broader populace either, and it’s more accepted, say, on Boogie Street than it is in places like Martinaise. Malicious eyes on them, people shouting slurs in the street, threats of violence, all defiling their fresh new love… it doesn’t bear thinking about… it’s all such a drag… better to nestle against Ulixes’ side and not think at all…
“Then let’s see if the Comrade has anything at his place,” Ulixes offers.
Ah, the Nameless Comrade, yes. He’s a good compromise. He’ll understand what’s going on here, he’s like them. Vague thoughts on the matter of Community half-crystallize on the verges of Steban’s mind as he lets Ulixes coax him into putting some clothes on and making himself presentable.
Thus it is that the Smoker receives a knock on his door, and opens to find both his new friends, grinning hopefully and sheepishly at him. They’re both quite rumpled, covered in love-marks, and smell of sex. Apparently they eagerly took to the lesson the Smoker taught them last night, and spent all day internalizing it, and now they’re starving because they forgot to take into account that lovemaking is a vigorous activity that burns calories. The Smoker invites them inside and shares his dinner with them.
Ulixes digs in with a healthy appetite. Steban picks at his food and stares into the middle distance, happily dissociated. At one point he plaintively touches Ulixes by the shoulder, and Ulixes distractedly tells him, “Nicht jetzt, Liebling, eat your dinner.”
Steban then acquiesces to coming back down (or up?) to the surface of Elysium long enough for Ulixes to get some food into him. He has the glazed and loved-up look of someone who popped some molly at a rave, and the Smoker asks Ulixes in an undertone if he’s quite alright. He witnesses Ulixes’ voice transform into something warm and gentle that rounds out his Gottwaldian accent in a novel way as he says, “He just gets like that sometimes, bless.”
Ulixes goes on to talk about his plans for the following day, about how he heard that there’s a Communard bunker hidden under the old FELD-building, and that he thinks it would be interesting if they went and checked it out together.
“Sure, I’ll bring the picnic basket,” the Smoker chirps and only wonders later if Ulixes even meant to include him in the ‘together’. He looks at the two of them, across the table from him but also in their own entirely separate world and feels a sharp sting of loneliness. There’s a reason why the unfinished drawing in his sketchbook is called Two Ideologues and not Two Ideologues And Their Friend, and why he himself doesn’t appear in it.
He does go with them down the coast to see the old bunker. The weather is good for a walk. Once they’re past the fishing village, on the barren stretch of empty shoreline, Steban and Ulixes can hold hands unimpeded. It really is beautiful, the sight of their blossoming romance. They can barely bear to not touch each other at all times. They’re blind to anything but each other, swimming in bliss, dizzy with reciprocated desire. Every time they duck into the reeds to kiss, they get drunker on each other’s lips. It makes the Smoker want to retch. Isn’t love beautiful? Did he really ditch his main source of income for this – third-wheeling two idiots?
They do eventually reach the FELD-building. There is indeed a bunker. It’s a bare and desolate little space and it smells of dust and fifty-year-old desperation. Naturally, Steban and Ulixes are wowed, and start exploring the room for any hidden caches or anything that the gendarmes might have missed. The most interesting thing to the Smoker in here is the portrait of Kras Mazov, surprisingly well-preserved after so many decades. His art theory brain powers up and dispenses facts about Revolution-era propaganda art, and what it means that the man was depicted in this pose using that technique. Apart from that, Comrade Mazov is silent. He has nothing to say that could help the Smoker right now.
His companions have started making out on the dusty lower bunk bed, murmuring to each other about when the revolution comes… this or that will happen. The Smoker leaves. He doesn’t think they notice.
That night, he gets drunk and works himself into a full-blown panic. He threw away his main source of income, and for what? Things with the Sunday Friend were… well, they were rarely pleasant, but also not horrible, and it all sort of worked, and anyway it was only once a week, it would have been fine! What is he supposed to do now? There’s no way that art sponsorship thing will come to anything. He’s alone with no recourse and no one even wants him now. Soon he’ll be out on the street, with not a single reál to his name. Where will he seek shelter then? Steban and Ulixes will soon forget him, as if he never existed.
He should have never listened to them. He should have never started developing feelings for them. All that did was blind him to reality. Stupid, stupid. When will he learn? It’s plain to see he was a means to an end to them, nothing more, nothing real. He nudged them towards each other, showed them how it was done, and now his purpose is fulfilled, and he can fuck the hell off, probably.
He curls up on his bed that he soon won’t be able to afford anymore, and sobs to himself, and drinks himself to sleep.
He wakes up the following morning to a splitting headache, none of his problems having magically gone away, and a knock at the door. It’s Steban outside, saying that he and Ulixes are about to go to class, and asking if he wants to walk to the metro with them.
See, he wants to spend time with you, he cares about you, a little thought pipes up.
It is immediately overshadowed by the frightened part of him that’s still blindly panicking, and angry about panicking, and needing to lash out at the person who made all this happen. You don’t want to go third-wheel him and his one true love again and beg for scraps of their useless, worthless attention. What have they ever done for you, huh? Don’t let him see you like this. Push him away. Get mean about it.
“I’m not going to class,” he says, “and frankly, I can’t think of a single thing less appealing than spending time with you two.”
Steban sounds more baffled than hurt when he says, “What? What did we do?”
You talked me into ruining my own life and now you don’t even want me, the Smoker’s mind howls. It was always about you and him! I never had a place with you!
“That’s the thing about being a means to an end,” he says instead. “There is an end. When things are transactional, transactions end. So it’s high time you left me alone, hm, Esteban?”
Silence. Then Steban says, “Wow. Maybe Uli was right about you from the start.”
That stings, because now he’s imagining what it was Ulixes said about him ‘from the start’. And it makes him feel worse, naturally. Oh, they think they’re so much better than him, with their ideals and their politics and their scholarships…
Not mean enough yet. Aim at where he really lives.
“Oh, by the way, I never finished your little book,” he says, trying his utmost to keep his voice from trembling. “It seemed like delusional drivel to me. So why don’t you go stare at some turnips, or whatever it is you do, and leave me to my business.”
He thinks he can hear Steban mutter something like “Not the fucking turnips again.” But then he adds, “Look, if you just let me in real quick, we could talk like reasonable people…”
No! Don’t let him see you like this. Clearly you need to go bigger. Get even meaner than that.
“No. Okay? No. Do you understand the meaning of that word? I mean, small wonder that hasn’t prominently featured in your… Villalobos primary education, but I thought at least in university…”
It’s an ugly thing to say, a blatant dig at the sort of people who go knocking on doors in Villalobos and don’t accept no for an answer. In the reasoning parts of his brain, the Smoker knows that Steban of all people has probably never breathed near La Puta Madre in his life. But it seems like the kind of thing someone might be sensitive about, and he feels in the mood to poke at sensitive bits.
A set of knuckles meets the door. “And where do you get off saying shit like that to me?” It’s almost a hiss, far from Steban’s usual measured tones.
Almost there now. Go for mockery.
“Not exactly beating the allegations here, papi.”
He can feel the moment Steban gives it up. “You know what, go fuck yourself. Hope you have fun with your business.”
The Smoker listens to his footsteps fade away, his whole body shaking.
Well, you’ve gone and done it now, love. Whether or not he helped you before, he’ll certainly not do it again.
Ulixes can tell that something is wrong when Steban comes back to his room alone and with a face like someone looked in his eyes and spit in his morning coffee. He props himself up from the comfortable slouch he affected on the bed and spreads his arms to take in his lover.
“Liebling, what is it? Where’s…?”
“Oh, he’s not coming.” Steban lets himself drop, just his full inert weight on Ulixes’ chest. Being crushed was never so enjoyable. “Told me to fuck off, in fact. In no uncertain terms. Some… off-color things were said.”
“What? Why?”
“I don’t know, what goes on in that man’s brain is an enigma to me.” Steban lifts Ulixes’ shirt up and burrows under it. “He said something about us being transactional,” he continues, muffled into Ulixes’ shoulder. “That we were a means to an end, or something.”
“What does that mean? He, what, just wanted help getting rid of his sugar daddy? And then he ‘rewarded us’ for that and now we’re done?” Ulixes draws the most withering air quotes he can manage around ‘rewarded’.
A despondent sigh from Steban. “Seems like it.”
“Whoof. Then all that talk about ‘just wanting friends’ was just… he lied? He really is just some kind of gross profit-minded opportunist?”
“Maybe you were right about him in the beginning,” Steban admits.
Ulixes likes being right, but he hates Steban being sad much more. He hates when the world doesn’t measure up to what Steban thinks it has the potential to be. Steban isn’t gazing at the stars with hope and optimism a hundred percent of the time. He sometimes falls into darker moods, in which he doubts himself and the future and Mazov and everything (everything, somehow, miraculously, but Ulixes’ friendship). Ulixes doesn’t know if that’s clinical depression or just a sensitive temperament, he only knows that he abhors it. He hates the quiet crying in the night. He hates when nothing can coax Steban out of bed, when he’s just not there.
So he doesn’t say “I told you so”. He instead says, “I’m sorry. Best to forget about it, hm? Are we going to class still or…?”
Steban groans and nestles even closer. “Skip? I’m not really feeling it anymore.”
This is potentially dangerous territory, and could herald a several-days-long downshift, so Ulixes almost insists they get up and go to class. But then he notices how Steban’s started making little grinding motions against his thigh and, oh, alright then.
There have been many different variations on the theme of lovemaking in the last few days, but this is a new flavor of it. This is Steban trying to fuck his frustration out. Ulixes smiles and pulls him closer, more than content to test the merits of this.
It is night, and the Smoker is attempting not to pass out.
In the days since driving Steban away, he has consistently felt like shit. His existential fears, his loneliness, the fact that he had two friends and then fucked it up. A part of him keeps insisting that he’s better off without them, that the loneliness he felt while being with them was harder to bear than the loneliness he feels while simply being alone. But the far more sizeable rest of him can admit that he made a mess here, and in a way that’s hard to come back from. For shit’s sake, he all but said “All Mesques are gangbangers” to Steban’s face. That’s Sunday Friend talk, although the Sunday Friend would have couched it in politer terms. Oh god, he called him papi in a sleazy voice. What the hell is wrong with him?
Tonight, to try and feel less shit, and also to go on the lookout for potential clients, he decided to check out that new nightclub in the church down on the coast. He might have taken a little something there, had a drink or three, in any case, was having a wonderful time, meeting so many gorgeous people, feeling extremely good. Then ‘extremely good’ started petering off into ‘kind of bad’, and he decided to get home. By the time he’d been halfway home, ‘kind of bad’ was turning into ‘extremely bad’, and then, the men, in the dark, in doorways, in alleyways, they’d started following him. Shouting slurs down the empty Rue de Saint-Ghislaine.
But he’s almost home free. The Capeside Apartments loom up ahead, most windows dark. He only has to get in, and then up to his apartment, without being spotted. If only he wasn’t so sick and so dizzy. If only his legs weren’t giving out under him. His heart is jack-hammering in a panic, but it pierces the fog in his head only as dull fear. He has to go on. He can’t go on. He can’t be found here. He might get worse than just a beating.
“Aw, shit,” says a voice in the gloom, from somewhere up above. Footsteps hurry down stairs. Thank god and all his Innocences, it’s Cindy. She kneels beside him, checks his face, mutters something about the size of his pupils. “The fuck did you get into, buddy?”
“Cindy, please,” the Smoker whispers. “Please, there are men after me. Help me get to mine, or yours, I don’t care, they just can’t find me here.”
“Shit,” she repeats, slings an arm around him and hefts him up. She’s stronger than she looks. “Okay, but I’m not lugging you up the stairs. Steban’s is closer, come on.”
The cold grip of dread only heightens the nausea. No, he can't show his face around Steban. Not after what he said.
“No, he hates me,” the Smoker whines. That is suddenly very important. That and the fact that he’s going to puke on Cindy’s shoes soon.
Cindy snorts and goes on, not giving it even a second’s thought. “Steban hates no one. Let’s get a move on, right? And quiet.”
The next minute or so is a bit of a blur. Cindy half-drags him down a hallway, hammers her free hand against a door – “Come on, I don’t care if you’re fucking in there, we don’t have time” – the door opens, warm light spills outside.
Steban asks, “Cindy, wh- oh shit, what happened to him?”
“Bad trip, or roofied, I dunno, he says there’s people after him, let us inside…”
“Damn, okay…”
The Smoker is hauled over the threshold, the door falls shut – safe – and now he’s got his hands clenched in Steban’s shirt and is babbling, “Sorry… I’m sorry, sorry, for everything…”
“Later, okay?” Steban says and pries his fingers off. “Let’s get you sorted first.”
“Seriously?” asks Ulixes from where he’s sitting curled up on the bed, blanket wrapped around his shoulders. “You’re just letting him back in here, after the shit he said to you?”
“Uli, is this really the time? He looks like he’s about to pass out.”
“He basically said you were a—”
“Yes, I know. Lots of people do. It’s nothing special, okay? I mean, what did you first think when you met me?”
“I thought, here’s a guy with a comprehensive grasp of theory—”
“No, you didn’t. You thought, wow, didn’t know they let their peones go to school.”
“I did not—”
“…doth protest too much…”
Just then, a voice shouts outside in the hallway, “Where’d he go? He go this way?”
“Little rat! Come out here, we just want to talk!”
“Shit,” Cindy hisses. “Everyone shut up, lights out, on the floor!”
Ulixes slaps the light switch off. The room is plunged into sudden darkness.
The Smoker, at this point, doesn’t really have control of his body. He’s reeling. He still feels like he’s going to be sick. He feels himself get tugged closer to Steban and on the ground. They’re under the writing desk now, and he’s shaking uncontrollably, and the only grounding thing in the universe is Steban’s arm around him, the warmth of Steban’s body at his back. He hears himself whimper, and Steban, with great aforethought, clamps a careful but firm hand over his mouth. He’s close enough to smell, like this. He smells of those cheap herbal soaps that turn out, for some reason, mostly camphor.
Heavy footsteps, out in the hallway. At first it seems they will walk by, but then they linger.
“The fuck is this on the wall there?” someone asks.
“That’s that commie star and antlers,” someone else says, bored.
“Yeah? There any commie fags here?” There is laughter. “Come out here, commie fags!”
Against his back, the Smoker can feel Steban’s silent, derisive chuckle. “Commie fags,” he whispers in the Smoker’s ear, pathologically unable to resist ridiculing the stupidity of the insult. The Smoker tugs at his sleeve and silently points across the room, where Ulixes is on the ground near the bed with Cindy.
There’s anger in Ulixes’ face, visible even in the dim moonlight. He makes some kind of movement. He’s not seriously letting himself be provoked by this bullshit…?
Steban reaches over the Smoker to make a sharp hand gesture at Uli. “Down,” he breathes. “Stay. Down.”
With a huff, Ulixes seems to deflate. Cindy glares and kicks at him.
They lie in silence for a long moment, keeping their breaths shallow, not daring to move. Then the men outside seem to get bored with the empty hallway, and walk on. Only after the front door slams shut do they dare to breathe.
“What was that?” Ulixes asks, getting to his feet. “Homo-phobes?”
“Apparently,” the Smoker says. “I’ve never seen them hang around here before. They didn’t look union. I’m actually going to be sick right now.”
“Here.” Steban drags the wastepaper basket close. “I’ll clean it out later.”
“Thanks,” the Smoker says, and begins to passionately bring up the contents of his stomach.
“Ew,” Cindy says.
“For what it’s worth, I’m sorry,” the Smoker continues between heaves, “for the things I said to you. I felt lonely, and scared, and pissed that I was scared and lonely, and I needed to take it out on someone. I’m sorry it was you. None of what I said was actually meant.”
Steban kneels down beside him and supportively rubs his back. “You were scared?”
“About money – but mostly that you were going to ditch me at the first opportunity. That we’d had sex and now I’d outlived my usefulness to you, and you were going to forget about me.”
“We’d thought you’d felt that way towards us.”
(“I can’t believe you guys all fuck now,” Cindy mutters.)
“No, no.” Tears are gathering in the Smoker’s eyes, if from emotion or stress or overwhelm or the strain of throwing up, it’s hard to tell. “I know I’m… I’m not a very good person, I know, but I wouldn’t do that to you. You’re my friends, right?”
“You’re not a bad person.” Steban sighs. “Not for getting by the way you do.” He waves a hand at Ulixes. “Come on, Uli, let’s bring it in.”
The Smoker feels himself enveloped by two pairs of arms.
He wakes in the morning light squeezed like a sardine between two bodies on a bed not meant for two, much less three. Despite having slept like the dead, he still feels wrung out and jittery from the night he had, and his head aches, so perhaps that is why he can’t dredge up any enthusiasm for having someone’s morning wood pressed to the small of his back.
The person behind – a look back reveals it’s Steban – shifts against him and murmurs something unintelligible in his sleep. His arm slung around the Smoker’s waist, a saving grace last night, now feels like a cage.
