I Travel Troubled Oceans - Chapter 35: ... A Story is Untrue
Jack leans back on his lounge chair, sipping some rum based cocktail. It's quite good, and it even came with a little paper umbrella and a Hibiscus flower. Max is lounging next to him, wearing a gorgeous sarong from his 2010 beachwear collection, sipping her own tropical drink. Anne and Mary and Charles wrestle each other in the perfect blue surf.
Back in dreary England, SWAT teams are no doubt raiding Max's office, empty of everything except a particularly alluring painting in a golden frame. Featherstone had both time to warn them and time to cut all paper trail ties to their little partnership. And no one remembers Mr. Scott.
It's rather sad they had to give up their little criminal empire, but needs must. Who could have predicted a deranged police Sargent blaming them for gang activity? Preposterous. They're the respectable sort of criminals.
Ah well. The Bahamas, and their non-extradition treaty and lax banking laws, are simply lovely this time of year. And they have a gorgeous estate bought for a song and meant for the next con they were going to run, but perfectly suitable to live in themselves. It'll sink into the sea eventually of course, but nothing lasts forever.
This is the end of the road folks. Thanks to everyone who's read, liked, or reblogged this fic over the years.
I Travel Troubled Oceans - Chapter 34: A Story is True...
The SWAT team bursts through the front door, the dining room French doors, the second floor bedroom windows, all without warning. It's a Saturday for God's sake, and only half noon. He supposes they were hoping to find him at home.
They have him surrounded.
Anne charges towards the police Sargent standing in the front doorway, coordinating all this chaos, looking to give him a piece of her mind. Or a taste of the blades she still carries. She's cut down in an instant.
No beanbag rounds or nightsticks here.
Mary steps into the hallway, half hidden behind her clipboard. Probably making for the camouflaged entrance to the basement. Maybe she'll be able to wait out the investigation that's sure to follow – the dozens of inspectors and crime scene investigators sure to be crawling all over his lovely home once he's taken in. And then maybe she'll be able to sneak out the back, find and warn Max.
Maybe Max has already been brought in.
Jack would never squeal on her. He's not entirely sure she'll return the courtesy.
Jack raises his arms above his head in a gesture of surrender. Stands from the sofa he'd been lounging on. The police advance past Anne's cooling body, their boots leaving red tracks on the pristine white carpet and lovely blonde wood floors he'd had installed in the lounge.
He's grabbed roughly by the arm, forced around, pushed against the nearest wall. A priceless painting crashes to the floor, glass shards splintering everywhere. The Sargent – the one who killed Anne – steps forward, shiny shoes clicking against the floor. Roughs Jack even further against the wall as he handcuffs him, hisses into his ear about finally getting foreign muck off the streets. About what a great movie finale this would make.
Jack has no idea what he's talking about.
He wishes Charles was here.
He hopes Charles is a hundred miles away, safe and gone to ground.
Jack is brought to the station and made to wait what feels like an eternity in a small windowless room on an ugly, uncomfortable plastic chair. He's still handcuffed.
When he's finally read his charges, the Sargent – who killed Anne – lists them grandiosely, as if he's killed the Queen. Jack has to struggle not to laugh. Extortion of Immigration Office personnel. Conspiring to bring criminals into the country.
There's nothing about his real estate scam. Nothing about Max or Featherstone. Nothing about the Brothel, even.
He's looking at a five stretch, unless he confesses. A good lawyer could get it down to two or three.
Anne is dead.
His persona of a dimwitted poof is useful here. He just wanted to bring his favorite seamstresses to work for him. He had no idea of their relations' gang affiliations.
Anne is dead.
He'll do the time, at a cushy white collar prison, no doubt and then ruin whoever was yellowbellied enough to go to the police for a bit of blackmail or extortion. The bastard didn't even come clean about the brothel. He'll be back on top in no time. Unless he confesses.
Anne is dead.
He can see the headlines now. Gutter rat responsible for massive real estate scam. Man posed as fashion designer to rob the rich blind. Bastard feels no remorse for his despicable actions.
And he, the sole villain of the piece. His name would live forever.
Anne is dead and Charles is gone and Max has hopefully already fled.
Jack smiles. Asks the Sargent – who killed Anne - “Why, is that all you have on me? I've been a much naughtier boy than that.”
I Travel Troubled Oceans - Chapter 33: In Which We Reach the Tipping Point
Charles walks. Nowhere in particular, really it's just that he can't fucking stand to be in that house right now. Walks long enough and far enough he goes from the broad straight pavement of the wealthy neighborhoods to the grey cracked narrow pavement of the slummier places. Places like where Jack's going to stash all his seamstresses in some sorta company town.
Charles had been all on board for some aspects of domesticity, once he'd got used to the idea. Having a roof over your head without squatting. Having working plumbing, that was nice. He even has his own personal favorite mug in the cupboard of the kitchen.
He's gone soft, is what he's saying. Been domesticated from the days when he'd squat in whatever filthy abandoned hole would put some walls between him and the elements. And the walls were optional.
But some things about domesticity don't sit easy in him. Like having cleaners come and dust all the huge empty rooms they never use.
He knows they're being paid well – he'd insisted on that. But having to buy a house so huge you never use half of it just to look good to the sorts of people they're trying to con seems like a waste. Sure, they've thrown a few parties for Jack's collections, but those could have been hosted elsewhere, surely. And buying up the remnants of Hamilton's real estate empire and using his methods to turn a profit was always the plan. But now Jack's diversifying. Running businesses and brothels and buying up blocks of warehouses to turn into flats for his employees.
Flats he's charging rent for. Flats who's rental is contingent on working for Jack in some capacity. All while he's making enough money he could just give them away.
It feels like the sort of operation Albinus was running. Getting kids young, desperate. Tying them to you with the pipe or with the money or with knowing that if you tried to run, you'd be killed by the latest kid he'd pulled up from the gutter. Knowing that sticking with Albinus was better than trying to make it on your own, unprotected. He fed you, after all. Clothed you. Put a roof over your head. And all you owed him was your undying loyalty. Your loyalty until death.
And now what's Jack running? The same damn thing.
No drugs, but the same binding shackles of debt and ownership. The same debt of providing for someone who you pulled from nothing, from the gutter, from death. Raised up into new life.
It's absolute shite. Living free, living comfortable, has taught him that. Albinus didn't free him or any of the other kids he'd taken in. He'd enslaved them.
And Jack might be a nicer master, but he's becoming a master all the same. And he doesn't know if he can stay with a man like that.
We are making progress. I say to all of you, we are making progress. Those who would consider themselves our betters are frightened, like little children, as we destroy the pillars of their society. Their bankers, their managers, their bosses who hold the whip. Who use that whip against us. To keep us down. To keep us hidden in the shadows while they stand in the light of what? Of progress.
Of money and of health and of freedom and self determination. A freedom and a wealth that is built on the backs of our work. Of our lives.
Who cleans their streets and homes? Who cooks their food? Who collects their rubbish and takes it far away so they do not have to see it or think about it?
Who ensures their lives keep turning? Us. It is us.
Our mothers and fathers, sisters, brothers, cousins, our nieces and nephews. Our sons and daughters are born into a world of shadow. A world where even the benevolent Master binds us in chains. Where even the good man refuses to see us as he goes about his day.
The whole world refuses to recognize us, the people of the shadows. Unless it is to crack the whip. Unless it is to squeeze the living blood from our bodies. To fertilize their fields with our blood and with our sweat and with our very lives, if needed. If profit demands.
And why do they ignore us so? Because they are afraid.
Afraid that if they don't pretend that we are invisible, inhuman, that we will somehow infect them with our otherness, our unworthyness. Afraid that they will slip down into the shadows themselves. Slip down to where we are. Hidden. Inhuman. The chattel that makes this city, this Empire, run.
But mostly, they are afraid of us. Of us. Because they know how many of us there are. How few of them, really, there are.
Because they know that if we were to stand as one and say NO. I will not suffer this any longer. They would lose.
They are already losing.
We are washing the streets in their blood. We are making their lives s precarious as they have always made ours. We are changing the world.
They know it. They feel it in their bones. And so they cling harder to the edifice of gold and marble they have constructed atop our shoulders. They crack the whip harder. They bleed us dry.
But we are at a tipping point. I say again, we are at the precipice. And we will move the balance of history.
I say take heart, brothers and sisters, as we rise out of the shadows and into a new world. A world of our own making.
And like anything, it is a world born in blood. But it is a world that will triumph. I say it is a world that will survive. And it is a world that we build together.
Idelle is conflicted. One of the brothel girls, an old friend from the streets, has heard whispers. Just whispers beneath whispers, really, of an investigation surrounding Jack. A Police investigation.
Some crooked bobby looking for whoever's trying for Flint's old territory.
Some Bahaman gang, which is why they think Jack's involved. All those Visas, all those seamstresses and house cleaners and suchlike. Well, they've all got families. Husbands and brothers and sons.
Who may or may not be going around beheading people.
Idelle should really tell Max. But Max has been ignoring the problem. Keeps saying her official (and illegal) informants haven't heard anything, so of course it's nothing to worry about.
But Idelle has heard.
And Augustus will believe her. Cut ties with Jack, if that's what it takes. Make it look like all the off the books consulting never took place. It is all off the books for a reason, after all.
He's a respected pillar of the community, after all. And maybe he was considering investing in – in the fashion house, yes. No conflict of interest there. Because Idelle so loved modeling for Jack that first season, and it's how they met, after all.
Yes, it's time to rewrite history. Augustus is an important man, after all. He weathered his tenuous connection to Hamilton, didn't he? He can certainly weather his connection to Jack. And Idelle will be by his side to ensure it.
I Travel Troubled Oceans - Chapter 32: Intermission 2
From the Desk of Sgt. Louis Davidson
Metropolitan Police
The vacuum left by Flint and Vane is finally being filled and the streets are washed in fresh blood again tonight. It's those darky Caribbean blokes. Animals, hacking good upstanding citizens apart in the bloody street.
Animals.
What they're running, what they're pushing, nobody knows. Anyone gets close to investigate gets dead. No undercover informant has managed to even get close. So we need to think about the problem from the other end, don't we Davidson?
Who's fronting them. Well, that's easy. Jack Rackham – from the Caribbean himself - starts up a little business and all of a sudden, there's darkies crawling out of the woodwork. Work visas, immigration paperwork, housing applications, all for Bahamians, same as Rackham. He's got a nice little company town going now as well, putting all his workers up in some slummy tenement that time forgot.
That's all well and good, as far as it goes. But the minute Rackham starts establishing his little business empire making frocks, who shows up but the gang of butchers making a run on the city?
What do they have on Rackham? Is it a willing collaboration? Who's his connection in government, all of a sudden giving out immigration visas like they're party favors? Plenty of open questions. And only one man to get answers.
That's a good tagline, that is. Should keep that for the gook. Or maybe save it for the film adaptation?
I Travel Troubled Oceans - Chapter 31: In Which Fractures Begin to Form
Jack's little business empire has expanded again. He's essentially running a couture house now – although his application to actually be called a couture house hasn't been approved yet. And indeed, he may need to make some additional inroads to France to actually get the approval of the Federation, but he meets all of the requirements.
He's even moved into a dedicated studio space, with state-of-the-art technology and two-dozen seamstresses, largely provided by Eme, and acres of storerooms and even a catwalk for critiquing designs. Because despite all the digital drawing boards, Jack is still very much mocking up designs on the dressmaker's dummies before actually putting pen to paper. Or gigantic touchscreen computers. Whichever.
Still, it's all very modern and sleek and impressive to the investors he's seeking to court. Housed in a converted warehouse, the noble brick edifice pocked with large, modern windows, it's the exact mix of historical precedent and modern sensibility that has built his (Max's) real estate empire. And just like the imperial remnants making up his gullible marks on the real estate side of things, the same toffee mouthed suit wearing old guard eats it up on the fashion side as well. Or their wives do, at any rate, and he's discovered that a lot of the time, the wives are the ones holding the pocket books.
Just as the industrial revolution forced the landowning British aristocracy to look to gauche American millionairesses for bridal stock, a similar thing is happening now with the technological revolution.
So many nouveau riche sprouting up out of the woodwork with their computer security systems or their sweatshops full of overseas call center employees, providing goods and services no one who attended Eton would ever have thought to invest in, at least non until it became ubiquitous. It's not prestigious or old money enough.
There's an over-the-top glamour to it that just appears chintzy when compared to the rambling country estates and the pheasant hunts and all the pageantry of the old money crowd. But those country estates are crumbling at the foundations. Those hunts a show put on to pretend that they haven't burned through all their money. That they're still relevant. Powerful.
But that's the thing. It's a show that works. A trick that's fooled a great number of the nouveau riche that despite all of their millions, they still haven't made it. They're still not really sitting in the seat of power carved out by thousands of years of noble British arses.
And so they either get angry, fight to make their type of rich the only on that matters, or they “marry up.” Buy their way into the prestige they crave. The gravitas of the British empire at it's height. The ruins of British aristocracy can all be had, and for a comparative pittance.
After all, it's what Jack's doing.
And the brothel has payed major dividends by way of an impoverished hotel chain owner (gambling debts, you understand) looking to offload some property quickly. It's a block of residential flats he'd purchased with the intent to demolish them and put up a luxury hotel once waterfront development got a bit further along. As he and the other property owners hadn't had the Councilor on side, the redevelopment efforts went nowhere and the flats have sat vacant for nearly two decades.
Why he didn't just choose to rent them out? Well, that would take effort, wouldn't it. And he hadn't gotten where he'd been (millions of pounds in debt to some very unsavory individuals) by putting in effort, by planning for the future instead of living in the now now now.
Jack, on Max's orders, of course, had snapped the flats up for a song. They're not in the residential market, but a little elbow grease and they'd be quite livable. Much more livable than the council estates most of Eme's seamstresses and house cleaners and some of Max's brothel girls lived at.
