by Deanna Chase
So he folded his hands at the base of his back, wiped his expression and did his best to look professorial. Or, at the very least, unapproachable.
“...He is a documented expert in inter-species warfare and defence,” Durenkirk continued, now reading from a small, transparent feed monitor placed directly below the microphone set into the podium. “...Further, Mr. Dehgoies has participated in over ten human and inter-species wars in official and unofficial capacities. Those wars spanned continents and covered multiple terrains and tactical approaches, including the jungles of Vietnam and Panama under the Americans, high desert terrain and lowlands of Afghanistan under the Russians, Pakistan under the Turks and drug cartels under the Mexican military authority. He’s even recently spent some time in South America with our own Mi5...”
Revik saw the frowns relaxing on some of the faces in the wider crowd.
So they no longer saw him as a Nazi.
Just as a paid fence-hopper. Or, more accurately, a merc.
Revik couldn’t be sure which was better, personally...but clearly the latter was preferable to the majority of this crowd.
Revik had already surmised that many older English still had less than fond memories of the Germans. He’d noted that much even while passing as human, due to the accent he still carried from learning English in Bavaria, back in the early part of the last century.
“...As the first instructor we’ve ever had on staff of his race, we would like to extend a warm welcome to Mr. Dehgoies, and thank him for joining us to improve and aid in more comprehensive inter-species understanding!”
Revik stifled another snort.
Inter-species understanding, his ass.
Learning how to kill seers more efficiently using one of their own as a patsy consultant was a lot closer to the truth.
Before he got very far in that line of thought, however, the entire room full of well-dressed humans began to applaud, still looking up at the stage and at Revik himself. Revik winced, looking around in bewilderment as they did it. For those few seconds, he could only scan faces, trying to understand what they were clapping about.
Then he realized they meant the applause as a compliment.
In their eyes, he was “one of the good ones,” a seer who had taken the side of humanity in the endless-seeming struggle between the races.
Revik had no idea how to respond to that, either.
So he didn’t. He only stood there, unmoving.
It hit him again, however, as he caught the gaze of the sympathetic woman with the graying hair and the floor-length white dress, that he might as well have painted a target on his chest, taking a job like this.
If there was ever a race-traitor job, this was definitely it.
Blending after that little scene up on the podium was impossible, even though Revik figured he’d only been standing up there for about three minutes, tops.
Now that they all knew what he was, Revik felt eyes on him wherever he went in the room. He also picked up on flickers of light, which was worse: some of them curious, some disgusted, some aroused, some angry. He fought to avoid all of them, and only half-succeeded.
He didn’t stop drinking, either, which didn’t help.
Drinking didn’t so much block impressions as distort them...even amplify them strangely, popping out some flavors more than others, and dulling Revik’s ability to interpret anything he felt, whether the initial impression was more or less accurate...or not.
Still, he must have been doing a better job blocking impressions than he’d realized, because he jumped nearly a foot when a hand stroked deliberately and unambiguously along the length of his crotch while he’d been leaning against the bar.
He’d decided to count drinks at that point, which was sort of delusional given that he’d started before Eddard called him up to get ready for this thing. He knew he was beyond tipsy and solidly into drunk at this point, although not messily so, thanks to his seer constitution. If he’d been a human, Revik suspected he’d be under the bar by now, not standing next to it.
He’d had at least two before they called him up on that stage, and Revik felt reasonably sure he’d had at least two more since that time. He’d wedged himself against one corner of the bar, choosing to hide in plain sight, so no one would be actively looking for him. He’d chosen a public place, too, where people would be less likely to try and pin him down with those inevitably awkward and overly-personal questions that humans seemed to be incapable of not asking seers. Revik could feel it was nerves and ignorance and whatever else, and sometimes he could even be gracious about it...but not tonight.
Really, he was counting down the minutes before he could get the fuck out of there and make his way home where he could get drunk for real.
Therefore, when he got groped, quasi-publicly no less, he jerked enough to spill his drink for the second time that night. Stepping out of the way of the hand, he looked at who it belonged to, fighting to keep his infiltrator’s lack of expression in place when he saw Durenkirk standing right next to him, smiling like he’d just pulled a little girl’s hair in school.
Revik gave him an openly angry look, quirking an eyebrow.
“Can I help you, sir?” he said, his voice cold.
“You work on the side, don’t you?” Durenkirk said.
Too loudly, Revik thought.
He couldn’t quite keep his eyes from darting to either side, to see if anyone else stood close enough to hear the human’s words. Of course, he realized...too late...doing that only made his interaction with Durenkirk more conspicuous.
“...Most of you icebloods do, am I right?” Durenkirk added, smirking.
Revik stared at the other man, fighting somewhere between real offense and confusion. Then he caught a flicker of Durenkirk’s light, and realized the male human was drunk. Too drunk. Even so, for the first time in what felt like a long time, anger won out.
“Fuck off,” Revik said.
The human flinched, but didn’t move away. His voice did grow more cautious, however.
“You haven’t heard my price yet,” Durenkirk said.
