Original Fic: "Hightower," R, M/M
Hightower: A Not Good Idea (1/3)
Author:
_beetle_/EthanMB365
Fandom: Original Fic
Pairing: M/M
Rating: R
Word count: 1,000
Notes/Warnings: No.
Summary: Written for the week 5 May 4th-May 10th prompt(s): “I don’t think this is a good idea.”
“I don’t think this is a good idea, Ri,” I whispered as we crept ‘round the auxiliary water reclamators out back of his daddy’s barn. Visible clouds of dust, bleached bone-white by the seemingly ever-present sun, puffed up with our every step, creating a cloud that-in the clear, dry night-could be seen for acres, at least, and might alert Ri’s daddy and/or his older brother Phillip to the fact that someone was out and about on the Friendly property. “I don’t think-”
“And now ain’t the time to start, darlin’. Leave the thinkin’ to me,” Ri said, grinning over his shoulder at me. I glared and stopped, crossing my arms. Ri stopped, too, pulling me into his arms for a kiss that I turned my face away from. Unfazed, he simply bussed me on my cheek instead of my lips.
“C’mon, ‘Lex, don’t be like that. I was just jokin’.” He armed sweat off his forehead. The night was relatively cool, though the day had been oppressively hot, as usual. One hundred fifteen in the shade, and it wasn’t even full-on summer, yet. Even after ten years I still dreaded the hellish Western summers. “You know how I get when I’m excited. I say all kindsa stupid shit.”
“Just when you’re excited?” I huffed, and let myself be hugged tight. For a few moments, anyway. “Ugh, Ri, how come you’re so sweaty? It’s only ninety-five, ‘ccordin’ to the threedy.”
Ri laughed and let me go. But not far. “Just . . . excited, I guess . . . why? Ain’t you?”
“Well, yeah,” I admitted, taking his hand again and this time, instead of grinning he smiled. The sweet one . . . the first one he’d ever smiled at me, when we were both just first formers, and I was still new in town, and shy because of that. I’d talked funny and I’d looked different than everyone else. Too pale and too short. But Ri hadn’t minded then and he doesn’t now, even though he still swore that, despite the past ten years out West, I still sounded like “some City Back East.”
Whatever’s left of the Cities Back East.
“C’mon.” Ri’s usual grin flashed out again: white, white teeth in a dark, dark face. “The barn ain’t gettin’ any closer.”
And because I couldn’t resist the grin, either, I let him tug me to his daddy’s empty barn, where the shadows lay so deep and velvety and cool. And when we laid down together in the hayloft it was for the very first time. . . .
And afterward, Ri held me and we just laid there, and talked and talked about the future, and our hopes and dreams. We fell asleep gazing out at the constellations through the open window in the barn roof.
It was perfect.
*
“Wake up, Sleepin’ Beauty!”
I opened my eyes to see Phillip Friendly standing over me, smirking. Spooned up behind me, Ri grumbled and squeezed me closer, more asleep than awake.
Phillip nudged Ri’s foot with his own booted one. “You, too, Sleepin’ Ugly,” he said when Ri grumbled again and pressed his face to my sweaty nape.
“Uh-” I blushed, trying to wriggle away from Ri, who wasn’t having any of it, and just held me tighter. Phillip snorted and watched us struggle-me to get away while simultaneously trying to cover myself with the quilt, and him to pull me closer while tugging on the quilt as well, despite the already sweltering heat of the barn-still smirking. “Uh . . . please don’t tell your daddy about this, Phillip.” Or my Aunt Riva, went without saying.
Phillip snorted again. “Who d’ya think sent me to get you two?”
Now Ri was awake completely, scrambling to his feet and grabbing for his jeans. “Fuck me, daddy knows?” he all but squeaked.
“’Course. You two ain’t exactly sneaky, Riley. Make more noise than any three deliisks during a matin’ flight.” Phillip laughed and glanced back at me, giving me a thrice-over that made me blush and pull the quilt more closely about me. Phillip’s smirk turned lazy and he kept staring until Ri, half dressed and pulling on his t-shirt, noticed and stepped pointedly between his brother and I.