A perk of the job, as he'd keep the rent reasonable (for London) and he'll feel better with all his eggs under one easily protected roof. There's been whispers of a new player on the streets. One who's gunning for Flint's old spot on the hierarchy. One who, unlike Flint, only desires to sew chaos and disorder, and who wields violence as his only tool.
Charles has tried to find out more, but his underground boxing ring knows only the same rumors Max has heard. That they're foreign and are going after, well, everyone. Random people in the street. Businesses and banks. No real motive or method, other than mayhem.
Mary is getting brought along to threaten someone on the Immigration Council into giving immigration visas to all the people Eme's found to staff their little business empire. They've been living in Britain for years – in some cases decades – but in the shadows. Below the radar. Brought in as cleaners or farm laborers or just because they had family already living there, family to take them in and help them get jobs away from the plantations and resort hotels of the Caribbean. And now they have the political capital to make them legal citizens.
Via blackmail gained at the illegal brothel they run, but still.
And normally, it'd be Charles going with Anne. Or going by himself, really. He loves that sort of thing, B&E and breaking kneecaps and all. But he's not really on board with this mission, is the thing. Had a giant screaming row with Jack about it, in fact.
Tying them down with legal identities had been one complaint. Plus there's the whole thing with becoming landlords and then generously offering those apartments to their employees for well below the average London rent. Who wouldn't want that?
Charles, apparently, who thinks everyone should be a squatter with no legal address or birth certificate.
Frankly, Mary doesn't see anything wrong with charging rent for the flats they just bought. Sure, they don't have a mortgage they need to pay off, but there's always projects to be funded. Palms to be greased and favors to be bought. Leverage to be applied.
Mary knows because she compiles all the files on their marks and their potential enemies and their potential allies. Who they can afford to screw over and who they need to make nice with.
And Mary doesn't see the big deal about making the flats available only to their employees. That way you know who you're renting to. You know your customers. And they have incentive to stay at the job, or to keep their flats clean and in good order.
But Charles hadn't seen it that way and now things have descended into sullen silence and is probably why Anne was so eager to get out of the house. And Mary so eager to go with her when usually her contributions to the gang lie in the realm of paper pushing and handling all the actual office tasks that go along with running a semi-legitimate business.
But she'd been on the streets before. As a dealer, sure, but still. She knows how to handle herself. And the gun she's got in her boot makes her feel a lot better about the whole thing. And Anne never goes anywhere without her knives. But they're starting off genteel like, with blackmail of the Councilor with his mistress from the brothel. And if that doesn't work, well. There's plenty of ways they can go from there.
It's worth it to keep Eme on board. Providing workers and providing legitimacy to their cover story of being from the Bahamas.
They're playing with expectations, after all. Making people think Jack's legitimate. That he started legitimately as a designer and clothing manufacturer in Nassau. And he had workers there. Workers he wants to bring to Britain, because they're trained in already. Because he's an eccentric millionaire and he can do whatever he pleases. And the Immigration Council will let him.
Or, they will once she and Anne are through with them.
I Travel Troubled Oceans: Chapter 28 - In Which Everything is Going Splendidly
Charles nods to the young Black boy who has been guarding the entrance to the underground fight ring the last few times he's gone. There's a scar marking him as a member of a street gang on his collar bone, just barely visible above the ratty white vest he's wearing. The boy is too young to be an enforcer just yet, can't be more than thirteen or so, but Charles would bet that's where he's headed. Guard duty sometimes involves turning away idiots who've been banned for one reason or another, and that sometimes requires hitting them with a tire iron, or the baseball bag the kid's got leaning against the wall next to him. Makes for good training.
He gets nodded through by “security” and Charles feels the scar above his own clavicle pull as he heaves open the rusty scissor gate on the freight elevator that leads down to the maintenance basement where this nights fight is happening. The office park has been abandoned since it was half-built as part of the speculative real estate boom in the 80s, right before construction was halted during the subsequent crash in the 90s, and it's one of the been in bankruptcy limbo ever since.
See, Charles has been picking up some new property valuation skills over the past year or so and it's become like second nature to assess whatever rotting hulk of a warehouse or car park or office tower he ends up in, even though they're not particularly interested in corporate spaces. And the return in investment on a place as rundown as this wouldn't make it worth it even if they were.
Charles descends into the musty depths, past mildew streaked walls and industrial lighting. Every other bulb appears burnt out or broken, even behind the metal cage guarding each light, and much of the descent is in darkness. When he reaches the sub-basement, it's not much better. Emergency lighting illuminates the cracked and water stained corridor before he's spit out into the vast, open, empty sub basement. Shop lights have been strung up in a corner, and all the street toughs and gangsters have congregated there, waiting to beat the everloving shite out of each other.
He greats the few he knows well enough for casual drinks down the pub. And a few who are as close to rivals as he knows anymore. The ones who want to throw themselves at him to see if he'll eventually break. To see if there's a crack in his defenses, to see if he's weak, the way he was always afraid ofbeing.
They generally end up broken instead, crawling off to whatever stinking hole they're squatting in to lick their wounds before trying again next week.
He doesn't blame them. He did the same thing when he was starting out. Half-starved and wild and willing to get himself beaten half to death just to prove himself to the man who held his leash.
And maybe someday they'll turn on their leader, their master, the same way Charles did, and be free.
He also tries to greet some of the newcomers that have been showing up the last couple of months. They're mostly from the Bahamas and it might help sell their cover as former residents of the islands if they're friendly. Plus Max likes any intel he can get on new gangs forming to fill the power vacuum left by him and Flint, and to a lesser extend, Jack. Jack who had handed control of his little drug empire over to one of his smarter and less addicted pushers, who's running things pretty much same as usual unless Jack makes a special request for them to attend this or that party. But that doesn't mean the chosen successor will actually be a success and Charles tries to keep an ear to the street during fight nights. Toughs are as inclined to gossip as anyone, in his experience.
Except the Bahamians, who pretty much stick to themselves and don't seem inclined to talking much even then.
They do seem to be keeping an eye on Charles, though, as much as he keeps an eye on them. Subtle glances from across the room, blink and you'll think you imagined it. Caught only out of the corner of your eye, but glaringly obvious if you know what you're looking at.
They're sizing him up for some reason. And he doesn't think it has anything to do with the fighting tonight.
But Max says they're nothing to worry about. She still has her finger on the pulse of the street. Still owns it. All the pickpockets and cutpurses. All the street corner pushers. Mid-level gang bosses pay tribute to her, and she's starting to get her grip on the white collar criminals and the government officials they own, thanks to their new identities as respectable people. So if Max says don't worry about it, Charles won't. And instead he'll lose himself in the calm he feels before the rush of blood and adrenaline of a fight.
Councilor Featherstone shuffled another application for planning permission from the friend of an enemy to the bottom of the ever-growing stack. Ordered an ecological impact survey to be conducted for one proposed building site in Wales and waived it for another.
Life was good. He had a beautiful, loving wife. A large, well decorated home in a fashionable suburb, usually reserved for Westminster types – or minor nobles. His neighbor was a baronet! They nodded regally to one another in passing! He was finally getting the sort of recognition a person of his position deserved.
The bribes. The fancy dinners. The consulting fees for do-nothing jobs on various boards and committees. The friends (Jack) in high places, able to connect him to the world of wealth and privilege he'd only been able to dream of before. The sort of wealth and privilege he'd only been able to rub shoulders with as he'd stammered and stuttered his way through long dinners with department heads who all knew each other from their posh grammar schools.
Now he's able to hold his own during those long, boring dinners. Now he has people hanging on his every word.
Yes, life was good. And he owed it all to Jack.
Jack who had a head for business, and real estate investment in particular, that was nigh uncanny. Every investment a hit. Every piece of property picked up for a song and turned around at a monumental profit. A profit he got to share in.
Every piece of planning permission he signed off on, rubber stamped, moved to the head of the queue just got him a bigger slice of the pie. A pie Lord Hamilton had never been particularly inclined to share, keeping the payout for himself and fuck everyone who actually made any of his little deals happen.
Featherstone thumps his heavy antique desk (a gift from Jack) with his heavy antique gold ring (another gift from Jack) and pushes Lord Hamilton and his unreasonable attitude out of his mind. Yes, things were looking up with new business partners – who treated him like a real partner – and the future seems brighter still.
It is the height of summer and it is sweltering. Even naked with the blankets kicked down to the foot of the bed. Even with the blinds closed and the windows wide open, trying to catch some nonexistent breeze, Hawkeye feels like he's melting into a puddle of sweat.
Trapper, unfairly, looks delicious. The summer sun has given him a tan down to the navel and up to the indecently short length of the shorts he's taken to wearing. They're the kind you're supposed to wear with tall argyle socks and loafers, on the golf course or the tennis court, although Trapper mostly wears them at home and often disregards the socks. It leaves his long, long legs – God, they look so long leading up to the hem of his pink or baby blue or forest green shorts like that - bare in the bright afternoon sun as he lounges in a camp chair or putters around the yard.
He looks like he oughtta live on the deck of a yacht, somewhere off the coast of New Hampshire or something. Drinking champagne and eating Maine lobsters like Hawkeye's sure all Trapper's Ivy League classmates did in the summers. Though Hawkeye bets they didn't look half so good doing it.
Trapper's hair is sunbleached, too, and blonder than usual. He's a golden Adonis in the morning sunlight, posed in indolent recline against the pillows, the long sweep of his body curled towards Hawkeye's side of the bed all lean muscle and gleaming golden skin. Hell, he even looks good with damp temples and a bead of sweat trailing down his chest to where the sheets pool in his lap.
Hawkeye wants to follow the path with his tongue.
Trapper grins at him like he can read Hawkeye's mind. “See something you like?”
A pause as Trapper looks at Hawkeye and he looks leonine, predatory as he gives him a once over. “Cuz I sure as hell like what I'm seeing.”
Trapper lets his glance trail teasingly down Hawkeye's body, from the dip between his soft little breasts and over the round hill of his little belly to stop just before the twisted sheets that half cover him. He looks so good like this, plump and soft and pampered. Trapper lets his finger trace around the dip of his navel, down to the sweet little crease at his hip, the fold his belly makes on his lap. He wants to bite at it and then kiss it better after.
He wants to bite and kiss Hawkeye all over until they're both wild with it and then he wants to open Hawkeye back up where he's still slick and tender and used from last night at nearly midnight, standing in the dark in front of the window to try and catch the almost-cool breeze, an exercise in keeping quiet and Trapper wants to fuck him screaming into a pillow, through the mattress, a hundred thousand times.
Trapper's erection is obvious under the thin sheets and a red flush has spread across his golden skin. Hawkeye can imagine ripping those sheets away, pushing Trapper back against the pillows, and straddling him. Spreading himself wide. Plunging down onto Trapper's gorgeous cock, red and flushed just like his chest. He can imagine riding Trapper, nails digging into his skin, rising and falling, rising and falling over and over and over again until he's panting and red faced and even sweatier than he is right now. Until he's gasping for the humid summer air.
Which, no. Absolutely not.
It's a nice fantasy, but it's just too damn hot.
Hawkeye hadn't ever been much for exerting himself, in the bedroom or otherwise, and that was before he'd put on thirty-seven pounds. Although only about nineteen of them were added to what he'd weighed before Korea. Still.
“I'd like it a lot more if it wasn't ninety degrees at eight in the morning,” Hawkeye grumbles. “It's too hot out to do anything except complain about how hot out it is. And eat ice cream.” The last is said hopefully, because Trapper likes to indulge Hawkeye and his sweet tooth, and he's gotten pretty good at taking a hint.
Trapper's a little disappointed that his hopes of an encore are being crushed, but he can't blame Hawkeye. Boston summers are as hot and muggy as any they sweated through in Korea. Nights so warm they'd slept naked in their cots and any trysts were limited to breathless gasping dreams. So Trapper puts away his thoughts of anything athletic but maybe...
“I'd take care of you. Do all the work, you wouldn't have to lift a finger, Hawk.” He's always been a little lazy in bed. Always liked to be pampered and looked after, when he's not demanding to be used and used hard. And Trapper sure likes taking care of him.
“I'd lay you out on the mattress. Spread you open. Suck you off while I fuck you open. You wouldn't have to do a thing.”
Hawkeye looks at him, gives him a real thorough once over. Eyes hot and focused on his hands and his lips. “Tempting....”
Trapper grins, victory almost assuredly assured. He reaches a hand out to cup Hawkeye's cheek, intending to whisper gentle nothings and then kiss him senseless.
“But it's just too damn hot. You'll have to take a rain check until we move to Antarctica.”
Trapper lets his hand fall, but he laughs good naturedly. “Well, I don't know what that'd do to our morning commute. Why don't you take a cool shower and I'll fix you something to eat. It oughtta be better downstairs anyway.”
Especially in the kitchen where it's got tile floors and it's on the shady side of the house. God alone knows Trapper's thought about laying down naked on those floors some nights after long sweltering days in hospital gowns and long, even more sweltering rides home on a bus and a streetcar full of other sweaty men and women, just for some kinda relief from the heat.
For all that he's used to summers in Boston, and in hotter, more crowded apartment blocks and tenements than this, it does get real fucking hot.
Maybe he oughtta think about air conditioning for the bedroom.
He imagines sliding into bed, the sheets as cool and refreshing as the tiles of the kitchen. Imagines the room cool enough he and Hawkeye could sleep cuddled together, like they're able to now. Trapper curled around Hawkeye's smooth back, arm over the plump flesh covering his ribs, hand cupping the softness of his belly. He imagines slipping the hand down the smooth cool skin, sliding under Hawkeye's shorts to cup his cock, fondle his balls until he's hard in Trapper's hand and begging to get fucked.
Imagines turning with Hawkeye under him, pressing him into the cool mattress and fucking him raw.
Trapper shifts and the sheet pulls lower.
He's so hard. Hawkeye wants to put his mouth on him. Wants to give in to temptation and let Trapper fuck him, no matter how much he'd regret it later, when he's even hotter and sweatier and more out of breath from the humid air.
He rushes for the bathroom, before he gives in to temptation.
