Scene 8: A parlor.

  Rich is back the next morning, in defiance of all the worries Rafael had fabricated while lying awake in their too-empty bed. When he wakes to the feeling of the mattress shifting beside him, and a pale figure climbing delicately up to creep toward the shower, a shot of adrenaline sends Rafael up on one elbow at once in an undignified scramble.

  “Rich,” he says, raspy with sleep and concern, and Rich jumps and whips back to stare at him, eyes wide in the dark. “Are you alright?”

  “I didn’t meanta wake you,” Rich says, which isn’t an answer. “Sorry.”

  “I’m, no, of course,” Rafael says impatiently. “Are you hurt?”

  “No?” Rich says, and shrugs uncomfortably, eyes skittering away from Rafael’s stare. “I’m—no, yeah, no. I’m good.”

  “Rich,” says Rafael, in the automatic tone of parental authority, an elder brother’s impatience, and Rich winces with immediate guilt. Damnation. Rafael sighs and draws a hand over his face, softening his voice. “...Rich. He had you well into the night. You’ve no need to play a brave face for my sake.”

  “I’m not!” Rich says. “I’m not, I’m… I’m good.” He hesitates, jaw working, and then says, more softly, “He thought maybe he’d get to fuck me, how—how drunk he had me. But he didn’t. I guess he doesn’t like how much I, uh. Don’t want it. Y’know, he likes when he can act like we like it.”

  “I know,” Rafael says, heart aching. “Then… he didn’t force you, at least.”

  “Yeah, no.” Rich reaches up to the nape of his neck, as though to grip there; his fingers alight instead on the russet stain of the bite Carraway left on him a handful of days ago, already healing to a tight, shiny ring of scarring. “It’s not like he needs to, to make his fuckin’ point. So. But. He knows I’m fucked up about that, I guess, by now.”

  It would do neither of them any good to ask what he means by ‘fucked up’, and why and how; the broader image painted by the knife scars on Rich’s arms and his fond reminiscence of the first time that was any good needs no further bitter detail. His impressive strength and stature would seem unassailable at a glance, but Rafael has seen enough of the world to know that a man of any size can be grievously hurt, with enough force of cruelty.

  He must assume that at first, Rich had not been willing to bristle and snap at whoever it was that hurt him. Before he learned to warn them off, they left quite the complement of scars painted across his pale arms and behind his wary eyes. And so Carraway is forced to circle a fiercely-guarded boundary, testing invasion strategies, teasing and tormenting and meeting, every time, a snarling, empty-eyed statue in the form of a man.

  “He’s gonna get tired of waiting eventually,” Rich says, and Rafael can see the way he shudders even from across the room, his shoulders curling in on himself. He doesn’t say whatever his thoughts stray to, though—just breathes out and shakes his head, offers Rafael a brief wave and vanishes into the bathroom, where the water turns on.

  Rafael tries to lounge in the warm, comfortable bed just a little longer, but it’s a futile effort. When Rich gets out of the shower, Rafael heaves himself out of bed and takes it over in his place. The morning proceeds normally enough from swords to breakfast to errands around the compound.

  When they meet up with Connor in a parlor, Rich studies him anxiously, glancing at Rafael, who takes a moment too long to comprehend.

  “So,” Rich says awkwardly, “you guys—everything okay?”

  “Yes?” Rafael says.

  Connor laughs. “Lord have mercy, Red, yeah I’m good! First time I’ve had a good seeing-to practically since I been here! You don’t gotta look like that, Raf was doin’ me a favor.”

  “Oh,” Rich says, turning pink. “Okay, well. That’s good! I’m glad you—it was—cool, okay.”

  “Real cool,” Connor says, and shoots Rafael a meaningful wink. Rafael opens his mouth to respond to that, and finds he has no words—he looks away instead, cheeks heating, and Connor laughs again, not unkindly.

  “Hey, where’s the goods, Red? Don’t tell me you forgot already.”

  “What?” says Rich, and then, “Oh—shit. I left it in the dresser. Dammit.”

  “Left what?” says Rafael, perhaps a little too quickly. If he can step away he won’t have to look at Connor’s meaningful grin and Rich’s uncertain face anymore, and by the time he returns they must surely have moved to another topic.