Finally, after what I can only assume was a stare-down, Phillip turned away, making for the loft ladder.
“Whatever. Woman from some City’s here to see you. She’s waitin’ in the livin’ room.”
“A City?” Ri glanced at me, worried, and I froze, mouthing: What did you do?
Nothing! was the reply I got. Then Ri was turning back to his brother, who was waiting at the top of the ladder.
“Someone from a City to see me?”
Phillip’s dark eyes ticked from Ri, to me, then back when Ri took a step toward him. Ri may have been younger, but he was bigger. And meaner in a fight, too. “To see you, Sexy-Lexei.”
Then he was gone down the ladder with a laugh before Ri could do more than snatch up his own boot and take aim.
When Ri turned to look at me, he looked scared . . . and excited.
“You ain’t do nothin’ either, right?”
I shook my head no.
“Well, then,” Ri knelt in front of me, took my hands, and kissed them tenderly. His own were shaking a little. “Welp, then, we ain’t got nothin’ to worry ‘bout, I guess. Still, an’ all . . . I wonder what she wants with you.”
Thinking of my early childhood Back East-before the internecine Feuds and Wars really began to proliferate and spread beyond what the Twelve Cities could control-and the circumstances under which I’d been taken (smuggled is more like it) out of Hightower, I shuddered, suddenly cold in spite of the hot, heavy, still air.
Ri frowned and wrapped his arms around me. “What’s wrong, baby?”
“Nothing,” I lied, shakily, wondering if they’d--whoever they were-finally found me . . . after all this time and distance. “Let’s go see a lady from Back East.”
II
Hightower: Are You Crazy? (2/3)
Author:
_beetle_/EthanMB365
Fandom: Original Fic
Pairing: M/M
Rating: R
Word count: 1,000
Notes/Warnings: No.
Summary: Written for the week 5 May 4th-May 10th prompt(s): “Are you crazy?”
“I can’t believe it!” Ri exclaimed as we trudged across his daddy’s acreage from barn to rambling old farmhouse.
Ri kept having to stop and wait for me, or-more often-he’d come back to walk with me.
Little did he know I thought I was trudging to, at best, my own imprisonment. At worst . . . I didn’t even want to imagine.
Ri swung my hand excitedly, like a child. “Hot damn! Somebody from one of the Twelve Cities! Just like you were, huh?”
“Yeah,” I said, smiling limply in the face of his innocent anticipation. “Just like me.”
*
The floorboards creaked under foot as we stepped in from the heat of the day, to the marginally cooler kitchen. Phillip was drinking synthmilk straight from the container, and ignored Ri and I as we crossed the kitchen.
I kept dragging my feet and Ri kept shooting me confused looks. Finally, halfway down the hall, he stopped and whispered: “Is somethin’ up?”
“Let’s run away!” I whispered back, tugging on his hand. When he didn’t budge, I looked around. He was gaping.
“Are you crazy?”
I sighed. “Remember how, when we were little, we were gonna run off and join the Corps? I’ve been thinking, you know, that isn’t such a bad idea. . . .”
“Lex, I-”
“We can hear you two hissin’ back ‘n’ forth like a couple of riled vipers,” Ri’s daddy called from the living room, his voice low like Ri’s, but unlike Ri’s-and quite unlike their last name-it wasn’t friendly. And why should it be? Someone from the damned Cities had taken time out of their precious Wars to come thousands of miles to see his son and his son’s . . . friend.
“C’mon, before the old man blows a gasket,” Ri murmured, leaning in to kiss me quick and teasing.
“But-”
Ri was dragging me into his living room to see his father sitting on the couch and, sitting next to him, in full field dress, was-
“Theya Friar?” I exclaimed, the name falling from my lips as if I’d last said it yesterday. The past decade fell away from me as Theya stood smartly and bowed deferentially to me, pin-neat in her blue-and-green uniform and polished black boots. Her dark hair, shot through with grey and white, was gathered in a braid that hung down her back.
“My liege,” she said gravely, holding her bow as if waiting for something. Meanwhile, I could feel Ri’s surprised eyes on me.