The Smoker tried to subtly pull away, get himself some breathing room, but he’s not subtle enough. Steban stirs and blinks into a state that some might say resembles wakefulness. He squints at the Smoker, sees he’s also awake, remembers that the concepts of people, existing, awakening, and mornings are a thing, and mutters, “Morning.”
“Good morning,” the Smoker replies, hoping he sounds normal. (He’s spent lots of time with various men in various beds, but has rarely ever experienced waking up with one.)
Steban hums inarticulately (judgement on the goodness level of the morning is clearly still pending) and moves to sit at the edge of the bed. Yawning, still approximately two thirds asleep and probably not consciously aware of what he’s doing, he adjusts himself in his boxers, grinding his palm a little bit into his wayward erection.
He’s going to make that my problem, the Smoker thinks, and I’m not in the mood.
He prepares for unpleasantness, but then Steban looks over at him, eyes still half-shut, and murmurs, “Gonna go take a shower, I think."
Huh.
Now here’s a man who notices things in other people. He could put that to very good use if he went outside more.
While the Smoker ponders this, Steban begins to get up, saying something under his breath about how he needs some coffee, but the Smoker says, “Wait just a moment,” tugs him back down, and wraps his arms around his shoulders.
“Thank you,” he says.
“For what?”
Being like that. “Helping me last night. You didn’t have to, especially after those things I said to you.”
Steban furrows his brows. “What was I supposed to do, leave you out there with those men?”
The Smoker smiles and kisses his unclothed shoulder. It’s odd, when he thinks back on the embraces he shared with other men lately: Gendarme with his brawny arms that could bring the might of the law down on anyone trying to give the Smoker any shit, the Sunday Friend whose clammy, unenthused grip nonetheless held immense worldly power, the sort of power that could protect a scared young man from anything. Steban has neither brawn nor power. His body is not terribly impressive: well-groomed enough, but left mostly to its own devices, a work in progress like that of many men their age, unfinished, unrefined. Yet, when Steban wraps an arm around him in return, the Smoker feels bizarrely safe. A different kind of safe than what he’s aspired to before.
“What?” Steban asks now, catching him looking.
“It’s weird,” the Smoker replies honestly, “but I feel really safe with you.”
“Hmh.” Steban blushes, and bites back a sheepish smile, and says nothing. People probably don’t usually say things like that to him.
For a moment, there’s silence. Then the Smoker says, “Again, I shouldn’t have lashed out at you. I was so scared that I wouldn’t find another way to get by without the Sunday Friend… that I’d be left with nothing and no one… and it felt convenient to blame you for talking me into it. But that doesn’t excuse the things I said. For what it’s worth, I did read your little book. I’m not sure I understood it, but I thought it seemed sweet. And the sketches of the inframaterialist buildings were beautiful. And I don’t think you’re a gang member.”
Steban shakes his head. “I know. You couldn’t have teased me about the turnips if you hadn’t read it.” He sighs, his arm around the Smoker squeezing tighter. “We should have taken better care. You did something huge and terrifying, breaking it off with that man, and you should have had our support. I don’t know why we… didn’t remember that.”
He’s ashamed of himself, the dear heart. He’s recently been awakened to the tantalizing world of love and sex and has been floating on a cloud of unremitting horny like it’s second puberty since. Now he’s back to his senses enough to be embarrassed by it all, and cognizant of the fact that there are things he’s been neglecting.
“You’re in love,” the Smoker tells him simply.
“Evidently.” Steban clicks his tongue. “But Dobreva and Abadanaiz led a whole revolution while in love. I’ll have to do better.”
“You’ll get there,” the Smoker says vaguely, patting him on the shoulder, because he has no idea who Dobreva and Abadanaiz are.
“Hm,” Steban hums and abruptly pulls away. “Going to take that cold shower now,” he says with the apologetic smile of a young man harassed by bodily urges. I don’t know why it does that all the time now.
He gets up and rifles through his wardrobe for something to wear to the communal bathroom. “Will you be okay here on your own?”
“I’m not alone, am I? He’s here,” the Smoker says and indicates Ulixes, who, formerly smushed against the wall, is now starfishing out in bed, and has been asleep for the whole exchange.
“Well, he’s sleeping.”
“I’ll probably try to get back to it, too. I still feel exhausted from yesterday.”
He does end up dozing off again next to Ulixes for a short while. When he comes to again, Steban is already back from the shower, standing by the bed, looking down at the Smoker and Ulixes who have drifted together, and the depths of fondness in his gaze are almost shocking. The Smoker wonders if he should give some sign that he’s awake, but Steban’s eyes are drifting now, upwards to the bust of Mazov on the shelf.
He looks at Mazov the way an Innocentic worshipper would look at a depiction of Dolores Dei. In his mind, he’s probably not straight up praying to Comrade Kras, but it’s a close thing. It takes a conscious remembrance of the fact that Mazov is not a deity, just a historical figure he admires, and anyway Innocentic worship is the opiate of the masses, or whatever. But he’s seeking guidance with the image of Mazov, that cannot be denied.
“It’s so much,” he whispers to the bust. “It’s so much to lose.”
For a moment, his eyes look frightened…
PERCEPTION (Sight) – There’s something about the Smoker on the Balcony, when he opens the door to you, that you’ve not seen before on him. It has nothing to do with his clothes, which are par for the course: pants that flatter his skinny legs, and a shirt that’s open to the navel. It’s something more intangible. There’s a… lightness to him, and the smile he gives you is a true one, the kind that actually warms his eyes. Like some unseen weight on his shoulders got a fair bit lighter.
EMPATHY – Yet still, there’s a slight nervousness in the way he stands in the door that you can’t immediately explain.
SMOKER ON THE BALCONY – “Gendarme! This is a pleasant surprise. And so early in the day, too…”
YOU – “It’s my day off. I can’t stay long, either, I’ve got a, khm, a date later. Just here for a quick talk.”
ESPRIT DE CORPS – In his small apartment, where Jamrock borders the GRIH, the Lieutenant is getting ready for an afternoon of leisure with a man he cherishes, scowling thoughtfully at his wardrobe. Perhaps he’ll wear a jacket sans halogen patches today. He doesn’t need to be a member of the RCM for this.
ELECTROCHEMISTRY – We can’t keep Kim waiting.
SMOKER ON THE BALCONY – “Oh, congratulations. Please, step inside. I actually have a friend over right now, but he can leave.”
YOU – “If this is a bad time…”
SMOKER ON THE BALCONY – “It’s fine. He’s not the paying type of friend.”
You step on through. The main room of the Smoker’s apartment is empty, though you do spot clothes on the unmade bed that aren’t quite the Smoker’s style. From the kitchen, you can smell coffee and cigarette smoke, and perceive the presence of another person.
You peer inside and see a young man seated at the kitchen table, a book in front of him, reading and taking intermittent notes while he smokes. He looks comfortable, half-dressed and with his legs up on the second chair. The cup of coffee next to him is nearing empty and in the process of getting cold.
YOU – “Hi, Steban! Remember me? From the book club? We built the tower together!”
STEBAN, THE STUDENT COMMUNIST – The young man looks up, slightly startled. He was deeply immersed in his reading – or it’s a standard “oh shit, a cop” response. “Oh… hello, gendarme. Yes, I recall.” He looks from you to the Smoker and back. “I didn’t know you knew each other.”
YOU – “I didn’t know you knew each other. Small world, huh?”
STEBAN, THE STUDENT COMMUNIST – “Small apartment complex anyway.” There’s something in his posture you can’t quite decipher. Something strangely…
HALF-LIGHT – …defensive.
SMOKER ON THE BALCONY – He steps up to Steban and touches his shoulder. “Time to get a move on, dear heart.”
STEBAN, THE STUDENT COMMUNIST – “Will you be okay here?” With him, is what he’s not saying.
SMOKER ON THE BALCONY – “Oh, yes. You needn’t worry about the gendarme. He’s a sweet one, really. And you should be studying, shouldn't you?”
HALF-LIGHT [Trivial: Success] – Not defensive. Protective.
STEBAN, THE STUDENT COMMUNIST – “Alright, alright. If you say so. Toss me my things, then?”
The Smoker tosses him his clothes, and he steps out into the bedroom to get dressed.
SMOKER ON THE BALCONY – He gestures to the chair Steban just vacated. “Please, do sit down. May I offer you anything? A drink?”
YOU – “No, I’m properly on the wagon now. I’ll take some of that coffee, though.”
SMOKER ON THE BALCONY – “Beautiful.”
Steban, now fully dressed, makes his return, grabs his books off the table and says, “I’ll be downstairs if you need anything at all.”
SMOKER ON THE BALCONY – “I’ll be alright. But thank you.”
STEBAN, THE STUDENT COMMUNIST – “Mh. Take care, bonito.” He kisses the Smoker on the cheek, gives you a nod and leaves. The door snapping shut somehow manages to express anti-cop sentiment.
SMOKER ON THE BALCONY – “Adorable, isn’t he? Well, anyway, what brings you here?”
INLAND EMPIRE – Tell him, tell him!
YOU – “Just some news for you. Trant tells me he showed your portfolio around to a few galleries and things… I’m not sure how that all works, it’s been a moment since my Actual Art Degree days… but he told me to tell you he found one who is interested.”
SMOKER ON THE BALCONY – “Interested?” the young man repeats, hesitant. Not sure if he’s actually hearing what he thinks he’s hearing…
YOU – “In exhibiting your art.”
SMOKER ON THE BALCONY – He gasps. “Gendarme! Really?” As he covers his mouth with his hands, you witness in his eyes something beautiful as the sunrise: the sudden dawning of hope.
ELECTROCHEMISTRY – Hooooyah! Sweet sweet dopamine. That’s what it’s all about, baby.
INLAND EMPIRE – Remember this? This is what helping people is.
Chapter 3
Summary:
I truly hadn't planned on so much time passing in between me posting these. not sure what happened.
anyway, not much to say abt this one except i guess this takes place in a universe where Harry didn't find Tiago's clothes. also i'm like 90% sure that Steban at THIS point isn't actually talking to the ghost of Mazov, just hallucinating, but who knows what his future will bring
Chapter Text
Of course the Smoker fusses and frets about setting things up with the art gallery until everything’s arranged to his satisfaction, and then he fusses and frets over how to tell Steban and Ulixes the news.
That shouldn’t be all that important in the grand scheme of things, really, nothing to spend so much brain capacity on. But the fact of the matter is that he wants them at the opening of his little exhibit, and he wonders if that is at all possible. Surely, if he invites them, the whole event would offend their communist sensibilities. Even the thought of them wasting any time on such a thing! Surely they’d call it bourgeois and take umbrage at the very notion. For them to attend some kind of pretentious art showing in Grand Couron! What if rich people are there? He hasn’t even considered telling Cindy yet. Surely she’d spit in his very face for selling out.
He’s thinking about it even now, under the cover of the velvet night, while the other two are actively trying to have a romantic moment. They’re posted up in the meeting room, where the concrete gives way to open air, all wrapped in the throw blanket from the couch to ward off the night chill, pointing out what constellations they remember to each other.
“That one there,” Ulixes is saying. “In Walder it’s called Deis Handschuh – Dei’s Glove.”
“Huh. In Mesque, they call it Franconegro’s Gauntlet.”
“In Kedran, it’s just The Guiding Hand,” the Smoker decides to chime in. “Fascinating, that all three cultures saw a hand-shape.” He draws his end of the blanket closer around himself. “Do you ever miss it? I know I miss Kedra fiercely, sometimes.”
“No,” Steban says. “Born here.”
“Me too. I wouldn’t be opposed to seeing Gottwald one day, but…”
“I wouldn’t know what to do with Mesque, if I went there. No, it’s Revachol for me.”
“Do you remember crossing over?” Ulixes asks, some curiosity in his voice. “Interisolary travel?”
“Oh, yes.” The Smoker shudders. “The Pale is… well, the Pale is undeniable. They say you can cross once and be unaltered by it, but I doubt that.” Many artists who experienced Pale, he knows from his classes, feel an urge to incorporate the experience, in some way, into their art. Not him. If anything, just remembering it makes him hunger for real tangible life, for warmth, for touch, for humanity to envelop him. He snuggles closer to Steban, who out of all of them runs hottest. “It’s…”
“Fascinating,” says Ulixes.
“Abhorrent,” says Steban.
Staving off the disagreement at its root, the Smoker points into the sky at random. “What’s that one there?”
“Not a star,” Steban tells him. “Warship Archer.”
“Ah. Disappointing.”
Ulixes nods. “Those damned searchlights. And they blot out half the sky. It’s a miracle we’re seeing any stars at all.”
Again the Smoker shivers, for a very different reason. He remembers the clear star-fields of his childhood, of Kedra. His two companions have never seen an unobscured sky in their lives. It was stolen from them, he thinks. They stole even the sky.
“How much longer is this to go on?” he asks. He’s not sure where the thought came from.
“Not much longer now,” Steban says, and with such certainty that the Smoker wonders what it is he knows. Could be simple optimism. Could be a complete shot in the dark.
“Oh?” he asks, deliberately vaguely.
“I’ve been talking more with Mañana, who hangs out by the harbor gate. He tells me the unions are, well, things are happening. Talks of forming one… mega-union, not just for solidarity strikes, but something bigger. That the Claires are getting strange new shipments brought in, large shipments, and he thinks it’s maybe arms.”
Ulixes fidgets, excitement taking hold, a hound smelling blood on the wind.
The Smoker takes out a cigarette and lights it. “Gendarme tells me the Claires are smuggling drugs in.”
“We-ell, raw components, according to Mañana. Which is clever of them. Wouldn’t want to manufacture here in Martinaise in a big way and risk antagonizing… Villalobos. My guess is they pass it down there for cheap. Before they get in bed with the cops, the Claires are going to try Madre. Or Mazda. Get both at the table, if they’re truly ambitious.”
“The revolution is going to have mobsters in it?” The Smoker chuckles. That’s… probably not the ideologically enlightened resistance force that his two friends were envisioning.
Steban plucks the cigarette from his hand and takes a drag. He looks pensive.
Well, that’s realpolitik for you.
When he’s not being anxious about the art exhibit, though, life seems… good. The days grow warmer. The four of them – the Smoker, Steban and Ulixes, and Cindy – are sitting around the kitchen table, smoking, shooting the breeze, and idly wondering what to do with their evening, and the apartment is made holy by housing friends, genuine friends, in it. The kitchen, for the first time since the Smoker started living here, is a hearth.
“Well, I’ve got some paint, and we can probably go to the Frittte and get… what am I saying, you guys all have condoms now,” Cindy is saying, and the Smoker realizes he, while being anxious about the art exhibit again, has lost the plot a bit.
“I’m sorry, what exactly were you suggesting?” he asks.
“We make paint bombs and throw them at Gary’s door. Or at Gary, if he’s there.”
Steban rolls his eyes. “We do that every other day already.”
“We… do?” the Smoker asks.
“I also did not know that we do this,” Ulixes says.
“It’s kind of a Cindy-and-I-thing.”
“Yeah, it’s our number one bonding activity.” Cindy smirks. “But if Gary is a no-show, we can always go down to that new club down on the coast. Disco… something?”
“Disco Elysium. Not that they play disco music there,” the Smoker says. “Have you been?”
“Yeah, I checked it out,” says Cindy. “Some decent kids running the place. It’s one way to pass the time.”
Steban and Ulixes look unsure. “Haven’t you recently had a… bad experience there?” Steban asks.
The Smoker gives him a wan smile. “It wasn’t the club’s fault. And if I stopped visiting any place I had a bad trip at, well, where would I even go anymore? No, I like the idea, don’t you?”
They exchange a glance, and the Smoker figures that this isn’t really about him and his bad trip. All that was an excuse. The fact of the matter is that the two of them are simply not club-going people. They’d probably prefer a night in with a board game. The prospect of potentially meeting people sets them on edge – not very communard of them, all told.
“It would do you boys a world of good to go out and live a little,” he suggests, trying his level best to not make it sound too teasing. “How are you going to community-organize if you don’t get in touch with the community?”
They both look like they’ve bitten two equally sizeable lemons.
“Well, I’m going,” Cindy ends the discussion. “You guys can come or not come.”
The four of them head to the waterlock just after sundown.
The beat is already going strong when they step in through those huge and decrepit church doors. The club is decently filled but not packed, half of the patrons Martinaise locals, the other half young people from, presumably, up in Jamrock. The Smoker waves at Andre, whom he has previously encountered here, who waves back but seems busy on the dancefloor setting the mood, beckoning everyone to dance alongside him, keeping the mood nice and pumped up.
They’ve added a little makeshift bar here since the club’s inception. The four of them get drinks, served by a blonde girl with the vague sort of smile of someone currently very very very high. Cindy starts chatting her up, as much as that is possible over the thumping of the music. The Smoker tries to convince his two friends to dance, to no avail, but he remains cautiously optimistic: the night is young, perhaps later, once they’ve got a few drinks in them, they’ll be more amenable.