  “Nanocream,” Rich says. “I got some more from Nitro the other night after you went to bed, I was gonna give one tin to Connor yesterday and then, uh…”

  “Yeah, we remember,” says Connor, grinning widely now. “Coulda used a little extra, I was good and sore after—”

  “I’ll go fetch it,” says Rafael, and leaves the room as quickly as he can without running. He hears Rich say, as he leaves, “Okay, but seriously, are you okay?” and Connor start to laugh, and then Rafael is out of earshot, walking fast as though he could leave behind the heat clinging to his skin.

  Hopefully Connor makes it clear that Rafael did only as Connor wanted him to, that he didn’t—he’s not. He would never. Not in the way that someone did to Rich, some unknown time ago. He can only hope that Rich knows that.

  The nanocream is in two unassuming little candy tins at the bottom of Rich’s top drawer. Rafael fishes one out, tucking it in his waistband when it becomes obvious that it won’t fit into his pants’ tiny, useless pockets. Then he turns on his heel and begins the walk back to the parlor, much slower to return than he was to flee.

  He’s barely made it to the end of the hallway when he catches a flash of bioluminescent glow spots; a shining constellation of living stars dance across the glass front of a curio cabinet and then wink out as their bearer rounds a corner, hurrying away—it can only be Stefan, as ill-suited for stealth as any living man could possibly be.

  Rafael goes nervously still, but he can’t exactly march after the man and demand to know what he was doing in the hall, and there’s no point to just standing here. He has to continue onwards, in painful apprehension.

  He’s not even halfway to the parlor when the sound of heavy boots comes from a cross-corridor just behind him, and a moment later Sandgren’s voice says, “Well, look who it is, the big slut's shadow wandering around on his own.”

  Rafael turns reluctantly. Sandgren is approaching with that nasty smirk on his face, and behind him is Stefan, who apparently has seen fit to report on Rafael for the crime of daring to be outside his room and walking down a hallway. Rafael looks at him with every bit of the sharp, furious hurt he feels at this unexpected turn, and Stefan winces back from the glare, falling in behind his master’s shoulder.

  I didn’t know it was you, he mouths apologetically, as though that makes it any better.

  “Eyes up here, son,” Sandgren says, and moves even more decisively in front of Stefan. “I’m talking to you.”

  It's a sign of just how much Rafael loathes Sandgren that he doesn't immediately think of the illicit nanocream he's carrying; all his energy is focused on holding his tongue, keeping himself from saying anything to make this entire scene worse than it’s going to be. Or, even more suicidal, trying to knee the sadistic old bastard in the balls before he even starts in on whatever game he’s got planned. As satisfying as it would be to see Sandgren on the floor writhing in pain, Rafael would pay dearly for such a small victory.

  “I remember you now, you know,” Sandgren goes on, and Rafael doesn’t so much as flinch, watching him through a mask of cold composure. “You’re almost as slippery as Arthur’s new piece of arm candy, but you’ve stepped out of line before.”

  Rafael remembers, and he remembers why, and he’s expecting it when Sandgren says, “You threw a fit after that smart-mouthed little slut you used to run around with stroked out on me.”

  Despite the lack of surprise, it’s no easier to hear. Rafael manages not to snap, not to curse, not to tear the man’s throat out with his bare hands, but he can’t muffle the faint sound of rage behind his teeth, or the way his hands clench at his sides. Behind Sandgren, Stefan’s head twitches up, watching Rafael intently.

  “That was you, wasn’t it?” Sandgren pushes, grinning now, pleased to have gotten the reaction he must surely have been looking for. “And now you found another lost cause to attach yourself to. Arthur’s going to get bored with him eventually, and when he does I’m going to pay him back, and you’re going to watch—”

  “I’m sure it comforts you to imagine so,” Rafael says, reckless with rage. He bites it back a moment later, but Sandgren has already bridled, furious in turn. But somewhere beneath that… a flash of something other. Something almost uncertain.

  “Is that so?” Sandgren says, and whips out a hand as Rafael starts to shift, grabbing him by the upper arm, holding him with a bruising grip. “No, you stay right where you are, I want to hear this. I thought Arthur stomped all the fun out of you, but it sounds like you’ve got something to say to me.”

