Arthur LeGuin | Athyr Liung (thedragonking) wrote in camallate, @ 2011-08-12 17:56:00 |
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Entry tags: | athyr |
Fic: Book of Days
Title: Book of Days
When: refried_scenes AU
Who: Athyr, Mordred
Rating: R
Warnings: Sex.
There’s something close to seasons here. After so many years in the sunless wideness of space with nothing above, below, or beside him but far-off stars and planets, Athyr is still a little thrown by the progression from warm to cooler weather, the way the terra-forming has produced small forests of deciduous trees that change colour as the months wear on.
Autumn is waxing along the coast, and Clarissant is restless and bad-tempered. Athyr doesn’t mind. He does his work outside, trying to keep alert to the scattered birdsong and the distant bleating of sheep in the leas closer to the village. Valdoree is an agricultural planet, so there’s not much in the way of animals, but someone in the village--maybe the mayor, he’s got an idea it’s the mayor--keeps a herd of sheep and sells lambs to folks who want something more than synth protein to eat.
The birds are just leftovers from the original terra-forming programme. He knows, because the Alliance sponsored birds on New Britain too, back when it was getting started. One of his jobs was overseeing the migratory counts every year to make sure there was enough of everything, just like he had to read reports from the folks who did counts on things like beetles and bees too. It bored hell out of him, but now he hangs onto the memory of it like it was God’s own instructions. The things he remembers from New Britain are precious, especially now that they’re starting to wander out of his mind.
At night sometimes he records the things he remembers in the logbank he took off the Broceliande. He doesn’t tell Mordred he’s doing it; he’s half-worried that Mordred would make sport of him. But lately he doesn’t remember near as much about New Britain as he used to.
He’s not sure if it’s just age or something to do with what the Alliance doctors did to him. Either way he’s scared. Either way he’s scared to sickness at losing the only thing he’s got left of home.
Around the time the fields that spread all the way to the edge of Clarissant’s property start to turn bright gold from ripeness, Athyr starts to catch the grief that always sends him running to the capitol. He feels guilty doing it--ain’t Mordred’s fault he’s still got his sister. Ain’t being done to spite him. But the unfairness of it sets Athyr’s teeth on edge and makes his heart burn against his lungs, so that each breath hurts to draw.
He does as he always does and starts packing for the journey. It doesn’t surprise them any more, they don’t ask questions. It’s all right.
“Hey.”
Athyr’s head comes up. Mordred is standing in the doorway to his room, a hand on the doorframe, watching him. His eyes are surprisingly mild.
“Just going into town,” Athyr says gruffly, looking away again.
“What, no hello?” Mordred’s mouth twists. “Come on, I need a hand with dinner.”
“I’m leavin’.”
“Try staying here this time. Whatever you’re after up there, you’re not getting it.”
“Gonna see if Miss Clar needs anything.” (He can’t help calling Clarissant Miss Clar, even if he has been living in her house for nearly four decades now, even if she does swear at him every time she has a bad spell, even if he’s heard Mordred call her all manner of things shouldn’t ever be repeated.)
“Athyr.”
“Ain’t no point talking about it.”
“Is that so.”
“Just need to get away.” Athyr keeps his eyes on the pack.
“You’re running from me.”
“Ain’t I got the right to do that?”
“If it was any use to you I’d say give it another shot.” Mordred’s voice is starting to take on the wry tone it gets when he can’t be bothered to get annoyed, like he’s just amused at Athyr’s folly. “As it is I think it’s a waste of your time. And I’d rather have the help with dinner.”
“I don’t ruttin’ care what you’d rather--”
He knows more than feels Mordred’s hand on his arm. He’s getting used to interpreting the meaning of added pressure without the dissonance of expecting a sensation to catch up with it. Sensation never comes.
He starts to try and word up something to answer with, but when he turns to Mordred, Mordred kisses him. Athyr can feel the hard pressure of his mouth, the way his fingers tighten against Athyr’s skin, the push of his tongue--Athyr can feel the presence of it, and his mind starts racing right away, putting together the meaning. He knows he’s late responding. Having to add it all up by hand instead of having his body do it for him always delays things. But then his hands knot in Mordred’s shirt and he’s kissing back, and he feels Mordred’s hands shift to his hair.
Sex used to be intuitive. It takes work now, it takes a real conscious effort because he has to wake his mind up enough to connect responses to whatever Mordred does. But that doesn’t mean it ain’t still good. Just because he can’t feel it--he can’t feel the tightness in his dick or the agonising good torture of slow fingertips against his thighs or his throat, all that’s gone. So now he keeps his eyes open. He watches Mordred flush and sweat, watches his eyes haze over, the way his lips part when he’s near gone. Athyr thinks he knows what Mordred wants better than he ever knew Anna or Gwen, because he used to get so lost in his own pleasure that it was hard to remember his partner.