In the meantime, he takes a few spins with Andre. He talks to the bewildering young man at the DJ booth, who mostly yells phrases at him bereft of sense, but imbued with a gorgeous vivacity, and he finds that as long as he occasionally nods and says “beautiful” in return, it can feel like they’re having a deep conversation. He drinks some more. He spots Steban wandering off with some guy named Noid; they appear to be heatedly discussing something. Over at the bar, Cindy and the girl named Acele are putting their heads together. Idly, the Smoker muses on how he loves them all, how he could love everybody in this world if only they were willing to let his love into their hearts. Above it all, Dolores Dei smiles enigmatically. It makes the Smoker think about glowing lungs, about how the Dolorian lungs, sometimes depicted upside down, sometimes blackened and charred, have for a time served as a symbol for what Gendarme would call the ‘homosexual underground’. It makes him think of his own smoking habit. He shakes the thoughts off and returns to the dancefloor, immersing himself in a lovely sea of pulsing, sweating, joyful humanity. He refuses to let the eyes of Dolores fill him with shame. He belongs in this world. He belongs, he belongs, he belongs.
Eventually, exerted from dancing and beginning to feel quite drunk, he wanders across Ulixes, who has situated himself in a corner with a tall, pale woman in grandma clothing with whom he’s discussing, by the sound of it, entroponetics.
“Are you having fun?” he asks.
“Quite!” Ulixes nods. “Some fascinating stuff is going on in here. Did you know? There’s a Pale anomaly right over there.”
“Oh. I’ll make sure to stay away.” The Smoker shudders. “Where’s Steban? He’s not with you?”
“He’s up there.” Ulixes points at the rafters.
“Huh…?”
“He found a guy who lives up there whom everyone calls the Crab Man. They’re debating, but don’t ask me what about.”
Predictably, the Smoker finds himself asking, “What ab…?”
“I couldn’t tell you if I tried. My Mesque is what they call ‘mucho shit’.”
“I don’t know that they call it that,” the Smoker says.
“El problema es el capitalismo,” a voice wafts down from above, impassioned.
“I do know that one.” Ulixes grins.
Steban climbs back down a little while later, looking a bit ruffled, but not too unhappy about it.
“How was the crab man?” Ulixes asks him.
“Nice enough, but completely unrecruitable. He seems to worship the concept of entropy.” Steban waves a dismissive hand. “Pity. I was so sure I’d get him. I think I’m generating huge amounts of plasm right now. I can feel it, it’s amazing.”
“Oh?” Ulixes asks. “What makes you think so?”
“I might be able to answer this quandary.” Squinting, the Smoker leans in and studies Steban’s face as best he can in the strobe lights. “Ah, right. What did you take and who from?”
“Oh, you’ll have to ask Noid,” Steban says carelessly. “Can I touch your hands, please?”
“Sure.” With a fond smile, the Smoker reaches his hands out. Steban touches the backs, then the palms, then lifts them up and kisses the knuckles, then presses them to his own face. His stubble feels scratchy under the Smoker’s palm.
“Holy shit,” Steban reports, wide-eyed. “Holy shit.”
“He might be getting his wires crossed, sensation-wise,” the Smoker explains to Ulixes, whose eyebrows are rising to his hairline. “Or everything is amplified. He seems to be feeling alright about it, so far.”
“Can you slap me really hard in the face next?” Steban asks, beaming.
“Oh, dear heart, no, that would require more intensive negotiations,” the Smoker says. Ulixes makes some kind of sound (is it… disappointed?). “And sobriety.”
Steban, however, is already off to the next thing. “I think the spirit of Kras Mazov is literally in this room,” he says, staring past the Smoker’s shoulder into the middle distance with his coin-sized pupils. “I think I’ll sit in the Pale anomaly and talk to him for a bit. This might be a pivotal learning experience.”
The Smoker pats his back. “You do that, hm?” To Ulixes, he says, “Go keep him company. I’ll find Noid.”
Steban is having a great night. He was nervous about coming out here at first, but he’s not nervous now and hasn’t been since his new acquaintance handed him that little tab and showed him how to let it dissolve under his tongue. The air is bright. Textures feel new and amazing under his hands. Comrade Mazov has appeared to him and told him he’s a star in a darkening sky and that it is totally okay if he fails some of his exams. His heart is so loud and is beating so hard and he’s sweating through his shirt but that’s all okay. The Pale anomaly is a patch of total silence that feels, in this state, like a leaden blanket around his shoulders, like being immersed in a wash of lukewarm coastal tides, and it doesn’t matter that it steals the words off his lips because he’s communing with Comrade Mazov on a different level of thought transmission altogether. In terms of the physical, he’s got his head in Ulixes’ lap, and Uli is caressing his hair, all wondrous things. He is projecting his thoughts and feelings into Ulixes’ fingertips, along the pathways of his nerves, right into his mind. Such is the nature of their lovely closeness. Is this how Mazov and Nilsen used to do it? He could ask the specter of Mazov right now, but their debate is simply too dense to allow for any digressions, thoughts compressed into diamonds, magnificent in their brilliance.
“Thoughts like diamonds,” he vocalizes dreamily. “Can you see them, Uli?”
Naturally, he can’t hear Ulixes’ reply, but he reads off his lips, “Always when I’m with you.”
There’s nothing to do in response to that but kiss him, and Steban pulls him close and does just that.
The kiss is an absolute kaleidoscope of sensation. Every miniscule movement of Ulixes’ lips feels like a thousand things at once. Everything is impossibly heightened, which only makes Steban want to meld into Ulixes’ skin even more. His head swirling, his blood throbbing, he sits up and puts a hand on Ulixes’ thigh, trails it up the inseam of his pants, to where he wants—
Uli catches his hand. He lifts Steban’s chin up, makes him look at his face, and shakes his head no.
“What? No? Why?” Steban demands, and the anomaly eats his words.
Ulixes huffs, and drags them up and out of the anomaly, where sound works normally again. “Not like this,” he says into Steban’s ear, only just audible over the music. “You’re not in your right mind.”
“Nonsense, my mind feels righter than it has in a long time. You’d see, if you could experience this like I do. If we could find Noid, maybe he has…”
“No,” Ulixes repeats. “I think someone should stay sober tonight.” He parts from Steban after one last lingering kiss. “I’d be perfectly happy to let you call the shots any other night. But not right now.”
"Dance with me, at least," Steban pleads, and that they do.
A hazy amount of hours later, Steban wakes once more in the Nameless Comrade’s bed. It’s easily twice the size of his own, but so full up with people that they’re going to have to start stacking them, almost. There’s Ulixes nestled against his left side – so far, so good – and the Comrade himself next to Ulixes, head resting on his chest. To his right side, there’s Noid, who apparently came home with them for some reason. At the foot of the bed, where there’s a little room, Cindy and Acele are curled up like cats, arms around each other. Everyone is in varying states of dress. There’s a smell in the air of stale booze, sweat and cigarette smoke.
Something happy stirs in Steban’s chest. He can’t quite put a name to it, but it’s nice. Something about the sight of all these friends here.
At this point, he’s awake enough to become aware of a strange itch on his chest, just above his sternum. There’s a dull ache in his muscles generally, but this is not that.
He looks down and discovers that someone has stuck a large band-aid to that spot for some reason. He peels it off and,
“Oh shit. Oh, shit!”
The memory obligingly slots into place: Cindy, waving the tattoo gun that apparently she just had for some reason. Her and the Comrade bickering over the exact design. “Is it safe?” Steban had asked her, by that point somehow sober enough to be squeamish. “It’s a sterile needle, ya dink,” Cindy had replied, “Don’t get your panties in a twist…”
Even with his system all abuzz still with the effects of Noid’s little acid tab, there had been stings of pain. He’d clutched Uli’s hand for support, and Uli had looked at him, a strange but not unhandsome glint in his eyes…
Now, just below his collarbones, there sits a perfectly undeniable star-and-antlers. He’s going to have to start buttoning his shirts up all the way if he wants to avoid showcasing his political leaning wherever he goes.
“It could be worse,” says a voice – the Comrade’s. “Could be ‘MAMA’ in a heart.”
“You don’t know just how likely it could have been that,” says Ulixes. “To hear him tell it, it’s only a matter of time before his mother gets Innocentified.”
Evidently, while Steban has been examining his tattoo, his friends have started waking up. “Why would I want the filth that is the Innocentic system anywhere near my mother?” He decides to prod the area. It stings. “Ouch. Good morning. You people gave me a tattoo.”
The Comrade shrugs. “You wanted one.”
“What happened to not letting me call the shots?”
“I’m very sorry.” Ulixes doesn’t look very sorry.
“It’s kind of hardcore though,” says Noid, who is a startlingly pale and skinny creature in the sunlight.
“Last night you said your ‘sines weren’t synced with’ communism,” Steban says.
“They’re still not. But I can acknowledge that standing openly by your convictions is pretty hardcore,” Noid opines. “Anyhoo, first trip, right? How are you holding up?”
"Fine, just exhausted still. Not much of a hangover, all told." It's nice of Noid to ask. They may have proclaimed themselves "trip buddies" or something of the sort last night, amidst the euphoria. Trip buddies regardless of political positioning. It’s… not the kind of thing he would have gone in for, before. But… oh well. The man did give him free drugs. “Quite the experience. Thank you, actually, for that."
Ulixes puts a hand on his shoulder. “We’re not looking to make it a habit.”
Uli… always bristling whenever Steban so much as speaks to a new person. They have to have a conversation about that someday. But not right this morning. Still, Steban sighs. “Ulixes…”
The hand squeezes. “I need you focused on this world. Not the better one you can paint behind your eyelids.”
In a slightly warning undertone, Steban repeats, “Ulixes.”
(Yes, the temptation is there, to feel like he did last night all the time. But there are sufficient things holding him back. Principle, for one. Lack of money to blow on such a frivolity, for two. Uli, as well, even when he’s being like that. Then there’s the question of how he would explain it to mums. Besides, feeling normal is also pretty good most of the time.)
He tsks. “You people are ridiculous. You sorely tempt me to not even make you breakfast.”
But of course he does. Of course he makes breakfast.
As they all drink coffee and eat the breakfast quesadillas that Steban manifested, the Smoker somehow hears himself speak up.
“I wanted to tell you that there’s a gallery in Couron that’s exhibiting my art soon.” Before anyone can react, he continues, “There will be a bit of an opening party and I’d like to invite you.”
Okay, here we go. You’ve been working on the argument in favor like it’s a dissertation. Go through all the talking points. They’ll love that.
But somehow it goes wrong. Maybe it’s the hangover. Instead of his meticulously polished list of pros and cons, it all comes out in a kind of jumbled mess: “It’s not going to be overly bougie, I promise. It’s... an art scene, no one will mind any… um. I mean, it’s just my paintings, you’ve seen them, there’s no harm in… and you’re my friends and you, in a way, gave me the courage to even try—but if you don’t want to that’s fine! Just, I know it’s not your thing, and maybe… hey, let’s think about it as an infiltration. Going—unless that’s silly. Um. It’s up to you of course, and I won’t mind if you say no, because I get it, I do…”
Steban looks up from drowning his poor quesadilla in hot sauce, exchanges a quick glance with Ulixes, and says, “Of course we’re coming.”
They end up walking Noid and Acele back to the church for lack of anything else to do with the day and also a strange reluctance to separate after hitting it off so well. Viewed in daylight, the church-turned-nightclub needs a lot of work, and somehow Andre talks Steban and Ulixes into volunteering themselves to help. It means many afternoons spent down by the coast as the days grow from warm to sweltering, afternoons that start to include food and coolers full of drinks and music and dips in the sea. Ulixes freckles in the sunlight, to Steban’s endless fascination. He spends evenings tracing new constellations on Ulixes’ face and arms and shoulders. Steban tans more than in all his past years of university combined, and has his usual complicated feelings about it.
One day, Ulixes is off in a meeting with his academic advisor, and the Mysterious Comrade is in Couron supervising the preparations for his gallery opening, so, with no task on his hands, what Steban does is this: he makes a whole picnic basket’s worth of enchiladas (not as good as mums does them, but good enough) and takes them first to Call Me Mañana in exchange for all the union gossip, and then down to the church to share with the Crab Man, who he fears has been neglecting earthly sustenance in the rapture of hole-worshipping. It’s nice to flex his Mesquize, and to chat with someone else out of Villalobos, even though Tiago barely remembers it. His accent sounds like home, like childhood.
Sitting in the rafters next to Tiago’s half-obscured form, and looking down at the speedfreaks below setting up for the night, Steban has two thoughts. One, that he wouldn’t have done any of this not too long ago. He simply would have stayed in his room reading and waiting for Ulixes to come back. Two… well.
The second thought is strange, more of a feeling (a premonition? A whisper on the wind?). These are the last golden moments before the storm breaks, it whispers. Be glad that you are granted them, beloved child of the city.
He shakes the thought off. It’s nonsense, of course. There is no way of telling what the future brings.
“What does one wear to an art… thing?”
“I don’t know,” Ulixes says. He has been to exactly as many gallery openings as Steban, which is to say none. He was just going to wear his usual. Maybe his second pair of shoes, the one that’s less scuffed. Now he’s watching Steban brush his hair, an enthralling sight. In Ulixes’ unbiased opinion, Steban has the most gorgeous hair out of any person alive or historical. It’s silky to the touch. It’s glossy. It’s so dark it nigh-on swallows light. He woke up with it in his mouth last week and thought, How lucky I am.
“Maybe I’ll put it up,” Steban says now and runs his hand through it. “And can you lend me one of your jackets? I’d get mine back from that cop, but I don’t know where he lives.”
Ulixes nods. If Steban brushes his hair much longer, he will simply have to ravish him.
"And should I have The Tattoo out?"
Whether or not to show The Tattoo off has, of late, become a frequent and central issue in Steban's life. "I'd say yes. It's a statement," Ulixes says and bounces his leg, a dynamo powered by sexual longing.
Maybe he’ll go wild and add a bolo tie to his outfit.
The evening of, he meets Steban at his door, wearing the good shoes, bolo tie and a mid-range cologne that his mother got him for his last birthday because she doesn’t know what things he likes. Steban is looking great. That’s par for the course, in Ulixes’ unbiased opinion, but tonight he has indeed put his hair up in some kind of a half-ponytail situation, held together by a little metal star-and-antlers barrette that Cindy actually made for him while on her found-materials-arts-and-crafts kick. The jacket Ulixes lent him is a herringbone print that makes him look distinguished as hell, and he’s topped it all off with a red silk scarf he says was a gift from the Crab Man, draped just so to still expose The Tattoo. Ulixes links arms with him and gets the distinct idea that this is a date.
Now, he has often fantasized about bringing communism back to Revachol by Steban’s side, piling slain bourgeois at his feet, but he has never once imagined taking him out on a date.
They meet Cindy on the steps outside. She’s got multiple studs in her ears and a smoky-eye look that she may or may not have used a piece of coal for, and is wearing a leather jacket hand-painted with the Skulls logo over what looks like a moth-eaten black tulle skirt that has seen better years.
“What?” she asks. “I’m meeting Acele down by the waterlock.”
The Dolorian church is dark tonight, because not just Acele but all four speedfreaks are waiting by the waterlock. Acele is in an off-white blouse and slacks and some imitation pearl plastic jewelry. The other three have applied their more liberal understandings of the concept of ‘semi-formal outfit’ to themselves: Andre is wearing lots and lots of kandi bracelets and a shirt that says PLUR! across the chest in glow-up letters, Egghead his biggest lung-shaped belt buckle and a blazer covered in imitation rhinestones, and Noid some kind of black dress with fishnet sleeves and a new, sturdier exoskeleton painted gold to match his necklace and earrings. They all have spray-painted their hair to glow three different colors in the dark, and liberally applied body glitter to themselves.
People give them weird looks as they all pile into a train-car to Grand Couron, and under other circumstances, Ulixes would have cringed and tried to keep his distance, but right now he wouldn’t have it any other way, because the slightly bemused smile that all this is putting on Steban’s face looks very good there. So he gamely lets Egghead rope him into an incomprehensible conversation about… music, maybe, or philosophy, or both.
As they exit the metro and walk the few blocks to the gallery, a car pulls up at an intersection and honks. It’s a cop car, and they all know the two gendarmes inside: the disco cop, dressed in most ostentatious disco garb, and his friend, today in a black bomber jacket and matching gloves. A blonde man with a slightly unsettling smile is looking interested in the backseat.
“Fancy seeing you all here!” the disco cop shouts out the window, giving them all finger guns.
“We’re going to see an art gallery,” Steban tells him. (None of them should, strictly speaking, be talking to cops, but with this guy, somehow they can never resist.)
“What a coincidence, so are we!” says disco cop. “Wanna hitch a ride there?”
“Harry, we don’t have any room,” says his friend.
It’s a moot point anyway, because, “Ride with pigs? Roll up in the piggy-mobile?” Cindy shouts up at them. “No way. What do we look like, fucking faschas eager for a little turn in the bootlicker-wagon?” And she gives them the finger.