Hawkeye leaves to take a shower and it breaks Trapper out of his dreams of window air conditioning, cool floors, and ice cubes melting on his skin. Of fucking Hawkeye and then collapsing onto cool sheets. He grips himself, hard.
God, he just wants to rut his aching cock against the mattress until he cums, spilling hot and sweaty and sticky all over the damp sheets, until the fire in his loins is cooled even though the rest of him is hot with exertion and the sticky humidity of the day. But he'd want a shower after and for all they worked hard to share a shower stall in Korea, Hawkeye's gotten territorial about the bathroom.
Trapper stands, breathing heavily in through his nose, getting himself under control. He's not that fucking desperate he can't keep from rubbing off against the nearest available surface, rutting like some kinda animal just cuz Hawkeye wasn't up for it.
Hawkeye. Fuck. He's supposed to be making him something to eat right now.
Trapper gives himself another squeeze, tight enough to cut through the ache of his desire and hopefully keep him sated for a while. And then he puts on one of Hawkeye's little silk robes, shivering as it trails cool and tantalizing across his thighs and chest and still-hard cock and he goes downstairs to wash at the kitchen sink and then fix Hawkeye a little something. Something light and cool enough it'll be refreshing, but filling enough he doesn't go hungry.
Trapper looks through the refrigerator and they've got some fruit he can slice up with cheese or something? A little European maybe but Hawkeye's cosmopolitan enough it's probably fine. And then he remembers they've got ice cream in the freezer, like Hawkeye'd asked for earlier. Trapper likes that – likes the idea of making Hawkeye an ice cream sundae for breakfast. Likes the idea of giving Hawkeye what he wants.
It's just so fucking decadent. It'd be so sweet and cool on Hawkeye's tongue. So cold and heavy in Hawkeye's stomach. Filling. But Hawkeye'd still ask for more.
Seems like Hawkeye's always asking for more of everything, now he knows Trapper'll give it to him. Wait on him hand and foot, a good little wife.
Fuck. It's just so fucking too much and not enough at the same goddamn time.
Trapper grinds and presses against the hard wood of the kitchen cabinets as he slices strawberries and scoops ice cream into a bowl. It's not enough.
They've got chocolate chips in the baking cupboard. Not quite hot fudge sauce, but Trapper adds those and tries to decide if he's got enough time to make whipped cream. He hears the shower shut off, so probably not.
Another time maybe – he's sure this won't be Hawkeye's only ice cream sundae of the week. God, he can imagine it now, Hawkeye's face a mess of whipped cream and chocolate. Can imagine kissing him and tasting rich chocolate fudge sweet and dark on his tongue.
Yeah, definitely a thought for another time.
Hawkeye steps out of the bath onto the bathmat, his skin so delightfully cool in the slight breeze from the open bathroom window, the curtains billowing in what might be a real breeze. He stands in front of the mirror, taking in his appearance.
It's changed a lot since Korea. His hair is longer – it's probably time to ask Trapper for another haircut since the wet strands hang down to his collar. He's clean shaven, now that he has access to sharp razors free of rust. And he's certainly filled out since he's moved in with Trapper – a Trapper who's also changed since Korea, as evidenced by his desire to cook for Hawkeye. To give him everything he could ever ask for, and a few things he'd never known he'd want.
A Trapper who likes Hawkeye like this. Likes him coddled and cossetted and spoiled. Likes waiting on him hand and foot, just as much as Hawkeye likes being waited on. Because that's something Hawkeye's learned about himself over the course of the almost a year he's been living with Trapper. He likes to be spoiled almost as much as Trapper likes spoiling him.
Maybe it shouldn't be a surprise. Most people would probably kill for a lover as devoted and all-consuming as Trapper is. How burningly, passionately too much he is.
Too much for just one lover, much to Louise's chagrin, and occasionally Hawkeye's.
Too much even for himself. Feeling so much, he could never just come out and say what he was feeling for the people he loved. He had to show it instead.
Hawkeye runs a hand down his chest, feels the water sluice down the smooth slope of his chest, the peaks of his nipples blossoming under his hands. He cups his hands over his pectorals and squeezes, the soft flesh cool and malleable as clay.
It feels good, grounding. He rubs hard with the heels of his palms, grinding against the hard nubs of his nipples.
He, on the other hand, was flighty. Afraid of commitment. He pushed everyone away with a laugh and a joke. He gave everyone what they wanted – kept them happy, or as happy as they could be, at a MASH in Korea. But he didn't give them anything deep. Anything meaningful.
Hawkeye's the last person to ever settle down. An eternal bachelor. A one-night-stand.
And here he is, standing in Trapper's bathroom in Trapper's house after almost a year of sleeping in Trapper's bed.
Not that he's been the only one sleeping there, some nights. Hawkeye doesn't think he's any more a one man's man than Trapper is. But he is the only one with a toothbrush on the counter and a towel on the hook.
Hawkeye's hands drift lower, pressing into the soft flesh of his ribs, down to the paunch that circles his waist. It's softer than his chest, and still cool from the shower. He pinches a part of it and it sends a zing of pleasure down his spine.
Trapper loves to pinch and nip at him when he's blowing him. Loves to fondle at his paunch when he's fucking him slow and steady, Hawkeye sitting in his lap, unable to do anything except pant into Trapper's shoulder and grip the muscles of his shoulders, scraping his back with short neat nails. Loves to cup it gently is his huge hands when they sleep together, Hawkeye curled up inside Trapper's long, lean body.
Hawkeye kneads harder into the softness of his stomach. The towel he's wrapped himself in is digging into the new flesh of his hips, but as he turns to examine himself from all angles, he doesn't mind how he looks.
Trapper likes it, for one thing. Can't keep his hands off of Hawkeye. And that does some great things for a guy's self esteem. But Hawkeye's grown to like it just for himself, too, if he's being honest.
It's a whole hell of a lot better than the way he'd looked when he'd just gotten back. He'd been so skinny he could count all his ribs, back then.
But even before he'd been drafted and shipped halfway around the world to eat moldy food in a flea pit (which did not help one's appetite, not one bit) he'd been too skinny. Not as dangerously so, but he wasn't exactly in the habit of eating three square meals a day. Between the long hours at work and the coming home to an empty apartment, there just didn't seem to be much point in things like eating breakfast. Or in eating dinner that didn't consist of a handful of pretzels and too many gin martinis at the bar down the way from the hospital. He was probably heading right for liver failure and scurvy, living like that.
Hawkeye takes the towel from around his waist and actually starts in on drying off.
Now, he's got some meat on his bones. His face has filled out, with round cheeks that dimple when he smiles, if you can believe it. The towel glides over the plump flesh of his arms, when before he'd been able to circle his whole spindly biceps with thumb and middle finger. He sweeps the towel across the padding over his collar bones and ribs and pelvis, where before they'd been sharp enough he'd worried they were going to break through the skin. The towel journeys lower.
The meat of his ass and the softness clinging to his thighs is erotic, in some ways. Inviting. Far better than the scrawny stick-legged thing that had paraded through the mess hall naked, begging for attention and both humiliated and aroused at being on display.
There's something lush about him now. Pampered.
His hands are soft with scented soaps and lotions applied after scrubbing up from surgery, his nails neatly trimmed. His hair is soft and his face is baby smooth. And he's got all the attention he could want, now.
He thought it would be stifling. Constricting.
The only thing he had it to compare to is his failed almost engagement that he'd been too chicken, too scared of commitment to even choke out a “will you marry me?” even when she'd threatened to walk out the door. And then made good on that threat, leaving him with a nothing but a green apartment to remember her by.
He hadn't been willing to change, for her. Hadn't been willing to give her what she wanted.
He'd naively assumed that every committed relationship was like that. But Trapper isn't asking for anything, just offering it. And taking what Hawkeye's able to offer in return. He isn't asking Hawkeye to change for him, but Hawkeye's changing anyway. And not just physically, although that's probably the most noticeable part.
Hawkeye pats his tummy, relishes the soft heft of it. He probably ought to get back to Trapper. And breakfast.
Hawkeye takes fucking forever to actually get downstairs. The ice cream's half melted by the time he actually sits at the table, still damp and wearing only a thin silk robe, which clings to him enticingly.
Trapper blushes. He's not supposed to be thinking things like that right now. Things like how the silk cradles Hawkeye's little belly or how plump and soft his thighs look where they stick out from underneath the hem.
“Quick, Hawk, Eat it before it melts.” He practically throws the sundae across the table. And sits down quickly before he can stare too long at the front of Hawkeye's robe to where his plush breasts press against the slippery silk.
“Ice cream for breakfast?” Hawkeye picks up his spoon and bats his eyelashes. “Trapper, you spoil me.”
Trapper blushes deeper and stands. Sitting down isn't keeping him from staring as much as he'd hoped it would.
“Well, you asked for it.” And he really likes giving Hawkeye what he asks for.
“There's other stuff too,” he adds, and brings the plate of cheese and deli meats and slices of fruit and bread over to the table. “If you wanna eat something other than dessert for breakfast.”
“Very cosmopolitan,” Hawkeye comments, and goes back to licking melted ice cream off his spoon. “Must be that Ivy League education.”
Trapper sits down again, and takes a slice of peach to keep from taking Hawkeye's hand instead. Or taking his mouth in a kiss.
“Well, just to balance it out, I was thinking of grilling this evening. Hot dogs and hamburgers and everything.”
Hawkeye looks up from his ice cream in interest. Everything is a pretty broad category, after all.
“Unless your majesty would prefer cucumber sandwiches?”
Hawkeye laughs and sticks out a pinky as he raises his spoon. “I'll have those for afternoon tea, Jeeves. As long as you make those little cakes to go along with.”
“Greedy,” Trapper accuses, and leans across to give Hawkeye a chaste peck, mindful of the fact he hadn't wanted to get all riled up earlier. And not sure if he can control himself if he tries for more. “I'll see what I can do.”
Trapper had made petit fours for one of their dinner parties with Charles and Hawkeye will not stop waxing rhapsodic about them. They're a pain in the ass to make, though, and Trapper only breaks them out for special occasions. So it doesn't hurt to sweeten the pot, so to speak.
“I might be willing to reconsider my stance on moving to Antarctica if you do,” Hawkeye says with a wink.
“Good to know you accept bribes, Hawk. Or maybe it's me that's accepting a bribe,” Trapper says with a grin. “But even if we don't have to go as far as Antarctica, we could still think about getting out of the city for a while. Head up the coast for some R&R.”
He's been thinking about taking some vacation time, and Hawkeye's almost done with the journal article he and Charles are writing, so it shouldn't be too difficult to pry him away from the hospital. They could head up to New Hampshire or Maine easily enough on the train. Spend a week or two swimming in the cold ocean and eating fresh crab and lobster boiled over a fire right there on the beach.
Trapper's family had never done it when he was growing up, sticking to the public beaches at the end of the trolley lines. But some families he'd known rented cottages on the shore to let their kids splash in the waves without a million other people around. And everyone he'd gone to college with had summered on The Cape or at The Vineyard.
“Some R&R sounds nice,” Hawkeye agrees.
“Want to head up to Maine for a couple weeks in August? You can show me around.” Trapper leers. “I'm sure you know of a few private little spots where we could relax.”
And it's true. Hawkeye's “entertained” a fair number of people in and around Crabapple Cove. And there are a few sandbars and barren little islands where you can conceivably get stuck for a night without any of the local busybodies saying anything. And showing up back in town rumpled and sandy is only to be expected.
But all that feels like half a lifetime ago. Fooling around in uncomfortable haylofts and fucking on rocky shingle has sort of lost its appeal, if it ever had much.
Hawkeye's used to comfort now, if not a little decadence. He's used to soft mattresses and breakfast in bed, if Trapper's feeling particularly doting. Used to being pampered, to being spoiled. And he doesn't want to give that up just to relive a few half-remembered flings.
“None of the places I know are places I'd want to take a classy dame like you. You deserve better, and frankly, so do I.”
“All right,” Trapper says easily, “I'll book us a room at the Ritz Carlton. Or whatever the New Hampshire equivalent is.”
That'll probably mean a conversation with Charles, he'd know classy vacation rentals better than anyone. Hell, his family probably owns at least two summer getaways. It might take a dinner party in a sultry little cocktail number to get advice off of him, but Trapper's done worse things to get laid, and he'll have to clear their little vacation with Charles anyway.
Might as well kill two birds with one stone.
“It'll be nice to have a vacation all by ourselves,” Trapper continues. “A secluded cottage, a private beach. I bet Dr. and Mrs. Pierce could have a real nice week together up the shore.”
Mrs. Pierce?
It's a title Hawkeye didn't think anyone would ever hold, even for a joke. But apparently it's one Trapper wants. And Hawkeye wants to let him have it. At least for as long as their little vacation from work and Boston and reality lasts.
“Is that so?” Hawkeye asks, his chin resting in his hand, spoon artfully dangling from the other. He's looking up at Trapper with wide, shining eyes.
That makes him shiver, almost as much as him calling himself Hawkeye's wife does.
He wishes they were at that beachside cottage now. A place with total privacy. A cool sea breeze through the open windows of their bedroom as they move from sleeping to waking. Long days with no other obligations than each other, and no real reason to leave the bed.
Trapper leans in. “Yeah. I think so.”
Hawkeye closes the distance and kisses him. His mouth is cold and sweet as Trapper's tongue probes inside, all thoughts of keeping things slow gone from his mind. Everything's gone from his mind, except for the way Hawkeye's dropped his spoon, dots of ice cream splattering against the table, and his hand is now gripping the scruff of Trapper's neck tight enough he'll probably have scratches from Hawkeye's nails.
It feels good. Not as good as the way Hawkeye pushing into his mouth like he'll die if he doesn't feels, but still pretty damn good.
When Hawkeye'd kissed Trapper, he'd meant for it to be chaste – well, relatively chaste. But then Trapper'd pushed. Deepened the kiss. Pressed inside Hawkeye's mouth, deep and relentless, and suddenly Hawkeye'd been gripping him by the back of the neck and pressing back.
The table's cutting into his stomach and he's going to get a crick in his neck, but Hawkeye can't make himself pull away.