Now he’s lucky to have anyone at all, being nothing more than a pretty-looking fellow who can’t sense a goddamn thing that touches him. It’s all just pressure now. So if he wants to get off--and he has to get off, since otherwise Mordred won’t sleep with him--he has to use his imagination. And that ain’t defective, exactly, but it ain’t nothing hindered by Mordred splayed out on the bed beneath him, cloudy-eyed with sex, one of two people left in the whole rutting universe who know what he and how long he’s lived.
When he finally stops to think again, about something that ain’t what he should be doing to Mordred, they’re sprawled on the floor with one of the sheets half-wrapped around them, tangled up like a couple of cables in an engine room. Mordred strokes his back. Athyr, who’s always touching things like a nervous habit, just in case his sense of feeling suddenly decides to come back, is lying still for once.
“Try staying here.” Mordred’s voice comes to him fuzzily, that accent that always seems like it’s changing around. Athyr nods.
“Yeah.”
“I mean it. I’m sick of you disappearing with no word or warning.”
“You want me to fill out papers?”
“No, idiot, I want you to stay.”
“Mm.” Athyr nuzzles his cheek against Mordred’s shoulder. “You just want someone else around you can set the blame on when dinner ain’t fit to eat.”
“You’ve caught me out,” Mordred says, deadpan. “And since we’re on the subject, Her Royal Highness demanded mutton stew to-night.”
“She gonna eat with us?”
“Only maybe. If you’re not stupid,” he says, mimicking Clarissant’s sharp tones exactly. Athyr laughs, still slow-brained from the sex, and Mordred sets a hand palm-down on his chest. “So probably not.”
“No,” Athyr agrees.
“You ready to get up and help me?”
“Aiya, I guess.” He stretches and sets about untangling himself from the sheets. When he glances back, Mordred is looking at him with an unreadable expression, gaze steady. “What?”
“What? --Nothing. Admiring the view. Come on, move your ass.”
It takes them a while to get supper underway, what with distractions like kissing--like some randy kids, Athyr thinks--and getting dressed, and staying dressed--and then they get into a light, dumb argument over what Athyr can do to help, since he ain’t allowed to handle the kitchen knives, not with his trouble. Finally Mordred sets him to making the piecrust for the stew. While he’s working, his eyes keep straying to the window.
All that wheat is the blazing golden colour of a star turned sun. It tugs his mind back out to space, to the Broceliande. To all those things he’s lost or’s losing.
“Reminds me of home,” Mordred says, off-handedly.
“Yeah. Me too.”
Mordred squeezes his shoulder--extra-hard, he knows, so he’ll be able to feel it. “We’re maudlin sons of bitches. Come on, we’ve got to get this done or Clar won’t speak to us for a fortnight. As if she didn’t already.”
“You’re the one who keeps runnin’ his mouth off.”
It’s good here. It’s better than where he was before, floating in space with no particular destination, flying back and forth endlessly just to keep the ship in the air. This is kinda like a home. It’s the closest he’s ever gonna get any more.
He still misses the Broceliande. She was good ship, sturdy and small, not hard to manoeuvre, even with just him for crew. Nimiane had no family, so when she died he didn’t report it, just put her in the spare shuttle and pushed her into space (he told himself, a little wistfully, that she’d have been pleased with that. She loved the big emptiness of space as much as Gadriet did, and Athyr liked the idea of her wandering there for-ever in the shuttle, sailing through uncharted galaxies of unnamed planets or getting pulled into the dust of asteroids orbiting some star).
And every few years he docked somewhere and got the Broceliande inspected, because it only seemed right to keep her in the best condition he could afford. Nimiane did. And the whole while he remembered what Mordred said about counting the years, and how he’d stop doing it after a while, but he still kept marking them down in the ship’s log anyway. Partly it was to keep himself sane. He was too small for that ship, and he felt it badly. One night he got the idea that if he ever found Mordred and Clarissant again he should ask them to come and live with him there, and he fixed onto it like a kid with a new rifle. He dreamed about it, sometimes feverishly. If they were there, he kept figuring, he wouldn’t be so lonely. They’d understand him. They knew how it felt to be eternal--to realise that those stars out there passing him by would die before he did. To know that someday New Britain will just collapse in on itself and disappear, the city where he was born destroyed in a single extinguished candleflame of a moment, and he’d still be inside the Broceliande, counting the years in the aging logbank.
Somehow he ended up living with them instead, and even if he misses Nimiane’s boat, this is better. He’s grounded. When New Britain goes, he’ll still have Mordred.
Athyr glances back at him, but Mordred is cutting mutton into pieces, fully intent, and doesn’t notice the look.
Athyr’s afraid he’s in love with him.
And then he thinks: not afraid. It ain’t no crime, so long as he don’t say anything, or go around acting like some lovesick fool.
He straightens his shoulders and gets back to work. He doesn’t know how long it will last, but right now he feels like he’s home.