“We are not the monkeys, but we’ve got the key!” Egghead adds cryptically.
So the cops drive off, and the fine non-cop citizens continue their walk.
Even in his airy silk shirt that drapes across the flat plains of him like a dream, the Smoker is sweating. If he hadn’t topped it off with a sweet-ass black dinner jacket, everyone could probably see his pit stains right now. He’s never been this nervous in his life.
(Okay, realistically speaking, he has probably been more nervous on some occasions in his life. Getting caught by his parents with his first boyfriend. Starting sex work. Talking to the Sunday Friend and realizing just what he is. But right now it sure feels like he’s never been this nervous in his life.)
There’s a small crowd of art connoisseurs here, some of them probably quite wealthy, the sort of people who drop serious money on promising young talent. The Smoker thinks he might even recognize one of his professors from the university. These people know their stuff. They know what they like. They’re here to judge him.
He’s meant to mingle with the crowd, answer questions. Present himself. Make pleasant, charming and erudite chit-chat about his art. Really, he’s pressing himself flat against the wall by the exit that leads to the restrooms. He could really use a drink, or a bump, or a tight hug, duration about 20 years…
He becomes aware of some kind of blurry motion somewhere in the room. Someone’s got their whole arm up in the air waving. At him?
He turns to look and it’s Gendarme, rocking some kind of bedazzled Thirties-style jumpsuit. He’s grinning and waving and trying to get his attention, and there beside him, two more pairs of hands raise in salute and form the Mazovian antlers.
They brought the whole gang. Back behind Steban and Uli, Egghead pumps his fist in the air. Andre is buzzing with restless energy. Acele and Cindy are arm in arm and Cindy seems to actually be enjoying being here. They look like the dictionary definition of ‘motley’. Excepting Mr. Heidelstam, none of them clearly had any idea how to dress for the event. There’s glitter and leather and glowing spray-paint, the cheap kind. Steban is looking like a drug runner and an academic popped out some kind of communist lovechild, and he’s showing The Tattoo off. Ulixes is wearing a bolo tie.
God, the Smoker thinks, his heart overflowing. Ridiculous.
He detaches from the wall and goes to meet his friends.
They scatter around the gallery soon, perusing the artwork. Gendarme is the first one to spot himself in a painting (“Kim, Kim, look, look! He did one of me!”). The Smoker has depicted him in a quiet moment in his apartment, looking out of the window into a sunset, cigarette in one hand, a brightly colored juice-box (orange) in the other. There is sensuality to it – he has lovingly rendered the hint of hairy pecs peeking out of Gendarme’s partly open shirt – but all in all, the Smoker felt it interesting to depict the man behind the disco, a man who is deeply thoughtful and somewhat pensive and feeling all his forty-some years and cannot always let himself show that.
There’s also a portrait of Egghead at the mixing table that is deemed “hardest-core!!” and one of Cindy, caught in the motion of dipping her brush into red mazut (“Would’ve liked something a bit more conceptual.”) The Smoker has made a collage out of old Revolution-era propaganda leaflets and then used them as background – or perhaps foreground – for a portrait of Ulixes, making it look like the young man is gazing out at the viewer from in between the words (“Not that I’m not flattered, but I can’t help but worry at the waste of literature.”)
Of course there is no… suggestive artwork depicting anyone the Smoker knew would come to the gallery or take issue with it in any way. He’s fastidious about consent. Noid, for example, has point-blank refused to be drawn at all, and the Smoker has respected that. Hence why Two Ideologues, now finished, is not exhibited here – he’s not about to out anyone – and neither are the various tasteful nudes and semi-nudes that his friends have sat for. A pity, really – Man in Leotard and Comrade Ingenue are some of his best works.
But he has managed nonetheless to get Steban in here twice, in a way. One of the acrylics paintings, titled Fawn, features a lot of abstraction and imagery of stars and antlers shedding velvet, and he catches Steban looking strangely worried when he sees it (“How come he gets the high-concept shit?” Cindy asks). He seems to like the other, simpler portrait, that straightforwardly depicts him in the Smoker’s kitchen making breakfast, a lot better (Más Preciado, it is called, after a line in some incomprehensible song Steban sometimes sings a few bars of under his breath when he’s doing chores). Alas, Steban’s no great comprehender of art.
Two hours into bopping around the room and explaining the process and meaning behind the artworks, his approach to capturing the human form, to not just his friends but also the various experts present, the Smoker halts a moment and realizes that he is having a great time. He has people here supporting him. People who know a lot about art seem to like his paintings and want to know more. Maybe he’ll be able to make some money, even. How has life so quickly turned from… well, sort of middling… to startlingly close to the ideal?
Then the door swings open, and the Sunday Friend enters.
The Smoker’s mind abruptly empties. All he can do is stand, transfixed to the spot, and watch the man walk in, and watch as other people notice him, and someone somewhere mutters, “Oh, absolutely the fuck not.” There he is, the Sunday Friend, as if he never left. The same boring suit and tie. The same lank, flaxen hair. The same fussy, silver-rimmed glasses. The same pedestrian face, with eyes that never seem to really look at anything.
The same worldly power, hidden behind the uninspiring façade. Once, he hoped naively that this power would shelter him. Now he feels only fear. Why is the man here?
Villedrouin has now spotted him. “Ah, my young friend,” he says, striding towards the Smoker, for some reason feigning surprise. “What an unexpected pleasure to be meeting you here, and on such a fine evening!”
“Hardly so unexpected,” the Smoker says, and somehow finds it in him to firm his spine. “This is my art being exhibited here.”
That’s right, a voice in his mind whispers. Let him see what you accomplished here, without his help. He promised he’d sponsor you, when you met, and then he never did. But you made it anyway.
“How wonderful,” the Sunday Friend replies, holding out a hand. “Always excellent to see an honest effort pay off despite a, shall we say, difficult start. Allow me to congratulate you.”
The Smoker is subjected to an unenthused, clammy handshake. He’s surprised how much it repulses him now to have to touch the man. It brings back memories of having to touch the man in other capacities, and…
Well. The Smoker genuinely likes sex work. Most of the men that visit are sweet, in their own ways, like Gendarme. And the Sunday Friend has always been… patronizing, but perfectly civil. Never stepped out of line, never broke a rule, always paid on time. No cause for complaint, ever. But there had been some undercurrent to the relationship, something insidious, something hard to put a name to. With his other clients, it feels like… like amiable strangers helping each other out. With the Sunday Friend, he felt… used.
It's sociopolitical, suggests another voice that also lives in the Smoker’s head now, a fairly recent addition to the mindscape, its inflection soft and Villalobos-Mesquize. What you are feeling is an effect of class inequality, and the dynamics of hegemonic occupying power.
You feel this way because you’ve woken up to your class interests, adds a second voice, complimentary to the first, a tinge Gottwaldian.
Only when the voices’ owners step up beside him, putting their hands on his shoulders, does the Smoker realize that he’s been in danger of dissociating. He snaps back into the moment, yanking his hand back, and now Cindy appears next to Steban and Uli, and the speedfreaks, while probably having no idea what’s going on, cluster around them, and from somewhere behind, a calm voice says, “Excuse me, RCM. Monsieur… Villedrouin, wasn’t it? I don’t believe you’ve been invited to this event.”
It's Gendarme’s partner, badge in hand, and there’s Gendarme himself, crossing his arms, biceps bulging in the sleeves of his bedazzled shirt.
In that moment, the Smoker has the strange thought that if he let himself fall backwards right now, somebody would catch him. He is surrounded on all sides by… friends, actual friends.
“Ah,” says the Sunday Friend, “I didn’t know this showing was invitation only.” His eyes glide over the gathering of colorful characters, never catching anywhere in particular. This is nothing but faintly amusing to him. But that doesn’t matter anymore, because to the Smoker, it is everything.
“Well, it is,” Gendarme says, gravelly, almost a growl.
“And I do recall it being stated very clearly last time we met that he didn’t want to see you anymore. Tonight or any night,” Steban adds, his hand on the Smoker’s shoulder clamping on tighter. There’s an undercurrent of nerves in there, but it’s not that startled-whippet-fear that the Smoker observed last time they told the Sunday Friend off together. Something has changed in the meantime.
He’s getting one of the good blowjobs later, the Smoker mentally notes.
“Oh, was that stated, hm?” Gendarme rasps, and the performance is applause-worthy, the stance, the play of muscle, the scary cop voice. The bedazzled disco ball onesie somehow only accents it. He shoulders his way to the front of the little crowd and looms in front of the Sunday Friend. “I’m sure everyone here would like to see our young friend’s wishes respected, dontcha think? Be a shame if some kind of misconduct happened here, yeah? Be a shame if some kind of trace of misconduct made its way up the totem pole?”
Suddenly, the Sunday Friend is not looking so amused anymore. He clears his throat. “Well, quite. I’m sure there is no misconduct here. A simple misunderstanding, is all.”
“Well, quite,” Gendarme repeats, oozing Asshole Cop now. “And the way I see it? If you misunderstand again, it looks like you’ll have about half the dudes in Martinaise lined up around the block for ya.” He prods the Sunday Friend’s chest, right in the boring tie. “And I’ll be coming first.”
Oh, he’s getting one of the excellent blowjobs later, if his partner allows it.
“That’s right,” chirps someone in the crowd – Ulixes.
The Sunday Friend nods, more to himself than to anyone in front of him. “I see. Well, allow me to compensate you for the disturbance…” He’s reaching into an inside pocket, where the Smoker remembers his checkbook is kept.
“No one here wants your money anymore,” he says firmly.
“Hey, I’d take it,” Gendarme says, and he’s the silly, wacky Goofball Cop again. “I need a new record player, since the man I was before my apocalyptic bender kinda sold mine for speed money…”
Some people laugh. That seems to get to the Sunday Friend in a way none of the threats and posturing before have: the laughter.
“I see,” he repeats, and the lightness in his voice is even more evidently fake than the way he usually talks. “In that case… a good evening to all.”
With that, he turns on his heel and walks out the way he came.
When he’s gone, everyone turns with evident concern towards the Smoker. No one seems quite sure what to say until Andre remarks, “Wow, who was that guy? Massive bummer.”
Again, there is laughter.
The Smoker smiles wanly. “Just… an ex.”
“Well, the sines were rancid,” Noid says.
“You okay?” Steban asks, patting the Smoker’s shoulder.
“Yes, dear heart, I’m fine.”
“Just, you’re trembling a little.”
The Smoker sighs. “This was supposed to be my night. Everything was meant to be perfect. And now… now it’s just about him again.”
“Those people,” Gendarme spits, “they really have to ruin everything, huh? Fucking Moralintern.”
“Harry, you work for the Moralintern, in a way,” his partner reminds him.
“Pah! I work for the people.” Gendarme thumps his chest.
“Um,” Steban and Noid say in unison.
They start debating the (questionable) merits of the RCM, while the Smoker is ushered to a chair. Someone brings him a mimosa from the refreshments table. He sips it with what he hopes is an air of debonair melancholy, and not just a plain ruined mood. Most of the gallery visitors who are not part of the group are milling around uncertain what to do, many appearing to be in the process of leaving. Great.
It's Andre who eventually appears in front of him with Egghead in tow and says, “Hey. Let’s blow this pop stand and go bar-crawling?”
“Jumping all over the world!” Egghead adds.
The Smoker gratefully accepts their hands up. “You know what? Fuck it. Let’s.”
The Gendarmes say their goodbyes because one of them has to drive and the other doesn’t trust himself near alcohol, and the rest of the group begins a meandering walk to the correct side of the river in search of affordable bars. They start out at a thirties-themed dive that offers cheap cocktails, leave there because the sines don’t end up passing muster, grab food and a few six-packs of Potent Pilsner at a Messinian take-away place, somehow end up in a karaoke joint, get thrown out because Ulixes starts a wailing rendition of The Star and Antlers, then the Smoker leads them to a somewhat ‘underground’ establishment where Noid gets into an argument with some regulars about the nuances of gender presentation, Steban sees his first drag queen and looks like he’s reaching some kind of epiphany, and Cindy and Acele disappear to the ladies’ room for twenty whole minutes.
“There’s just this feeling I’ve been getting,” Steban tells him at some point, his voice beginning to slur, their shoulders pressed together in a very occupied booth.
“A feeling like you maybe want to try putting a skirt on?” the Smoker guesses.
“Maybe that too. But that’s not what I mean.” He gestures with the drink in his hand at everyone in the booth, raucously drunk and loving one another, talking and laughing and flopping all over each other. “Something about all these people, all of us here together, and supporting each other, what’s the word…”
“Community,” the Smoker tells him with a smile.
Chapter 4
Summary:
Okay folks, we're almost done here!! And this is an exceedingly funny thing to say four chapters into something, but isn't it surprising that this thing had a plot all along??
Anyway, this was originally going to be much longer, but I decided to split what was intended to be chapter 4 into two, because what I have on my hands amounted to over 11k words in total. That's too much!! So, slightly shorter chapter today, the rest will follow soon once I'm done editing it.
Lotta Harry POV going forward.
Chapter Text
It’s midmorning going on noon. They both slept in, and all of Ulixes’ vague plans of getting out of bed at some point have just been dashed in the most fortuitous manner when Steban woke up, stirred comfortably against him, kissed his neck and murmured, “Mm, te quiero.”
Ulixes isn’t sure what that means, but it sends a happy shiver down his spine. Sometimes, he reflects upon how long he spent pining, unsure whether he was allowed to even want this kind of physical closeness with his comrade, and how easy and self-evidently right it now feels. How lucky he is, and how amazed his past self would be if someone told him that soon he’d be waking up every day to Steban and his sleepy kisses and his te quiero.
Before, in his fantasies, he’d sometimes dared to imagine Steban, at most, patiently allowing him to touch him once or twice, bearing his grasping, over-greedy hands with the long-suffering pity of an Innocence. Now, he’s surprised at how much and how frequently Steban seems to want him, how many times he initiates. He imagined touching Steban would feel like caressing a marble monument to a distant ideal, some kind of icon of revolutionary thought. But he is warm and pliant under Ulixes’ hands, and heaven, if it existed, couldn’t possibly be more glorious.
Now, Steban has flipped him on his back and is kissing a path down his body, unhurried but intent on his destination. Ulixes knows he is a lanky and unsightly creature, but somehow Steban kisses him like a precious thing.
“I would do an—” His voice hitches as Steban’s lips brush the ticklish part of his stomach. “Anything for you.”
Steban looks up at him with fathomless warmth in his eyes. (His eyes are the kindest thing in Ulixes’ world.) “Right now, will you let me…”
But he never gets to suggest what he would like to do, because there’s a sudden, loud knock at the door. Steban pauses and slumps with pure exasperation.
“Can we just ignore it?” Ulixes whispers.
“I don’t know, could be important,” Steban replies, then raises his voice, “Who is it?”
“RCM!” It’s the disco cop’s voice. “Open up, I need to talk to you!”
Steban rolls his eyes and flops over onto his side. “Come back with a warrant!”
“This is serious,” says the disco cop.
Steban looks at Ulixes, who shrugs. The mood’s already killed, anyway.
“Just a moment,” Steban shouts back and reaches down for their clothes, left in a pile on the floor. He tosses Uli his things, makes himself decent, and walks to the door, muttering unhappily under his breath. “Díos y todos sus Innocencas, if he’s here to ask me if women are bourgeois again, I swear I’ll…”
Uli chuckles. He’ll think back on that later: But we were just laughing.
YOU – Fidget a bit as you wait for the door to open, listening to the small noises of a padlock being undone. Kid’s still on the overcautious side, apparently.
VOLITION – There was probably no need to come here. This might all still be nothing…
HALF-LIGHT – …but better to make sure.
ESPRIT DE CORPS – If only we’d taken Kim along. Kim would know what to do.
STEBAN, THE STUDENT COMMUNIST – The door finally unlocks and swings open and the young man emerges, tousled and in his underwear. It’s going on noon. College students.
ELECTROCHEMISTRY – Emerging with him is a scent of stale cigarette smoke and sex. My, my. Did we interrupt something here?
STEBAN, THE STUDENT COMMUNIST – “Yes, gendarme?”
EMPATHY – He’s trying, he really is, but he can’t quite suppress a trace of annoyance in his voice.
YOU – “Sorry for the blue balls, kiddo, but I have to talk to you. Your buddy here too? Or what do you say, boyfriend? Comrade?”
PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT – H—
ELECTROCHEMISTRY – No, Coach, shut up, we’ve been over this. We’re a sissy homo pansy faggot et cetera too, in a way, and so is Kim, the coolest person we know. Let it be already.
STEBAN, THE STUDENT COMMUNIST – “Ulixes? Yes, he’s here.” He opens the door a fraction wider, just enough so you can peer inside and spot Ulixes, sitting cross-legged on the bed. He, too, is wearing boxers and a rather threadbare red t-shirt with faded lettering across the chest proclaiming “REVACHOL–MESQUITE CULTURAL FOUNDATION. VILLALOBOS CHAPTER. KEEP OUR LIBRARIES OPEN”.
