by Kelly Jensen
“No.”
“Anyone ever tell you you’re a terrible liar?”
Bram sighed and watched Gael’s hair move under his breath.
The plassex skylight over their heads glowed gray with Alkirak sunlight. They’d have to wait out most of the day before starting the drive home, meaning they had too many empty hours to fill, which probably meant talking.
After last night, they really needed to talk.
Bram was hesitant to hear what Gael had to say, though—about him and his stupidity, and about what had made Gael go all stiff against the wall.
“I should check on the rover,” he said, preparing to let go of Gael and roll backward. “Get us ready to head out as soon as the sun starts down. We don’t want to be stuck here another day. I need to get back to the farm.”
“Aavi put enough feed in the dispensers to last seven days, and your irrigation system is all set. Even your processing plant can be automated. If you had a harvesting bot, you wouldn’t need to head out there at all.”
“I do have a harvesting bot.”
“Then why did you need me?”
And so they arrived at the first conversation Bram didn’t want to have.
Bram loosened his arm and pulled away. He couldn’t do this with their bodies pressed close enough for Gael’s curls to tickle his nose. Rolling onto his back, he draped his arm across his forehead. “I didn’t need you, Gael. I wanted you. There’s a difference.”
“Not so far as I can see. And you didn’t want me last night.”
“I did.”
“Then why—”
“Can we get breakfast—”
“No.” Gael rolled over and sat up. “I want to do this now, while I’m in town, and maybe have a job to go to if this—” he gestured between them “—is a nonstarter.”
A horrible emptiness teased Bram’s gut. “I didn’t think it was going to be like this,” he whispered more than said.
Gael’s cheeks flushed a deep red, and he dropped his chin.
“It all sounded so simple.” Bram pressed his arm into his eyes. “Flip through a few profiles, pick someone I might have a chance with, bring him out here, get to know him, and plan for the ever after.”
And when put like that, it didn’t sound that simple at all. It sounded ridiculous. Was he really that stupid?
Bram moved his arm and looked up at Gael—whose lips were twitching. Stiffening his expression, Bram fought the tickle at the corners of his own mouth. Gael’s mobile features followed along, wavering between amusement and consternation, until they both gave in to quiet laughter. Bram pushed back on his elbows until he could sit up.
“Not funny,” he said, trying to sound stern.
“Kinda funny.”
Another snort escaped, more a release than real humor. After Bram got his mouth back into a serious line, he glanced over at Gael. “It’s only been a few weeks, but I feel like I know who you are. Like I told you, your HV was the most real one I saw. You looked scared and vulnerable and like you needed someone, and I guess I wanted to be that someone. I dunno. Then last night. You were afraid, and I realized how much I didn’t know. About you, about how this was all going to work. And I’m left wondering if I’m . . . if I can be enough.”
His skin felt hot, but Bram let it blaze. He’d just admitted he didn’t think he could win a heart, or even a bedmate, without appealing to a specific need. Or maybe that he’d chosen Gael because he wanted to be some sort of protector or hero.
Worst part, all of it was true. He did want to be needed. He wanted to be necessary to the happiness of another person. He wanted to banish the demons that tortured Gael’s sleep. Wanted to make him smile every day.
Ridiculous.
And Gael was looking at him like he was some sort of crazy.
“I’m sorry,” Bram said.
“For what?”
Bram lifted a hand, let it drop. “I didn’t know it would be this hard. To want you, but wonder if you felt obligated to kiss me. To want me back.”
Understanding shone brightly in Gael’s eyes, like a revelation. “I do want to kiss you. Want you to want me.”
Bram closed his eyes against the earnestness in Gael’s gaze, which was so sweet and full of the want they were talking about. Trusting that face would be so easy. Falling for it. His own want was near overwhelming, edging toward need. But none of this would work if he kept believing he and Gael were at cross purposes. If he doubted Gael’s reasons for being here. Trust had to go both ways. Neither of them wanted to be played.