“Uh,” I said, then, out of my childhood memories came a vivid one: my mother, in her Seat of Office while speaking to this woman, this . . . Commander of Hightower’s militia. I knew exactly what Theya was waiting for, and it sprang to my lips and out, unbidden. “Rise and report, Commander.”
Theya straightened up with a heavy sigh. Her face was grim and grief-torn.
“They are dead, my liege,” she said, her voice catching as a tear rolled down her cheek. That single tear rocked me more than anything I’d ever seen. People like Theya Friar never cry. At least not where others can bear witness. “All of them. Your lady mother, her brother, all her cousins and kin. Even your father has gone on to the Beyond. You are all that is left of the Tower Oligarchy. The City of Hightower waits with hope for your return.”
Ri’s hand dropped away from my own. “’Lex? What’s she talkin’ ‘bout?”
“Yeah-what the fuck?” came from the entryway behind Ri and me. But everyone ignored Phillip in favor of watching me, and I. . . .
I turned and barreled past Phillip, back down the hall and out the kitchen door.
*
I’d been lying in the loft of the barn, on my back on the quilt-which smelled of hay and still, faintly, of sex-right under the window. The heat had been such that I quickly grew sleepy and closed my eyes. When I opened them again, it was because someone touched my face.
I bolted up and Ri was pulling me into his arms, murmuring that it was alright, that it was just him. I was shaking and clammy, broken out in a cold sweat. I didn’t remember what I’d been dreaming but I knew it hadn’t been pleasant.
Ri held me till I stopped shaking, then sat back to look at me. The loft was dim and shadowed, meaning the sun was on the wester, and in this dearth of light, Ri looked eerily like his father, stern and dour.
“Is it true, then?” he asked softly, his dark eyes shining and unreadable. “What that City-soldier said?”
I nodded once, slowly. “Yes. All of it. Theya Friar never lies.”
Sighing, Ri looked up, running a hand over his close-cropped hair. “Who is she? Who’re you?”
His eyes, when he looked at me again were accusing and I couldn’t meet them for long.
“I . . . I’m just me, Ri . . . just Lex,” I said pleadingly, and Ri’s eyes hardened.
“But that ain’t it, is it? You’re more’n just Alex Stanton, ‘ccordin’ to her,” he said bitterly, and I winced . . . but nodded again. “So who are you?”
It took a little while, but I met Ri’s eyes squarely. “I am . . . Oliver Alexei Mihailovich Godineau Hightower . . . heir to the Seat of the City of Hightower . . . and Oligarch-presumptive of the First City of the East, as of . . . whenever the last of my family was executed or murdered or taken captive in the Wars,” I said, and between one blink and the next, tears were running down my face and I was sobbing.
After a few seconds that felt like eternities, Ri’s arms slowly came around me and he held me. He called me my ‘Lexei and sugar and darlin’ . . . all the pet names that’d so used to annoy me until they hadn’t, anymore.
And I . . . I just wept. For my mother and father, for my cousins and kin, for my long-lost but never forgotten Hightower.
But most of all, I wept for myself.
Hightower: Friends Helping Friends (3/3)
Author:
_beetle_/EthanMB365
Fandom: Original Fic
Pairing: M/M
Rating: R
Word count: 1,000
Notes/Warnings: No.
Summary: Written for the week 5 May 4th-May 10th prompt(s): Friends helping friends.
“So . . . what happens, now?”
I shifted in Ri’s arms but didn’t move my face from where it rested over his heart. The beat was strong and slow and comforting, and I sighed.
“I don’t know,” I whispered to his heart. “I know Theya will expect me to go back with her. There can’t not be an Oligarch in Hightower.”
Ri sighed, too, running his hand through my hair. “Hey, why can’t your Auntie Riva be the Oligarch?”
“Because she’s not a Hightower. She was chief of my mother’s personal security. When the Feuds between the Cities began to get bad-just before War was declared-my mother had Charris Bellechaine, smuggle me out of Hightower and take me west. She became Riva Stanton and I became Alexei Stanton.” I drummed my fingertips lightly on Ri’s abdomen. “She risked letting me keep Alexei because she thought I’d respond to it more naturally.”