  Rafael’s heart is in his throat, choking him, his skin running hot and cold—he stares back into the man’s hateful eyes, frozen, trying to think.

  “He’s not disposable anymore,” he says, dry-mouthed, fighting to temper his rage with caution, not to blurt out anything catastrophically foolish. “How valuable might a young man be, intelligent, a hard worker, young and handsome—how might he compare to a bitter, grasping old man who ceaselessly and viciously oversteps his bounds—”

  “Is that a threat?” Sandgren snarls, and Rafael stifles a sound of pain as the man’s fingers dig into his arm.

  “How could it be a threat, sir?” he says, deferential to a fault. “What could I possibly do?”

  “Nothing,” Sandgren says immediately, and lets him go, shoves him back against the wall instead, pinning him there by the unyielding stricture of the collar around his throat and twisting hard enough to send bright lights sparking in front of Rafael’s eyes. “Nothing except run off that smart mouth, you little—”

  A faint chime interrupts him. Sandgren holds up the hand that isn’t at Rafael’s throat, clicks together the rings on his fingers, and scowls bitterly at the little alert screen that pops up.

  “Every ten fucking minutes,” he growls, and steps back, letting go of Rafael with a derisive shove. “You’re lucky real men have work to do, bitch. Watch yourself.” He starts to walk away, and then pauses, turning back. “Look at me.”

  Rafael straightens up, meeting his eyes—watching Sandgren raise a hand, refusing to flinch. The slap knocks him back down and to one side, hitting the wall shoulder-first, and he stays where he is, feeling the cold edge of Rich’s smuggled medicine dig into his hip, breathing.

  It takes him a long minute, leaning against the wall and catching his breath as Sandgren’s heavy, satisfied steps recede down the hall, before he can get back to his feet.

  “I didn’t know it was you,” Stefan says, from well out of arms’ reach. His eyes are haunted, his pretty mouth a miserable line, his whole body poised for a quick getaway. “But you shouldn’t have mouthed off like that.”

  “Go to hell,” Rafael growls, touching at the terrible bright throb of pain in his mouth. He thinks his lip’s been split.

  “We’re there already, dipshit. But. Hey. Did you really know—that guy, the, uh. He stroked out. On screen. That guy, you knew him?”

  “On screen?”

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  “Yeah,” Stefan says, grimacing. “The sergeant keeps tapes. You didn’t know that?”

  Rafael can’t find it within himself to answer, but the raw, white-hot horror and pain devouring his heart must show on his maskless face; Stefan sighs hard through his nose and gives a taut, uncomfortable shrug.

  “He doesn’t get a lot of wins these days,” he says, in a low mumble, as though to speak of his master thus even in his absence might bring down fire and brimstone on his head. “He records it, when he gets—when he gets somebody. That guy, with the—”

  “Sam,” Rafael says, a snapping convulsion. To see this snake of a man refer to him so callously, twisting his face in a lopsided imitation of Sam’s slack, fallen smile—it won’t be borne, Rafael can’t bear it. “His name was Sam, and he was better than any of us. And most certainly better than you.”

  “Yeah, well, he can join the club,” says Stefan, with a bitter quirk of his lips. “Look, man. I’m sorry. I really am. But you’re crazy. I can’t do a damn thing for you if you’re crazy.”

  “If you want to do me that favor you owe me, then fuck off,” Rafael snaps. Stefan performs a bitterly sarcastic bow, one shining hand to his heart, before turning on his heel and vanishing down the hall.

  Rafael’s legs still feel weak, and his stomach is churning coldly. He shouldn’t have said that, shouldn’t have said any of it, but—god, he hates Sandgren, and the snapping, snarling dogs that men become once the wretched old bastard has gotten his hands on their leads. That brief flash, that tiny glimpse of unease behind Sandgren’s sneer was poisonously intoxicating.

  Regardless, by the time he gets back to the parlor he’s more than glad to sink into one of the couches, breathing carefully through the lingering shivers.

  “Oh hey, you were gone a while,” Rich starts, and then gives a sharp and sudden noise of alarm and springs at once up from his seat. “Shit. Raf? What happened?”