YOU – Echo-Maker's Mesque?
ENCYCLOPEDIA – No. You seem to recall him mentioning a parent from Gottwald. This is a case of Boyfriend Shirt.
THREADBARE BOYFRIEND SHIRT – Someone’s first fawn-legged stumble into community aid, nowadays sadly subsumed by the unforgiving mistress Theory. Although, who knows?
YOU – “I was wondering if the… um, the Smoker on the Balcony. Our mutual friend? He calls himself Martin Martinaise sometimes. I was wondering if he’s here, too.”
STEBAN, THE STUDENT COMMUNIST – “Smoker on the…? Huh, yes, I suppose he does like to smoke on balconies. Very apt. Well, as you can see, he’s not here.”
VISUAL CALCULUS – True. The apartment is too small to conceal anyone within.
YOU – “Ah. Thing is, I was supposed to be meeting him at his place today… to sit for a portrait, erm, nothing else. Nothing… raunchy.”
STEBAN, THE STUDENT COMMUNIST – “His sittings can get raunchy enough.” Behind him, his companion chuckles. “Gendarme, what he does for his work, with you or anyone, is none of my business. No need to come to me about it.”
YOU – “No, the thing is, he won’t answer his door. It’s weird. He always kept our appointments before. So I thought I’d ask if you’d seen him. Or know where he is.”
STEBAN, THE STUDENT COMMUNIST – He exchanges a glance with his companion. “That is weird.”
ECHO MAKER – “He’s usually fastidious about appointments.”
VOLITION – You have experienced this, also. Whether in his role as a painter or as a… person of negotiable affection, the Smoker takes his work very seriously. He might affect a carefree demeanor on the surface, but truly prides himself on being reliable. An admirable trait.
YOU – “I just hope nothing’s happened to him. Might let myself in with the spare key and make sure.”
Make sure of what, you don’t want to say. You might just be imagining horrors that aren’t there, based on all the shit you see in your job. Might just be… what was Trant’s word for it? Hypervigilant?
SAVOIR FAIRE – But letting yourself into people’s homes to look for clues is what you do.
STEBAN, THE STUDENT COMMUNIST – You’ve never been quite sure what fuels this guy’s paranoid streak. Unlike Noid, he never cared to tell you, and you never asked. But you see in his eyes that his thoughts are taking forms similar to yours. “Can we come along?” he asks.
YOU – “Don’t see why not.”
SUGGESTION – Best tell them to get dressed first.
Turns out you don’t need the spare key under the rock. As soon as you try pushing the door open, it gives. Weird.
HALF-LIGHT – Alarm bells shrill in your head.
SMOKER’S APARTMENT – The apartment is empty of people, but full up with mess. Somebody has flipped furniture over, turned drawers inside out, searched, in a word, for something, scattering the Smoker’s belongings carelessly across the floor. Signs point to there having been a struggle.
Behind you, you hear the shocked exclamations of the student communists. It’s clear to them, too, that this wasn’t a friendly prank. Violence has occurred here.
The Smoker himself is nowhere to be seen.
ECHO MAKER – Ulixes has drifted towards the dresser, examining a dark spot on its edge. “Blood.”
YOU – “Don’t touch it. Might have to have a closer look later.” Urgh, this has become work now. You push your rapidly mounting concern for the Smoker deep down for now and turn towards the two young men. “Look, you two spent a lot of time in here lately, right? More than I did. Help me search all this mess for anything out of the ordinary. Anything that’s missing, or that doesn’t belong here.”
Pale and frightened, they nod.
VISUAL CALCULUS - As you stride through the apartment, analyzing the trail of destruction as you go, a pattern emerges. They broke down the door - at least two people, maybe even three. The Smoker was likely in bed, but when he heard the door break down, he ran to the dresser because - ah - he had a little can of pepper spray stashed away here, likely in case something went awry with a client. He never got to use it - he was subdued, likely beaten in some manner. You can't tell how badly, just that there's blood. He was then dragged outside by... yes, two people, while the third searched the room for... what?
EMPATHY - God, he must have been so scared. He doesn't deserve this. Where is he now, afraid and in pain?
VOLITION – Okay, Harry, let me handle this. We can panic about the Smoker later. Right now, to find out what happened here, we need to be a detective. Treat this like any other crime scene. Search the apartment for clues. You have two people right here who know the missing person fairly well. Ask them questions.
HALF-LIGHT – Are these two above suspicion?
ESPRIT DE CORPS – Well, for one, you can forget an alibi. These two will vouch for each other no matter what.
LOGIC – I don’t see what their motive would be. You saw them with the Smoker days ago at the gallery opening, and they all seemed awfully chummy.
DRAMA – Also, look at them. Hard to fake pants-wetting fear like that.
EMPATHY – Not fear of you. Fear for their friend.
YOU – “Right. When did either of you see him last?”
ECHO MAKER – “Yesterday. We had dinner together.”
STEBAN, THE STUDENT COMMUNIST – “He seemed okay, then… I mean, he was just like always.”
LOGIC – If that’s correct, whatever happened here occurred later at night, or early in the morning.
SUGGESTION – These two were probably asleep or fucking and didn’t hear a thing. But maybe the other neighbors did – check with them later.
YOU – “Right.” Time for the next branch on the dialogue tree. “Do you have any idea who—”
STEBAN, THE STUDENT COMMUNIST – “Mierda,” the young man says suddenly from where he’s been kneeling on the floor and rifling through the Smoker’s art supplies. “Everything is normal on Earth.”
RHETORIC – Ex…cuse me?
YOU – “Didn’t take you for a guy who’d use Moralist buzz-phrases.”
STEBAN, THE STUDENT COMMUNIST – “I’m not. There was a painting here that he called Everything is Normal on Earth.” He gestures to a few canvas paintings stacked against a wall. “It’s missing.”
CONCEPTUALIZATION – So it’s… art theft?
LOGIC – No, it can’t be. The Smoker is a young and mostly unknown artist. Up-and-coming, maybe. But his artworks aren’t valuable enough to break into his apartment to make off with a painting. Also, why steal just one? And not even one that he deemed worthy of exhibition? And why steal him along with the art?
ECHO MAKER – “Found something else too.” He holds up a notebook, sadly vandalized. Several pages have been ripped out. “This sketchbook… something was taken from it.”
The two students look at each other. They are not good looks.
EMPATHY – They’re putting it together, whatever ‘it’ is. And it’s making them very concerned.
YOU – “Come on, out with it. What’s so special about that art?”
STEBAN, THE STUDENT COMMUNIST – “The painting… Everything is Normal on Earth… it was the portrait he made of the man he called ‘the Sunday Friend’. And that sketchbook… I looked through it before. I’m pretty sure the missing pages contained all the preliminary studies for that same portrait.”
PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT – Him! That bloviating sack of shit!
RHETORIC – That Moralist scum!
PAIN THRESHOLD – That powerful man you can do very little about.
YOU – “Well, shit.”
LOGIC – But why now?
YOU – “Maybe someone in the Moralintern finally traced him here… maybe someone out there’s got blackmail on him. Or the art exhibit gave him a scare… made him think that that painting might be revealed to the public. Could be that’s why he went there in the first place, to check if it was there. So he’s trying to cover for himself, get rid of the evidence.”
A memory surfaces – you, big and blustering you, at the gallery opening, taking joy in rubbing that smarmy Moralintern lackey’s face in it. Threatening that some evidence of his little affair with the Smoker might find its way to his superiors if he continued fucking around with the guy. He must have taken that to heart…
ANCIENT REPTILIAN BRAIN – Gone and fucked it all up again, have we, brother-man?
VOLITION – No. Do not allow yourself to spiral over this. Eyes on the case. What needs to be done next?
ECHO MAKER – “So they… disappeared him? What, just because the man felt threatened?”
STEBAN, THE STUDENT COMMUNIST – “Fucking Moralinterna… he should have never tangled with them in the first place. They’re worse than the gangs.”
The two of them are now holding onto each other, looking at you with wide, frightened eyes. Two kids… no, two young adults in need of a superior adult. Please know how to fix this, their eyes plead. What can you possibly give them?
“Where do you think they took him?” Steban asks timidly. “Not…” He points upwards, to the sky. “Right?”
YOU – You can at least comfort him as to that. “No, they can’t have. Villedrouin would have wanted to keep this off the books. Bringing his secret boytoy on a Coalition airship is the last thing he wants.”
STEBAN, THE STUDENT COMMUNIST – “So he’s still somewhere here.”
You know that look. Hope. Terrible, terrible hope. You remember the matchbox tower. You do not want to watch the light in his eyes die.
YOU – “Yeah.”
HAND-EYE COORDINATION – Automatically, you reach into your pocket for your ledger. But you haven’t brought it with you. This is your day off, and it was supposed to be a chill hang with a friend.
ESPRIT DE CORPS – About… that.
YOU – “We can’t use the RCM for this.”
STEBAN, THE STUDENT COMMUNIST – He throws his hands up in a fit of pique. “What are you fucking rent-a-cops ever even good for?”
ECHO MAKER – “Are you not tired of the taste of Moralintern boot leather?”
ENDURANCE – Well? Aren’t you?
VOLITION – Your personal feelings on deep-throating the boot don’t matter right now. The fact of the matter is that this cannot be an official RCM investigation, and you can’t ask your precinct to just do it on the side.
HALF-LIGHT – Don’t know who is watching. Don’t know whom you can trust.
ESPRIT DE CORPS – Kim, most probably. But the rest…?
INLAND EMPIRE – You are alone now, just like in the song. No one to assist you but two useless baby-academics.
SUGGESTION – Unless…
YOU – Unnnnnless…?
SUGGESTION – You’re in Martinaise. You know Martinaise. Consider the resources available to you here.
YOU – “Got it. I’ll go to Evrart.”
ECHO MAKER – “Mr. Claire? Why?”
YOU – “The last time I was here on a case, I noticed pretty quickly that he’s got eyes everywhere. If someone saw who took the Smoker, they were likely on Evrart’s payroll. And he owes me one.”
STEBAN, THE STUDENT COMMUNIST – “He does?”
YOU – “Sure. I got Wild Pines to pull out back then (sorta). In a way, I gave the harbor to the union. Time to call in a favor with the big man.”
STEBAN, THE STUDENT COMMUNIST – He clutches his friend’s arm. “You really did that?”
Something like grudging respect in both their eyes now. Hoo boy.
Steban decides to trail after the disco cop to the union leader’s container office, and therefore Ulixes decides to trail after Steban. They’re let in without trouble and then told to wait out front of the container while Officer Du Bois goes in and talks to Mr. Claire, so they sit together and look out across the massive terminal, now fully painted in union colors. It heralds a resounding victory for the working class, with more to come, but not even that can cheer Ulixes up right now.
He’s not sure when he grew so fond of the mysterious Comrade, Steban’s upstairs neighbor. At first, he remembers, he felt jealous, he felt threatened. An attractive young man living so close to Steban… spending time with him when Uli was away… but somewhere along the way, those feelings evaporated, perhaps when it became clear that the Mysterious Comrade was really not trying to take Steban for himself.
(And it’s bad, Ulixes knows, to think of Steban as something to be taken, even owned. It’s certainly not communist. Still, the thought comes back sometimes, and he doesn’t know how to get rid of it, and he is ashamed…)
Now, he’s reeling to accept the fact into his mind that the Comrade is just… gone. Yanked away by his Moralintern ex-lover, leaving a him-shaped hole in the world.
It’s easy to forget that Coalition people can just do this. Their presence is not usually a big factor in the lives of ordinary people. They’re just… there. Unremarkable. Except the airships in the sky, of course. But even those have always been there, as far back as Ulixes can remember (of course, rationally, he knows that they’ve not always been there, and have taken up their stations very recently, in historical terms) so they appear… normal. That he thinks like this at all is the victory of Moralism, and it makes him clench his fists in impotent rage. Next to him, Steban shivers and wraps his new red scarf tighter around himself. He can’t possibly be cold in the early summer weather, so this is likely a self-soothing gesture.
Ulixes puts a hand on Steban’s shoulder. “They’ll help us here, I’m sure.”
Steban shakes his head. “What can anyone here even do? How are any of us supposed to find him, or get him back? He might already be…”
“Shh, shh,” Ulixes hushes, because he can’t bear the thought.
“All of Revachol is like this, isn’t it?” Steban continues. “They dispose of us whenever they want, whenever we become inconvenient. Not even dangerous, just inconvenient. How much longer are we supposed to tolerate this?”
“Not much longer now,” Ulixes echoes Steban’s own words.
They lean on each other and fall quiet.
At some point, a man exits the container-office, apparently the man Steban knows as Call Me Mañana, seeing as he greets him with “Hola, Mañana” and they start conversing in Mesque. Uli listens even though he doesn’t understand, because he likes the cadence of Steban’s voice in his mother tongue, likes how lively it sounds when he’s given the opportunity to speak it. And yet… it makes him prickle with unease, too. He knows that that’s culturally insensitive to think, but that over-clingy part of him hates being barred from any part of Steban’s life, even if only by a language barrier. And there’s more to it – the way Steban perks up in Mesque only serves to illustrate how much he’s holding something back in Suresne. How much of him, in an academic context, is performative, tailored to evoke acceptance with fellow intellectuals, and how the performance eases up around others of the Mesque diaspora. Ulixes can love Steban with all he has, but he’ll never get to have and hold Steban’s undiluted self. He gets the performance.
Right now, no one’s perking up about anything. They both look worried. Uli can discern “Evrart” being said a few times, and “Tequila Sunset” once or twice. Mañana seems to warn or caution Steban against something. Steban looks like he’s struggling to take in a lot of information at once.
Then Officer Du Bois comes back, and their conversation continues in whispers. Still feeling numb from shock, Ulixes manages to catch only a few snippets: “…some sort of hired goon squad, doubt they’re officially affiliated…”
“…who knows how much time we have left…”
“Well, Mañana says he has no ties to that place or any of those people…”
“Of course, officer. Not all of us are…”
“…airship out to Mundi…”
“I might know someone who…”
“…you absolutely sure you can pull that off, kid?”
“Look, I have to try.”
Ulixes shakes his head, hoping to dislodge the rushing in his ears, hoping to dislodge the images his brain generates of the Comrade’s silent form, robbed of its grace and beauty, discarded like a broken doll, in some ditch or in the Esperance or in the trunk of a car or in—
“Try what?” he asks.
Steban shoots him a concerned glance. “Well, Gendarme says that he can probably track down where they took our Comrade, with the information Mr. Claire provided.”
“Plus, I have… an ear for the city,” Gendarme says cryptically. “I’ll find the place. But I can’t head in there with the two of you as backup. And, again, no RCM. Can’t take ‘em up against the Moralintern, not now. It is not yet time.”
“What does that mean?” Ulixes asks.
For a moment, Gendarme gives him (and then Steban) a hard stare, seeming to internally debate something. At last, though, he shakes his head. “Means we need to pad our numbers. And Evrart says he can’t lend us his guys, it’s not his turf.”
“Right,” Steban says, straightening his back. “But if someone cleared that up with…”
“Well, as far as the old man is concerned,” Mañana interrupts him, pointing a thumb at Evrart’s container, “this is a pretty good opportunity for him, but…” He puts a hand on Steban’s shoulder. “Hermanito, you don’t have to. You can still turn in and go home. Evrart’s interests aside for a moment, you and I both know what we’re dealing with here.”
“I can’t,” Steban says. “I don’t see another way of getting my friend back.” He turns towards Ulixes. “Uli, I’d like you to go find Cindy and tell her what happened. Maybe she knows some people who’d come with us. Gendarme…”
“I’ll call my partner for backup,” Gendarme says. “And stay on Evrart. Maybe once things are straightened up, he’ll lend us some of his boys.”
Uli looks at Steban, wondering at the change in him. He seems… determined, now. “And what will you do?”
“I have to go make a huge mistake,” Steban says with a wry grin. Ulixes wants to ask him to explain, but he’s already taking off in long strides, waving goodbye.
Chapter 5
Summary:
idk how another month passed. i guess i was left to my own devices, many days fell away with nothing to show. it's whatever.
anyway, it's go time. steban potentially makes a life-ruining sort of mistake.
Chapter Text
Minutes later, Steban enters the formerly Dolorian church. He greets the speedfreaks quickly – it’ll be a good idea to catch them up on the events later, but he’s not primarily here for them. He gazes up into the rafters, trying to discern a humanoid shape amidst the gloom.
“Tiago! Tiago, estás aquí?”
For a minute, nothing moves, and Steban is afraid that Tiago doesn’t want to come down, or worse, that his mind has degraded so far by now that he doesn’t remember his own name or how to communicate anymore. But then, a voice wafts down from above: “What do you need, wey? Have you come to accept the mother’s love?”
“No. Kind of the opposite, actually.”
“Always the opposite with you,” Tiago drawls. “You make me tired, homes.”