Ri laughed suddenly and I looked up at his face. In the golden, westering light coming in through the barn window, he was beautiful: an onyx god whom I rightfully worshipped and adored. “I always wondered if your Auntie was ex-military or somethin’.”
“You don’t know the half of it,” I said, thinking of the day she’d taught me to not only make my own bed-something young Oliver Hightower had never done or had to do-but to make it with military corners.
Smiling, I briefly, wistfully remembered the past ten years with Aunt Riva, who was, despite the resemblance, quite a different being than Charris Bellechaine. . . .
“You’re going, ain’t ya?”
I sighed again, laying my head back over his heart. “I think I have to. Things must be . . . bad. If I can help, even by being a figure-head, I have to try. I want to try,” I admitted. Ri blinked and looked away.
“Don’t suppose you’d want comp’ny, out there in Hightower?” he mumbled so quietly I could barely hear him. But hear I did, and found myself looking back up at him, gaping, shocked beyond all other feelings. Then Ri was meeting my eyes, his own determined. “I mean, friends help friends, right?”
That hit me like a hammer in the heart, and before I could even think about it I was sitting up, saying: “Don’t put yourself out on my account, friend. I can handle Hightower all by my lonesome, so don’t let me take you away from whatever really matters to you!”
“I didn’t mean it like-aw, c’mon, darlin’, don’t-” Ri sat up and grabbed me before I could stand up, and wouldn’t let me go. And I couldn’t break free of his effortlessly iron-like grip, I knew from experience, so I didn’t even try.
“Let go of me.”
“No.”
“Let me go, Riley!”
“Never.” I looked over into his eyes and they were more determined than ever-more solemn than I’d ever seen them. “It wouldn’t be right to let you just go, not without back-up. ‘Side from that . . . I l-love you too much to let you go off somewhere without me. ‘Specially when I might never see you ‘gain if I did.”
I frowned. “Not . . . never.”
“I think it might be. Why’d anybody in their right damn mind come back here when they could be livin’ the life in Hightower or any one of the Twelve?” Ri asked ruefully. I reached out, brushing my fingers across his cheek and he shivered.
“If they had a friend like you waiting for them here, I’d say anybody would.” I smiled and Ri returned it, small and sweet, and kissed me.
“You’re more’n my friend, Alexei Stanton. But boyfriend seems like such a silly, small word for what you are to me. It don’t quite fit.” Ri searched my eyes, his own still solemn. “Boy-I-wanna-spend-the-rest-of-my-life-with sorta fits. But it’s kind of a mouthful. I think I like husband a lot better.”
My eyes widened till it felt as if they’d fall out of their sockets. “Ri . . . what’re you saying?”
Ri’s smile turned into a grin and he got up to one knee and took my hand.
“Alexei Stant-Hightower, I’m askin’ you to marry me. Hear me out,” he went on before I could say anything. Not that I would have, shocked as I was, once more. “You’re eighteen and I’m seventeen. We’re over the age of majority-we c’n smoke, drink, fight in a war, vote, and get married, if we want. If we want. . . .”
And it took me a few second to realize Ri had tossed the ball into my court. By the time I did, he was speaking again, nervously: “Well? What d’ya say, suge?”
Uncertain of what was going to come out, I opened my mouth to speak. . . .
*
I sat on the express hover-tran to Verdant-the last Western City-state before the Eastern City-states began-alone, but for Theya, and pensive.
Out the window, scenery, as dry and arid as any back home-back in the small, dusty town that’d become my home for going on eleven years-rocketed by. Tears welled up in my eyes for another home, lost to me.
“Don’t worry, Lord Hightower . . . you’ll be back, someday,” Theya murmured from the opposite seat. I glanced at her, and tried to not think of all I’d lost-all I’d given up-and smiled limply. Just then the door to our private car opened and in came my husband of one day . . . give or take a few hours.
Ri looked mildly uncomfortable in his nicest blue suit, and he was fiddling with the simple gold band on his ring finger. But his eyes lit up when they landed on me and he came to sit by my side, kissing my cheek.
My smile firmed up. Became genuine, when I thought of all that I had gained and the future that now lay spread before me like uncharted territory.
In three days, the Western City of Verdant, and beyond that. . . .