“I don’t need to hear it,” Revik snapped. He saw a scattering of heads turn in his direction, reacting to his raised voice, and likely also to the charge that expanded off his light. For once, he didn’t care. “I’m not for sale. Do you get that?”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m really fucking sure. And you couldn’t afford me if I was.”
The aged human smiled at him knowingly.
Revik didn’t wait for any more words. He knew he’d be likely to hit the human if he did. He wasn’t so drunk that he forgot how that would likely turn out for him, given what he was. He’d find himself collared and sitting in a cell, probably naked...definitely beat up...and hours before his hangover got a chance to well and truly kick in.
Of course, that would be after getting tasered to the ground in front of all of these people...or maybe hit with a tranquilizer dart by Defence College security.
Because of all of this, and a few other reasons, Revik didn’t wait.
He slammed his glass down deliberately on the bar and walked away.
He didn’t look back.
He didn’t breathe, really, not until he’d crossed the length of the chandelier-decorated ballroom. By then, he at least had some idea of where he wanted to go. He aimed his feet straight for the double glass doors leading out to the outer balcony. A large part of him wanted to walk out altogether, but, barring that, the priority was to get outside, out of that cloying room and the light of all of those humans and into less suffocating air. Since he doubted he could get away with leaving altogether, he went for the short-term exit instead.
Well, that...and it was closer.
Walking through those slightly ajar balcony doors, Revik opened them wider just long enough to get all the way through. Then, turning, he closed the glass doors behind him so that they latched with a loud click. He exhaled only then, feeling an almost exaggerated amo
unt of relief. He turned a few seconds later, to look out at the night sky, and the moon he saw reflected in the closed glass doors...
...and jumped, realizing he wasn’t alone.
The woman in the white dress stood there, smoking a long, dark cigarette.
She smiled at him, but Revik caught a flicker of nerves, probably from the closed doors. He felt something else on her, too, what might have been guilt. Something in the combination of those two things relaxed Revik at once. Especially once he realized the guilt came from the smoking itself. The rest of the story came to him from one swift pass over her light.
She was hiding from her son, who would throw a fit if he caught her out here.
It wasn’t a human cigarette, either, he realized, smelling the air. She was smoking hiri, a seer habit, and one significantly less toxic than the human variety. Even so, Revik was surprised. Despite the changes of the past few decades, it still wasn’t common to find humans smoking hiri, even the expensive kind, like she obviously had.
“Can I have one?” he said, walking towards her.
The woman smiled, and Revik smiled back.
He felt the pulse of relief off her light, too.
He was tempted to joke that he wouldn’t tell her son that he’d caught her out here, but stopped himself in time, reminded again that he was drunk. Drunk enough that he’d almost forgotten that the majority of humans weren’t enamored of reminders that seers could read their light, and therefore, their minds.
“Thank you,” he murmured, feeling her assent as he approached the wall where she stood.
While she pulled out the pouch of hiri, he smiled a little at the brand. The expensive kind, indeed. She bought the real deal, grown and cured only in Seertown, India. He watched her fingers as she fumbled with the container, which she’d smuggled in via a sequined white purse that matched the long dress.
Even so, he didn’t get any closer.
Revik stood a few feet away, instead, albeit along the same balcony wall, hands in his pockets. He also made an effort not to stare. He knew the importance of being non-threatening around humans, especially female humans...especially the older ones and the very young. Some habits were pretty well ingrained, no matter how drunk he was. While he waited for her to fumble with the hiri, he looked out over Belgrave Square, making out shapes in the moonlight that shone over the park in the center.
The woman handed him one of the dark-wrapped weeds a few seconds later, and he nodded a thanks, putting it to his lips.
Before he’d asked, she lit it for him, almost shyly.
“Don’t tell my son,” she said, smiling again.
He exhaled hiri smoke, grinning at her, in spite of himself.
“Which is he?” he said, feeling some of the tension leave his shoulders as he took another drag of the hiri. He motioned with the hand holding the hiri stick, indicating towards the closed balcony doors. “...I confess, I know very few of the attendees.”
“He is the new professor of counter-intelligence,” she said, taking a drag of her own hiri. “Stevenson. Garrett Stevenson.”
Revik nodded again, leaning his hands on the white stone balcony.
He remembered the name, and took a snapshot with his light of the image that came to the woman’s mind as she spoke it. He’d need to learn the current faculty anyway.
Taking another drag of the hiri, he looked down the length of the building itself that time, and its white, ionic columns. It hit him again that they were alone, and that it might not be particularly safe to be alone with a female human out here. He wondered if he should put more space between himself and her, just in case, but she seemed to be at ease with him for some reason.
It made him relax his guard more than he normally would have.
“Did something happen?” she asked him, after a few more seconds. “...Besides your fear of public speaking, I mean?”
Revik gave her a sideways look.
She was smiling again, though, a faint curiosity wafting off her light.
“You looked angry,” she added, motioning towards the door. “...Quite thunderous, really, when you first came out here. If you hadn’t been so startled to see me out here after you closed those doors, I might have been afraid.”
