Penumbra

by Dan Ackerman

Arden sniffed what he had claimed to be a glass of water and found it contained something undoubtedly alcoholic in nature. Hopefully not straight vodka, which was what it smelled like.

  Mara looked like she wanted to strangle Rhys. She glared at him for a solid five minutes by Arden’s estimate.

  Arden asked, “Should I be worried about him?”

  “He’s spare parts, not worth worrying about,” Rhys said.

  “Shut the fuck up,” Mara growled.

  “You’re being incredibly unkind,” Arden pointed out.

  Rhys rolled his eyes.

  “It’s not like you.”

  “It’s exactly like him,” Mara said.

  “You don’t even know me,” Rhys shot back.

  “But I know who you are. And who you hang out with.”

  “Are you two still in school?” Arden asked as casually as possible.

  They both made faces at him.

  “Cause you’re acting like fucking children,” he said.

  They shifted.

  “Yeah, that’s right. A spoiled, piece-of-shit peer just said you’re acting like children,” he told them. “So…figure it out.”

  “I just. Eden needs stability and you’ve brought the exact opposite into your home,” Rhys said. “That man is reckless and unpredictable. Arden, just because he doesn’t want to kill you now doesn’t mean he won’t change his mind.”

  Reckless, maybe, but Arden found that Oggie had his own kind of predictability. He couldn’t always guess what Oggie would do, but he could safely narrow it down to two or three options for most scenarios.

  “Oggie’s too spineless to hurt anyone. Not even to save his own ass,” Mara pointed out.

  Rhys shook his head. “He’s—”

  She dared, “Call him spare parts again.”

  “He’s legitimately ill,” Rhys said.

  “You’d be ill too if you’d grown up like he had.”

  “What, with nice toys and—”

  “Alone,” she said. The word dropped out of her mouth like a weight. For once, she didn’t sound angry, she sounded sad. “Mam never let Pop visit her during the day and she never let Oggie leave. And she sure as shit wasn’t staying home with him. We’re five fucking years apart. Five years and that boy was alone, you know, except maybe he wasn’t all the time. Who knows who wandered in? A worker on cleaning duty. A friend of Mam’s who dropped by. Who knows if they fed him and changed him, or if they hurt him? He doesn’t remember.” Mara looked toward Oggie’s bedroom. “Trust me, the Quarters’ nursery is better than that.”

  Arden felt sick.

  Had one good thing ever happened on Eden?

  Rhys had drawn in on himself.

  “The other kids in the Quarters weren’t nice to him, but at least we know what happened to him,” Mara said. “So, yeah. Spare parts are all he is. But he’s not bad.”

  Arden swallowed.

  She stood up. “Tell him I’ll be around tomorrow. If I spend another night here, I’ll end up ripping out my hair. Or his.”

  When she’d left, Arden and Rhys sat wordlessly around the coffee table.

  Arden picked up the cards and put them back in the box.

  “I was going to say we should get dinner, but I don’t think I could eat,” Arden admitted softly.

  “That can’t be true,” Rhys protested, his voice just as weak as Arden’s. “No one would do that.”

  “People have done a lot worse.”

  “I’m a piece of shit.”

  Arden grimaced. “You were being uncharacteristically unkind.”

  Rhys sighed. He rubbed his face.

  “What’s your problem with him?”

  “I.” Rhys let out a long breath. “I hate that he’s using you.”

  “He’s not.”

  Rhys sighed.

  “Maybe we’re projecting a little bit?” Arden guessed. He wouldn’t have fathomed to guess this before today, but now he better understood that Rhys saw him as someone who needed looking after. “Still feeling a little guilty about duping this poor naïve Autarch?”

  “Maybe that’s it.”

  “Maybe you both need professional psychological help.”

  “Can’t afford it,” Rhys said.

  “Bullshit, I know how much you get paid. You can afford a therapist.”

  “Therapy is for peers.”

  “Therapy is for people who need therapy,” Arden pointed out. “Let’s give it a few days and then maybe you can try to treat Oggie like a person instead of the psychic manifestation of your own remorse.”

  “Yeah.”