Opening his eyes, Bram prepared to ask the question that could ruin it all. He had to know. If he was going to take Gael home and make him a part of his life, he had to know. “What are you really running from, Gael?”
Gael’s expression blanked for a second before shuttering tight. That ever-present alertness picked up his shoulders and stiffened his whole body. He sat straighter and turned away. Bram didn’t move. He sat still and waited, trusting the fact that Gael hadn’t run for the door to mean he was just thinking. Sorting his words. Picking an answer.
Hopefully a true one.
When Gael turned back around, his eyes were glassy. “I don’t want to tell you.”
“I need to know, Gael. This can’t work if I don’t know.”
Gael inhaled slowly and squeezed his eyes shut. Bram continued to wait. When Gael opened his eyes again, he almost looked like he was peering out from behind a rock, checking if the way was clear. “Everything,” he whispered. “I’m running from everything.”
Of course he was.
Bram reached over to touch Gael’s hand. “Not going anywhere,” he assured him. “You can trust me.”
Gael snorted softly. “Where I’m from, trust is . . .” He drew in another breath, this one hitching and releasing before it was done. “I don’t want to talk about Zhemosen. I want to leave it behind.”
“Because of Aavi?”
“No! I just . . .”
“I’m not going to leave you here in Landing if you don’t tell me, but I’m not going to lie, either.” As if he could. “I want to know, Gael. I want to know who I’m taking home with me.”
Gael wasn’t much of a reader. He’d been taught his letters and recognized enough words to get by, but he’d never had the time to get good at it. He understood the concept of stories, though, and had always liked them. Would listen in when others wove tales, and on the rare occasion he had an hour to himself—and access to a net device—would poke through available collections for anything that had a happy ending. Because his personal story hadn’t been going so well and his ending had a bleak cloud around it. A dark inevitability.
So did his beginning.
But all stories had to start somewhere.
“I had a brother. Loic.” Just his name hurt. “We don’t know where we came from. Like, if we had a mother. I mean, everyone has a mother, but we never knew ours. Only reason we suspected we had the same one was because we both had curly hair and the same color eyes. I’m older. Was older.”
Gael swallowed the handful of needles in his throat. Bram’s earlier comment echoed through his thoughts.
“I didn’t know it would be this hard.”
Loic’s ghost answered him: Yes, you did.
“Who raised you?” Bram asked.
“We called her Auntie Ru and by the time we thought to ask why we had to call her auntie, she was gone.” Like so many others.
“I don’t understand.”
“People disappear in the undercity. All the time. We’re not registered and filed. We’re just a problem, one Zhemosen deals with by sealing off every district below a certain level, trapping us under the ground. So long as we stay down there, we don’t exist. Not officially. We don’t matter.”
“Then how did you get out?”
“A friend, a favor, and everything I owned for a name and an ID chip to match.” Gael held up the cheap plastic Band he wore. “This is all I have, all I am.”
Gael watched Bram absorb what he’d shared so far. Any notion Bram had that Zhemosen was the paradise everyone thought it was had to have dried up into dust by now.
“Is Gael your actual name?”
Not the question Gael had expected. He allowed a hesitant smile. “Yeah. The Sonnen part is new. I chose it. Means sun.”
Bram returned a somber nod. “What about your brother?”
Gael shook his head. “I’m one of the lucky ones. I don’t know what happened, or why, but I could so easily have been like Loic. Maybe he was sick or I dropped him too many times. It was probably my fault.” And didn’t he like to torture himself with that? “I was too young to take care of a baby. I don’t remember much from before Auntie Ru took us in, and I’m not even sure how long we were alone before then. Anyway, Loic was damaged in some way. He had trouble staying focused, and he got into these moods. I was the only one who could calm him down. I sometimes wonder if that’s why Auntie disappeared, because she couldn’t deal with any more of Loic’s moods.”
Another thought he’d tortured himself with. If only he’d managed Loic better.