It's good and deep and sweet and Hawkeye's practically crawling on top of the table to get closer to him.
Trapper stands and pulls him up from his seat and into his arms. They kiss like that, deeper and hungrier, until, “You gotta stop, Hawk, or else I won't be responsible for my actions.”
He's hard against Hawkeye's hip, erection hot through the layers of silk. And Hawkeye won't say he's unaffected either.
Trapper's thumbs smooth down Hawkeye's biceps and he shivers, even though he feels like he's boiling over. It's too much. It's not enough.
“Would it be so bad if you didn't stop?”
“Hawk...” Trapper clutches at him and he sounds broken. “Please... Don't tease me.”
His hips grind forward involuntarily, desperately.
“No tease, Trapper. I'll let you have what you want.”
Though maybe not the way Trapper wants it.
Hawkeye smiles gently and leads him over to the living room. He pushes him down on the couch and Trapper lets him.
He runs a hand down Trapper's chest and Trapper tilts his head back in a moan.
His chest is tan and toned and Hawkeye rips the robe open to get better access. His hands, his mouth, map out the breadth of his shoulders, the nubs of his nipples as they harden, the lean muscle of his stomach, all the way down to Trapper's lap.
Hawkeye's on his knees between Trapper's thighs, as Trapper tries and fails to look like he's not already unraveling at the seams. He runs a hand through Hawkeye's hair, and that helps. The strands are still damp from the shower, and long enough for Trapper to twine his fingers in.
“You need another haircut, Hawk.” It comes out more of a gasp than he'd like.
“Later,” Hawkeye says, and pushes aside the flimsy robe that's barely covering him.
Trapper gasps as the cool silk slides over his fevered skin. As Hawkeye's breath ghosts over the head of his cock.
His hips buck and Hawkeye backs off.
“I still don't want to have anything to do with sex this morning, especially after I went to all the trouble of getting clean.” Hawkeye leans back on his arms, the picture of nonchalance even with his own cock sticking out hard and obvious under the light silk of his robe. “So you're just going to have to take care of yourself Trap.”
Trapper whimpers. Grips the arm of the couch and digs his fingers into the couch cushions.
The robe slips further off his shoulders, spreads wider, revealing everything.
He feels so exposed like this. On display. His dick twitches and he can feel the way Hawkeye's gaze lingers. It's heavy, almost like a physical touch.
Almost, but not quite.
Trapper unclenches his fingers, takes his hand off the arm of the sofa. He spits in his palm and wraps his hand around his big, hard cock. His back arches and his hips buck into his touch. His entire body is alight.
Fuck.
He looks so good. Hawkeye's own thighs spread open where he's sprawled on the floor. His own cock hard but untouched, a pleasurable ache. Desire all the sweeter for being unfulfilled. Or for being given over to Trapper, fulfilled by Trapper, while Hawkeye simply watches.
He's always was an exhibitionist, a showman. But he's enjoying being a voyeur as well.
Trapper's an Adonis in the throws of pleasure. A golden god of hedonism and self-love. Narcissus, but so wrapped up in his own desires, he's clearly unaware of just how delicious he looks.
Masculine, in this light. All hard angles and thick cock. But softened by the pink silk, the vulnerable place under his jaw bared as his head is thrown back in ecstasy.
Hawkeye settles further back on his elbows and looks.
Trapper's hips and arm and whole body strains as he works his tight fist over his hard cock. His eyes are half-closed in pleasure but he still glimpses Hawkeye sprawled indolently on the rug in front of him from underneath his eyelashes. His pale, soft thighs so different from the lean muscle of his own, hard and straining as he chases release.
A greyhound panting after the lure, his teeth are bared.
He wants to sink into Hawkeye's softness. He wants to chase him, to mount him, to push his hard cock between those soft thighs. To fuck him hard and sink his teeth into the tender flesh of his shoulder. He wants to mark him with his teeth and lick the blood away after.
He wants to devour, lean and hungry the way Hawkeye is soft and spoiled. But Hawkeye won't let him. He has to devour himself instead.
Trapper's fist clenches around the hardness of his cock, wrings the head of it harshly. He cums all over himself and his hand.
Trapper strains, finishes, and then slumps forward, a broken man. Hawkeye gets off the floor, and oof, he's not as young as he used to be. His arousal has faded with Trapper's own orgasm and now, now he can stand to touch without feeling like he'll turn to ash.
He tilts Trapper's chin so he can see his glazed, far-away eyes and cups the cheek next to his red, panting mouth. “You were so good for me, Trapper. So good.”
Trapper takes a deep breath, and calms. Turns his head into Hawkeye's palm and kisses him there. He breathes.
Then Trapper sits up, wipes his hands on his thighs with a stinging slap. Says, “Well, I guess I better go take a shower now. I'll cut your hair after, if you want.”
I Travel Troubled Oceans - Chapter 27: In Which Insignificant, Minor Characters Say Their Piece
Her plans are progressing quite well, thank you very much.
In all honesty, they are progressing further than she had ever dared imagine. Further than she had ever dared dream when she was just a titchy gutter snipe, just a corner girl standing out in the cold and the rain and the stifling smoggy heat of summer. Making rent in the backs of luxury cars or in mid-scale hotels that offered bland anonymity to mid-tier office workers looking for something, anything that would let them feel big and powerful and real.
The anonymity of those beige walls mirrored the anonymity she'd worn like a second skin. Becoming anyone, anything her clients' hearts desired until she would look in the mirror at the end of a night or the start of a workday and not see anyone at all. Just the curve of an eyelash as she applied mascara, the dip of the upper lip as she applied scandalously red lipstick, the sort her mother'd always said was trashy until she wasn't around to say anything at all.
All her life, she's been fighting against that anonymity, the sucking terrible bog of the street corners that wants to pull you in, pull you under. Make you into someone else. Make you disappear – like magic. Like the mundane reality of a John going too far, or of a corner girl taking one trip on the H-train too many.
All her life, she's wanted to be someone. Be herself, maybe, instead of Sarah or Cindy or whatever name she gives out to whichever “Mr. Smith” is taking her out for a spin.
She wants to be herself but better. More. She wants to be seen and she wants whoever sees her to be captivated. To love her, to want her. Not Cindy or Sarah. Her. Idelle.
She wants someone to want to put her on center stage, first in his life instead of an afterthought, a fun hour to be pulled out whenever there's time for it and then be put away when it's inconvenient. Out of sight, out of mind.
She wants to be seen.
It's why she'd agreed to Max's plan, even though Jack Rackham'd been the one actually doll her up, Max had been the one to pick her. The one to want to put her on that stage, dressed in designer togs, with the chance to whore herself out to some important government type. To be his mistress and his confidant and his wife.
Agreeing to her mad plan had been a desperate effort to wrest something, something from the nothing she'd been able to achieve with her life so far.
And her plans are progressing quite well, thank you very much. Even if they are not, strictly speaking, her plans.
Max is the thread running through her life, now, instead of the corner. Max and Jack and their little plan to, oh, take over half of London.
She goes along with the plan because, well, what other choice does she have? This is her best chance at being someone, meaning something to the wider world.
It means she gets to have her husband.
Idelle has the councilor wrapped neatly around her ring finger. And there's even talk of a baby in the future, an event planned by Max with all the detail and precision of a military stratagem. After all, timing is everything and that maxim holds true for actions both foreign and domestic.
But through it all, despite it all, Idelle loves him. And she'd do anything, anything to keep him.
Even if it means keeping him in the dark.
They talk about how we are safe in the shadows. They talk about how we are powerful in our invisibility.
And I ask you. What is safety without freedom? What is safety without choice?
The freedom to walk in daylight. The freedom to choose our own way, our own lives.
What choice do we have now? What freedom?
They have us working in the shadows. Working for them. As maids, as dishwashers and janitors. As hotel staff and cooks and as servants in their homes.
They have us hidden away, making clothes and finery for the rich people – the same rich people they say they want to destroy. The same rich people they walk among. While we are hidden in shadows.
They say there is no other choice. They say work the jobs we give you or starve. They say stay quiet in the shadows or be destroyed.
I ask all of you. Where is the safety in that? To be held on a knife's edge. Where is the power? To be kept as long as we are useful, as long as we are obedient.
Simply because we are paid, then we are powerful? Simply because we have jobs graciously given to us by a benevolent master, then we are free?
We are not dogs begging for scraps! We are not slaves beholden to a benevolent master for every scrap of kindness he gives us! That man may die. That man may tire of his benevolence! Then where will we be?
Tied to a man, indebted to a man, enslaved to a man who is no better than the hundreds, the thousands of other men who would own us and use us and starve us and kill us.
And even if he remains benevolent, what is one man against the hundreds and thousands of men who have no desire for benevolence? What can one man do against thousands?
I ask all of you. Is that safety? Is it safety that we are spared their violence as long as we are spared their notice?
There are thousands upon thousands of men with no interest in benevolence. Can we escape their notice forever? Can we live forever like worms in the ground, out of sight, away from harm?
Perhaps.
But I say to all of you.
As long as we stay in the shadows. As long as we stay complacent and grateful for the little we have been given, the little we have been allowed, the world will not change! As long as we serve a master and not ourselves! As long as we refuse to change the world, to topple the mighty from their thrones and raise up the ones like us who live in shadows, the world will not change!
And we will never be able to walk freely in the light.
I Travel Troubled Oceans - Chapter 28: In Which Jack Cons Another One and Eme Runs Essentially the Entire Enterprise
Jack's at another fucking cocktail party, just one of the innumerable he's forced to attend in pursuit of a mark. This particular cocktail party doesn't even do him the courtesy of being novel. It's hosted at yet another swanky hotel, hosted by yet another nouveau rich hedge fund manager. They all tend to blend together, the hotel bars and the sharks in suits, with their Rolexes on their wrists and blood in their eyes and no warmth in their perfect pearly smiles.
It gets rather exhausting trying to tell them apart, but the sell is all in the details so Jack's made himself flash cards and always makes sure to brush up on any potential marks – and their friends, enemies, and grandmothers – ahead of any little soiree he may encounter them at. It's the personal touch, after all, that makes all the difference.
This particular mark is special in that his girlfriend of the hour (fiance to hear her talk, cheap slag if you listen to his golfing buddies, investment firm frenemies, and old college chums, which may be why they're keeping the engagement quiet despite the size of the rock on her twiggy little finger) she's interested in fashion. Oh, every bint who's go the money to be thin and tan and blond has aspirations of modeling. But this one, this one fancies herself the next big runway star.
What's good news for Jack (what makes her different from every other girl like her) is that she's reasonably wealthy and very, very connected in her own right. Hedge fund arseholes are thick on the ground and Jack doesn't really need to con (to push, to sell his glimmering golden dream to) every single investor he comes across. Sure, Jack's selling this one (and any of his friends who happen to overhear Jack's pitch and look like they might be easy enough to hook over the course of canapes and cocktail waitresses) Jack's selling this lot a real estate venture. Condos along the Thames built over the rotting carcasses of old warehouses. Gilt and glamour now where there used to be commerce and the broken backs of longshoremen. Anyway, he's got the hedge fund managers sufficiently on the hook, their drunken promises signed on bar napkins along with their souls, and his sights are turned elsewhere.
Because nouveau rich investment bankers looking to make a quick million might be a dime a dozen, but nouveau rich investment bankers engaged to young women with aspirations of becoming an international supermodel and ties to moldering old men with titles, estates, and sexual harassment scandals they'd quite like to move overseas to avoid (another potential reason they're keeping the engagement quiet. They're all waiting for the scandal to die down. For their engagement announcement to appear in the papers and not have a tabloid sheet running an expose on dear old dad right next to it.) Marks like that are considerably more rare. And considerably more valuable.
Jack's got some rich new bitch he's scamming which means Anne's gotta get all dolled up in her little PA outfit and pretend to be harmless as Jack gives the grand tour. His workshop at the house, where Charles has been draped artfully over a stupid little sofa. Christine, who does all the actual work. Then the champagne and blow Range Rover ride over to Jack's actual workshop. The one where all the clothes actually get made.
Jack's a success now. He don't have to bother with anything more than mocking up a few ideas that might end up on the runway in muslin cloth for Christine to actually design and the few dozen people Eme found to actually make. That and showing useless rich bitches like this one around.
Sure, Jack might attach a ruffle or sew on a sequin the night before a fashion show. But he's just the front man. The pusher. He doesn't actually make the product. Not when they're pumping out a dozen designer spa robes a fortnight and what feels like hundreds and hundreds of stupid little cushions and scarves and other useless, pretty shite.
Shite Jack's made his bread and butter just as sure as he'd made powder his bread and butter after taking over from Charles. Found what works and stuck with it, has Jack. And just like with powder, they're fighting to keep up with demand.
Oh, couture's all well and good. It gets Jack's name out there. Makes him someone famous. Someone desirable. Someone others want their names associated with. But the number of people who actually care about high fashion is relatively small.
Making it in that world opens doors to the upper echelons of society but it doesn't make you a household name. Doesn't get your plush spa robes (with tasteful monogram logo) into the bathrooms of everyone making north of six figures. Or those that want others to think they do.
It doesn't get high society girls throwing themselves all over you in the hopes you'll see then, notice them, if just for a moment. Take them along with you to the world of elegance and glamour you've created yourself to embody. A world they can only dream of.
Because that's the secret everyone knows and no one talks about. The noble. The titled. The silver spoon set nestled in their velvet drawers. There's rot underneath the floorboards of their stately manor homes. There's mildew and cobwebs and rot.
That's why, despite their titles and their lineage and their connections, they need the new money, the new blood. People like Jack and the investment bankers and the American industrial revolution millionaires. New money wants prestige. And the old families need new money, now the agrarian dream's long, long past.
So Jack shows her (woos her with, wows her with) all the shining cutting edge technology that makes dreams (Jack's dreams, her dreams) into reality. And he very carefully doesn't show her the people (Eme's people) who actually make it all happen.