Beyond that, my City.
Hightower.
END
Author:
_beetle_/EthanMB365
Fandom: Original Fic
Pairing: M/M
Rating: R
Word count: 1,000
Notes/Warnings: No.
Summary: Written for the week 5 May 4th-May 10th prompt(s): “I don’t think this is a good idea.”
“I don’t think this is a good idea, Ri,” I whispered as we crept ‘round the auxiliary water reclamators out back of his daddy’s barn. Visible clouds of dust, bleached bone-white by the seemingly ever-present sun, puffed up with our every step, creating a cloud that-in the clear, dry night-could be seen for acres, at least, and might alert Ri’s daddy and/or his older brother Phillip to the fact that someone was out and about on the Friendly property. “I don’t think-”
“And now ain’t the time to start, darlin’. Leave the thinkin’ to me,” Ri said, grinning over his shoulder at me. I glared and stopped, crossing my arms. Ri stopped, too, pulling me into his arms for a kiss that I turned my face away from. Unfazed, he simply bussed me on my cheek instead of my lips.
“C’mon, ‘Lex, don’t be like that. I was just jokin’.” He armed sweat off his forehead. The night was relatively cool, though the day had been oppressively hot, as usual. One hundred fifteen in the shade, and it wasn’t even full-on summer, yet. Even after ten years I still dreaded the hellish Western summers. “You know how I get when I’m excited. I say all kindsa stupid shit.”
“Just when you’re excited?” I huffed, and let myself be hugged tight. For a few moments, anyway. “Ugh, Ri, how come you’re so sweaty? It’s only ninety-five, ‘ccordin’ to the threedy.”
Ri laughed and let me go. But not far. “Just . . . excited, I guess . . . why? Ain’t you?”
“Well, yeah,” I admitted, taking his hand again and this time, instead of grinning he smiled. The sweet one . . . the first one he’d ever smiled at me, when we were both just first formers, and I was still new in town, and shy because of that. I’d talked funny and I’d looked different than everyone else. Too pale and too short. But Ri hadn’t minded then and he doesn’t now, even though he still swore that, despite the past ten years out West, I still sounded like “some City Back East.”
Whatever’s left of the Cities Back East.
“C’mon.” Ri’s usual grin flashed out again: white, white teeth in a dark, dark face. “The barn ain’t gettin’ any closer.”
And because I couldn’t resist the grin, either, I let him tug me to his daddy’s empty barn, where the shadows lay so deep and velvety and cool. And when we laid down together in the hayloft it was for the very first time. . . .
And afterward, Ri held me and we just laid there, and talked and talked about the future, and our hopes and dreams. We fell asleep gazing out at the constellations through the open window in the barn roof.
It was perfect.
*
“Wake up, Sleepin’ Beauty!”
I opened my eyes to see Phillip Friendly standing over me, smirking. Spooned up behind me, Ri grumbled and squeezed me closer, more asleep than awake.
Phillip nudged Ri’s foot with his own booted one. “You, too, Sleepin’ Ugly,” he said when Ri grumbled again and pressed his face to my sweaty nape.
“Uh-” I blushed, trying to wriggle away from Ri, who wasn’t having any of it, and just held me tighter. Phillip snorted and watched us struggle-me to get away while simultaneously trying to cover myself with the quilt, and him to pull me closer while tugging on the quilt as well, despite the already sweltering heat of the barn-still smirking. “Uh . . . please don’t tell your daddy about this, Phillip.” Or my Aunt Riva, went without saying.
Phillip snorted again. “Who d’ya think sent me to get you two?”
Now Ri was awake completely, scrambling to his feet and grabbing for his jeans. “Fuck me, daddy knows?” he all but squeaked.
“’Course. You two ain’t exactly sneaky, Riley. Make more noise than any three deliisks during a matin’ flight.” Phillip laughed and glanced back at me, giving me a thrice-over that made me blush and pull the quilt more closely about me. Phillip’s smirk turned lazy and he kept staring until Ri, half dressed and pulling on his t-shirt, noticed and stepped pointedly between his brother and I.
Finally, after what I can only assume was a stare-down, Phillip turned away, making for the loft ladder.
