Hello there! Well, there was quite an outpouring of opinions on each side of the 'do you guys want chapters more often than once a week' question. But...the 'yes' votes won. So I'll work on issuing these a little more often. I'm not going to go crazy, but maybe five or six a month instead of one a week.
Actually the only vote I received was from Jon McGee. So, big shout out to Jon and thank you for voting. If you're looking for a great story to read...you know, besides this one, check out Jon's ongoing work "Potions Master" in the Sci-Fi / Fantasy section of Nifty. He's got five chapters posted thus far, and it's shaping up to be a damn fine read.
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22
A Tantrum and a Pleasant Afternoon
Neb scolded me for the entire ride back to The HALL. "Grown man...out of shape...poor showing...if you're the hope of the world, we're doomed."
I simmered with anger but didn't speak. Shawn felt the increasing pressure and tried several times to diffuse the coming explosion, but I ignored his efforts. No one was going to stop me having my say and I wasn't going to do it from the disadvantage of the back seat. By the time we pulled into the garage at The HALL and parked, I was more than ready to explode. I wasn't going to scream like a lunatic though. Long experience dealing with assholes taught me that coming unhinged usually meant they won. I had a different plan.
Neb got out of the car and stomped her way toward the elevator. I hauled myself out of the back seat as quickly as I could and called to her. "Neb, a word please."
She stopped and did a crisp about-face, but made no moves to close the distance between us. I closed it from several yards down to just a few inches. I gripped my watch with both hands behind my back, glared hatred down at her, and growled my thoughts out. "I don't know who the fuck you think you're talking to, but I know it's not me. We are on the same team. Drop the fucking attitude, lady."
I didn't give Neb a chance to say anything. I turned and walked away, toward the main gate, and waved over my shoulder. "GOODBYE ALL!"
"You can't leave!" She shrieked after me.
"Stop me if you can." I called with mocking sweetness.
Shawn appeared next to me as I reached the gate. The guard raised his eyes as I stepped out of the compound but didn't move or speak. A plastic bus slid to a stop at the curb. The door opened to disgorge a single passenger. "Church, I..." Shawn started to say. I grabbed his hand, dragged him across the sidewalk, and onto the bus. The door shut and the vehicle pulled away.
I flopped down on a seat near the door and offered Shawn the seat next to me. He was stunned. "I can't believe you just did that." He muttered and sat, seemingly for the lack of anything else to do.
I pulled my watch off and crushed it in my right fist. The hand shook, and Shawn noticed. He leaned in and whispered, "do you need a drink?"
"No, I'm pissed." I growled.
We rode a couple blocks in silence, me nursing my anger and him worrying until something on Shawn's person buzzed. He took his phone from his pocket and checked the screen. "It's my uncle." He announced.
I stopped him from answering it. "Can you text with that?" I asked.
"Yes, but..."
"But nothing. Text him you'll call him after lunch and shut the thing off."
"But..."
I made firm eye contact with him so he'd know I was serious. "Shawn, do as I ask, or I swear...I'll...I'll do something that no one will fucking like." I wasn't happy with the vagueness of my threat, but everything I thought of threatening would take too long to explain while Shawn's phone was buzzing insistently to be answered.
My threat, however vague, did what it was supposed to do. Shawn sent the message that I'd demanded and shut the phone off. I felt that he was scared. Disobedience was foreign territory for him. "I don't understand." He said to the blank phone screen.
I pried my fist open and stuck my watch back on. I tried to explain. "You probably think I just threw a childish tantrum and dragged you along with me. A very little bit of that is true. What I really did, was remind Neb and your uncle who's in charge."
I felt that Shawn didn't get it. I tried again. "You probably think your uncle is in charge, because of his position. Neb thinks she is in charge because of her rank. I know that I'm in charge because, without me, the mission doesn't go forward. I would bet that right now; your uncle is explaining that very simple fact to Neb. The point of walking away and refusing to communicate is to show them they are not in control."
After my explanation, Shawn was less confused, but I got the impression he thought I was being petty. That was also a little true, but that wasn't the point. "Don't get me wrong, this isn't just a power play. Your uncle asked for my help, and I agreed to give it to him. I've made no demands and I didn't plan to make any." I paused to think about that. People don't respect what they get for free.' I reasoned. Maybe I should make them pay.'
"I think tomorrow I will make some demands." I said as my thoughts crystalized into intentions. I set that idea aside to gnaw on later and gave Shawn some more instructions that I hoped would set the stage for my newly intended negotiations. "At one o'clock, turn your phone on and call Ars. Tell him only that we'll see him in his office tomorrow at eight. Ask him to have Bem and Neb there and don't answer any questions."