Oh, he's not running a sweat shop. Oh God no. He's a boutique couture house. A small business. Made in Britain. They're paid a fair wage (he's got other avenues of exploitation, no need to exploit his seamstresses) and they don't even really answer to him.
He's just the front for Max, after all. She's the one who's really in charge.
Not that the distinction, between sweatshop labor and honest commerce, would matter to his guest. The diamonds of the first water, the silver spoon set, they've never cared about how the sausage of Empire is actually made. They just turn the handle of the meat grinder from an ocean, a continent, away. Why should they care about the screaming in the slaughterhouse?
Why would they start caring now?
It's better to leave the actual work to the shadows and for Jack to set himself up as a gleaming, shining, gilded beacon of progress and luxury and everything she wants, needs, to see him (and by extension herself) as.
We have power, she tells the young bucks, the hotheaded, the ones with fire in their veins and a desire to take on the whole world all by themselves. To die screaming.
It might not be the power you are used to, she says. The power you hear about, dream about. The power of money and titles. The loud sort of power that sounds in councilor's chambers and company boardrooms. But we have power.
It is a quiet power. The power of shadows and invisibility. The power to go unnoticed in those councilor's chambers, those CEO's boardrooms. The power to be unremarkable and unremarked upon amongst those with with a louder power. The power to listen. To watch. To know.
It is a power that has been chained, harnessed, used to run empires. It is a power that can bring those empires to a dead stop when we all pull together against the yoke. When all of us who have been made into cogs decide at once to stop our motion. When we all stand up and say “We will not move! We will not be made to move by you!” and then the entire machine is forced to halt.
And we should not give that sort of power up for foolish dreams of war and blood and revenge. We should not give it up just to die screaming.
But she knows, deep in her heart that there are those who will not listen. Who will not be content with shadows. And her heart. She is so filled with fear for them. The ones who will die screaming.
Street's been a bit quiet lately. Perhaps too quiet.
S'pose it makes sense, really. Two of the biggest players just wiped each other out. Still, you'd think someone'd try and step into the space at the top. The big chair. The penthouse apartment, as it were.
Hell, that Vane guy we did a couple years back used to be a pretty big player.
But he's been quiet as a churchmouse since he got out. No love lost between him and Flint either, that's for damn sure. S'pose that's why we ain't heard from him in a while. Never would've gotten involved in the mess last summer. Never would've stuck out his neck for either crew – even without knowing it was old Lord Hamilton done him in.
Still can't believe Lord fucking Hamilton went down. Done in by his own upstart son.
Ungrateful bastard.
Course, upstairs kept it all quiet as they could. Reflects badly on the force and all that. But there's only so quiet you can keep it when there's foreign investors involved. Russian foreign investors.
The global economy. What a load of shite. Ought to keep things closer to home, that's my opinion. Ought to reward hardworking British sons instead of foreign muck.
Now you've got the Russians in here. The Chinese. On British soil. The fucking nerve.
Almost enough to put you off the take.
Now, Hamilton had been a proper gangster. A real Boss. A good English lad.
We need someone like him now, God knows. Or like that Vane lad. Not a lot of brains to him, though. If he'd tried for it, we'd know. The streets'd be running in blood. Instead they're like a fucking ghost town. And I'm the sheriff. Yeah – the Lone fucking Ranger.
'Cept I ain't allowed to hunt any of them fucking Injuns down.
No, just gotta let 'em take over. Let 'em run the place, like.
It ain't natural.
Street's been a bit quiet lately. Perhaps too quiet.
To a seasoned detective like myself, quiet spells trouble. Quiet is the calm before the storm – yeah, that's good, that. And there's a storm coming to London. A storm of justice.
Yeah. I quite like that. Got a real ring to it. Like from a movie trailer. Maybe I oughtta try for a screenplay. Nah, memoir first.
There's one thing that's fundamentally true about Amos Burton.
Amos Burton is dependable.
Amos Burton is steady.
Give Amos Burton a job and Amos Burton'll do it. Regardless of how dirty the job is. How many hours it takes. How much blood he's gotta spill.
Amos Burton is steady as a rock.
Amos Burton is wavering.
He's been drunk pretty much since the moment he stepped off the Roci. Fucked or been fucked by half a dozen prostitutes. Not much sleep over the past couple of days, like the shore leaves he used'ta take back when he crewed ice haulers. The real long deep Belt runs where you don't see no one not crew for months sometimes. The kinda runs you gotta scrub from your brain to be idiot enough to sign back on at the end of a couple days shore leave instead'a disappearing down the station tunnels like the rat you were and are and always will be.
Not a lotta shore leaves like that on the Roci though. Sure, he'll drink and fuck and have a hell of a time, being unattached to anyone or anything except Boss. And later Prax. And, even later, Cap.
But it's always one thing after another on that ship. No time to get truly wasted, the way he is now. Not with death staring them down on every fucking mission – bigger death than just losing out between gravity and a big old hunk 'a space rock.
Caught between a rock and a hard place. Hah.
Well right now the rocks the size of a fucking planet and the hard place is a whole army out for their blood specifically. Anybody'd get fucking drunk. Fuck and get fucked. Scrub the whole fucking situation outta their brains for as long as possible.
Anyone'd waver.
Not like Holden gives a shit what Amos or the rest of the crew get up to over shore leave anyway, all holed up with Chrissy and the UN bigwigs and the Duster bigwigs who maybe ain't trying to kill them anymore. And that's when he ain't holed up with Naomi. Doing his own kinda forgetting.
Cuz Cap's been made a general, unofficial but still an order.
Please! Save us, just one more fucking time.
So Cap's stuck trying to win a war in a playground they – the Earthers and the Dusters, the Innaloada - don't control. For the first time in history, maybe. This protomolecule's got their nice little forever war all fucked up and none of them know what to do about it. What to do about a real threat from the Belt.
Amos knows you kick a dog enough times, that bitch'll bite. That's one thing he learned growing up on the street.
Another is: don't fucking let some fucking smooth talker talk you into dying for him. Or a naive fucking idealist, though those are fucking thin on the ground in Baltimore and out here.
Those two things put together, Amos wonders if maybe it's worth getting killed over, following a man who'd lied into cleaning up other people's mistakes. Cuz the Belter bossmang they got nominally on their side's right. Inaros was fucking inevitable. And maybe it ain't Amos's fucking problem.
Amos slips out of the arms of his latest prostitute. He ain't normally the cuddling type and all it's doing is making him introspective.
Nothing much good ever comes of Amos introspecting.
He heads to the bar for another drink and there's Bobbie having one herself. “Chrissy finally let you off her leash?” he wants to snarl. But he doesn't. Cuz maybe he can understand Bobbie's unwavering loyalty to the person who'd saved her. Taken her outta a shit situation and pointed her in the direction she can do some good.
She gives Amos shit for how fucked up he is, but he ends up spilling his guts to her anyway. She might be one of the few people who can understand – and she's the one who's got booze.
And she does help him get his head on straight again, despite the making fun. Cuz she's right. Even though Amos ain't a soldier. Even though Naomi ain't his Boss no more. Even though Cap can be annoyingly idealistic still, even after all he's seen and done. All the choices of life and death he'd made. Still that kid tilting at fucking windmills.
And then, the other side of the coin, there's Chrissy's ruthless pragmatism. She's a snake, just like Inaros, killing and torturing and then smiling for the fucking cameras. That's the part Amos doesn't understand. He's killed. He's tortured. But he ain't ever lied about who he is or what he's doing.
Still, sometimes all you got is the people beside you, good or bad or worse. And he ain't gonna be the one to let 'em down.
Estuary
Cap quits his job as protector of the Belt about five minutes after it's handed to him, leaving the Belter bossmang who'd saved their collective asses during the whole Inaros fuck-up in charge. And then he and Naomi promptly fuck off for some kinda vacation. They don't call it a honeymoon, but Amos figures that's what it is.
Bobbie's still following Chrissy around. Trying to pick up the pieces after Inaros, maybe. More likely trying to get some measure of control over the Belt and the Ring and the person in charge of all of it, now that it ain't Holden.
And Alex is dead. Not doing much but floating forever in the black, tethered to some chunk of rock way out in the Belt. A rockhopper's grave.
The Dusters are going to give him a state funeral. An empty coffin, a memorial plaque. Martian and MCRN flags. Salutes. The whole fucking deal.
They all got invited, the Roci crew plus Bobbie and what's left of the Earther government. Cap and Naomi may even go, but Amos knows where to find Alex if he ever wants to see him. The coordinates etched under his name on the Roci's salvage plaque, like they'll all get someday. No point in watching them bury an empty coffin. (Even if Alex hadn't been floating in the furthest reaches of the Belt, it'd be an empty coffin, body given up to the recyclers. When you're terraforming red dirt, every little bit of organic helps. Doesn't matter if you're a general or a grunt, everyone composts the same.)
And speaking of generals, Amos doesn't see any point in listening to people who barely knew Alex, people who'd never worked with him, never listened to his stories of back home and that awful cowboy music stuck in a tin can together. No reason to listen to all the top brass talk about how perfect, how much a hero he'd been when Amos knows he'd been anything but.
He was the same as the rest of them. Same as Amos and Holden and Naomi and Bobbie and Peaches. Same as everyone on the Cant and the hundred other ice haulers and rock hoppers and rustbucket freighters that litter the Belt. Just a bunch of fuck ups looking to leave their past down the well, doing the best they can to survive for one more day.
So by the time the reporter lady tracks him down and starts hitting on him and asking about Peaches in the same fucking breath, Amos figures he's overstayed his welcome on Earth.
He goes up the well to Luna and hops a short-haul freighter full of wildly celebrating Earthers too drunk on hooch and the news that the war's finally over to realize who he is and that he ain't supposed to be part of their crew. (He does a better job manning the engine room than the guy he'd found passed out on the docks, so he don't feel bad about it.) And he travels with them the thirteen hours to Ganymede and then he's standing on Prax's doorstep with nothing but his duffel bag and a present he'd got for Mei way back on one of their stops on Tycho, back before it was a war zone.
“Sorry to show up unannounced,” Amos says even though he ain't. “But I'm on the run from that nosy reporter lady. You mind harboring a fugitive?”
“Wouldn't be the first time,” Prax says, smiling as he holds the door open.
And Amos has question about that. But as soon as he steps inside, Mei's crashing into his legs, hugging him while yelling out of what seems to be pure excitement. Not the worst welcome he's ever got.
Prax apologizes but Amos waves him off. Takes Mei's tiny hand and lets her drag him around, showing him every room of the tiny four-room apartment and then all of her toys and pictures of all of her friends from school. And she tells him all about what she's been learning (air recycling, she's been learning about how air recycling works and what to do if there's an emergency, complete with proving how long she can hold her breath while Amos looks suitably impressed.)
Prax says, “Mei, why don't you show Amos the plants you've been growing” and looks relieved when she bounces off to her room to go get them.
“I grew these all by myself,” she says proudly. Amos doesn't know what any of them are, but the tender green shoots poking up out of brown dirt reach up and out in low-g like they're reaching out to him. And Mei explains that her dad made an irrigation system for the plants, showing it to Amos proud like she did it herself. And Amos sits on the floor while she points at all the intricate workings with her small hands. It's a good job. Prax obviously put a lot of love and care into it.
Good.
And then Prax calls them in for supper and Mei springs up, dragging Amos out to the table where he sits with Prax at one elbow and Mei at the other, feeling a little squished since the rooms and the furniture and the whole apartment are all made for the tall, skinny space-formed Belter bodies, not big broad gravity-formed Earthers – and Amos is bigger and broader than most. He's never been inside a real house before, he realizes. All his stops on the belt have been brothels or seedy hotels. Not places people actually live.
They sit like that, all squished together at the tiny table, eating red kibble so spicy it makes his eyes water and his nose run and Mei asks him, in a serious, wide-eyed little kid way, if he's dying.
Amos has almost died a lot. No one takes it as serious as Mei does his watering up from the approximately five pounds of dried chili Prax must have put in the food.
“No,” he gasps out around the snot and the burning-numb tongue. “No, I'm not dying.”
He'd thought Naomi's food was spicy. She must have been taking it easy on all of them.
“I'll cook something milder next time,” Prax promises. And he's laughing at Amos, secretly, but not in a mean way.
And then he explains to Mei that not everyone eats the same foods. Which leads to a discussion about Earther food (not that Amos has much experience with it, born in the slums and then putting all that behind him, escaping up the well as soon as he could) but he tells about all the foods Cap used to wax poetic about, home grown vegetables and venison and home made bread. And about all the Duster foods Alex used to make, lasagna and curry and a surprising amount of Tex Mex. Or maybe it's not that surprising given the Dusters's collective fetishization of everything Texas. The cradle of space travel forever immortalized in an entire planet of people with manufactured drawls.
Mei says she's got a friend from Ceres who's family keeps bugs to eat. She's seen them in their terrarium, crickets hopping and climbing over the rotten log full of grubs. All of them, every single one, named Thom.
“Not as much soy protein in deep space,” Prax comments. “Not without importing it, anyway. The Inner governors always want parks and trees for their greenspaces. Something aesthetic rather than practical.” He sounds disapproving.
Amos grunts. Seems stupid to have parks when people are starving. Also seems stupid to have all your food in one place that can get wiped out by some madman with stealth tech and a protomolecule.
But Prax is working to fix that, Amos finds out as they clear the table. All those plants he'd told Chrissy about were originally meant to go to Tycho and Ceres and as many stations as could be rigged to grow them.
“You're going to turn us all into farmers,” Amos says. Belters, Dusters, and Earthers. Swords into plowshares. He isn't sure where that leaves someone like him.
“Well, if you want a head start,” Prax says, “we're always looking for help in the fields.”
Which is how Amos ends up running irrigation in one of the fields that's been rebuilt (the dome repaired, the mirrors back in orbit) but not replanted.
It's good work and it's – well, it's not easy work, the lines are a mess and he has to dig through half destroyed machinery and rubble to even get to the fucking reservoir and pump, half destroyed itself. But it's work Amos can do. He's run enough hydraulic tubing in his life. Not to mention all the smaller scale irrigation for the Prax panels.