“And you make me sad, Tiago, but no matter. I need to talk to you. Can I sit with you for a moment?”
Tiago sighs, but says at last, “Don’t see why not.”
Inelegantly, Steban climbs up into the rafters, and comes to sit on a large, somewhat sturdy-looking beam next to Tiago’s shadowed form, crouched in crab fashion. (The climbing leaves Steban a bit winded. On occasions like this, he sometimes wonders if he should invest some time in some form of exercise, but the thought fades after a while, unacted on.)
“Tiago, I’m not going to mince words, you’re not going to like this,” he begins. “So let’s just get it over with. I need help. I need you to try to remember something.”
Tiago makes a doubtful noise. “Can’t promise anything of the sort,” he says.
“Right, well, we have to try.” Steban takes a deep breath. Here goes nothing… “You were in a gang, right?”
Tiago cocks his head. “That’s right, ese.”
“…La Puta Madre?” Steban asks softly.
For a moment, there’s silence. Then Tiago says, “Maybe… maybe not. All of that is growing less important to me by the day now. The mother’s love is washing all that shit away.” But the levity in his voice seems fake. “You should try it sometime. Stop yourself worrying about what gangs people used to be in.”
Steban huffs. “Don’t think I’m not occasionally tempted! But no. This is important.”
“Pfff. What use can those old memories be to anyone? Better to let them disappear.”
“I need an in with Madre,” Steban says.
Suddenly, Tiago is very close and in his face. “And what do you need that for, chico?” he rasps. “Good little Mesquite boy like you. You kept your head low and got out of La Villa before they could get at you, so now stay out, and count your fucking blessings.”
“I’m not looking to join,” Steban argues. “I just need to make contact. To talk. My friend got abducted just this morning…”
“Madre took your friend? Then there’s nothing you can do.”
“Madre did not take my friend. There are some independent contractors operating on Madre’s turf, hired for an off-the-books operation by a Moralintern official. They took my friend. Evrart Claire’s people have information on them, but they can’t go in, because Claire wants in Madre’s good book first, for the benefit of their narcotics business but also, and this is sort of an open secret, to have them on-side in Le Retour.”
It’s as quick a summary of what Mañana told him as he can manage. He doesn’t want to go into the delicate relationship between the Claires and Padre Madre, the recent forays into cooperation on the drug business, the way the Claires officially aggressively weed out peones in the union, but unofficially some always seem to wind their way in, and doubtlessly get discovered and then tolerated, so long as they are useful… presumably, Tiago knows all this.
A joint foray against Moralinterna would be… second base. Bold. Not something that would simply be done for the joy of it. There would have to be a good excuse for it, such as perhaps a couple of poor little Martinaise boys that got themselves in trouble, one of them a friend to cops (to a particular cop, one with an almost self-destructive impulse to go sniffing around in dark corners) and one with ties to Villalobos, running home to ask a favor from the one place that any Villalobos kid always has leave to return to…
Tiago’s gaze is becoming distant again. “I don’t follow the local politics.”
“I do,” Steban says. “And if I’m to play intermediary for Evrart Claire that’s fine, as long as it gets me a way to bring my comrade back. Look, I know you were a peone – all I need is for you to tell me where, who, and what to say.”
Tiago is silent for a good long while. It takes all of Steban’s patience, acquired over years of painstakingly extracting meaning from long-winded tracts of theory, to wait him out. He crosses his fingers in his lap and forces himself not to fidget.
Suddenly, with an abrupt head motion, Tiago turns to stare at him again. “I do know you, boia, don’t I?”
“I came here just days ago with—”
“No. From before. You’re Constanza’s kid.”
It’s like someone dumped a bucket of ice straight down Steban’s back.
Through frost-numb lips he asks, “How do you know my mother’s name?”
Tiago chuckles. “Was never on the take, if that’s what you think.”
“Of course not!”
“She got that little place on Calle del Accensión still? On the corner of Amistad? With the garden out back? Sometimes, she’d let a man sit there… just for an hour, just pretend like…” His voice trails off into a murmur.
It’s a community garden, of sorts. Just a tiny patch of soil that several people in the adjoining apartment buildings care for together, Steban’s mother among them. He has helped out there himself throughout his adolescence. Sometimes, on semester break, he still takes a tram out and does it, because there’s a simple appeal to gardening – Mazov and Nilsen both knew this – and his mother appreciates him visiting.
And yes, sometimes there have been men in the garden, or hanging out in the little kitchen, who were clearly from some gang or other. Back in the day, it struck Steban as contradictory – his mums had always been scrupulous to keep him away from anything Madre- or Mazda-related, always communicated to him in plain words that the gangs meant trouble above their family’s paygrade, that he was to keep out of their sight, go off to college, and do something better with life. When he asked why, then, she would welcome those men into their home at all, she smiled sadly and said, “Esteban,” (she’s the only one who ever calls him that), “a banger is a very, very sad sort of person. They are people who have sold their lives away – out of desperation, poverty, because they were just dumb kids in it for the thrill with no one looking out for them, or because they were lied to. And the kind of work they’re forced to do destroys a soul until there’s nothing left, erodes it bit by bit. So I let them sit in the garden for an hour, since it’s the only bit of green those poor bastards are liable to ever see, and I give them a cup of my horchata, and that’s the least… the only thing I can do for them.” She then shrugged and concluded, “And they’re less likely to give me trouble, that way. It pays to get them to like you.”
Perhaps Tiago was one of those men. They were like shadows, to Steban, after a while.
He looks at Tiago and remembers his mother’s words, “a banger is a very sad sort of person,” and he thinks he understands why Tiago is here, letting a Pale anomaly turn his brain into soup, just to get away from what he left behind. There are, to his knowledge, very few ways to truly escape a gang once one is in there.
A part of him wants to leave the man be, maybe give him a hug or something, not bring those memories back. But the part of him that mainly runs debate sees an opening here.
“The way I see it, my mother did you a solid back then. You can do me one now.” It’s heinous, invoking mums to achieve the opposite of what she would have wanted. Lo siento, mami, Steban thinks, lo siento, lo siento. “Come on, Tiago. For Constanza’s kid.”
Tiago growls under his breath. The serene tranquility he usually projects is fast disintegrating. “That’s not doing you a favor, wey. You have nothing Padre Madre wants, except another willing body for him to use up and grind down.”
“We’re all being used up and ground down in one way or another,” Steban says, feeling a twinge of annoyance bleed into his voice. “At least the gangs are up-front about it. And I’m not. Looking. To join.”
“Looking to get in the man’s debt. Amounts to the same, sooner or later.”
Steban rolls his eyes. “You’re not my dad, Tiago.”
At that, Tiago’s mouth quirks wryly. “I could be.”
Hell, he could be. Some man out of Villalobos is, in probability, Steban’s father. He hasn’t given the matter any thought in years. Mums and abuela have always been more than sufficient.
He shakes his head. “Come now, don’t be crass.” Maybe it’s time for another approach. “If you get me there, I’ll get them off your back in exchange, yeah? I’ll tell them you’re dead.”
“You’re offering to, what, lie to Padre for me?”
“Would it be a lie?” Steban asks. “If Padre sent peones here to take a look at you, what would they find at this point?”
Tiago is silent. He looks, perhaps, the faintest bit uncomfortable with that assessment of his condition.
Steban could say more, but he bites it back. He’s not here to antagonize Tiago over his lifestyle choices. In fact… now there’s an idea. He kind of hates it, but it’s an idea.
“Tiago,” he says, “do this for me, and I’ll never ask you to remember anything ever again. You can just go ahead and disintegrate in your ‘mother’s love’ and I’ll not say or do anything about it.”
It’s what Tiago wants. It’s not something anyone should want. It’s, plainly, a convoluted way of committing suicide, and Steban should not be assisting in this. Half of him gets it. The other half is in open revolt against it. The whole thing makes him want to have a good cry, or maybe puke. All this goes against everything he believes in. He is not supposed to go near Madre. He is not supposed to enable anyone throwing themselves to entropy.
On the other hand, what’s the alternative here? Should he go home and sit smugly in the knowledge that he hasn’t compromised his ideological principles? Sure, and if he does that long enough, for years or decades maybe, perhaps that knowledge will dull the guilt of having, through inaction, abandoned his friend, his comrade.
It’s weird, but I feel really safe with you, the Nameless Comrade says in his memory.
Fuck. Fuck…
He remembers the bloodstain on the dresser. His hands start to shake.
Where is he? Are they hurting him? Is he even still alive?
Tiago’s hand, settling heavily on his shoulder, jolts Steban out of his thoughts.
“Fine,” Tiago says.
What happens next is witnessed by Steban from a strange remove, like he’s standing a half-step beside his own body. Later, he will remember it only in snapshots.
He gets on the tram out of Martinaise. He has to change trains twice. He’s gone this way a hundred times before, visiting family. There is always a place to come home to, every Villalobos kid knows that. In desperate straits, when money’s tight, when something needs to be acquired, settled, or disappeared, when there’s nowhere else to turn, no legal way to see something done. There is always a place to come home to.
The young man who opens the secret door, after Steban gave the special knock and password, is someone he remembers going to elementary school with. He’s got a good quality suit, poppy stuck in the upmost buttonhole, and an interesting facial scar. It’s all kinds of depressing.
“Steban,” the young man says with a grin, clapping him on the shoulder. “Came to slum it with the rest of us plebes, finally, huh?”
“Rafa.” Steban suppresses an eyeroll with all his might. “Are you calling me bougie for going to community college?”
“Is it not true?” Steban remembers now: he and Rafa played together when they were ten years old. At thirteen, the friendship ended, because one of them joined La Puta Madre while the other did not.
“No. You probably have more money than me.”
“Heh. Right you are. Padre takes care of his own.” Rafa pats the holster on his hip. He’s carrying a gun there, boiadeiro-style. The swagger makes Steban immeasurably tired. When this is over, one way or another, he’s sleeping for a week.
He’s led into a glum room, lit only murkily by a single desk lamp, the air thick with cigarette smoke. Half-glimpsed silhouettes move in the gloom. At the other end of the desk is a man all in white, his face barely discernible. Not the type of face that needs to be discerned.
The man in white listens as Steban lays out the situation, including Evrart Claire’s opening move. In the end, he can do little but humble himself and outright plead for permission to enter Madre’s turf and get the Comrade out. And, um. And, uh. Please?
“Ah, how political the personal has become,” the man in white muses, “and vice versa. Is that not a saying that originates with you communistas?”
Steban blinks. That desk lamp is blinding from this angle. “How did you know I—”
The man in white sighs. “Chico, you have a star and antlers tattooed on your chest.” A slight pause in which Steban has time to feel incredibly stupid, then, “I am aware of you, however. You’re Constanza Bernal’s kid.”
A part of Steban he didn’t even know he had, aggravated by this place, wants to answer machismo with machismo, teeth bared, fists on the table, “Keep my mother’s name out of your mouth”. He doesn’t. “Mm,” he says instead. It’s prudent, he feels, in this setting, to say little.
“Well-respected woman in the local community,” says the man in white. “Well-respected. She know you’re here?”
“Of course not.”
“Of course not. Be that as it may, it’s always good to see the local kids remember their ties to the old place.”
“I am not especially tied to this place or Martinaise,” Steban replies – a feeble statement, he well knows. His family is here. His life’s in Martinaise. And as for ties, he’s getting way more entangled right now than is probably wise.
The man in white takes him accordingly seriously, which is to say he chuckles. “Of course. The communista is a son of the world.” A pause. The man in white affects pensiveness and says, “You and Mr. Claire will get your permission… and a few of my boys will come along with you and see it done.”
Hmm… Gendarme did say we have to pad our numbers. It’s the largest concession he will get, and not unreasonable at that. “I’m grateful,” Steban says, bowing his head lightly.
“Of that I’m sure. And since you’re going to be rolling with us, you ought to take this,” the man in white says, and pushes a lightweight bundle of… something across the desk.
It’s a jacket. White. Real Saramirizian twill. Just like the one he lost to Detective Du Bois.
No, different, says a part of his mind that mostly watches, analyzes. That jacket belonged to your grandfather, who was quite a bit broader in the shoulders. This jacket will fit you.
Lo siento, mums, he thinks once more, as if she could hear him somehow, as if she could sense him doing the one thing she never wanted him to do.
It feels wrong to come by it this way. But the man all in white is watching, and so Steban shrugs on the jacket. It settles around him like freshly fallen snow, and smells like poppies.
Ulixes gnaws on his nails, already fed up with waiting.
He’s been back at the Capeside Apartments to talk to Cindy, who told him outright that she’s more than down to participate in a rescue operation, but that she can’t call on any other Skulls for backup, not without starting a gang war. The backup she has brought consists of two boys who seem to call each other “Piss” and “Fuck”. They don’t engender much of Ulixes’ confidence.
No one really told him what they’re waiting for, now, but it seems to have something to do with wherever Steban went. Officer Du Bois has been on the payphone with his partner, who apparently kicked up a lot of fuss about how he couldn’t be seen in his “police-issued motorcarriage” taking part in “this kind of operation”. He eventually arrived without the MC, silently scowling the whole time, and the both of them began talking again to various union people. Then, for some reason, the speedfreaks from the church arrived at the harbor gates. According to them, Steban came by and informed them of the situation, before having an incomprehensible (because all in Mesque), but seemingly heated, conversation with the crab man and then dipping.
Eventually, the phone in the union office starts ringing again. Detective Du Bois answers, spends a few minutes making monosyllabic replies to someone, then hangs up, turns to Ulixes and says, “Your boyfriend says he’ll meet us at the place, he’s got things figured out.”
“What does that mean?” Ulixes asks. Where is ‘the place’? What has Steban ‘figured out’? And why did he go there alone, and didn't even ask Ulixes to come along? He hates when Steban does that.
Gendarme ignores him and claps his hands. “Okay, everyone, go-time. Evrart’s agreed to lend us Titus and his boys, they’re gonna drive us up to Jamrock. Whoever of you kids wants to come can hop on in, but I have to warn you that things might get dangerous.”
“How dangerous?” someone in the back pipes up – one of the ravers, or maybe the piss-fuck-boys, Ulixes thinks.
“Pretty damn dangerous,” Gendarme says. “Maybe not a place for you folks.” He turns to Ulixes and adds, “Actually, you too, kid.”
Ulixes straightens and adjusts his glasses. “I’m not a child, officer, and I’m going to go wherever Steban goes. And I’m not going to abandon our comrade to his fate.” He’s not usually the guy to come up with the words, but he has to try: “I think that goes for everyone here. Everyone came here because they know the Comrade, because they’ve partied with him or smoked with him or talked to him or sat for his paintings and… all he ever wanted was to make beautiful things, not to bother anyone, and he doesn’t deserve to be disappeared by that Moralintern scum. He’s just… he’s…”
He falters, too choked up with his helpless rage to speak. But one look into Gendarme’s eyes tells him he doesn’t have to say anything more. Suddenly, Ulixes is hit with the insight that Detective Du Bois understands perfectly, that he loves the Nameless Comrade too, with the love of a man who would envelop the whole world. The Detective, Ulixes’ brain tells him unbidden, is the same type of person Steban is, one who feels too much and too deeply, who feels the ugliness of the world like a million cuts, and the beauty like rapture, a person without a mental shield, with a heart constantly and unremittingly being scraped raw against the World Spirit.
Ulixes’ gaze slips from Gendarme to Gendarme’s partner. They exchange a silent nod.
They all pass half an hour together crammed into the back of a lorry bearing the Débardeurs Union logo, antsy, fidgeting, mostly silent. “Right,” Gendarme says when he lets them out, “according to Evrart’s ‘special people’, the place is nearby – I thought we shouldn’t drive right up to it. Scope out the situation first.”
Others have had that idea as well – they are in a parking lot surrounded by rows of what seem like ordinary, nondescript tenements, and several dark, unobtrusive MCs are also loitering here. Ulixes is in no way a car expert, but he thinks that, underneath the matte paint jobs meant to be overlooked, these are good MCs – fast, strong workhorse types. Men are seated in them, other men leaning against them and smoking. Gendarme adopts a loose, deliberately non-threatening posture at the sight of them. His partner emits a discontented, wordless murmur and reaches into his jacket, perhaps for a weapon.
“Don’t like this much,” Titus Hardie mutters behind them. “Working with those types. All that effort cleaning them out of Martinaise and now…”
“To be fair, Titus, it was Theo that went through that effort, back in the day. Not us,” adds one of his companions – Eugene, Ulixes thinks.
If he says anything more, Ulixes doesn’t hear it, because Steban is there, with the men and their dark cars, sucking on a cigarette and wearing that face that means he wants very badly for everyone around him to believe that he’s not nervous, but it isn’t really working.
His face lights up with palpable relief when he sees them. He whispers something in Mesque to one of the other smokers, then crosses the parking lot towards them. By now, the sun is setting, and his jacket is so very white in the dusk.
“Hola a todos!” he says, waving a hand. “Thanks, Gendarme, for coming. Quite the crew we have here now.” He turns and sees Uli, a step behind Gendarme’s partner. “Ulixes.”