  Rhys left, too. He gave Arden a long hug on his way out, which Arden would have really liked if it didn’t feel so much like how he’d hugged Winslow, afraid he might not see him again. He hugged back hard and hoped, irrationally, that Rhys would be able to divine that he was truly alright through it.

  Arden peeked into Oggie’s room. He was making too much noise to be asleep, quiet moans and groans but no snores. He sat on his bed. “You awake?”

  “Too drunk to sleep.”

  Arden put a hand on his arm. He understood that erratic wakefulness. He found a sour stomach tablet in the medicine cabinet and convinced Oggie to swallow it, then asked, “You want some Nine?”

  “No.”

  “Okay.”

  “Shug, will you…” He let out a concerning, soft moan. “Fuck. Will you stay for a little while?”

  “Sure thing.” Arden made himself more comfortable on the bed.

  Oggie nestled up to him, his head on his lap.

  Half an hour later, he threw up without any warning. Apparently, one antacid wasn’t enough to stave off an entire day of drinking.

  Arden flinched from the onslaught of mostly liquid. “Fuck, Og, when was the last time you ate?” he asked without expecting an answer.

  Oggie mumbled something.

  Arden gagged on the smell and had to make a conscious effort not to vomit as well. He extracted himself from beneath Oggie, shed his soaked pants to avoid spreading the sick around, then escorted Oggie to the bathroom.

  He managed to get the next wave of sick into the toilet.

  Arden waited until he’d thoroughly emptied himself.

  He spent about ten minutes just spitting into the toilet.

  After that, Arden deposited him into the tub, stripped the sheets to save the mattress, and called for someone to come get the laundry.

  He returned to find Oggie exactly where he’d left him. He wiped his mouth, threw a clean blanket over him, and went to take a shower.

  On his way to the shower, he encountered the thrall he’d called to clean up. He stopped short. “Oh, hi, Peter.”

  “Your Eminence.”

  “Sorry about that.” He nodded towards the mess.

  “Bathroom too?” Peter asked.

  “The toilet, yeah. Sorry.”

  Peter gave a charmingly resigned shrug. “It’s the job.”

  Arden cleaned himself while Peter cleaned the room. He checked on Oggie one last time before he curled up in Oggie’s newly made bed.

  In the morning, he ordered the blandest breakfast he could think of, then went into the bathroom.

  Oggie hadn’t thrown up again, which was a relief.

  He peeled back the blanket as gently as he could. “Og, time to get up.”

  Oggie groaned.

  “Oh, come on, Oggie, you’ve got sick in your hair and you reek. And you’re like…sweaty.”

  “Sugar, please go away.”

  “I can’t, Og. You’re really gross right now.”

  Oggie whined piteously.

  “Come on, a bath, and then we can get back in bed and have a nice cuddle, and you can eat something,” Arden wheedled.

  “Mmm.”

  “Okay, well, I’m going to undress you,” he warned before he started to unbutton Oggie’s pajama shirt.

  The other man neither protested nor resisted.

  Once he had him undressed, Arden turned on the water
, making sure to keep it tepid for a while. He turned up the heat little by little and added a lot of soap, not just to clean Oggie, but to cloud the water.

  Oggie came to life slowly, stretching and sighing.

  “Should I wash you or have you regained the barest shred of dignity?” Arden asked.

  “Does that have to be an either-or question?”

  Arden dumped water over Oggie’s head. He’d liked the implication of that question a little too much. “Wash your hair.”

  “You’re beastly.”

  Arden grabbed soap and a washcloth. He gave Oggie’s back and shoulders a thorough scrubbing. “I ordered breakfast.”

  “Oh, I’m not hungry.”

  “You threw up pure liquid last night. You need to eat something.”

  “Nice coming from you.”

  Arden trailed his fingers down Oggie’s spine. He stopped where skin met water, terribly tempted to go lower.

  Oggie leaned forwards to expose more skin.

  Arden took his hand back. “Good thing we’re a fake couple. We’d be so fucking messy.”

  “Pet and peer aren’t a couple,” Oggie pointed out.

  “Yeah, well, if it was real, you wouldn’t be my pet.” Arden ran the washcloth over his shoulder.