“Whatever. Woman from some City’s here to see you. She’s waitin’ in the livin’ room.”
“A City?” Ri glanced at me, worried, and I froze, mouthing: What did you do?
Nothing! was the reply I got. Then Ri was turning back to his brother, who was waiting at the top of the ladder.
“Someone from a City to see me?”
Phillip’s dark eyes ticked from Ri, to me, then back when Ri took a step toward him. Ri may have been younger, but he was bigger. And meaner in a fight, too. “To see you, Sexy-Lexei.”
Then he was gone down the ladder with a laugh before Ri could do more than snatch up his own boot and take aim.
When Ri turned to look at me, he looked scared . . . and excited.
“You ain’t do nothin’ either, right?”
I shook my head no.
“Well, then,” Ri knelt in front of me, took my hands, and kissed them tenderly. His own were shaking a little. “Welp, then, we ain’t got nothin’ to worry ‘bout, I guess. Still, an’ all . . . I wonder what she wants with you.”
Thinking of my early childhood Back East-before the internecine Feuds and Wars really began to proliferate and spread beyond what the Twelve Cities could control-and the circumstances under which I’d been taken (smuggled is more like it) out of Hightower, I shuddered, suddenly cold in spite of the hot, heavy, still air.
Ri frowned and wrapped his arms around me. “What’s wrong, baby?”
“Nothing,” I lied, shakily, wondering if they’d--whoever they were-finally found me . . . after all this time and distance. “Let’s go see a lady from Back East.”
II
Hightower: Are You Crazy? (2/3)
Author:
_beetle_/EthanMB365
Fandom: Original Fic
Pairing: M/M
Rating: R
Word count: 1,000
Notes/Warnings: No.
Summary: Written for the week 5 May 4th-May 10th prompt(s): “Are you crazy?”
“I can’t believe it!” Ri exclaimed as we trudged across his daddy’s acreage from barn to rambling old farmhouse.
Ri kept having to stop and wait for me, or-more often-he’d come back to walk with me.
Little did he know I thought I was trudging to, at best, my own imprisonment. At worst . . . I didn’t even want to imagine.
Ri swung my hand excitedly, like a child. “Hot damn! Somebody from one of the Twelve Cities! Just like you were, huh?”
“Yeah,” I said, smiling limply in the face of his innocent anticipation. “Just like me.”
*
The floorboards creaked under foot as we stepped in from the heat of the day, to the marginally cooler kitchen. Phillip was drinking synthmilk straight from the container, and ignored Ri and I as we crossed the kitchen.
I kept dragging my feet and Ri kept shooting me confused looks. Finally, halfway down the hall, he stopped and whispered: “Is somethin’ up?”
“Let’s run away!” I whispered back, tugging on his hand. When he didn’t budge, I looked around. He was gaping.
“Are you crazy?”
I sighed. “Remember how, when we were little, we were gonna run off and join the Corps? I’ve been thinking, you know, that isn’t such a bad idea. . . .”
“Lex, I-”
“We can hear you two hissin’ back ‘n’ forth like a couple of riled vipers,” Ri’s daddy called from the living room, his voice low like Ri’s, but unlike Ri’s-and quite unlike their last name-it wasn’t friendly. And why should it be? Someone from the damned Cities had taken time out of their precious Wars to come thousands of miles to see his son and his son’s . . . friend.
“C’mon, before the old man blows a gasket,” Ri murmured, leaning in to kiss me quick and teasing.
“But-”
Ri was dragging me into his living room to see his father sitting on the couch and, sitting next to him, in full field dress, was-
“Theya Friar?” I exclaimed, the name falling from my lips as if I’d last said it yesterday. The past decade fell away from me as Theya stood smartly and bowed deferentially to me, pin-neat in her blue-and-green uniform and polished black boots. Her dark hair, shot through with grey and white, was gathered in a braid that hung down her back.
“My liege,” she said gravely, holding her bow as if waiting for something. Meanwhile, I could feel Ri’s surprised eyes on me.
“Uh,” I said, then, out of my childhood memories came a vivid one: my mother, in her Seat of Office while speaking to this woman, this . . . Commander of Hightower’s militia. I knew exactly what Theya was waiting for, and it sprang to my lips and out, unbidden. “Rise and report, Commander.”