The smile Steban gives him is one of pure exhaustion. It’s not something anyone who doesn’t know Steban very well could discern, but Ulixes can tell that Steban used up most of his reserves of strength just getting to this moment.
He opens his arms slightly, but there is no hug. Steban clasps his forearm in a very comradely manner. “Good to see you came with.”
(There is, however, a strange tinge of regret in it.)
Uli cocks his head. “You… got your jacket back?” But how? Doesn’t Gendarme have it? When would this have happened? This is weird.
Steban tugs at his sleeve. “Erm… not… quite.”
Then Ulixes notes how many of the men hanging out by the dark cars are also in white. Some are wearing poppies in their buttonholes, or tucked into their breast pockets, or tattooed onto their bodies. Red like the scarf that the crab man gave to Steban. Ulixes hates himself a bit for even thinking it, but with that scarf and the jacket he really does look a bit like a…
He sucks in a breath. “Steban, you didn’t.”
A flash of… pain?... on Steban’s face. “Uli, please, not now.”
Ulixes grabs his shoulder. “Steban, you didn’t!”
“Ulixes.” It’s that tone Steban only takes very sparingly, when he’s moderating debates in the reading group or at uni that have gotten rowdy. It means, right, this discussion’s over. “It’s going to be fine, I assure you. Let’s focus first on bringing our friend home.”
Behind Steban, a young man walks up and clears his throat. He’d look boyish, charming even, with curly hair and dark, beautifully shaped eyes, if it weren’t for the slash of a scar across his face, years old and healed but still quite large.
Steban nods at him. “Right. This is Rafael, he and his associates are representing the interests of La Puta Madre here.”
“Great, just great,” Gendarme’s partner mutters.
Titus Hardie cracks his knuckles. “And are they going to actually make themselves useful in any way if things break bad in there?” He gestures at the tenements.
Rafael the peone meets the big man’s gaze straight on. He’s not afraid. He’s on his home turf here. He has the other men at his back. But he also doesn’t want to start anything with the Débardeurs and face Padre’s displeasure later. The union is a steady supplier for Madre’s operation. Those poppy fields have not been their main income source in a good long while.
“We will do what the situation calls for,” he says.
Titus, who knows just as well about the state of things between their respective employers, grunts “Hrm.”
“Right, enough with the dick measuring, gentlemen,” Officer Du Bois says. He claps his hands and gestures for everyone to gather ‘round, in the same way that… Ulixes’ gym teachers would, back when he still had such a thing as gym teachers. (It’s not a torment he loves to remember.)
“Listen up,” Gendarme says. “According to Evrart’s people, there were four thugs in total in Martinaise: three subduing the Smoker, one getaway driver. The bad news is: they might have backup at their hideout, and we don’t know how they’re armed. The good news: it’s not foreign mercs this time. The four have been identified, they’re local boys, hitmen operating out of Jamrock and Faubourg, we probably outnumber them, and they’re idiots.”
“What makes you think they’re idiots?” one of the remaining Hardies asks.
“They chose themselves a base on Madre turf,” Gendarme explains, “As if there weren’t enough hiding places in Jamrock.”
Most of Jamrock is under the control of some gang or other, Ulixes thinks but doesn’t say out loud in order to not offend any parties present, it’s just that the RCM is one. It’s a matter of picking one’s battles.
Steban shrugs. “Perhaps they feel safe with a Moralintern contractor.”
“Heh. Maybe.” Gendarme grins joylessly. “But you know if any word of this got out, Villedrouin would disavow those guys quicker than you can say ‘price stabilité’. Well, alright. They’re squatting on the ground floor of this condemned building over that way. There’s several exits we ought to block off before we go and confront them in force…”
Steban is one step behind Gendarme and his partner as they enter the tenement building that Mr. Claire’s people led them to. He is in this exact position because he put himself here, wanted, on some level, to be here, but his heart is beating a hunted-deer-staccato of fear. He’s so far off any maps here. His life up to this point has mostly consisted of reading books. What in the name of fuck is he doing?
And this is not even where it starts, whispers the voice on the hot wind. Call this… a practice run.
He wants to grab Ulixes’ hand so badly, but he doesn’t dare to in front of all these Madre enforcers. He hates that he has to care about this shit now. He just wants Ulixes, the familiar feel of his bony hand, the supportive, comforting whisper of his voice, wants it with almost childish need. Instead he touches the object hidden under his new jacket, and finds no comfort there. It makes him almost throw up to even think on it being there. But the man in white gave it to him, and there was no refusing. All the bangers here carry, and…
I did not join. There was never any talk of joining. This can all still go away.
Steban shakes his head sharply. Here he is worrying about himself when his Comrade might be somewhere in this very building, maybe hurt, maybe… worse.
The Gendarmes begin to scope out the ground floor of the building, carefully and methodically, room by room. Their efforts yield a lot of dusty, empty space, some trashed furniture, and not much more. The group stops at a staircase. One set of stairs leads further up, the other into, probably, a cellar.
“Are you thinking up or down?” Gendarme’s partner asks him.
“I’m thinking basement,” Gendarme says. “If they were further up, we would have heard them by now, or they us. Down there it seems more insulated.”
“Right.” Gendarme’s partner turns around. “We don’t know for sure what’s down there,” he says. “Stick to myself and Harry. Do not try anything stupid.”
Someone in the group chuckles – for some reason, it’s Ulixes. Steban looks at him just to see him exchange a glance with Gendarme’s partner that is difficult to decipher.
“Right you are, officer,” Ulixes says, raising his eyebrows in amusement.
Down in the dingy basement, the Smoker sits and thinks of nothing.
They have roughed him up a bit when dragging him from his apartment, but he’s reasonably certain that he’s not badly hurt – not that it’s going to matter soon. His bruises throb in time with his heartbeat. The pain lets him know he is, for now, alive.
Two of his four assailants carry guns, and they’ve waved them in his face a little earlier while subduing him, and again here while asking him questions. But it’s clear that they don’t plan to shoot him here, quite yet. Not for him the quick bullet to the head, and his body weighed down and tossed into the Esperance. They plan to take him on an airship, the next airship out to Mundi, and on the way there, deep in the Pale, he will have… a little accident. A total immolation, an unbecoming. He will be seen entering that aerostatic. The Sunday Friend will even have a whole story ready, just in case this somehow comes back to him, about how he came crawling back to him to beg for money for the passage. Because he missed Kedra so much. Because he wanted to make a fresh start on another isola with his art. By then, his apartment will be cleared out, and it will be as if he never existed.
His abductors, too, are vaguely familiar. They are the men that pursued him that one time, sent to frighten him, sent to pressure him on the Sunday Friend’s behalf. That first time, with Cindy’s help, he gave them the slip and hid in Steban’s apartment. He is not so lucky now.
They asked him questions about his art. If any other incriminating paintings exist anywhere, or were planned for exhibition. It’s funny, in a way, that the Sunday Friend is finally paying attention to his art, and this is what that manifests as.
The Sunday Friend… hah. How foolish he was to think he could afford to play around with that man. That he wouldn’t consider him important enough to hurt. Stupid, stupid. Will he ever learn? (It doesn’t look like he’ll get many more opportunities for it.)
They tied him to the (inactive) radiator and are now ignoring him. They’re waiting for word on whether the information they got from the Smoker has been verified, on the signal to commence the next phase in their plan: bring him to the aerodrome. Maybe in the aerodrome, if it’s crowded, there’ll be a chance to escape. He’s not wildly optimistic though.
It’s so cruel, to have his life end in the Pale, that cold and hungry nothingness. So cruel. To think about it makes him cry. He doesn’t want to give his captors the satisfaction, so he looks at a drop of water dripping from the ceiling and thinks of nothing.
In his final moments, he will not think of nothing. He will think of every scrap of poetry he ever memorized, every artwork he ever admired, every beautiful sunset, every smile on his loved ones’ faces, every orgasm he ever shared with a sweet, receptive man: he will make his last thoughts be of beauty, and push the Pale back as long as he can, second after precious second.
Somewhere in the building, a door slams open.
“What the fuck was that?” asks one of the captors, reaching for his gun.
“The wind, or… something,” says another.
“Shit, no, there’s footsteps on the stairs. It’s fucking Madre! They found us!”
“It’s not Madre. Relax,” says a third captor, who is, nonetheless, also reaching for a weapon. “And even if it were, they’d just want a cut.”
“Think again!” somebody shouts, and the door is kicked open with such verve that stucco crumbles from the walls.
The Smoker gasps in absolute shock as Gendarme shoulders into the room, gun drawn, broad and imposing and there’s his partner behind him, and more and more people pour in through the door, some dockworkers from the harbor in Martinaise, some that the Smoker has never seen before, and this basement is quite large but it’s growing close what with the sheer amount of people they brought and—
They came for him? They came, guns blazing, hurtling across town like vengeance personified because of him…?
“Who are you? What the fuck do you want?” yells the first captor, brandishing his gun. But everyone that just came in has weapons too.
It’s a strange question, the Smoker thinks, until he notices that Gendarme and his partner are not wearing their RCM patches. They’re not here as cops, then…
“Me? I’m the man who’s about to ruin your fucking day,” Gendarme growls. He gestures with his gun. “Untie the boy. Hand him over. You’re not getting any cushy Moralintern payouts today.”
“Damn. This has to be one important twink.” Captor Number One’s eyes rove nervously. He’s sweating. Behind his back, he makes a sign at his companions.
“Kim, what is a twink?” Gendarme asks under his breath.
“Leave it for now, Harry,” his partner mutters.
Before they can get into it, captor number four suddenly yanks the Smoker upwards brutally by his shoulder. He can’t help but let a whimper escape as the barrel of a gun is pressed to his temple.
“Fuck this. I'm getting out of here. With the twink. Make any move to stop us and I blow his brains out,” captor four rasps and gestures at a door to the back, which seems to lead to another way out of here.
“And where exactly do you think you’re getting to?” asks a new voice, from behind that door.
As the Sunday Friend’s hired goons whip around, two young men appear from the back. One is lithe and roguish-looking, with gorgeous black hair and a facial scar. The other is Steban, for some reason. The Smoker blinks, and tries to squint. One of his eyes is swelling up. No, he’s not just secretly horrible and all Mesques look the same to him. It is Steban, with a new white jacket and his face completely shuttered.
Facial Scar exchanges a glance with Steban and makes a hand gesture. Even more men now enter through the back door and take up position against the walls. The suits, the brogues, the red and white… the guns… now this is Madre.
“You’re surrounded,” Gendarme growls. “And sure, you can hurt the boy, but you know the moment you do, everyone present here riddles you with bullets. So…” He sighs. “Look, folks, you’re deep in the shit now. Madre don’t take kindly to independent contracting in their territory. Mr. Evrart doesn’t take kindly to Martinaise citizens being abducted. And that Moralintern stiff is not going to protect you, or even admit he knows you. These are all problems you’ve got coming up, but I can offer you the chance of at least surviving this moment right here. Hand the boy over to me and run very, very far away. The rest is up to you.”
“This deal is shit,” sneers captor one, all sweat and false bravado. “What if we just took him with us, huh?”
But his friends are hesitating. Their eyes are shifting along the silent row of Madre enforcers, who all look very calm.
A sigh sounds from the back door. “Did you not listen to him?” Steban asks, in a tone as if he’s explaining Mazovian socio-economics to a firstie. “You are not leaving here unharmed and with him.”
For a moment, no one speaks. Fingers tighten around hidden weapons.
Then suddenly captor four spits, “Fuck,” and gives the Smoker a sudden, hard shove that sends him, reeling, stumbling towards Gendarme. Captor four turns on his heel, pushes past Facial Scar, and disappears out of the door at a run. Seconds later, his three friends follow.
Somewhere far away, a door slams shut, and a car takes off, tires squealing. The room exhales.
Large hands, not made for gentleness but managing it nonetheless, pick the Smoker up off the floor, and suddenly he’s flung his arms around Gendarme and is sobbing helplessly into his plush chest. “They were going to kill me,” he says, “They were going to throw my body in the Pale.”
“Shh, shh,” Gendarme murmurs and strokes his back, like the father that the Smoker lost almost a decade ago, when they caught him with his first boyfriend. “They won’t, though. They won’t touch you again. You don’t have to go in the Pale.”
Footsteps approach, and there’s a new hand on his back now. Steban, smelling of artificial poppies, cheap herbal soap and Tioumoutiris, the old man cigarettes he smokes because he is a hundred years old in spirit. The Smoker grips him, too, by the shirtfront and pulls him into the hug, and Steban’s arms wrap around him from behind, and it’s safe here now.
“My friends,” the Smoker sobs, “My weekday friends.”
The group begins to disperse not soon after that.
Gendarme is helping the Smoker up the stairs out of the basement and back into freedom and the fathomless night, exchanging worried mutterings with his partner over the Smoker’s head. He barely listens, his head still swimming with shock and relief, feeling a little like he’s sleepwalking, but it seems to be about the RCM somehow, and about how the RCM would probably have liked to arrest the Sunday Friend’s hired goons, but…
“The RCM wasn’t here today, Harry,” Gendarme’s partner reminds him. “That’s the whole point of this entire exercise.”
“So what, we just let them run?”
“I don’t like this either, but what would you have wanted us to do? We’re not killers.”
“Madre are. They might catch up to them still.”
“Yes, well, that’s Madre.”
The boy from Madre – Facial Scar – has drawn level with Steban.
“So this was what this was about, hm,” he says, nodding his head at the Smoker. “We came out here to save some Moralintern lackey’s boytoy? What’s he got that needs saving so badly?”
“I wouldn’t concern myself, if I were you,” Steban snaps at him.
They exchange some terse phrases in Mesque. The only Suresne word that the Smoker recognizes is ‘Retour’. Finally, Facial Scar shakes his head and steps off.
“Don’t be a stranger, Steban,” he shouts over his shoulder as he leaves.
“Who was he?” the Smoker asks. At Steban’s side, Ulixes has materialized, glaring after Facial Scar, looking like he too very much wants to know.
“He was my friend when we were children.” Steban shakes his head. “Nevermind him. Let’s go home.”
INTERFACING – Since Kim wasn’t able to bring his Kineema, you have to hitch a ride back in the union’s lorry again. This vehicle is meant to transport workers from point A to point B – the GRIH is too sprawling in size to traverse the distances between terminals on foot – so the back is lined with hard, wooden bench seats.
Titus and his boys have taken up one side. Apart from the driver, they’re celebrating the success of the operation. It’s nigh-on a miracle that they haven’t brought along a cooler of cold ones to crack open for the occasion. You and Kim gently usher the kids to sit along the other side.
EMPATHY – Ever since you recovered him, the Smoker on the Balcony has barely let go of you or the student communists. His head is still resting on your shoulder. He’s exhausted, poor thing.
PAIN THRESHOLD – They beat him a little, but you can see no serious injuries. His left eye is swelling shut, and his youthful face is marred by scrapes and bruises, but he will recover.
ESPRIT DE CORPS – The rest of the kids are curled around each other. When they talk, it’s quiet.
CINDY THE SKULL – “…don’t think you understand how royally fucked you are now. Look, I’m in a gang, I know what I’m talking about.” Her voice is missing the mocking tone she takes with you. It’s low, urgent.
STEBAN, THE STUDENT COMMUNIST – “Come on, Cindy, the Skulls are barely a gang. They’re just a bunch of kids jacking cars, drawing on walls and waving knives around. I grew up in the Villa, you don’t get to tell me about Madre.”
ENCYCLOPEDIA – “La Villa”, short for Villalobos, a term used by its residents. Compare: The Fau (Faubourg), The Domain (Eminent Domain), etc.
CINDY THE SKULL - "Fuck off. The Skulls are tough. They're cop-killers."
STEBAN, THE STUDENT COMMUNIST - "Mm-hmmmm."
CINDY THE SKULL – “Yeah, well, that’s not the fucking problem here right now, though, is it? Stop dodging and face up. You’re in the shit.”
STEBAN, THE STUDENT COMMUNIST – “I never joined.”
CINDY THE SKULL – “He gave you a gun.”
ECHO MAKER – “He did? Can I see it?”
CINDY THE SKULL – “Not the fuck now, Uli! Be a tankie somewhere else.”
STEBAN, THE STUDENT COMMUNIST – “I did the best I could with a bad situation, okay? Listen, none of this will matter anymore when the Return comes.”
SMOKER ON THE BALCONY – Stirring a little, he asks: “What, exactly, is going to happen ‘when the Return comes’?”
STEBAN, THE STUDENT COMMUNIST – “The dice will be thrown anew,” the young man says cryptically, and looks away into the middle distance.
INLAND EMPIRE – My god. Is that what talking to us is like?
ESPRIT DE CORPS – Kim wants to go home once you’re back in Martinaise, but you feel some kind of an obligation to this bedraggled group of kids. Kim will get it.