Shawn agreed to do what I asked. He didn't like it, but he would go along. I think because he knew they needed me and not the other way around. "Where are we going?" He asked.
"I have no idea. I saw the bus and got on so they couldn't follow us. I'm hungry. I figure, when we see a restaurant, we'll have lunch and explore a little. OK?"
"Sure." He agreed but still didn't like it. It seemed disobedience and spontaneity were both outside Shawn's comfort zone.
We found a restaurant and ate a nice lunch. It was nice except for Shawn's jittery nervousness telegraphing itself across our link. At 12:55 he dragged me from the restaurant so he could call his uncle. He hustled me to a park on the next block and stopped near a bench. I sat while Shawn shifted his weight from one foot to the other and fidgeted. I suspected he'd be doing that thing where he makes a fist and grips it with his other hand, except both his hands were clamped around his phone. He turned the phone on at 12:59 and dialed on the stroke of one.
Ars answered quickly, but not overly quickly. He and Shawn had a short conversation during which Shawn made the request for the appointment. His uncle assented and apparently added some thoughts of his own. One of them made Shawn blanch. The worry he'd been feeling since I first dragged him onto the bus in front of The HALL, spiked to fear. He held the phone out to me. "He wants to talk to you." Shawn said pleadingly.
I took it reluctantly. I didn't want to, but as much as I wanted to make a point, I didn't want to do it by making Shawn suffer. I felt I'd already traumatized the poor guy enough. "Hello, Ars." I said to the phone.
"Hello, young man. I take it your point is made." I listened to the small man's overly-pleasant voice and pictured him leaning back in his swivel chair, speaking to the ceiling.
"Almost." I admitted.
"Almost, you say. My, my, my, my, my; almost the man says. Shall I prepare myself for more foolishness, young man? My patience, though great, is not inexhaustible."
Ars would make an excellent chess player.' I thought. I wonder if they have chess here.' I gathered myself and responded very carefully. "It is not my intention to test your patience, and you shouldn't bother to prepare yourself for foolishness. All I want is to have a brief meeting to...to set the parameters of our relationship. That's all."
"I accept your terms, young man." The way Ars said it, I felt like he'd glad-handed me through the phone. "Yes, we should, how did you put it, `set the parameters of our relationship.' That is very good, young man, very good indeed. I look forward to seeing you tomorrow, yes, I look forward to it very much. Would you put Shawn back on, please? That is if you are finished. I believe we are...finished that is."
"Yes, Ars, quite finished. Have a grand evening. Here's Shawn."
I handed the phone back. Shawn and Ars said a few words to each other, and Shawn hung up. He practically collapsed on the bench next to me and sat leaning forward with the phone clasped between his hands in his lap. He was relieved but not all the way.
As for me, the conversation I'd had, and Shawn's reaction to the whole situation, was giving me a very definite impression of Uncle Ars Summas. I assumed Shawn saw knew exactly who the man was, but I wasn't certain. I asked a question that I didn't think Shawn would answer. "That chattering, pleasant, harmless bureaucrat thing he does, it's all bullshit, isn't it?"
"I love my uncle." Shawn said in a reluctant reply that wasn't an answer.
"But..." I prompted.
Shawn adjusted the way he was sitting, turned toward me, put one bent leg up on the park bench, and left the other foot on the ground. He hugged his knee and his eyes lost their focus. "My father...my uncle and my father don't get along, and my father..." he hesitated, then continued, "I guess I can tell you, it's all in your head anyway. My father didn't want me. He made that fact very clear my whole life. My mother tried to make up for it, but it's not something you can make up for. When I was sixteen, my mother sent me to school here in the capital. She really sent me away from my father and to my Uncle Ars. He...he was great...he...he made it better. Do you know what I mean?"
I told him I did. I wished I knew first hand, but I wasn't that lucky.
"When I got out of school, I went to work for The HALL. I wasn't there too long when one day, uncle and I were going over a report in a conference room, and my father was announced. He was in the city to see a client...he's a wealth manager...my father I mean and he'd stopped by for some reason. I hadn't seen him in four years. As soon as he walked in, he said, `I hope you thanked your uncle for giving you a job. I certainly wouldn't have kept you like he has.'"