Theya straightened up with a heavy sigh. Her face was grim and grief-torn.
“They are dead, my liege,” she said, her voice catching as a tear rolled down her cheek. That single tear rocked me more than anything I’d ever seen. People like Theya Friar never cry. At least not where others can bear witness. “All of them. Your lady mother, her brother, all her cousins and kin. Even your father has gone on to the Beyond. You are all that is left of the Tower Oligarchy. The City of Hightower waits with hope for your return.”
Ri’s hand dropped away from my own. “’Lex? What’s she talkin’ ‘bout?”
“Yeah-what the fuck?” came from the entryway behind Ri and me. But everyone ignored Phillip in favor of watching me, and I. . . .
I turned and barreled past Phillip, back down the hall and out the kitchen door.
*
I’d been lying in the loft of the barn, on my back on the quilt-which smelled of hay and still, faintly, of sex-right under the window. The heat had been such that I quickly grew sleepy and closed my eyes. When I opened them again, it was because someone touched my face.
I bolted up and Ri was pulling me into his arms, murmuring that it was alright, that it was just him. I was shaking and clammy, broken out in a cold sweat. I didn’t remember what I’d been dreaming but I knew it hadn’t been pleasant.
Ri held me till I stopped shaking, then sat back to look at me. The loft was dim and shadowed, meaning the sun was on the wester, and in this dearth of light, Ri looked eerily like his father, stern and dour.
“Is it true, then?” he asked softly, his dark eyes shining and unreadable. “What that City-soldier said?”
I nodded once, slowly. “Yes. All of it. Theya Friar never lies.”
Sighing, Ri looked up, running a hand over his close-cropped hair. “Who is she? Who’re you?”
His eyes, when he looked at me again were accusing and I couldn’t meet them for long.
“I . . . I’m just me, Ri . . . just Lex,” I said pleadingly, and Ri’s eyes hardened.
“But that ain’t it, is it? You’re more’n just Alex Stanton, ‘ccordin’ to her,” he said bitterly, and I winced . . . but nodded again. “So who are you?”
It took a little while, but I met Ri’s eyes squarely. “I am . . . Oliver Alexei Mihailovich Godineau Hightower . . . heir to the Seat of the City of Hightower . . . and Oligarch-presumptive of the First City of the East, as of . . . whenever the last of my family was executed or murdered or taken captive in the Wars,” I said, and between one blink and the next, tears were running down my face and I was sobbing.
After a few seconds that felt like eternities, Ri’s arms slowly came around me and he held me. He called me my ‘Lexei and sugar and darlin’ . . . all the pet names that’d so used to annoy me until they hadn’t, anymore.
And I . . . I just wept. For my mother and father, for my cousins and kin, for my long-lost but never forgotten Hightower.
But most of all, I wept for myself.
Hightower: Friends Helping Friends (3/3)
Author:
_beetle_/EthanMB365
Fandom: Original Fic
Pairing: M/M
Rating: R
Word count: 1,000
Notes/Warnings: No.
Summary: Written for the week 5 May 4th-May 10th prompt(s): Friends helping friends.
“So . . . what happens, now?”
I shifted in Ri’s arms but didn’t move my face from where it rested over his heart. The beat was strong and slow and comforting, and I sighed.
“I don’t know,” I whispered to his heart. “I know Theya will expect me to go back with her. There can’t not be an Oligarch in Hightower.”
Ri sighed, too, running his hand through my hair. “Hey, why can’t your Auntie Riva be the Oligarch?”
“Because she’s not a Hightower. She was chief of my mother’s personal security. When the Feuds between the Cities began to get bad-just before War was declared-my mother had Charris Bellechaine, smuggle me out of Hightower and take me west. She became Riva Stanton and I became Alexei Stanton.” I drummed my fingertips lightly on Ri’s abdomen. “She risked letting me keep Alexei because she thought I’d respond to it more naturally.”
Ri laughed suddenly and I looked up at his face. In the golden, westering light coming in through the barn window, he was beautiful: an onyx god whom I rightfully worshipped and adored. “I always wondered if your Auntie was ex-military or somethin’.”