EMPATHY – The Smoker is staring at the uneven bulk of the Capeside Apartments with a forlorn and trepidatious look. He can’t bear the thought of returning to his ruined apartment. He knows he will not feel safe there tonight. He knows he can’t stand to be alone now.
You herd the lot of them into the communist meeting room: it’s large enough to hold all these people, and the nights have gotten so warm that the giant hole in the wall is a source of refreshment rather than a nuisance. You then run back to the Smoker’s apartment, gather up all the pillows and blankets you can find, and bring them back.
YOU – “Let’s build ourselves a fort, shall we?”
While the students and Cindy construct the ideal fort, you help the Smoker patch up his wounds. Nothing is deep enough to require real medical attention, so the best you can do is put disinfectant on anything, get an ice pack from his fridge for his eye, and have him take some drouamine.
EMPATHY – By the time you’re done, the Smoker seems calmer, if exhausted. He’s not trembling anymore. He looks up at you with real trust.
INLAND EMPIRE – It amazes you, doesn’t it? That this fragile young man can calm under your large, scarred paws. Lets you imagine a life in which violence isn’t all you’re there for.
SMOKER ON THE BALCONY – “Gendarme… thank you.” He gives you a brittle smile.
YOU – “It’s just an ice pack and some drouamine, kid.”
SMOKER ON THE BALCONY – “I don’t mean just that. You came for me. You put that whole… rescue team together.”
YOU – Chuckle. “Oh, please. All those people wanted to be there, and not because it was me asking… because it was you who needed them.” You lightly pat his shoulder. “You’re appreciated around these parts, kid.”
SMOKER ON THE BALCONY – “Oh…” His eyes are growing moist again.
YOU – “Now get in the blanket fort with your friends, right?”
SMOKER ON THE BALCONY – “Can I make one last request?”
YOU – “Whatever you need.”
SMOKER ON THE BALCONY – “Can someone maybe put on some music? I don’t even care what kind.”
CONCEPTUALIZATION – Ah, we always have a song.
It’s night now. You’ve gotten as comfortable as you can on the ratty old couch, while the young people have piled into their fort, a great confusion of limbs. There are books here, and you’re reading, since you can’t sleep.
RHETORIC – Always good to catch up on your theory.
You’re still humming snatches of your song under your breath, because once that’s gotten stuck in the old head it stays there for a while.
ANCIENT REPTILIAN BRAIN – How the rill may rest there, down through the mist there, toward the Seven Sisters…
PERCEPTION (Hearing) – There’s rustling within the pile of limbs below. Someone is awake. Someone is extracting themselves.
STEBAN, THE STUDENT COMMUNIST – “A pretty song,” he says, lowering his already quiet voice even further to not wake the others, meeting your eyes in the moonlight. “I can’t say I understand all of it, but… it’s nice, if sad.”
YOU – In a whisper, reply, “It’s not a song made with young people in mind. When you get to my age, see if you understand it.”
STEBAN, THE STUDENT COMMUNIST – “Get to your age? That’s a big ‘if’, gendarme.” He chuckles softly and gets up, reaching for his shoes and jacket.
YOU – “And where are you headed this late, young man?”
STEBAN, THE STUDENT COMMUNIST – He pauses and looks back at you, slightly puzzled. “What?”
EMPATHY – This young man doesn’t have, nor remembers ever having, a father. Your parody of a paternal tone is met with complete and utter nothing by his sense of recollection.
YOU – “I was trying for a dad joke, kind of thing,” you explain. “Your dad not around?”
STEBAN, THE STUDENT COMMUNIST – He doesn’t ask how you know that.
ESPRIT DE CORPS – He doesn’t need to. His brain and yours are of a make and model. He is only just beginning to discover the things that people with such kinds of skillsets can and cannot do.
VOLITION – Poor kid’s got it all yet to come.
STEBAN, THE STUDENT COMMUNIST – “He’s not. I remember he just kind of… went away when I was very young. I don’t know where.”
EMPATHY – He doesn’t much care.
STEBAN, THE STUDENT COMMUNIST – “Anyway, I have a visit to make, but… thanks for sticking around tonight.” He nods his head at the Smoker, now fast asleep. “It was good for him. He feels safe around you.”
YOU – “He feels safe around you, too.”
STEBAN, THE STUDENT COMMUNIST – “Me?” He laughs a quiet, self-deprecating kind of laugh. “I’m not much for keeping anyone safe, but thank you for saying that.” He shrugs his new white lounge jacket on – it’s very similar to the one you took from his closet, just better fitted to him – and winds a red scarf around his neck. “Well, I’m off. Goodnight.”
You wonder where he’s going, but not enough to do anything about it. He’s a grown man, he can go wherever he likes.
SHIVERS – In the rafters of a dilapidated former Dolorian church – now a night club, though there was no crowd of revelers here tonight – a man basks in the patch of silence that promises to soothe his troubles away. Like benediction it feels, washing down upon him from above, but the world intercedes. It shouts his name: “Tiago! Tiago!”
The voice of the world is standing below, softly aglow in a new white jacket, almost a vision from the man’s past. One look into his face is enough, and Tiago clicks his tongue. “Oh, no. Oh, no, wey.”
A moment later, they’re embracing each other, and the younger man lets the last vestiges of his self-control slip out of his hands and sobs and sobs; he is so young, and he has challenged forces far beyond his caliber today, and he is terrified.
Chapter 6
Summary:
Aaaand we're finished!!! It's been a blast!! I'm not sure what I'm writing next, but I'm fairly certain Steban and Uli are going to feature
Chapter Text
A new day dawns, and it’s time to wake up and go on with life. Steban, Ulixes and Cindy help the Smoker put his apartment back together, but naturally he doesn’t feel safe there anymore. No one knows if and when the Sunday Friend will try again to have his ex-lover silenced, or to retaliate. Gendarme leaves them in the morning with a cryptic warning about how things have been set into motion now that are bigger than them, that are out of their hands. For a day or two, the best course of action seems to be to burrow in Steban’s room together and wait for the bigger things to happen to them, but eventually someone has to step out and buy some groceries. Things go back to something approaching normal, the veil of fear begins to lift, but everyone is waiting.
Perhaps it’s just their imagination, but things seem to feel tense on the streets of Martinaise. At one point, Steban makes a trek across the bay to check out the old seafort, where he’d heard a Communard holdover had been squatting just last winter, and finds a few union men there busy scoping out the terrain, who tell him politely to not stand in the way while the boys are doing their work. “They’re looking at the old chain, I think,” he tells the others when he comes home. “Seeing if it can be fixed. They plan to cut off the bay. Or maybe…” But he interrupts himself, looking trepidatious.
If anyone from Madre gets in touch with Steban again, he keeps it to himself. But sometimes he does wander off for a little while, and neither the Smoker nor Ulixes know where he goes.
The communist book club is still happening. The Smoker even tags along to the coffee house sometimes. It tends to be surprisingly lively, people of all political couleurs often saunter in and spontaneously join the debates, often the ravers or Cindy are there not so much to actually discuss any reading but simply to hang out with friends. Steban tells the Smoker once, as they walk home, that it’s not exactly the forum of rigorous academic exchange he originally wanted, but it’s something, and it’s fun, and it’s making people actually talk communism again like it’s aspirational, like it’s viable. Sometimes union men come by on their way to grab dinner after work. Many of them are involved in solidarity strikes with other Revachol West-based unions roused by the Débardeurs’ success. That is how Steban and Uli get involved with their first picket line (the Smoker is awfully proud of them).
There is a strange buzz of activity in and around the harbor, different from the usual pace of the work. The large, extraordinary shipments keep on coming. Sporadically, at intervals that seem random to an outsider, cops show up and show force, always in groups now. Eventually, their appearances lessen. They are busy elsewhere. News trickles into Martinaise of unrest bubbling up all over Jamrock, small and isolated incidents now, but perhaps the first twitches of something larger and wider. The Smoker is no longer as proud of Steban and Uli for getting out there. Instead, he is worried they will injure themselves, or fall in with the wrong people, or fall in with the right people at the wrong time, or piss the wrong people off. He frets and fusses when they come home elated and fizzing with stories of meeting fascinating potential comrades. He wonders if this makes him a coward.
One day, there’s a knock on the door. A voice hisses, “Reconocar a Dobreva y Abadanaiz.”
“We don’t really use the passphrase anymore, you can just step right in,” Steban replies. “Wait, Mañana?”
The man who enters is indeed Call Me Mañana. Steban offers him a seat on the lone desk chair, which he ignores. “Hermanito,” he says, “it’s happening. It’s breaking bad. I slipped out of the terminal to warn you.”
“It’s happening? What’s happening?” Steban asks.
Mañana begins to explain about strikes all over Jamrock turning into riots, every political faction under the sun taking up arms against all the other ones, neighborhoods forming protective militias and barricading themselves off against the whole world hoping to escape the chaos, the cops falling into violently disorganized internecine squabbling as some push to unify the myriads of tiny warring movements into some kind of strike force for an independent Revachol and others attempt to stolidly beat down any unrest in the service of the Moralintern in the name of keeping the peace as they’ve always done. The Smoker’s thoughts go out to Detective Du Bois, and he feels a sting in his heart as he wonders where in all that madness the man now is.
“And some kind of Coalition response is to happen. Look,” Mañana says, “Here’s the deal, boia: Evrart’s offering anyone out of Martinaise protection within the harbor. It’s armored, and it’s armed, so you might have a better chance with us than out here, but… you know how it is. You know how things went for Martinaise last time. And if you take up the offer… well, you’re properly in. Anything that hits the Débardeurs’ Union will also hit you.” He shrugs, for a moment affecting the look of the careless boiadeiro again. “I’m not going to push you to join. Me and some other union fellas are just going around putting out warnings so that people around here know what’s what. If you don’t want to come to the harbor, or have some safer place to go, you should evacuate fast, while it’s still possible. You’ll have to choose quickly – we’ll be battened down by sun-up tomorrow.”
Steban looks at Ulixes, who looks at his watch.
“No need to give me any kind of an answer now,” Mañana says. “I’m just the messenger.”
He and Steban exchange a few words in Mesque, they briefly embrace, pat each other on the back, then Mañana leaves.
“What did he say to you?” Ulixes, predictably, immediately asks.
“Just that he’d be glad if I stuck around,” Steban says, distracted.
“Well, this is it, isn’t it?” Ulixes asks.
The Smoker sits on the bed, staring at the pristine white floor, thinking… nothing. There’s nothing happening in his mind save for a mute, baffled astonishment. The voices of his friends drift through to him sounding like they’re underwater, or maybe just he’s underwater.
“He said sunrise tomorrow. Do you want to do anything before… do you have time to go home, things like that?”
“No, it’s too far out to Villalobos, and who knows what state the streets will be in… but I’ll try to get a message to them. What about your family, though? I know they’re not, um…”
“Steban, my family left the city weeks ago. I doubt they’re still even on the isola.”
“They what…?”
“Yeah. People who can afford to get out have gotten out. My father came up to me about it, said we could give it one more try, go back to Gottwald… I told him no, of course. I know where my loyalties lie.”
“Uli, you could have gotten to safety…”
“And betray the cause? And leave you behind? And move to another isola with no one but my parents for company? Perish the thought.”
The conversation moves on, as naturally as anything, to the things they want to take along when they go join the union’s barricade. Will they need warm clothes? It’s summer now, but how long can they expect this thing to take? It’s a good thing that so many of Ulixes’ clothes are already at Steban’s place. Does he have a spare pair of glasses? If there’s violence, his existing pair might break. They will probably not be able to take many of their books, which ones are the most important…?
The Smoker sits silently and reflects on their mutual devotion. It occurs to him that he hasn’t seen his family in years. They’re somewhere in the teeming cityscape of Revachol West, but he doesn’t know where. They didn’t want him back then. He didn’t want them either. He never tried to find them and see if maybe by now their attitude towards the ‘homo-sexual underground’ has improved. Now they’ll never know what will have happened to him.
He ponders, also, that this is the exact cause of events that he once hoped the Sunday Friend might protect him from. He was disabused of that notion pretty quickly, but still, as long as the man was around, there was a sliver of hope. All of those half-baked plans seem far away now. Yet he doesn’t regret…
“Hey.” He realizes Steban is now standing in front of him, addressing him. “Are you okay?”
The Smoker takes a fortifying breath and offers a shaky smile. “Reasonably.”
“Do you know what you…?”
“I’m thinking.” The Smoker shakes his head and laughs, suddenly, startling himself a bit. “It’s funny, I just…”
Steban sits down on the bed next to him. “What is it?”
“My art. I know that’s inconsequential now but… I was just thinking about how long I’ve been dreaming of having my art exhibited. What a monumental life goal it was. A milestone. And now… a few weeks of my paintings in a gallery, that’s all I got. That whole building might be shelled soon. And even if not, no one’s going to be looking at art for a long time now.”
Steban puts a hand on his shoulder. “It’s not inconsequential. It’s your life. It’s a shame things went this way.” He stares off into nothing for a moment, as if waiting for a thought to form. Then he adds, “But this won’t be forever. You’ll do it again.”
“But what if…?” He doesn’t finish, something in him shying away from the question.
Steban seems to understand anyway. He says, “Whatever happens next, you’ll have had those weeks. Weeks in which people looked at your paintings, and maybe they left that gallery happier or more inspired. That’s not nothing. You touched people’s lives. No one and nothing can take that from you.”
The Smoker nods and swallows past a sudden lump in his throat. “It’ll have to be enough.”
“You don’t have to come with us,” Steban says gently. “If you have somewhere else to go, we won’t hold it against you.”
But there is nowhere else to go. Revachol West will erupt soon, and the safest place the Smoker can think of for himself now is with the union, and with his friends.
He wipes a few stray droplets of moisture from his eyes. “I think I’ll stay with you.”
Steban pets his shoulder. “Very good. Let’s pack up some things.”
Ten minutes later, the Smoker surveys his apartment, his go-bag in his hand. He always keeps one handy in case he has to leave a place quickly – one never knows in his profession – but now it seems far too small to hold a life.
“Everything alright?” Steban asks from somewhere behind him.
“I can’t take any of my art supplies,” the Smoker says. He can feel himself starting to well up again. “I know it’s silly, but… some of these were quite expensive, and… I’m sorry, no, it’s nothing.”
“Hey,” Steban says. “You have room for one sketchbook. Some pencils. Maybe some paints. It’s not much but you can make a bit of art still.”
“But there will be no use for drawings where we’re going.” Again, the Smoker quickly dries his eyes. “And I’m not sure what else I have to offer. I can’t fight, I can’t… maybe there will be no use for me.”
“Come on, don’t say that. Everyone has use. I’m sure you’ll find something to do.” Steban picks up a sketchbook – the latest one, its pages mostly blank – and offers it to the Smoker. “Bread and roses, right?”
Right.
They all help each other pack their few belongings, ending up back in Steban’s room. The Smoker looks around and reflects on how dear the little sparse apartment has recently become to him within a relatively short time. Love was made here. Conversations were had here. He shared a space with friends here in a way that has been rare in his life. Now, where will he go? Where will any of them end up?
The Smoker is a natural doubter; he’s not given to assuming that the current unrest will lead to grand, sweeping improvement in the world. He doesn’t see himself growing older in a communist utopia. That skepticism is like reflex, but then he looks at Steban and Ulixes and Cindy and those ravers and the union men and the few tolerable gendarmes and he thinks, well, why not try? Why could there not be something good ahead? There are people who are quite sweet. Perhaps, if they try, they can end up in a place at least marginally better and more livable.
“Marginally better and more livable” makes for a terrible battle cry. But it’s all that the Smoker can bring himself to permit right now. Maybe he’s spent too long hanging on the coattails of a moralist. Maybe it’s too late for him to turn himself into a firebrand revolutionary. But he’s ready to try this, for his friends, and that has to count for something, right?
“Well,” he says. “We had good times here.”
“There will be more good times,” Steban replies, “and more good places. Better, even.”
Sometimes Steban sounds like a blithe optimist. Sometimes he sounds like an oracle. The Smoker isn’t sure which one it is now.
“This is it, then?” Ulixes asks again, checking their bags once more for good measure. “We have everything?”
“Yes, I should think this is it,” Steban says, “but we have until morning. What say you to a proper goodbye to the old place?” He gestures around at the things he won't be able to take: his plants, the cleanly white bedsheets, the bust of Mazov made of plaster painted to evoke marble. Mazov's expression doesn't suddenly miraculously shift into a smile, but it's nice to pretend for a moment that it did.
The Smoker grins, and marvels once more at this latent talent in Steban to sometimes, just occasionally, say the exact thing he needs.
“What did you have in mind?” Ulixes asks, a smile spreading on his austere features as well. Of course he already knows what Steban wants. Steban barely nods in the direction of the bed, and already Uli’s hands are all over him.
The future may bring just about anything: change, violence, hardship, growth, grief, joy, death, perhaps even communism. But for now, just for a few more hours, there can be this uncomplicated bliss.
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2woodroses on Chapter 1 Wed 29 Mar 2023 05:40AM UTC
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