They walk to Mei's school to pick her up and Amos tells him how well the Prax panels work and how other ships who saw them in the documentary are even copying them now. How everyone knows it was Prax – Amos's best friend in the whole world – who'd invented them. (They'd kept that part in, but not the part where Amos'd told the documentary guy to stop hitting on him and then broke his camera again. Or the part where the documentary guy'd turned out to be some kinda hitman.)
Prax smiles at that. “No wonder they cut that part. It doesn't exactly paint them in the best light, does it?”
And then he says. “I watched the documentary. And I appreciate you mentioning me, but you – Amos, you took what I said and made changes and figured out what did and didn't work. They're as much your invention as mine.”
“Why?”
“Hmm?”
“Why'd you watch that fucking godawful documentary?”
Prax laughs, kinda rueful. “I... I wanted to see what you and the rest of the crew of the Rocinante were up to. You all got turned into, I don't know. Heroes. Public figures. I guess I just wanted to know the truth.”
“Not sure if that's what it was. It was...” Intrusive. “Embarrassing.”
“You were certainly...”
“Fucking unhappy to be there?”
“I was going to say hounded incessantly.”
Yeah, by two horny fucks weeks out from any other lay except moping Holden or too pushy Alex.
And then there's the fact they were really trying to dig information outta him. Another reason he shouldn't indulge in pillow talk. Not with people he doesn't trust.
Amos shrugs. “I guess I never gave 'em what they wanted.”
Prax “hmmms” thoughtfully and Amos doesn't know what that means, but they're at Mei's school now and she comes barreling out to slam into Amos's legs. He picks her up and swings her around like a ship in orbit, Mei shrieking in wildness and delight and safety.
They walk home together, Mei swinging between Amos and Prax's hands. She tells them all about her day at school and Amos talks to her about irrigation and planting and Prax interjects with corrections. And they get home and Prax and Amos take turns washing the grit and dirt off in the tiny bathroom. When Amos emerges, Prax is just putting food on the table – less eyewateringly spicy, even from a distance – and they sit and eat.
After, they spend the time before Mei goes to bed watching some Belter reality show about, nearest Amos can tell, some kind of ship salvage competition. It's interesting and technical enough Amos picks up a few tricks that might come in handy if the Roci's ever really in the shit. And Mei asks Amos about why someone's doing something some way or why it blew up in their face. She's obviously invested in this shit, even has a favorite competitor – a Belter with bright blue braids that float out in a halo around their head in zero-G and tattoos over every inch of their uncovered skin. Maybe Mei'll be an engineer someday, if she doesn't become a botanist.
She'll be some kinda scientist, Amos figures. Got about five people's worth of curiosity about how the world works and don't trust answers just cuz an adult gave 'em to her. He figures she'll spend her whole life trying to figure out what's broken and how to put it back together.
Prax spends the evening reading something probably nerdy and almost definitely about plants on his handheld and absently pets at Mei's hair while she watches the show. Amos thinks whatever she ends up doing, she's going to have someone in her corner and that makes Amos gladder about the whole trip to Io and Dr. Strickland and the shit with the protomolecule than he ever thought he'd be.
Eventually, Mei goes to bed. It takes three attempts and a lot of chatter to Amos through the door and at least one bedtime story, but she's asleep and Prax returns to reading. With Mei gone, he's sitting close enough to Amos he can feel their arms brush as Prax scrolls through whatever news feed or article he's reading.
Amos thinks about the last time he and Prax were this close, this alone together. Back on the Roci, in the med bay where Amos stripped as far as (in)decency allowed for a bullet in his fucking shoulder. Ok, he had a cut on his hip, too. But there was no reason to parade around with his dick practically hanging out for as long as he did. No reason other than wanting to fuck, anyway. He was as obvious as he could be without coming right out and asking.
But Prax either didn't pick up on it (Amos figures having a missing daughter might make you kinda single minded) or he wasn't interested.
Still, Amos can't help imagining being even more obvious here, where there's less chance of interruption and much, much less chance of life-threatening emergencies. Imagines getting on his knees, looking up at Prax from behind heavy lashes in a way he knows makes him look coquettish and irresistible. Imagines Prax looking startled for a moment before throwing his reading to the side and working his fingers into Amos's hair. It's not long enough for Prax to pull on, but he'd still be able to feel it. Maybe he'd use his grip to direct Amos back down to his cock. Maybe he'd use it to direct Amos up for a kiss.
He thinks kissing Prax would probably be pretty great. He's so focused, so determined. And Amos sure knows more than a few tricks to make it good for both of them.
Another benefit to getting to kiss Prax is that Amos can work his way down his body, unzipping his coveralls and pulling his shirt off. Revealing a body he's spent too much time thinking about, alone in his bunk on the Roci, one hand down his own coveralls. A body Amos only gets tiny glimpses of. Prax's corded forearms if he rolls up his sleeves in the heat of the dome. The knobs of Prax's spine as he bends over the fields.
Amos thinks about how Prax's chest must look. His legs. His dick. And how it would probably look even better with Amos kissing and sucking on it.
Prax shifts and it knocks him out of his daydream. There he is, introspecting again.
“Time for bed?” Prax asks and fuck does Amos wish it was in a different context.
He follows Prax into the tiny bedroom. Strips down to his underwear and climbs into Prax's tiny bunk. He curls around the knobby curve of Prax's spine, between him and the door. The low glow of the room's panel lets him see the sunburn on the back of Prax's neck, born from days and weeks and months of bending over fresh tilled fields under the magnificent light of the reflected sun.
Amos stares at the back of Prax's neck until he falls asleep.
Life continues on like that, falling into something like a routine over the weeks. Not the same routine as onboard the Roci in deep of space. The routine of equipment checklists and scheduled maintenance and the nearly weekly emergency that always seems to happen whenever James Holden is involved.
Here, Amos wakes up when Prax starts to stir. Brushes his teeth to the sound of Mei springing out of bed, ecstatic to start a new day. Amos eats breakfast sandwiched between Mei and Prax. He helps Mei pack up all her things for school while Prax makes them all lunch. He and Prax walk Mei to school. He and Prax walk to the fields under the blazing dome. Amos runs irrigation, fixes things. Plants new seeds. Takes tender new shoots from the germination trays and tucks them into the tilled fields. Wipes the rich earth from his hands and the knees of his coveralls. Walks with Prax back to Mei's school and then home. Washes up and then helps Prax cook dinner. Listens to Mei talk about her day, what she's learned. Reads or watches at least semi-educational television until Mei goes to bed. And then he and Prax sit up for a while longer, Prax reading, usually. Sometimes he puts on music, the heavy Belter electronica Amos wouldn't have pegged him as liking. Or they play cards, some variation on the Belter variation of Egyptian Rat Screw Naomi'd taught him way back on the Cant. But mostly, Prax reads in comfortable silence while Amos sits next to him, close enough their arms brush when Prax scrolls through a page.
And then they go to bed.
In all honesty, Amos is starting to wonder if Prax isn't some kinda monk. Or maybe asexual.
Nothing wrong with that, but Amos sure as hell isn't and sometimes, when he's got the pleasant ache of a long hard day of work settling into his bones and he's in the bathroom scrubbing all the grit and the compost and the smell of green and growing things off his skin, he'll snake a hand down and rub one out. He's always quiet, but it adds a good few minutes to his shower and if you're paying attention, you can tell.
If Prax is doing the same thing, he's being really, really discrete about it.
And then Amos wakes up to Prax's erection pressing into his hip.
Half asleep, Amos does what any guy getting rubbed up on by the guy he's been horny for for fucking weeks – years – would do. He grabs Prax's ass. Pulls him close and really gives him something to grind on.
Prax moans.
Amos feels his own cock start to rise. He presses closer, wraps around Prax like a horny octopus. And then, all the way awake, he remembers that an erection ain't necessarily an invitation and springs back, right out the side of the bunk.
He lands hard, even in low-G. He'd worry about waking Mei up but she's over at a friend's house for a birthday sleepover. All he's gotta feel bad about is disturbing the downstairs neighbors.
“You ok?”
Prax peers over the side of the bunk, still looking half asleep and rumpled and hard.
Amos wrenches his gaze away from Prax's crotch. “Yeah, fine. Sorry. Didn't mean to-”
“What if I don't want you to be sorry?”
“Huh?”
Prax gives Amos a once over that makes him very aware that he's still half hard himself. Half hard and getting harder.
“What if I don't want you to be sorry? What if I want you to get back up here and finish what you started?”
Amos sits up, cuz he's not stupid. But he's gotta know, “Why the change of heart?”
Prax just looks confused.
“I've been here for two weeks-”
“Two and a half.”
Amos grins. “Fine, two and a half weeks. And you gotta know I'd'a been up for it the whole time. Why now and not two and a half weeks ago?”
Prax shrugs Belter style. “I didn't know, not really. I mean, you showed up out of the blue, dodging horny reporters, and I thought maybe it was a booty call. But then you didn't say anything or do anything. Didn't even make a pass.”
Amos snorts. Kinda hard to proposition a guy when his kid's running around showing him soil samples.
“You just went right out to the fields and ran irrigation.” Prax continues, and his expression turns soft. “You just fit right into our lives like you'd always been there. And I thought maybe, after everything that happened, you just wanted some peace and quiet for a while. And I was fine with that. Even with you stripping half out of your coveralls and carrying big wrenches around all day.”
Amos laughs. “That's what does it for you, huh?” But he makes a note.
“Even with you almost completely naked in bed with me every single night, I understood.”
His eyes lock with Amos's and they're full of heat.
“And then you started looking at me like you wanted to eat me alive and I went back to thinking this was a booty call.”
Amos turns that same look on Prax now. Cuz that's a fucking invitation if he's ever heard one.
“This can be whatever the fuck you want it to be.”
Prax gives Amos another once over, gaze lingering on his cock. “I want this to be a booty call.”
“Sure thing, Doc. Whatever you want. Whenever you want.” And he really means that.
“I want.”
Now that he's got permission, Amos springs to his feet, light in low-G, and fast. Prax is all spread out on the narrow bunk and Amos crowds him into the back wall. Gets his hands back on Prax's bony ass. Pulls him close, with the rough friction of his erection on Amos's thigh. Grinds the two of them together until Prax is gasping into Amos's chest.
The difference in their heights means Amos is grinding against Prax's stomach, looking down at the top of his head. Maybe it should feel silly. Instead, it makes Amos feel protective. Like Prax is still his to protect.
Everything's lighter in low-G than it would be on Earth, that's why Earthers gotta work out so much in space. The heavy muscle and dense bone required by Earth gravity atrophies in space and if you ever want to go down the well again (or have a heart that pumps blood to the rest of your body) you gotta keep them strong.
Space-born Belters, hell, even Dusters, have lighter bone, less dense muscle. Bodies adapted for a low-G environment.
Prax is light in Amos's arms. Birdboned and fragile in comparison. (Not weak. Never weak.)
He clings to Amos's shoulder blades with strong fingers, one leg thrown over Amos's hip, the other braced against the mattress. He clings to Amos like some kinda vine. A jungle one, like from old movies. Thick around as your waist and choking.
Like maybe Amos doesn't need to protect him, anymore.
Like maybe he can protect himself. Or they can protect each other.
Amos pulls him even closer. Grinds him hard against the cradle of his hip. Presses Prax's face into the meat of his chest.
Prax bites him.
Amos's hips buck at the sting. “Fuck, Prax.”
“You mean that wasn't the plan?”
He's laughing, silent, joyous, and Amos can feel it in his own chest.
“Sounds like a pretty fuckin' good plan to me, Doc. How do you want it?”
Prax lets go of Amos's neck and pushes against his shoulder. He goes easy in low-G. And there's some fumbling to keep everybody's asses in the narrow bunk, but now Prax is on top of him, sitting on his dick.
Fuck but that's good too, even better than the grinding.
Prax looks down at Amos, imperious. “Kiss me.”
Amos grins at Prax and surges up, pushing him back on his lap a little. And then he's kissing him.
It's good, real good, the way Amos figured it would be. Prax is focused and intense and his mouth is hot and urgent against Amos's.
He opens for him.
Prax's tongue is in his mouth, seeking. Amos lets his tongue slide alongside. It's wet and it's rough and it's just not enough.
Amos pulls back with one last searing kiss. Plenty of time for making out with their clothes on later. Right now he's gotta do something about the erection straining for any kinda touch, his or Prax's.
Prax looks like he's gonna protest the loss, but Amos cups his jaw, kisses him for the last, last time, and says, “Wanna see you naked. Please?”
Prax nods.
Amos pulls Prax's shirt off and his hips buck at the sight of him.
He's pretty. Long and lean and covered in tattoos.
Fractals unfurl across his ribs, somewhere between mathematical precision and organic wildness.
Amos brushes a thumb across one of the tight spirals at the base of his ribcage, right over the floating ribs. One press of his thumb and they'd break, he'd be inside Prax, bloody and ruined.
Prax shivers under his hands.
Amos skims his hands light and ticklish up Prax's ribs to his chest and he arches into his touch.
Amos cups his jaw. Starts kissing him again, wet, open mouthed things. Lets his stubble scrape against Prax's neck as he kisses down his throat. Down his body like he's wanted to.
“Pashangwala!”
Amos grins up from where he'd licked a stripe right at the base of Prax's dick, cocky. “Like that?”
“Yes, you asshole!” Prax bucks up into Amos's grip on his hips. “Don't fucking stop now!”
Amos keeps his eyes on Prax but gets back to work.
More broad licks at the base of his cock. Teasing nips at the inside of his thighs. Everything but what he really wants.
He loves how surprisingly bossy Prax is in bed. Wants to see if he'll-
There it is. Prax's strong hands gripping Amos by the hair. It's gotten a little longer in his time on Ganymede and there's enough for Prax to really tug.
Enough for him to drag Amos up to the head of his cock.
“Fucking suck my dick you fucking dzhemang.”
Amos laughs and then he can't laugh anymore cuz he's got a mouthful of cock and fuck.