"Uncle didn't react. He asked me to give them a minute. I went to an adjoining room. There was an intercom between them, between the two rooms, and someone had left the mic open in the room father and uncle were in. The way uncle spoke to father, I'd never heard anyone speak to my father the way uncle did. Verpa,' that's my father's name, Verpa Summas, anyway, uncle said Verpa, it has taken me four years to teach that boy that he is not worthless and I refuse to let you spoil my hard work. If I ever hear you speak to him, or find out you spoke to him, in that manner again, I will kill you.'"
"He said it just like that and my father laughed. Father said that uncle had an odd sense of humor. Uncle said it again. `I will kill you slowly, painfully, and gleefully...gleefully, Verpa, I will remove you from this world that can well spare the likes of you. I will do it in such a manner that everyone will believe it was an accident, and at your funeral, I will hold my sister, and comfort my favorite nephew, with the same hands that wrung the worthless life from your corpulent and repulsive body. Go from here now and do not return except at your peril.'"
There was enough of Ars' staccato cadence in Shawn's memory of the speech that I could picture Ars saying it. I also didn't have any affection for the man that would prevent me from believing he was as ruthless as Shawn made him sound. I didn't voice my observations and Shawn went on with the story.
"My father left and my uncle touched the call key on the intercom to tell me to come back in. Your father was called away, urgent business I think.' He explained. Then he went back to the report as if nothing happened and we worked together for the rest of the day. Right before I went home that afternoon he said, I hired you, nephew, but I did not `give' you a job. Your hard work and dedication are proving I made the right decision.'"
Shawn stopped talking but I didn't see that as the end of the story. "What does that tell you about your uncle?" I asked to keep him moving.
He shook himself out of the past to give me the moral. "I believe two things and suspect a third. I believe my uncle loves me very much. I believe he would kill my father and not lose one second of sleep over it. I suspect he left that intercom on deliberately. His mind is always ten steps ahead of everyone else. I don't think he's made a mistake, that he didn't intend to make, ever."
I drew my own conclusion from Shawn's story and voiced it. "And as much as you love him, he scares you just as much."
Shawn's eyes focused on me, like he suddenly looked up and realized I was the audience for the story he'd been telling. "It's kind of the way I feel about you. I know I'm safe with you, but the amount of power you have is...unnerving."
"And that's why you worry when I do things like challenging Ars' authority."
"YES!" He shouted, releasing his knee and waving his hands wide in a dramatic gesture of exasperation. "I've never seen anyone give him a flat `no' like you did. Most people wouldn't dare."
I shrugged off his emotional display. "I'm not a diplomat. Doing things like that has cost me in the past, but I don't seem to learn from it. I guess I'm hard-headed."
"And I have to teach you climbing." He pretend-moaned.
"Yeah, but not today." I slapped my hands on my knees and used them to push myself off the bench. I stretched my arms over my head and heard my joints snap and pop in protest. "Now that we have the afternoon to ourselves, what do you want to do with it? Should we walk around, or window shop, or go back to the hotel?"
Shawn glanced down like he was thinking. He bit his ripe lower lip and raised his eyes to mine without raising his head. It was an up-from-under look that I felt between my front pockets. "Let's go back to the hotel." He said with a huskiness in his voice that sent an electric thrill through my body. "I have something else I want to teach you."
"YES!" I shouted, my enthusiasm threatening to overwhelm my decorum. I cleared my throat and pretended some calm I didn't feel. "Uh...yes, that's a good idea. Do they have cabs on this world or do we have to take the fucking bus?"
Shawn's ringing laugh let me know he enjoyed my enthusiasm. "Come on," he took my hand and led the way from the park, "we'll take the bus. It will give you time to anticipate."
"Anticipate...you're killing me." I objected and picked up my pace. "I've been anticipating since I saw you in that climbing suit this morning."
He squeezed my hand. "I felt you admiring me while I was on the advanced wall. It felt nice."
"I never saw anyone that could move like you, as fluidly as you. It's breathtaking."
My compliment embarrassed him. "Stop, I'm not anything special."
"You're very, very wrong, there."
I was buzzing with excitement by the time the `slowest bus ever' dropped us in front of the hotel. Shawn didn't even have the door to the suite closed when I started shedding clothes. He stopped me. "I have an idea."
"So do I, but we have to be naked for my idea to work."
He grinned, then softened the grin to a very seductive smile. "I want to use our link to add to the experience. I want to go very slowly and use our emotions to guide us."
I wasn't sure what he was talking about and asked a question for clarity. "We are still gonna have sex, right?"