“I went to work at the factory I told you about. The clothing one. They let me keep Loic with me, and when he was feeling okay, he helped with the work.” Simple jobs like fetching and carrying. “When he wasn’t feeling okay, I had to lock him in a storage room. It was a good place for him. Close and dark and the walls were padded with bolts of cloth.”
Bram winced.
“But eventually my boss got tired of the hours I had to take to calm him down and then there was the damage, the things he broke, and I was let go, and that’s kind of what happened for about ten years or so. I moved from job to job, staying for as long as I could get away with.” Gael sighed as old and new pain tugged at his heart. “When Loic was happy, he was the happiest guy I knew. He got that he wasn’t right, but was mostly okay with it. He had trouble learning and remembering. Could never read much. Neither of us could, but I remember everything I learn. There’s nothing wrong with my head.”
He understood the contract he had with Bram. Price had made sure of that. He glanced over at Bram, who hadn’t moved more than a centimeter. Where did a man learn to be so still? It wasn’t the same as Loic’s dark blankness.
Gael took a breath. “When Loic was happy, none of it mattered. We had each other.” Invisible fingers squeezed his heart. “And even when he wasn’t happy, when he was breaking things or just laying all still and dark like he was dead, he knew I was there. He’d tell me that when he came out of it. That he always knew I was there, and that was what brought him back. Me being there.”
“What happened? What happened to him?”
Gael swallowed again. Painfully.
Bram touched his hand.
“They . . .” Gael started. Stopped. Regathered. “They killed him.”
“Who killed him?”
“We were working for the Trass family. Doing odd jobs for the family businesses, running errands.” He winced. “Not all of it was good work.” Too much of it had been him trying to smile, trying to remember those dirty encouragements.
Gael exchanged a look with Bram and breathed out a sigh when he realized he wouldn’t have to say that part out loud. Explain what had happened last night—or his end of what had happened.
“If I wasn’t there when his moods happened, Loic sometimes got into fights. He was bigger than me, stronger, and he was just so damn eager to be useful. But he didn’t always understand what he was supposed to do.”
And people had used that.
“He got into a fight with the wrong person, and Julius Trass made it go away. The trouble. Then his brother Rufus started training Loic to fight properly. I thought it was a good thing and it seemed like it was. The focus helped. His moods even seemed to disappear for a while, or he could go and train and get through it when it wasn’t real bad.”
This was where it got ugly, but having come this far, it’d be quicker to race to the end than backtrack, come up with another story.
“I didn’t like the idea of him fighting for money, but it made him happy. He was good at something. Then he lost a fight. He wasn’t ready; he was on a downward slide and Rufus thought that’d make him sharper or meaner, but they never really got him. He lost another fight and things got bad. I started taking more jobs, jobs I didn’t want, because I wanted to save up enough to get us out of there. I had this stupid idea we could make our way to the shore and that everything would be all right if we could get out of the undercity and into the light.”
Gael couldn’t tell the rest of it while sitting under a square of the light he’d always wanted to see. He slid off the end of the bed and started pacing. Wrapped his arms around himself and looked for the darkest corner of the room.
He was aware of Bram shifting behind him, moving to the edge of the bed. He hoped Bram wouldn’t try to touch him. Gael might snap. Jump up or sideways or down, arms out, fists cocked. He rarely experienced violent urges, which had always made Loic’s outbursts so hard to understand. But he felt dangerous sometimes, as though he might explode in unpredictable ways.
“They set up a fight they knew Loic couldn’t win. Basically, they sold his life. And they made me . . .” The world blurred as Gael sucked in a quick, sharp breath and pushed to get it out, to finish his story. “They made me watch as someone beat my brother to death, and then they told me I owed them whatever Loic had lost them, on top of my own debts.” He’d never understood the tallies, the lists, the overwhelming numbers stacked against him. He looked up, met Bram’s unwavering gaze. “And I had to do this job, this job I just couldn’t do. So I ran away. I could only go one step lower—become property. I was damn close as it was. So I ran.”