  “I’m, I’m well,” Rafael says, despite all evidence to the contrary. Shaken as he is, and finally among friends, the mask of casual ease is slow to come to hand. “I don’t know. I’m afraid I’ve done something foolish.”

  “What happened to your lip?” Rich says, sounding entirely un-comforted. “Did somebody hit you?”

  “I’ve been incautious,” Rafael murmurs.

  “Naw, c’mon, you’re a plenty smart guy,” Connor says confidently, and comes over to gently bully Rich to one side, bending down to touch firm, gentle fingertips at Rafael’s stinging mouth. “This’s gotta be Old Scratch, huh? You got a bone a mile long to pick with that man, I wouldn’t’ve figured when I saw you around before…”

  “Sandgren,” Rafael says, before Rich can ask. “Yes. He caught me on the way back—I wasn’t prepared, and he knows exactly the measure of how to goad a man. I called him a bitter old man who would soon be obsolete, and I think it was only through some summons to his duties that I escaped worse than…” He touches glancingly at his own lip and probes it with his tongue; it tastes of raw flesh and stings like an absolute whoreson, but there’s no hot trickle of blood. “I’ve seen far worse days.”

  “Hoo boy!” Connor whoops, looking delighted. “Wish I could've seen his face when he heard that! But he din't haul you off to torture jail, so it's probably fine.”

  “He was uncertain,” Rafael says, and the words are as fine as gold in his aching mouth, cold and precious. “Just for a moment, underneath that venal malice. Rich has him worried.”

  Connor gives a bright clarion laugh and kisses Rafael right on the burning sting of his lip. Which makes everything abruptly better, to Rafael's surprise.

  Rich looks worried himself, but he takes the tin of nanocream when Rafael offers it mutely up, hands it over to Connor, and then wraps one massive arm around Rafael and draws him close to hold him.

  “I should’ve been paying attention,” he says, low in soft regret. “Shit. The mansion was pinging me about Sandgren for the last fifteen minutes, but I checked and it was just Stefan, and Sandgren actually likes the little shit, so… I didn’t realize he ran into you, too.”

  “Stefan let him know where to catch his prey,” says Rafael, and wraps a hand around Rich’s wrist, holding on, pressing into his warm side.

  “That slimy, ass-kissing li’l shithead,” Connor says in disgust. “If he keeps up like he’s been doin’ it’ll be just a matter of time before somebody feeds him his teeth.”

  “Mm,” Rafael says in agreement. “My loathing got the best of me, and… I’m afraid I may have drawn Sandgren’s attention to our station even further.”

  “We'll ride out that storm when it hits us,” Rich says, squeezing him gently. “I’ll try to keep him off you after this, though.”

  “Send him my way,” says Connor, and cracks open the tin, dabbing some on a fingertip. “I’ll take him any day of the week, I been wanting to have it out with him ever since I got here. If I was a free man, the first time I saw him lay hands on somebody he’d’ve been out in a half-dozen pig troughs before he realized he was done.”

  He reaches out to Rafael’s face again, and Rafael blinks at him and then winces when Connor dabs nanocream into the stinging split in his lip. It seems a waste to put such a precious resource to use for such a minor wound—but there’s no returning the cream to the container now. Rafael obediently lets Connor tend to him, and considers the thought of Sandgren with no authority to back him, with no Carraway looming at his shoulder. Measures him up, mentally, against Connor’s speed and the fire that he sees sometimes burning behind the man’s eyes.

  “He would still be bigger than you,” Rafael says after a moment, distantly, and Connor snorts. “He’s been a sergeant with Carraway since they were both young, he must know how to fight, mustn’t he?”

  “Maybe he did a hundred fuckin’ years ago,” Connor says. “Any farm kid in the Tennessee Territory’s fit to take a Kentucky sergeant, though. And you best believe I’m fixin’ to take my chances, one of these days. Anyway, whole world’s bigger’n me, never stopped me before.” He sucks his finger clean and screws the tin shut again. “There, that’ll fix the lip at least.” He turns a bright-eyed look on Rich. “Now, what’d I hear you say about your buddy the house tellin’ you something about Sarge?”

  Rich blinks at him as Rafael goes still. “Oh, I had her alert me whenever Sandgren is moving towards one of you guys.”