  “You take a bath yet, sugar?”

  A bath sounded nice, even nicer with Oggie. “I kind of had to shower last night.”

  “Ah.” Oggie took the washcloth from him. “Be an absolute pearl and…and just, fuck, just go in the other room for a little while. I was going to try to be diplomatic about it, but I’m so fucking hungover.”

  Arden patted his shoulder. “Take your time.”

  A while later, Oggie came out of the bathroom, ate three bites of food, and cuddled up to Arden. He asked, “Haven’t you got to be at work?”

  “No, Og, I’ve got my tablet. I’ll work from home.”

  “On my account?”

  Arden glanced at him. He shifted. “You did throw up on me. Kind of interrupts a sound night’s sleep,” he pointed out.

  Oggie whined. “You’re so cruel to me.”

  Arden resumed going through his messages. Nothing interesting.

  In fact, the only interesting thing he saw all day was a strange signal coming from Terra. Some kind of old-fashioned radio signal. He couldn’t tune in to it, so he sent it along to someone who could interpret it better.

  They’d found a few signals like that before. Usually songs or old news reports. One or two calls for help that had been too old to be worthwhile. Arden liked to have them sorted out anyway, even if they weren’t helpful. He considered them part of Eden’s history, as much as part of Terra’s.

  Once they’d found a whole movie, back when Mama had been alive. She’d been so excited to have a new old movie to watch.

  When his eyes started to hurt from staring at the tablet, he scooted down into the bed and wrapped his arms around Oggie. “Hey.”

  “Hmm?”

  “Can I ask you something?”

  “Sure.”

  “I mean, really ask you something, Oggie.”

  Soft and concerned, Oggie said, “Go ahead, sugar.”

  Arden couldn’t ask what he really wanted to know. He couldn’t ask any of the things he really wanted to know, about Oggie or the future, or the past, for that matter.

  “What is it?” Oggie asked when Arden hadn’t spoken for a while.

  “Can you lay off the drinking for a while?”

  “Oh.”

  “I’m worried about you.”

  “I don’t drink.” Oggie swallowed.

  “Please.”

  “I can try.”

  “I’m, uh, I plan on taking a few days off, well, you know. As much as I can. To get ready for the trial and everything. We have a strong case and it’s all a formality. I could throw Morris into the void if I wanted.”

  “You should.”

  “Hmm? Well, no one’s ever done that.”

  “If anyone deserves it,” Oggie mumbled.

  Arden hated that. He scooched closer. “Can I promise you something?”

  “Uh, I’m not good at keeping promises. If I was, you’d be dead,” Oggie warned anxiously.

  “No. Can I promise you something?” Arden repeated more clearly.

  “Oh. I can’t stop you. Can I?”

  “I asked you if people had hurt you and you said no.”

  “So?”

  “So you also told me you don’t drink and that’s super obviously a lie.”

  “I don’t drink,” Oggie said. “And people don’t hurt me.”

  “Well. If you decide someone is, and if you want to tell me who, I promise I won’t let them hurt you anymore.”

  Oggie stared at him, his eyes green and huge. “Why are you letting them hurt me now?”

  Arden didn’t know what to make of that.

  “Do you like to hurt people, too, sugar? Just to see what happens?” Oggie asked. He touched Arden’s ribs.

  Arden flinched before he did anything.

  Oggie dragged him closer, his fingers digging into Arden. He clung to him. “Or are you so used to it you can’t tell the difference anymore?”

  Puzzled, but mostly sad, Arden ran his fingers through Oggie’s hair.

  “Tell me I have nice hair,” Oggie proposed. “Say it gives you something to hold on to.”

  “Just checking to see if you got all the barf out.”

  Oggie didn’t huff or whine that time. He kept his grip on Arden and didn’t let go, not even when Arden tried to pull back.

  While he waited for the end of this captivity, Arden tried to think of ways to keep Oggie happy, distracted, and sober until the trial. A reliable witness did not show up hungover, or drunk, or high, and he didn’t vomit on the stand.

  He’d remember what happened, clearly and without hysterics.