"Yes, Church," Shawn said and sounded like an exasperated middle-school teacher correcting an overly curious child, "we will have sex. This thing we have...I felt so much...what, feedback I guess, from you last time, but I didn't use the sensations. I want to try. Will you let me set the pace?"
"Sure." I agreed. At that point, I would have agreed to just about anything he wanted. He turned to lead the way toward my room, and I got an eyeful of his drool-inducing lower half. The view prompted an addition to my statement. "I'll follow you anywhere."
Shawn's steps faltered and he moaned. He halted his progress but didn't look back. "Your lust is like...it's raw and wild. Can you try to go slow?" He asked.
I shut my eyes and took a couple breaths. I managed to get my desire under control and opened them to see Shawn facing me with a curious look on his face. "What did you just do?" He asked. "Did you meditate?"
"I told myself it's like savoring a steak."
"Steak...I'm steak?" Shawn asked and tried to sound indignant but couldn't pull it off.
"Shawn...you are filet mignon." I teased.
Shawn broke up. His ringing laugh filled the suite and made me glad to be alive. As he laughed, he led the way to my bedroom. I followed as he guided me, still fully clothed, onto my bed. What happened over the next few hours was a mind-blowing lesson in sensuality. Shawn set the pace as we teased and touched and kissed and tasted and caressed each other. I read him and he read me as we initiated and responded turn by turn. We rode the undulating waves of mutual linked pleasure, need, lust, and desire to one shared and shattering climax and then another.
He collapsed on my back after the second, gasping and sweating. He kissed the back of my neck, and the side of my face. "How was that?" He panted.
An aftershock went through me and shook us both. "I think I saw the face of god." I said into the mattress.
My comment pleased him. He rolled off me onto the bed and settled to catch his breath. I rolled onto my side so my eyes could feast on Shawn's glistening perfection. I drank him in as he lay flat, his hands resting on the lower half of his ribcage, one leg extended straight out while the other one, farthest from me, was bent, the knee several inches above its twin.
Most of Shawn's body was smooth with a smoothness that appeared to be natural. The little body hair he had, was well-groomed; a neat mat under each arm, an arrow-straight treasure-trail from his navel that led to a curly, black bush over an impressive, but proportional manhood. His feet were nicely shaped and well-kept except the bottoms that were calloused from climbing. His legs were by far my favorite; buttery smooth, creamy white skin, taught over defined and beautifully developed muscle, and topped with slightly wider hips, and pert, round buttocks.
Above his narrow waist, was a defined flat stomach with an innie naval, just big enough to fit the tip of my ring finger. The small of his back didn't meet the mattress, but arched, with inspired natural architecture, up to a broad sculpted back. His ribcage was ornamented with defined pecs and wide-set pink nipples about the size of a quarter. Prominent collar bones pointed to strong shoulders and muscled arms. Above them, was a sinewy neck with an attractive hollow at the base.
His oval face grew from a soft jawline that held a pink, kissable mouth full of straight, white teeth and a talented tongue. Medium cheek-bones kept his features soft and flanked a cute round nose. Heavy-ish black brows and long black lashes surrounded his big, clear, piercing, ice-blue eyes. Above it all, a head of long, shining, raven-black hair that pooled around his head against the pure-white sheets.
He shut his eyes and hummed. "Mmmmmmm...that feels good."
"What does?"
"The way you feel when you let yourself enjoy me."
"What does it feel like?"
He explained to the ceiling. "Appreciative, happy, relaxed but a little excited, and a hint of hunger."
"That sounds about right." I agreed with his description of my emotions.
Shawn shifted around until he was propped on his elbow, facing me. "You are falling for me, aren't you?"
I rolled away from him to lay on my back. "Fuck, Shawn." I complained, angry that he ruined the moment. "I WAS enjoying myself."
He laid a hand in the center of my chest. "What's wrong? It's fine."
"It's not fine!" I insisted and heaved myself out of bed.
Shawn sat up, confused and concerned; the sweet spell of the afterglow shattered by my anger. "What's the matter? Why is it not fine?"
"Why doesn't he get this?" I asked myself aloud. "Why don't you get this?" I asked him. "It's not OK for me to love you. Jesus, look at me. LOOK AT ME!" I pounded my chest with fists full of hate. "I'm a fat, broken, miserable drunk who's twice your age. How can you say it's fine? What's that, a FUCKING JOKE? It's cruel, Shawn. I don't even know what the fuck I'm doing here with you. GODDAMNIT, I WANT THIS BUT IT'S WRONG!" I buried my face in my palms and wished I could die.