  Connor’s smile widens into a grin so delighted he looks manic. “Shit,” he breathes, “Good goddamn, you got the house turned traitor on him? Fuck if that en’t the sexiest thing I’ve heard this year.”

  “She’s not a traitor,” Rich huffs, “what’s with you guys? It’s not weird spy shit, it’s just a functional fuckin’ placemind!”

  Rafael allows himself an audible sigh. “And after all, our master has a long history of well-reasoned and generous responses in the face of perceived treachery or espionage,” he says with delicate sarcasm.

  Rich elbows him gently in the side, giving a quiet throb of a playful growl. “Come on, hon, he’s not gonna find out. Especially not from Connor, right?”

  “On my momma’s grave!” Connor says, still looking much too pleased for safety’s sake.

  “Your mom’s not even dead,” Rich says, and Connor gives a bright peal of laughter.

  “On my daddy’s, then,” he says. “I know how to keep my mouth shut, Red, don’t you worry about that. Get on and get to work for the day, how ‘bout, and I’ll take this down to the boys.”

  Carraway seems satisfied by the previous night’s amusements, because he works diligently away for the first half of the day, making calls and sending messages. It isn’t until after lunch that he begins to slow, and when he does he entirely ignores Rich and Rafael in favor of sending for another boy, apparently for a change of pace. Andy arrives after a few minutes, looking frailer than ever in his wasted slenderness, his storm-colored eyes filled with a bleak, bitter misery.

  “Hey, you two,” he says to Rich and Rafael, and Rich says, “Hey, Andy, how’s it going,” and Andy says, “Just another day at the fucking office, y’know?” and Rich gives a rough, startled hiccup of laughter before glancing guiltily aside at Carraway, who is decidedly unamused at the byplay.

  “Why don’t you come on in, starshine, if you’d be so kind,” he says with acid courtesy, and gestures with his silver claws. Andy sets his narrow jaw and crosses the floor, then climbs Carraway’s lap. He’s in only a brief pair of drawstring shorts, his olive skin drawn taut across his bones and prickled up with cold—and he shudders convulsively when Carraway skates his big rough palms up the ripple of his ribs.

  “You cold, darlin’?” Carraway teases, and strokes a few more shivers out of his prey.

  “Yes, sir,” Andy says, with such weary disinterest it takes Rafael’s breath away. “Bet you got some plans to warm me up. Sir.”

  “I think we could stand to sweeten you up, too,” Carraway muses, and cups Andy’s narrow rear with one hand while he rummages in a desk drawer with the other, drawing out a patch shaped as a white rabbit. “Here, now. Let’s see how this treats you…”

  “I could do with a line of coke and a tropical vacation, too, if you got any of those in there,” Andy mutters, and gets only a paternal chuckle and a squeeze on the ass.

  The thin, miserable, bitter man in Carraway’s arms isn’t a good boytoy; he mounts no effective resistance to Carraway’s desires, but neither does he satisfy them. He’s blatantly disengaged from anything that’s done to him, and his chemically-induced need to touch and be touched manifests itself first and foremost as a twitching, foul-mouthed impatience to get the whole business over with. He is gracelessly, savagely unpleasant, and even his suffering is unaesthetic. In his body, tattooed on his skin, in the lines of his face and the deft confidence of his hands, he demonstrates that he used to be a very beautiful man, a man of grace and intelligence and skill, and that he would rather waste everything he ever had than spend one more moment entertaining the monster who dared claim it for himself. He wants to be done; he wants to be gone; he wants anything but what’s happening to him.

  Carraway, for his part, works Andy over with the stubborn petulance of a child who doesn’t understand why a once-bright toy has grown battered and slow, why the gears have snapped, the fair face cracked, the shining lights dimmed. This was fun, once; this was a game he could play, once; this was a toy that sang when he flipped the switch, marched when he pressed the lever, turned on when he hit the button. What’s gone wrong? Surely he hasn’t lost his own skill… Rafael remembers this stage, worked upon his own flesh. The teasing and toying, the pills and potions, the increasingly elaborate torments.

  In the rising tension of the office, Rich goes very quiet and grim. He does his work in intermittent fits and starts, eyeing Andy’s torment with sidelong misery. No blood’s been drawn, nor cries for mercy, so he can at least hold himself fast to his own station rather than being driven to the danger of intervention. But it’s a near thing, and his unhappiness is palpable.