“Might have been?” Revik said, clicking softly.
“I wasn’t afraid of you,” she said. “I’m not.”
Revik hid another smile, but said nothing.
Even so, he was amused, in spite of himself.
Not only that, he was flirting with her...with his light, at least...and he knew it. Dialing it back a bit, he leaned his backside against the railing. Exhaling in a tired-sounding sigh, he took another drag of the hiri before answering her.
“Yeah,” he said finally. For some reason, maybe alcohol or maybe some other reason, he told her the truth. He even looked at her directly while he did it. “...Your kind seems to think my kind are all whores,” he said, blunt. “It gets old sometimes.”
“Was it Durenkirk?” she said casually.
Revik turned again, sharper that time. He watched as she took a drag of the hiri.
Seeing his expression, she smiled.
“Everyone knows he’s a pooft,” she explained, waving the hand holding the hiri towards the sky. “All but his wife, apparently, but I suspect she has her own diversions.” Her smile crept up wider, even as she propped an elbow on one arm. “...Besides,” she said, motioning towards Revik’s body. “He was staring at your bum earlier. Pretty intently, I should say. Even after he embarrassed you up on that stage.”
Revik let out a surprised laugh, then nodded.
“Noted,” he said.
“You’re quite beautiful,” she remarked next, looking him over with a studied casualness. Flushing a little when Revik gave her a direct look, in her light more than her complexion, she added, “Not conventionally so, of course...but you must know you’re extremely attractive, even without the whole ‘seer mystique’ thing you have going for you.”
When Revik didn’t answer, her smile grew more wry.
“I’m not surprised Durenkirk took his chances,” she said. “Frankly, you’ll probably get a lot of that, working here...from men and women. But technically, it’s harassment. Especially if he did it the way I suspect he did, given the number of bourbons I saw him downing earlier.” She paused, then added more cautiously, “I’m on the board. For the college, I mean. I could report it, if you like. They won’t do anything, but it might discourage him…embarrass him, at least.”
Revik felt his shoulders stiffen.
It hadn’t occurred to him she might be in a position of authority, not with her hiding out here, getting buzzed on seer weed and looking guilty when she got caught. He started to stammer out a reply, but she waved him off, laughing a little.
“You should see your face,” she said, clearly amused. She held out a hand to him, the one not holding the hiri. “Miranda Stevenson,” she said.
Revik remembered the name. Putting it together with the son’s name she’d given him earlier, he felt his face heat slightly. He only shook her hand, though, saying nothing.
“Ah,” she said, watching him shrewdly. “You’re not going to talk to me anymore.”
“I’m drunk,” he said, looking back out over the balcony. “I’m sure I’ve said more than I should have already, Ma’am.”
“Ma’am,” she murmured. He heard a stab of annoyance in her humor that time. “So it’s ma’am now, too? You really know how to hurt a woman, Mr. Dehgoies.”
He shook his head, folding an arm over his chest. “We don’t use those titles. Seers,” he added, by way of explanation.
“So how do you call one another?”
“Dehgoies,” he said at once. “Formal, anyway. Or military. Informal would be Revik, my given name. You may call me either.” He kept his voice carefully polite that time, borderline expository, but she grinned at him again, seeming to relax.
“So if I call you Revik, will you go back to flirting with
me?” she said.
Clicking again softly, he shook his head. A darker flavor pulled at his light, though, even as he did it. For some reason, his mind returned to earlier that night.
That afternoon, to be precise.
“I’m too drunk to flirt, too,” he said.
He felt her flinch, but didn’t know how to talk over it.
When the silence grew more awkward, he cleared his throat. Stubbing out the last of the hiri, he gave her a short bow, thanked her for the hiri, and returned back into the main room, closing the glass doors behind him.
That time, he decided, formalities be damned.
He left.
He didn’t tell anyone. He didn’t even call ahead to alert Eddard he was going, although he didn’t think about why that was, either, not at first.
It was only after he’d been walking for about ten blocks, his breath steaming out in front of him in the late autumn air, his arms wrapped around the relatively thin tuxedo jacket as he walked...that he admitted to himself that he wasn’t going home.
Vash’s words still knocked around in his head, too.
Maybe it was the old seer’s words that he heard the loudest when Revik found his feet taking him to the tube train at the top of the Heath. He wasn’t thinking about that consciously though, not when he entered the tube station, not when he walked onto one of the cars...and not even when he eventually got off, walking out of a second tube station that dumped him more or less in the middle of Soho.
Either way, it didn’t seem like much time passed before Revik found himself standing outside a bar he’d never seen the inside of before, although––like every other seer living in London––Revik had long known exactly where it was, and what happened inside.
Staring up at the flashing neon, he fought to think.
Then he decided he didn’t care about doing that, either.
Thinking, that is.
Blanking out his mind, which was only marginally sobered-up anyway, he walked directly to the black-painted door, giving a short nod to an orange-eyed bouncer who sat on a stool outside. Without bothering to ask the seer sitting there, Revik gripped the iron door handle in his hand, giving a hard yank to separate it from the frame.