Bram was pushing off the bed. Gael hunched down, wondering not so idly if he could detonate inward instead of outward. Disappear forever. Then Bram’s arms were around him and he was suffocating. Drowning on air, on the familiar scent of someone already so dear to him, though he barely understood his feelings toward Bram. He fought. Bram’s embrace remained firm. Even in this, he was still, immovable.
Calm.
The memory of Loic and how he’d died shredded Gael’s emotions. He’d hoped time and distance would ease his grief, but three months and half a galaxy had made no difference. It still hurt. Sun, it hurt. The pain of it shocked him, bending and twisting his limbs as he continued to fight Bram’s hold. Nothing could change what had happened. He’d run, and Loic was right here, clawing at his heart.
Gael shoved an arm beneath Bram’s.
Bram held on.
Gael felt like he was dying. Every breath hurt and his chest burned. Desperately, Gael looked up at the square of light in the ceiling. At the filtered sun. At a sky that was the wrong color, but just there, just over his head.
“I . . . I . . .”
Bram whispered his name and Gael fell. Fell against him, into him. He untucked his own arms, pulling them from around his ribs and moved them around Bram’s. Buried his face in the square chest pressed so close. Inhaled, exhaled. Waited for the sky to drop on him.
And cried.
Sea to sea, he was crying. This was awful. The most awful thing that could happen. Ever. In the history of evers. Tears had never been his friend—they left him weak and exhausted and nothing changed. Loic had still needed him and they’d both still needed something to eat. Somewhere to sleep. Shoes that didn’t let water in through the soles.
A warm hand cupped the back of his head, and Gael remembered the touch. Only Bram held him this way: gently and with such sweet intent. He remembered this smell, this warmth, this wonderful being next to him.
He stopped crying. Sucked back the rest of his tears and sighed.
Bram’s stillness crept slowly into him. Solid, implacable. Gael’s shoulders dropped and his stomach unknotted. The sense that he might explode started to fade. His need to be here, to exist, flickered to life with a small, steady flame.
“I’m sorry,” he wh
ispered, unsure if he spoke to Bram or Loic.
“Shh,” Bram said. “Bad luck doesn’t need an apology.”
“But—”
“I’m glad you ran to me.”
Such a simple statement, but in that moment, it was everything. Curling his fingers into Bram’s shirt, Gael hung on. For life, for his future. To the idea that maybe things would turn out okay. And because he liked Bram. Had liked him the moment he’d seen that first HV. The quietness of him. The surety.
He wanted a life with Bram. Oh how he wanted it.
A kiss landed atop his head. The sweet gesture almost undid him all over again, and Gael understood, finally, why last night could have been a mistake. Bram had told him over and over that they had time, and he wasn’t the sort of man who would use him, even if Gael was willing. Bram hadn’t brought him out here just to warm his bed.
Bram wanted to love him.
Ah, Bram. Please be patient with me. Keep to your stillness. I can be what you want, I know I can.
He could be what Bram needed—and not because he always strived to do a good job, no matter the work. This, he wanted. Really wanted.
This, he almost believed, he might actually get to have.
“It’s not that complicated, really. If you get the wiring wrong, it just won’t work,” Bram explained as he snapped a joint closed, completing the last circuit on his (hopefully) improved filtration unit.
Orfeo had sent news. His mineral was a composite of known and unknown elements. A team from Muedini would be paying him a visit at the end of the week to assess the find and take their own samples. He’d said nothing about Aavi.
Bram planned to head down the crevasse first to, well, he wasn’t quite sure. Knock a few extra anchors into the rock. Run a couple of lines for easier access. Poke around a little more on his own. Wrestle with the notion he’d found something that could make him or break him.
“Not working could be an issue when you’re a kilometer below the mist,” Gael said, one eyebrow raised, lips crooked in a cheeky smile.
Oh how Bram loved that smile. Any smile. Gael’s face curved into happy shapes instead of worried lines. Since their return from Landing, Gael had been lighter. A reflective mood caught him now and again, probably when he was thinking about his brother. Bram never pressed. Never asked if he wanted to talk. He simply allowed Gael his space, which seemed appreciated.