Prax looks down at him so warmly it makes Amos blink. And then Prax is fucking his face like he's trying to get his fucking money's worth.
Fuck.
It's all Amos can do not to choke and Goddamn. Prax's strong fingers tugging at his hair. Prax's slim hips slamming into him.
Amos's got a hand down his briefs and then he's got his hard cock out in the open and in his hand and it's so fucking good.
Prax looks down at that. Looks at how Amos is fucking into his hand just as hard as Prax is fucking into his mouth.
“Fuck, Amos.” Prax tilts his head back in a groan. “I'm not gonna last if you keep looking like that.”
He takes a breath and seems to get ahold of himself. (He's always been precise. Controlled.)
(Pedantic, some might say.)
He looks back at Amos. His hips slow.
The rhythm Prax is setting now is slow and methodical and deep. He's got Amos's hair in his strong grip and he's fucking himself in long, steady strokes. Amos moans.
He feels split open.
He feels like he's gonna want a condom soon.
Sex in space is inherently messy. All the bodily fluids don't follow the course of gravity. They float in fat droplets as large as their surface tension allows before the low gravity finally smashes them against walls or floors or people and they break.
And nobody wants jizz floating loose around their quarters.
So Prax's prolly got a stash of condoms somewhere close by, for those nights before Amos landed in his bed, interrupting whatever his normal routine was. Amos makes muffled sounds around the cock in his throat and pulls against Prax's grip, hoping he'll let him up for a minute so he can ask for one.
Prax pulls him off his dick. “Need something?”
“Getting close, Doc. Don't wanna make a mess.”
Prax looks down at him, considering. “Do you want it like this? Or do you want to cum while I ride your dick?”
“Fuck, Prax. Is that even a fucking question?”
Prax shrugs and it pulls at Amos's hair. “Some people like that kind of thing.”
“I like getting ridden,” Amos says.
“Ok,” Prax says and dismounts his face.
Amos swallows roughly around the absence of his dick and then stands to strip off his underwear.
He's feels pretty fucking good when Prax fumbles the lube and condoms he's pulling out of the bedside drawer.
Amos skims on the condom Prax hands to him. Prax watches and Amos gives himself a couple extra strokes, just to put on a good show.
Prax returns the favor by kneeling on the bunk, ass towards Amos, and starting to finger himself open.
Amos walks up behind him. Lets his erection bump against Prax's naked thighs, still marked with his teeth. “Wanna let me do that?”
His hands are a lot bigger than Prax's. He can reach deeper. Stretch him out better.
“Yeah,” Prax gasps, although it takes him a couple more thrusts before he actually takes his finger outta his asshole.
Amos lubes up a couple fingers while Prax puts his own condom on. Prolly a good call. He's looking pretty worked up, cock all spit shiny and straining.
He jerks back against the blunt finger Amos traces around his hole. Eager.
Amos puts a hand on his hip to keep him from just impaling himself. Goes slow. Just really eases into him.
“I'm not going to break,” Prax spits, head hanging between his clenched fists.
“I know.”
“Pashang fucking cock tease.”
Amos eases out just as slow as he'd eased in. Prax is tight and blood hot around him.
He's been in a lotta people's guts, in a lotta different contexts. It's always jarring just how hot people run inside.
“Gonna take my time at this.”
It might be their only chance. He hopes they'll fuck again (all the fucking time, ideally) but prolly not like this, not with how much time and privacy it requires. May as well enjoy it while it lasts.
He eases back in, just as slow.
Prax relaxes in a long roll of an exhale. The thumb gripping his hip moves to stroking gently.
“Good.”
“I'd be better if you'd give me another fucking finger,” Prax grumbles, but he ain't fighting Amos's pace no more.
Amos decides to reward him. He gives a little rub to Prax's insides on the way out. Adds a second finger on the slow, steady way in.
Keeps that up until Prax is melted into the bed.
Adds a third finger. That's a slower go, a wider stretch. But Prax just says “mmmm,” so Amos keeps going. Slow in. Slow out. Until Prax resembles a heap of jello more than a man.
Amos crooks his finger and hits Prax's prostate dead on.
Prax screams into the mattress but he doesn't clench up or start fucking himself back against Amos's hands.
Amos pulls out. “Think you're ready now.”
“Finally!” Prax's got his neck craned around to look at Amos and he looks intense bordering on pissed.
“Ain't patience supposed to be a virtue?”
“Not one that I've ever cared to practice.”
And Amos knows that ain't true. Prax is maybe the most patient guy he knows.
Likes to take the time to do things right. Takes his time with the plants, pulling them from their trays, untangling roots before tucking them safely into the fields like tucking a kid into bed (from what Amos's seen in movies anyway.) Takes his time with Mei, answering her hundreds of questions about anything under the sun, even after most people would prolly just tell her to shut up (and Amos has a lot more personal experience with that kinda adult behavior.)
But Prax sure as hell ain't patient now.
He turns and pushes Amos violently against the pillows. Straddles him. Lines his cock up and sinks down in a quick slide that knocks the air from both their lungs.
Immediately raises up just as fast and slams down again.
He's got his hands planted on Amos's stomach for leverage and his nails bite into Amos's skin. The last time Amos'd gotten fucked like this, he'd been handcuffed to a bed, unable to do anything but lay there and take it. But he's got his hands now.
“Jesus Christ, Prax.” He brings a hand up to Prax's hip to steady him. The other goes to Prax's chest, thumb brushing over pixelated vines that swirl toward a nipple. “Don't fucking break me.”
“You try getting teased for hours! Weeks! Who knows how fucking long and see if you've got much self control.”
He's panting at the end and Amos ain't sure if it's from the pace or from being all riled up.
“Do you know how many times I've dreamed about this?”
And honestly, no, Amos doesn't know. Thought he'd been the only one laying awake thinking about it.
“What'd you dream about?”
Prax slams down on Amos's hips again. “This.” Again. “Us fucking.” He tips his head back, looking up at the blank ceiling of the bunk as he slams down again. “Strickland dead and you covered in his blood and fucking me until I couldn't walk.”
“Well shit Prax.”
That blows pretty much everything Amos had been thinking right out of the water. And if he wants it like that. If he wants it fast and hard and hurting, Amos'll fucking give it to him.
Amos lets Prax raise himself up, easy in low G, and then using his grip on his narrow hips to slam him back down.
“Fuck. Yes. Again.”
Amos does it again.
And again.
And again.
Prax is flushed and panting and his cock's slapping against his stomach with every downstroke.
“Getting close?” Amos sure as hell is.
“Yeah. Yes I'm close.” He's panting so bad he can hardly get the words out.
“Well don't hold back on my account.” He looks meaningfully at Prax's cock, where it's bobbing stiff and weeping.
Prax takes a hand off Amos's stomach and it stings as his nails wrench free. He wraps his bloody hand around his cock instead, something to fuck into as he's getting fucked.
“Fuck, Amos. I'm close.”
And then he's spilling into the condom. Back arched in a tight bow, head thrown back, neck exposed.
Amos fucks up between his straining thighs and then he's cumming too.
“Fuck.”
Amos slumps back against the pillows and Prax collapses down on top of him, panting. His nails dig into the meat of Amos's chest.
“Fuck.”
Prax rolls off Amos and ends up squished between him and the side of the bunk.
“We should do that again,” he says.
Amos strips the used condoms off both of them but doesn't bother to get up and throw them away. Not with Prax laying on his chest like he is, hand trailing strange patterns over his sweaty skin.
“Sure. Whenever you want.” He looks down at Prax who lifts his head and meets his eyes. “Whatever you want.”
They start having sex pretty frequently after that. Just another thing added to their routine, in with all the planting and the sowing. All the family meals. All the time spent with Mei dancing between them like a planet around a binary star.
At night, when they're sure Mei's asleep and won't come barging in, demanding yet another bedtime story. In the shower after a long day in the fields. Getting off crammed in the tiny stall, soapy skin sliding against soapy skin. Kissing under the water, fat droplets running down their faces, into their mouths, between their bodies.
It's good.
Even the fully clothed making out Amos'd predicted is pretty great and Prax has stopped even pretending to read nerdy science articles once Mei's in bed. Instead, he'll come back out to the main room, not to sit with Amos but to sit in his lap. Shove his tongue down his throat. Kiss him until they're both breathless and panting and have to run to the bedroom, shedding clothes as they go.
That's what they're doing when Amos gets a video call from Cap.
“Pashang bossmang,” Prax curses from where he's grinding against Amos's thigh.
“Hey Cap. Kinda in the middle of something here.”
Amos is polite and only showing his face to the camera, but Holden's blushing regardless.
“Sorry to interrupt. Avasarala just called. There's trouble at one of the Ring Gates and we've been asked to go check it out.”
There's almost no delay so the Roci's gotta be close by.
“We'll be there to pick you up in an hour.”
Fuck.
“Ok.”
“Say hi to Prax,” Naomi says from off screen. She's laughing with her voice and probably knows exactly what Amos is doing right now.
Amos hangs up on her.
“Well, we've got an hour.”
“Not much time for a goodbye.” Prax slips off of Amos's lap. “I'll go wake Mei up while you pack.”
Amos nods in appreciation. As much as he'd love to finish what he started, he wants to say goodbye to her more. Doesn't wanna be the kinda guy to slip off into the night without saying a real goodbye.
And he's glad he's got time to pack. His stuff's ended up spread all over the bedroom and the apartment, somehow. He's used to living outta a duffel bag when he's on shore leave (though this isn't like any shore leave he's taken before) so it's a surprise when he's gotta dig coveralls outta Prax's drawers and a spare pair of mag boots out from under his bed and his toothbrush from outta Prax's bathroom cabinet.
He tucks the drawing Mei'd made him at school (out of soy paper and plant based pigments as part of a botany lesson) on top and then he's ready to leave.
Mei stumbles outta her room, rubbing sleep outta her eyes, and runs into Amos's legs.
He lifts her up and into the crook of his arm. Holds her as Prax closes the door behind them. Carries her down the endless station tunnels, lights low to mimic a Terran night. They're heading down to the docks so Naomi and Holden don't gotta waste time going through customs. Prax carries Amos's bag and fuck but he really doesn't want to have to say goodbye.
He does, though, standing at the empty berth the Roci's supposed to use. Lets Mei hug him and plant a wet kiss on his cheek. Almost wants to tell Holden to go fuck himself when she says, “Bye Uncle Amos. Come back soon.”
“As soon as I can, pumpkin.”
He sets her down gently. Kisses her forehead.
And then he's hugging Prax tight as he can like he can pull him into himself, keep them together for just a little longer.
Prax kisses him and it's pretty chaste for the two of them, but it's deep and lingering. Like Prax is trying to do the same thing.
The Roci lands in the dock and Amos pulls away.
He doesn't know what to say. Other than, “If that's ok. Coming back, I mean. I'll try to give you more warning next time.” Because that's the polite thing (the normal thing) to do.
Prax says, “You're always welcome here.”
And he means it. He's still got a hand in Amos's coveralls. Still has Amos's bag at his feet. He's still holding on.
Amos picks up his bag. “Goodbye Prax.”
“Goodbye Amos. Don't get eaten by the Ring.”
Amos takes his bag and walks up the gangplank.
Turns around in the doorway. Sees Prax watching as he leaves, sees Mei's vigorous waving.
He waves back to her and then turns and comes aboard the Roci.
They're out of the dock and gone before Mei stops waving. Before Prax stops watching.
An Endless Sea
“You could have stayed,” Holden says.
It's just the two of them in the galley, Naomi off with the Belter bossmang, saying her own goodbyes before they head through the Ring.
Amos would be on shore leave too. Getting drunk. Getting fucked. But there's routine maintenance due in a couple days and he'd rather make sure there's no surprises once they're on the other side of the Gate, cut off from all supplies except what the mining company might be willing to give or sell them.
Amos learned not to rely on the kindness of mining corporations after the last time he went through a Ring. Or any of the Terran outposts.
Cap's kinda persona non grata on those after he gave up his power over the Rings to the Belters (least, that's how a lot of the die hard Earth First people seem to see it.)
So Amos is stuck on the Roci until his last diagnostic comes back and Holden's too lovestruck and mopey to wanna avail himself of Medina station's hospitality. Instead, he's sitting at the table, watching Amos take apart and clean the irrigation tubing on the Prax panels.
(No saying how long they'll be stuck out in the Ring. May as well make sure they have a good oxygen supply on board.)
Maybe it's his working on the Prax panels that makes Holden ask. And Amos guesses he appreciates the sentiment. But, “No, I couldn't have.”
“Why not?” Holden asks, almost belligerent. “You like them. You liked staying with them. Why leave?”
Amos wonders if he's trying to start a fight. Like he'd tried to do with Alex a long time ago, to make up for hurting him. But Amos doesn't feel hurt. And Holden doesn't work like that.
So he explains, patient, “I like you too.”
Cap makes a face.
“Not like that.” Not unless he'd want to. But he's weirdly monogamous and romantic in a way Amos doesn't think he could stand.
“You're my friend. I wouldn't leave you when you needed me.”
Cuz that's the thing about Amos Burton. He's steady. He's dependable.
He gets the job done.
Holden blinks. Seems to accept what Amos is saying is the truth.
He stands and puts a hand on Amos's shoulder, firm and friendly. “Thank you.”
Amos shrugs under his hand. “Sure. But I promised Mei I'd come back and visit again soon. So you better not pull any hero shit, Cap.”
“I'll try not to cause any more interplanetary incidents.” He grins. “But you know how things go.”
Yeah, Amos sure fucking does.
Holden wanders off to bed.
Amos hangs around cleaning irrigation until his diagnostic comes back green across the board. And then he tucks himself into his narrow single bunk and falls asleep thinking about what kinda weird alien plants he could bring back for Prax to nerd out over.
The next morning Naomi rejoins the crew and the Roci leaves Medina station. Goes through the Gate into the starless black of an unfamiliar sky.