“You don’t know the half of it,” I said, thinking of the day she’d taught me to not only make my own bed-something young Oliver Hightower had never done or had to do-but to make it with military corners.
Smiling, I briefly, wistfully remembered the past ten years with Aunt Riva, who was, despite the resemblance, quite a different being than Charris Bellechaine. . . .
“You’re going, ain’t ya?”
I sighed again, laying my head back over his heart. “I think I have to. Things must be . . . bad. If I can help, even by being a figure-head, I have to try. I want to try,” I admitted. Ri blinked and looked away.
“Don’t suppose you’d want comp’ny, out there in Hightower?” he mumbled so quietly I could barely hear him. But hear I did, and found myself looking back up at him, gaping, shocked beyond all other feelings. Then Ri was meeting my eyes, his own determined. “I mean, friends help friends, right?”
That hit me like a hammer in the heart, and before I could even think about it I was sitting up, saying: “Don’t put yourself out on my account, friend. I can handle Hightower all by my lonesome, so don’t let me take you away from whatever really matters to you!”
“I didn’t mean it like-aw, c’mon, darlin’, don’t-” Ri sat up and grabbed me before I could stand up, and wouldn’t let me go. And I couldn’t break free of his effortlessly iron-like grip, I knew from experience, so I didn’t even try.
“Let go of me.”
“No.”
“Let me go, Riley!”
“Never.” I looked over into his eyes and they were more determined than ever-more solemn than I’d ever seen them. “It wouldn’t be right to let you just go, not without back-up. ‘Side from that . . . I l-love you too much to let you go off somewhere without me. ‘Specially when I might never see you ‘gain if I did.”
I frowned. “Not . . . never.”
“I think it might be. Why’d anybody in their right damn mind come back here when they could be livin’ the life in Hightower or any one of the Twelve?” Ri asked ruefully. I reached out, brushing my fingers across his cheek and he shivered.
“If they had a friend like you waiting for them here, I’d say anybody would.” I smiled and Ri returned it, small and sweet, and kissed me.
“You’re more’n my friend, Alexei Stanton. But boyfriend seems like such a silly, small word for what you are to me. It don’t quite fit.” Ri searched my eyes, his own still solemn. “Boy-I-wanna-spend-the-rest-of-my-life-with sorta fits. But it’s kind of a mouthful. I think I like husband a lot better.”
My eyes widened till it felt as if they’d fall out of their sockets. “Ri . . . what’re you saying?”
Ri’s smile turned into a grin and he got up to one knee and took my hand.
“Alexei Stant-Hightower, I’m askin’ you to marry me. Hear me out,” he went on before I could say anything. Not that I would have, shocked as I was, once more. “You’re eighteen and I’m seventeen. We’re over the age of majority-we c’n smoke, drink, fight in a war, vote, and get married, if we want. If we want. . . .”
And it took me a few second to realize Ri had tossed the ball into my court. By the time I did, he was speaking again, nervously: “Well? What d’ya say, suge?”
Uncertain of what was going to come out, I opened my mouth to speak. . . .
*
I sat on the express hover-tran to Verdant-the last Western City-state before the Eastern City-states began-alone, but for Theya, and pensive.
Out the window, scenery, as dry and arid as any back home-back in the small, dusty town that’d become my home for going on eleven years-rocketed by. Tears welled up in my eyes for another home, lost to me.
“Don’t worry, Lord Hightower . . . you’ll be back, someday,” Theya murmured from the opposite seat. I glanced at her, and tried to not think of all I’d lost-all I’d given up-and smiled limply. Just then the door to our private car opened and in came my husband of one day . . . give or take a few hours.
Ri looked mildly uncomfortable in his nicest blue suit, and he was fiddling with the simple gold band on his ring finger. But his eyes lit up when they landed on me and he came to sit by my side, kissing my cheek.
My smile firmed up. Became genuine, when I thought of all that I had gained and the future that now lay spread before me like uncharted territory.
In three days, the Western City of Verdant, and beyond that. . . .
Beyond that, my City.
Hightower.
END