  Rafael keeps his eyes more on his work than otherwise, and does his best to send completed work for Carraway’s approval whenever it seems he’s growing too focused on his prey or too delighted with his own cruelty. Lesser items, simply to derail him, or more attention-drawing ones when Carraway seems unlikely to pay attention for less—spreadsheets and bills, interspersed with the announcement of a transfer of power in the local shipping industry, then an explosion at a business partner’s distillery and the corresponding cut in profits, and after that a minor logistical crisis from the recent atmospheric river flooding that swamped a few key outposts in the Tennessee borderlands. Perhaps it makes no difference, in the end, and if it does then it will certainly go unnoticed, but the least Rafael can do is the attempt. He spent long enough trying to numb himself, he can’t return to it now.

  Eventually, Andy is induced to a panting desperation; eventually, to a more biddable softness. Carraway revenges his frustration and sates himself with renewed enjoyment in stringing the man’s fragile, shaking body through a cruelly protracted wait on the edge of relief, and then jovially refuses him at the last.

  Andy is safe, then, for another while. Rafael has seen the breaking in of a dozen men, and the wringing-out at the end of their captivity yields Carraway much the same satisfaction. A man resistant, induced to such entertaining struggles… as he began, so he ends.

  But there’s time yet before that end, it seems. Carraway dismisses them all with a hungry and thoughtful eye that has them hastening their exit, lest he change his mind—Andy stumbling along with Rich’s arm protectively about his shaking shoulders.

  He barely makes it beyond the door before buckling in on himself. Rich gives a rumble of alarm and goes to grab for him, but Andy barks, “Hey!” and stiff-arms him away, heedless of their respective sizes, before finally subsiding against the wall to catch his breath.

  “Fuck me running,” he says eventually, and drags his crumpled little shorts back into order, ignoring both Rich and Rafael’s concerned eyes. The line of his unsatisfied arousal presses long and heavy against the scanty material; he cups one hand around it, thin shoulders shining with sweat and shaking with unwanted desire, eyes dilated, mouth twisted with rage.

  “Anyone spare a hand for a poor boy from Brooklyn? Call it your good deed for the year.”

  “Uh, well,” Rich says, going pink. “It’s just. Y’know.”

  “Of course not,” Rafael says forbiddingly, voice pitched for the back seats. “After a disgraceful show like that, you’re lucky we don’t leave you to make your own way back to the dorms.”

  “Raf!” Rich protests.

  “Come along. You know we can’t indulge this sort of disrespect to Mr Carraway and his rules. Why, after all you’ve done for the place! To think you’d disregard how things are done around here now.”

  Rich gives a dissatisfied little rumble, frowning fit to curdle Rafael’s heart in his chest, and turns away to collect Andy, with his weary cooperation, up into his arms.

  He says, almost growling, “I don’t see—”

  Rafael gestures a sharp slash of cut it out! “And I don’t care to stand around educating you on the respect due our superiors. If you insist on hauling him, by all means, get to hauling.”

  Rafael gives another harsh, peremptory gesture, fast forward, and sets off, Rich trailing on his heels for a change.

  A hallway later, Rafael dares a look backwards and flinches at the two thunderous frowns his gaze meets, one deeply disappointed, the other scornful.

  “Oh, come along,” he protests in the face of their displeasure, and pantomimes removing a very large and obvious mask, switching out his coldly imperious face for one of true exasperation. “Just because Carraway doesn’t have Sol’s keen ears, it doesn’t mean his own have been carved of soap!”

  Rich looks abruptly sheepish. “Right, okay,” he says. “Yeah. Andy, you’re just gonna have to suck it up for now.”

  “I got something you could suck—”

  “Shut it, you mean little goblin,” Rich says with tender warmth, and gives him a little jiggle so he yelps in indignation. Thus, in quiet companionship, they set forth for safer harbors.

  Smashwords as well as your (but not Amazon yet except for After the Storm), under the series title, Stories From The Michigan Fleet. The early access ebook of Run Aground is only! The final, polished version of the ebook will come out November 2026, when the webnovel finishes posting. If you missed book one, After the Storm, you can . And check out our !