I Travel Troubled Oceans: Chapter 26 - In Which Jack Decorates a Brothel and Eme Staffs It
Despite Anne's well documented misgivings – she's taken to glaring at the back of Jack's head whenever he mentions it - the running of the brothel goes quite smoothly. Mostly because Max is the one actually running it.
Not directly, of course. No. She'd dug up an old contact from the streets – an elderly Madam who's surely seen, and done, all that it would be conceivable for the operator of such an establishment to do – to run the place day to day.
The girls all know her. Trust her not to skim more off of them than they're skimming off of her. And Max gets to wash her hands of the whole affair.
Excepting, of course, the information learned from taking bored, lonely, horny men to back rooms for a bit of private entertainment. That gets delivered to Max by the bordello Madam at weekly meetings.
Meetings that are, Jack imagines, much different in form and content to the monthly shareholder meetings he is privy to as the face of the investment. Max has gotten a few of the very gentlemen who'd attended Jack's salon – including the one so taken with the blond, from whom the very idea of a brothel had been birthed - to invest. But she's made sure Jack retained controlling interest in the venture, as is her want, via the investment firm they've set up to launder the returns from various ventures into various other ventures – all completely legally, of course.
The British financial institutions used by the old money and nouveau rich alike are designed to keep everyone's hands as clean as possible. And all the most genteel sorts keep an investment firm or two on retainer to ensure they never have to do anything so gauche as work. No. Jack's ilk is expected to spend their time with leisure activities while the returns roll in.
Hence the popularity of an upscale brothel, Jack supposes.
And since Jack is, frankly, lacking in business acumen for anything other than pushing powder - as evidenced by his rather non-illustrious and extremely short-lived career as a fence - he is merely the pretty face of Max's investment. And as such, he's content with the extent of his role on the executive board being once monthly meetings where nothing of value is done or said, more of an excuse for glad handing and cigars than anything else – before everyone goes home, richer and more self important than they were the month before.
That's not to say that Jack doesn't have any sort of involvement in the project, oh no. Max may have chosen the building – conveniently near the business district, but not so near as to be glass and steel and modernity. But it's Jack's job to decorate. And decorate he does!
The club is modeled after an old fashioned gentleman's club. The sort with a library and a smoking room and a formal dining room. The sort with a history.
The sort with a haughty stone exterior and an interior that evokes the height of the British empire. The halls are lined with reproduction (forged) antiquities from various of the former (and present) colonies. There's even a trophy room, for authenticity's sake and because all the hedge fund imbeciles like to refer to themselves as hunters and to others as prey even though they've never had to fight for anything in their lives.
It's also the sort of club with rooms available for members to stay in if their business in London runs overlong.
So much nicer than staying in a hotel. So much more comfortable. Homey.
And the turn down service is nothing to sneeze at.
All of that means that Jack – read Max – is running what is essentially a bar, a restaurant, and a hotel. All at the same time. And all requiring the utmost discretion from the staff.
It's a good thing Eme knows so many people in hospitality.
Flint. Oh, Flint had all these grand plans for toppling the establishment, the ruling class – both criminal and legitimate (which is just another kind of criminal, if you ask her) – all to put himself at the top.
But many of them – the left behind, the hidden, the invisible - had allied themselves with him. His plan was a long shot. But it looked like the best shot most of them could ever expect to be given.
The best opportunity they could expect to emerge into the light of day, real people once more.
So when Flint fell – toppled from his marble plinth – and revealed himself more dedicated to his lost love than to his cause, they'd disappeared back underground. Like termites. Like cockroaches.
Thriving and surviving in the dark. Just as they have always done.
Just as they always will.
And then along came Jack Rackham.
Eme refuses to fool herself twice. She knows he's after money and fame and power, just like Flint, though without the authoritarian ambitions. Knows he was raised in the gutter and that he hungers for more than his lot in life. Specifically at the expense of those who've never known want.
There's no great righteous cause wrapped about Jack Rackham like a robe, like a shield. Just the desire to live safe and rich and famous.
But they've done more with less, her and the rest of those hidden underground. And Max – the real power behind the throne – she has a good head on her shoulders, excepting where Miss Guthry was concerned. But people do stupid, stupid things for love.
Even she was young once, though she feels she's lived centuries.
So no, Eme doesn't feel as if she's repeating past mistakes, catching hold of Jack Rackham's silk coattails. Tying herself to this new criminal empire in the making.
No matter what some hotblooded young fellows think.
And anyway. There's no saying that once Jack gets them what they want they cannot get rid of him, should he prove more trouble than he's worth.
That had always been the plan for Flint, after all.
I Travel Troubled Oceans: Chapter 25 - In Which Jack Hosts a Salon
The renovation of the Fitzwilliam house goes much the same as the renovation of the Hennessy house had. There's the sorting through the detritus left behind by a family fleeing financial ruin – much of it trash, but occasionally they find a real treasure tucked away in an attic or unused drawing room. The Tiffany reading lamps in the disused library are worth a pretty penny, as is the Chesterfield in the front hallway. Then there's the cleaning – and Jack doesn't have a fashion show to get ready for to get him out of it this time. He'll have to plan more carefully in the future. And then there's the painting and the general DIY. This is left to Anne and Charles, who wield sledgehammers and spackle with great aplomb. The walls are painted a sage green and gilt is rubbed into the cracks and ruination that hasn't been completely sanded away.
The deepest, ugliest pits are glossed over, as if they never happened. But there's just enough imperfection to imply history. To prove that some great family once lived here – committed great deeds here, the kind one founds a nation on.
After all, that had gone over so well the last time. May as well play it up.
When Max is done with it, the house has an air of ruined grandeur about it. Like empires lost and their remnants left to fade with quiet dignity. The sort of dignity men such as the Fitzwilliams had aspired to – aspired and ultimately failed to attain, brought low by their own greed and hubris. But no need to dwell on that part.
And, like the last house, Max is planning to turn this one over to an investment group. It's in better shape, however, and needn't be razed to the ground. They plan to turn it into upscale condominiums or some other such thing. It's zoned for residential use, after all. Probably no exemptions, even though Featherstone is eager to work with Jack on the planning permission – on this house and all the rest of the Fitzwilliam properties. He's practically prostrating himself in front of Jack after how much Idelle enjoyed the spa weekend he'd “negotiated” out of Max. And how much assistance Jack rendered to him with regards to finding a ring and planning an upscale wedding and all the rest.
Which reminds him, he really ought to get some work done on the wedding dress, now they're at the stage where Mary takes artistic photographs of all the empty ruined rooms. That ought to keep him out of having to lug big lighting rigs around under her iron fisted direction.
And then Max gets the great idea to host a salon of all things. Investment bankers and industry bigwigs and pretentious artists, gathered into Jack's elegant ruined home. Shown what exactly he can give them if they choose to invest in him.
What he can give them is ruination, of course, but they'll think it grandeur.
It'll all be very tedious, but it should work to get Jack's name out there even more. Expand the empire Max is working to build by another few bricks. And, well, Jack's never going to say no another chance to talk himself up in front of the movers and shakers
--
Max is throwing a fancy dress party for a bunch of upper-class wankers for some ungodly reason. So Charles has been carting furniture around all fucking day while Anne drapes silk and arranges pillows artfully and Mary yells at them. Well, it's not yelling. But she's got this commanding sort of air to her when she gets off on a project like this. It's kinda hot, honestly. Anne definitely thinks so, because the two of them disappear pretty much as soon as Max's back is turned. Which means Charles has to hang Max's stupid fucking painting all by himself. And it's just as much of a pain in the arse as the last go round, Max making him move it millimeter by fucking millimeter until it meets her exacting and fucking unfathomable expectations.
Fuck but Anne's lucky he likes her.
Although Charles is man enough to admit that the party isn't all bad. He gets to sit on one of Jack's stupid little sofas, arms draped across the back, cigar in one hand and drink in the other. Jack sitting next to him all prim and prissy while Charles sprawls and glowers and smokes a decent cigar. One of the rich fucks had brought a box of Cohibas as a bribe. Paltry, in the grand scheme of things, not even half the pound of flesh Jack'll end up extracting, but it's a nice enough gesture.
Plus, he'd gotten to throw out the pasty balding thirty-something tech magnate who'd dared show up to one of Jack Rackham's parties in jeans and a sweatshirt.
Jack's going for some kind of age of sail theme, for some fucking reason and everyone has to meet the dress code.
Charles can't say he minds Jack in a long brocade coat and a half unbuttoned shirt and gauzy scarf or cravat or whatever you would call it tied around his neck. And he's got about a half dozen rings on each hand and these big leather boots and maybe it's because Charles spent too much of his childhood in seedy rock and roll clubs, but it's intriguing is what it is.
And Charles can't complain too much about his own outfit. Jack's got him dolled up in leather pants and leather boots and a black sort of floaty shirt that is open to the sternum and he's got some sort of metal and leather necklace on and some leather bracelets and it could be a whole lot worse.
He could be in one of those stupid knee-length coats and vests that all the toffs seem to have gravitated towards. One fucker's even wearing a fucking powdered wig – the kind with the ponytail and the stupid little velvet bow. And their cravats aren't anything like Jack's little pastel scarf over bare skin, they're big white frothing things cascading down their shirtfronts. Like the shit some bad wedding band from the eighties would wear.
Yeah, leather is definitely preferable. Especially given the way Jack keeps looking at his legs out of the corner of his eye. Charles sprawls further, spreads his legs wider. Bumps his knee against Jack's and grins like a shark over the rim of his glass as Jack gives him a fairly blatant once over.
--
So Jack doesn't actually get much work done on the wedding dress. He honestly, truly meant to. But then Max wanted him to throw a salon for potential investors in the old Fitzwilliam house before it got turned into upscale condominiums.
Max was probably picturing a pretty standard rich people party.
Champagne. Canapes. Maybe a string quartet if he was feeling particularly over the top. But just a party.
But he wouldn't be Jack Rackham if he just “threw a party.” No. It was going to be an event. Models. Drinks. Drugs.
Fancy dress.
And not suit and tie, either.
Salon. That makes him think Parisian royalty. Gilt and enormous powdered wigs and beauty marks. Pastel blues and pinks.
Gossip.
Scandal.
That might be a bit of a hard sell for the staunchly British old guard being invited, though. Not the scandal, of course. The Francophilia.
But perhaps he could do something from England's sorry past.
And his latest fashion show had gone over so well. The one with more old fashioned sensibilities. Velvet and silk and jewels.
But this has to be a little sexier than simply elegant. It is summer. So shear fabrics, higher hemlines. More cleavage, which in Idelle's case is dangerous, so it's a good thing she and the esteemed Councilor are otherwise engaged.
Max doesn't like them mingling with the investors, anyway. Too obvious that they're in cahoots, even if Featherstone remains largely unaware of the fact.
So the rest of the models get outfitted with attire that would not be out of place in a 1700s brothel - though their jewelry is much grander, of course. And that sets the theme for the rest of the party.
And then Jack has to make outfits for himself and Charles, too. But it's worth it to come in something bespoke that didn't just come out of some costuming department like all of the investors' costumes clearly had.
Those that bothered to wear them, anyway.
But that's part of the hook. Make them work for it a little. Make them fucking invested. They'll be much more likely to open their pocketbooks that way, what with the sunk cost fallacy and all that rot.
The models make a good impression as well. And Jack makes sure there are plenty of cool drinks – with plenty of rum in them to lubricate the conversation. It feels rather like an upscale gentleman's club, just on right side of seedy.
One investor even suggests Jack open a club of his own! Why, with waitresses like the ones at this party, he'd make a killing.
The girl who'd been spilling out of her corset as she'd freshened his drink curls a lock of her hair coquettishly around her finger before turning around to show her posterior clearly agrees. And Jack's sure she's just after a better class of clientele than the street corners had afforded her. But well. There's almost infinite potential for information gathering at a club like that.
Information or blackmail. Jack's not really that picky.
It's worth bringing up to Max at any rate.
--
Jack's got some new fucking hairbrained scheme cooking under that ridiculous mullet, Anne can feel it in her bones. Comes of knowing him so damn long, probably. Not many secrets between the two of them. Not many things hidden from one another, even if Anne ain't much for talking, not the way Jack is.
But she'll speak up when she has to.
Like when Jack brings up starting a “club” that's a barely disguised brothel at their next strategy meeting.
“Thought we were trying to stay on the right side of the law now. Not doing anything outright illegal.” Just immoral. “Like all the other rich fucks.” Cuz it's hard to break the law when you're the one writing them. And when you've got the whole Met in your pocket.
Running a whorehouse, though. That just seems unnecessarily risky. And plain fucking unnecessary.
“Think of all the blackmail and inside information we can collect,” Jack wheedles. “We wouldn't need to worry about the legality. Not when we'd have details of much worse crimes to hold over the head of anyone who'd rat us out.”
So the only thing keeping them safe is mutually assured destruction. Cuz that worked out so fucking well.
But Max is nodding.
Jack always was a persuasive fucker.
“That would be no trouble. I'm confident my girls could get any information you wished out of a man, provided they have the right incentive.”
“And I'm sure you could give them the right incentive,” Jack counters. “Why, simply having a place of business that isn't the street is likely to incentivize most of them.”
“So this would be my business.”
Jack laughs, a flighty fucking thing. “You know I have no head for business, Max. Not like you do.”
Max snorts at the obvious attempts at flattery. But it's true. Mary is the one to do all of Jack's books.
And before that, back in Jack's drug kingpin days, it'd been Anne.
Charles had never bothered with books.
“You'd be the one in charge, Max. The one to provide employees.”
Max probably already has a bevy of girls picked out.
“But I'd be willing to be the face of it. The one to take all the risk.”
The one to reap all of the accolades.
Jack grins slyly, the kind of smile that always got him – and by extension Anne – into trouble. “You could be a silent partner.”
Max is honestly, seriously considering it.
Anne looks to Charles, who shrugs. To Mary who says, “seems logical to me.”
“I'll provide the management of course,” Max says.
“Of course,” Jack answers.
“I still think it's a bad idea,” Anne says. But she's been outvoted three to one, with Charles's shrug counting as abstaining. So fuck it. They own a brothel now.