  Maybe this case wasn’t as clear-cut as Arden had hoped.

  They had Morris’s fingerprints on the bottle, though, smudged on to the label in an as-yet unidentified bodily fluid. They’d tracked the batch to his supplies. It had never been reported stolen, which it should have been, given the value and potency of the drug. That alone implicated Morris.

  It had to.

  “Has Mara come by today?”

  “No. I think she needed a little time to herself.”

  Oggie burrowed even closer to Arden.

  Arden tried to shift but couldn’t.

  “It’s been funny, living without her. We’ve been peas in a pod since she was born, you know.”

  Given what he’d learned last night that statement implied so much.

  “She’d give me such a hard time when I got sick after a night out and I’d tell her she owed it to me after how many of her diapers I changed.”

  “That’s what family’s for,” Arden guessed. Mama had never seen him get messy and Mother had never been the one to clean him up as a teenager.

  What had she thought of him when he’d slunk back home on those nights? She’d told him he disappointed her, but what had she honestly thought?

  What had anyone ever thought of him?

  Had Mama loved him, had she loved Mother, or was she just as under their thumb as the rest of Eden? She had cuddled him and covered him in kisses, dressed him up and fed him morsels of her favorite snacks, and it had felt so warm and real.

  Just as real as the way he’d felt about Rhys.

  “Thanks for cleaning me up, sugar. I know it isn’t what you signed up for.”

  “Don’t be silly, Og. I signed up exactly for this.”

  “I don’t remember that being part of our agreement,” Oggie murmured.

  Arden combed Oggie’s hair away from his face. He wanted to tell him how beautiful he was, but he didn’t need to hear that. He knew already. “No one gets involved with you without thinking they’ll have to clean you up at some point.”

  “That’s the second time you’ve called me messy today.”

  Arden told him, “You popp
ed a blood vessel in your eye.”

  Oggie smacked him and rolled away. He wrapped himself in blankets and huffed periodically but wouldn’t answer when Arden asked what was wrong.

  Arden found that pretty amusing. “Tomorrow I want to go out.”

  Oggie huffed.

  “We should walk around the Solar Deck.”

  “I couldn’t bear everyone looking at me.”

  Arden rolled close to him and rested his chin on Oggie’s shoulder. “So I’ll close it.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah, just you and me, Oggie. Anywhere you want to go on Eden, I’ll close it to everyone else.”

  “That’s…” Oggie turned over. His movement put him close enough to Arden that they nearly bumped faces. “Anywhere I want to go?”

  Anything to keep him in a better mood, to stave off the day-drinking.

  “Anywhere.”

  “So there’s this book,” Oggie began eagerly, “It’s called Mr. Murry Saves the Day.”

  “I saw the movie.”

  Oggie sat up. “Well, you should read the book, because it’s better, and because the ending is different.”

  “Sorry, I’ll get right on it.”

  “In the movie, you know, they never show you who he picks, they just show him standing in the hallway, right, at the intersection. One way, left, to see Jeanette, and right, to see David.”

  “Well, yeah, but it’s all set up, you know, the whole movie leads up to him picking Jeanette.”

  “That’s why the book is better,” Oggie told him. “In the book, you know, you’re in his head, you know what he’s feeling, not just what he’s doing, and he, uh, he goes right. He goes to see David.”

  Arden smiled. “To the restaurant.”

  “To the bad match.” Oggie smiled back.

  “To the mess?” Arden guessed.

  “It’s the only book I’ve ever read where…” He trailed off. The smile faded from his face.

  Arden urged, “Where what?”

  “Where a boy like me gets the guy.”

  “Handsome young men always get the guy.”

  “No, pretty, messy bitches are a steppingstone. A moment of personal growth for someone else. A tragedy or something to pity. A funeral to attend, a wake-up call for someone else. An ex or a fling, or prostitute,” Oggie explained with a serious intensity Arden had never seen before. “Disposable.”

  Arden took his hand.

  “Let me pretend I’m not disposable. If you never ever give me anything else, give me that. One night of…” He blinked, his eyes wet, red-rimmed suddenly, and ten times greener because of it.