I heard sounds of the sheets scraping as Shawn scooted around the bed. He reached out to me with a sweet, gentle, persuading voice. "Church, would you look at me please?"
I uncovered my face and looked up cautiously. Shawn was sitting at the foot of the bed. He felt bad, but he felt that way for me. The emotion wasn't pity, he felt bad that I felt bad. "I want you to listen to me very carefully. There are a few things you haven't considered. You are nineteen years older than me on a world where people live to be three-hundred." He did some math, half of it in his head and the other half on his fingers. "To put that in Earth terms, proportioned to an eighty-year Earth life span, we're really only five years apart."
Shawn felt he'd made a big point with his math, but then lost his way with whatever else he was planning to say. He raised his hands in a helpless gesture and let them drop. The motion was similar to what his uncle had done when he seemed defeated. "The other three things you listed are really only one thing. You hate yourself. From what I've seen in your memories, you always have. I know what that's like. You can't fix it alone, and I can't fix it for you, but together, maybe we can."
He got up, crossed to where I was standing, and stood well inside my personal space; close enough that I felt the heat of his body and smelled the sex on him. "I want you to think about why you're punishing yourself for things you can't help and can't change. I want you to think about letting go of your shame and letting me in." He took both of my hands in his. "I have something I want to talk to you about, but I won't do it until you've had some time to think. We can talk about it when we get back from The HALL tomorrow."
He pushed himself up on his toes and kissed me on the lips, mouth closed. He lowered his heels to the floor again and his manner changed, the honey had disappeared from his voice. "It's getting late. You'll need to clean up and get downstairs soon. I'll eat up here tonight."
His rejection stung me like an openhanded slap to the face. Shawn felt the sting that I felt and rushed to tell me I'd misunderstood. "I want to give you some space to think about what I said. You're still welcome in my bed tonight." He said and gathered his clothes from where they were scattered about the room. He paused with a second thought on his way out the door. "You're not just welcome, I want you there. I like waking up with you."
He left and I was alone.
A short time later, Beni greeted me at the bar. "Alone tonight, sir?" He asked as I approached what was becoming my regular spot for dinner.
"Yes." I admitted and almost choked on the word.
"Yes, sir." Beni said and went rapidly away. He hurried back with a neat, straight double which he set in front of me. I stared at it while I confirmed I wanted the porterhouse again. Beni went away to put the order in and returned a very short time later with another double and a glass of ice water.
I had the first glass in my hand, still staring at the untasted amber. Beni did the best he could to set the second drink behind the bar without calling attention to it. "Are you quite well, sir?" He asked as he set the ice water down on the bar.
"No, I'm not." I said to the whiskey. I put the drink on the bar but didn't take my eyes off it. "He showed me the trap I've been living in and offered to open the cage door." I explained. "I'm trying to figure out if I want to let him."
Beni's hands appeared on the bar at the edge of my vision. "That young man seems to have great wisdom for so few years."
"Yes, he does." I agreed
"Sir." Beni said and waited for me to look at him. "The right decision is an obvious one, but not an easy one. If you choose the path he has offered to you, it will be most difficult one you have ever traveled. It will hurt. Old wounds, long covered by thick scars, will yawn and bleed. Memories you thought you buried will rise up and terrorize you afresh. That is the only way to release the poison. You must bleed, and hurt, and feel everything you've so far refused to feel."
He laid out the horrors with the zeal of a man advertising a haunted house at Halloween. I half-expected him to quote the Bible verses about `the tempest and the thunder.' Beni paused to look at his hands. "Sir..." he raised his eyes to me, "Sir, the path doesn't end, but it gets smoother, and straighter. The wounds heal, and the memories fade. Sir, if he is willing to go with you, even part of the way; if he has offered his hand, take it. It's not a path anyone can walk alone."
"That's roughly what he said." I admitted with a sigh.
Beni nodded his grave face; the fingers of his right hand touched the knot of his tie. "I wish I knew at his age, what he knows. Sir, if for no other reason than the people who selflessly reach out to those of us who struggle...those people are so terribly rare...take his hand. It may be the only one ever offered you."
I turned the whiskey glass on the bar and thought about Beni's words. "Thanks, Beni." I said after a long minute. "That advice you didn't give me is the best I've ever gotten."
"Yes, sir." He replied quietly. His normal manner returned and he became more animated. "I'm sorry, sir. Your chili must be getting cold." He said and went away.
In his absence, I had a short battle of wills with the whiskey, but the whiskey won...like it always won.