Riki was touching Iason's body.
Iason lay in the middle of the bed, on his side, resting his right cheek on the mattress. He had a pillow, certainly, somewhere nearby, but it had been lost into the tangle of linens, and he was not interested in searching for it. The sheet, kicked up in front of his face, limited his vision to only what he could see out of one eye. His sense of depth was gone. He knew there were seven yards of empty space between himself and the far wall, but only because he had walked it every morning for the past five years, since he had purchased this apartment out from under a rival, as Blonde as himself, who was no longer paying his business the attention it required. The railing that separated his balcony from the vast empty spaces between Eos' towers appeared as immediate to him as his bedside table. The Riki in front of him, reduced by a dimension, was not real, either; he was a painting of himself.
A painting would not touch the body of a Blondie.
But then, no one touched a Blondie. Except for another Blondie. Even then contact would be rare, a gesture made to carry weight beyond what a signature or a retinal pattern could guarantee. There was no law that prohibited it. It simply was not done.
Iason made a point of doing many things that were not done.
Riki sat on the bed at Iason's side with one knee propped up, his toes marking divots in the mattress, and the other leg butterflied out to the side. His shoulders were hunched in a way that should have made him look defeated, but only made him appear indolent. A pet ring, for which Iason had handled the needle himself, pierced the head of his cock. He was, except for the ring, naked.
None of these things were unusual. What was unusual, what was remarkable to one who took note of Riki the way Iason did, was Riki deciding, on his own initiative, to touch Iason. Iason had not expected this. When Riki first reached out and found the line of his hipbone, Iason looked up at his face; he did not see the sideways glance through eyelashes that meant Riki was trying to get away with something he knew he was not permitted. Alien as Riki was to Eos, and as ignorant of its codes of conduct, he was quick enough to pick up on what was expected of him.
And as he was still Riki, no matter where he slept, he ignored the rules as often as possible.
After that first look, Iason decided Riki was only exploring. It was not unpleasant to be explored, so he remained silent, considering it an indulgence, like sliding into direct mental interface with Jupiter: something he could enjoy for the moment, but must be careful not to become accustomed to. The half-vision he managed around the barrier of the sheet was another novelty, reminding him that this was not his usual world. He used the time to study Riki.
A well-trained piece of furniture might be called upon to touch a Blondie, perhaps to fasten an article of clothing, or to work with the clasp on a piece of jewelry. He would do so with precise, economical motion, always impersonal, because the furniture would be perfectly conscious that he could not be considered a person. He would be careful to keep his expression neutral, since a Blondie would not care to know his opinions.
Riki knew none of this. His face was openly curious as he ran a hand in long, even strokes over Iason's skin to learn the texture and its irregularities. There was an element of calculation in the way he used his fingertips to test for resilience; caution, when he traced the tendons running down the exposed side of Iason's neck. He was vicious, in the impersonal manner of a cat, when he pressed hard against Iason's shoulder and chest to find the edges of the bone underneath.
Someday, Iason would make use of this. The more comfortable Riki became with his body, the more shocked he would be the next time Iason turned it against him. Because he would. Not in a betrayal great enough to damage the attachment he had cultivated. But enough to sting. Enough so Riki would remember. Perhaps, if Riki truly enjoyed this touching, then it would be interesting to bind him one night, in chains, to see how he would react to having Iason's body within sight, but beyond his reach.
Riki's hand reached Iason's navel. For a long minute he lingered there, rubbing at the scar tissue. It was the only place that showed Iason had ever been cut, or required to heal.
"What is it?" Iason asked, in response to Riki's frown. He was gratified to see Riki startle at the reminder that he, too, was under observation.
Riki's frown grew deeper. "Why do you have this, if you weren't born?"
"Of course I was born," said Iason. "Aren't I here?"
"You know what I mean."
There were certain Blondies who believed knowledge was something to be hoarded, and not shared unless required. Iason disagreed. He found educated pets and furniture remained useful to him for far longer than it took for their prettiness to fade. "I was not born from a woman, if that is what you mean. The womb in which I grew was created by Jupiter."
Riki scratched a circle around his navel. "Then why do you have this?"
"An embryo must be nourished."
Riki snorted. "Don't tell me you haven't found a better way. I thought you had a better way for everything."
"It didn't need improvement," Iason said, mildly. "Many other things did."
Riki seemed to consider that for a moment. Then he took his hand from Iason's belly, and leaned back in a long, languorous stretch that lifted his hips from the bed. He sighed as he pulled and stressed his own muscles in a fine display of his inferior body.
Slut. Iason slid his hand between the arch of Riki's back and the bedsheet. "Strength. Endurance. Intelligence," he listed. "All showed significant room for improvement."
"Then what good am I?" asked Riki. He yawned, expansively, with nothing of politeness or deference in it, until Iason needed to clench his jaw to hold back a yawn of his own, then he fell back down onto the bed. Sweat transferred from the skin of his back to the flat of Iason's palm.
"You are not good. But that is not why I keep you."
He rose up and moved a knee to the other side of Riki's thighs, so that he straddled him and could look down at his face. Strength was one of the more obvious refinements Jupiter had gifted to him, and he used the hand caught under Riki's back to haul his hips up against his own. Riki squirmed against the bed, first to shift his weight to his shoulders, and then, when his cock brushed against Iason's, to rub himself into hardness.
There was more sweat on Iason's palm, now. It made it easy to slide his hand down Riki's spine and push a finger into his hole. Riki sucked in his breath. He glared, but did not stop rocking his hips.
Iason crooked the finger. "Roll over," he said.
"No."
No. Of course not. That would be too easy. Iason's wrist was turned at an awkward angle, but he did not consider moving himself. He bent Riki's leg and swung it out and over his arm, like he was positioning a jointed doll.
"Let go. It doesn't bend like that." Riki tried to kick out, but succeeded only in jamming his heel against Iason's hand. He flinched and shut his eyes. Now Iason's hand was threaded between the clutch of his legs, and his finger penetrated more deeply. Iason put his other hand on Riki's hip and pressed down, pushing through his resistance, until Riki was pinned to the bed with nothing left to leverage against.
To thrust would require Iason first to withdraw. Instead, he moved his hand in a circle. Sometimes, in the middle of an arc, he would curl his finger sharply, and Riki would try to jerk away.
He didn't get very far.
Riki's eyelids quivered, but did not open. Not yet. Iason knew he almost had him. Only another moment of patience was required. Riki had his own code of honor, reveled piecemeal to Iason over these last months, and there was a stubbornness in it that would not let him surrender with his eyes closed.
Riki sighed, and opened his eyes. His expression was, for his face, the picture of restraint. On the face of a Blondie, it would be an embarrassing display of emotion.
"Let me," Riki said.
"Let you what?"
Riki swallowed, and it made his Adam's apple shift. Iason leaned down and bit it. Riki swallowed again, and Iason followed it with his lips.
"Let me roll over."
Iason raised his head to see Riki's face. His eyes, black as his hair, were furious.
"If that's what you want," said Iason.
He took his hands from Riki and moved to the edge of the bed, reaching for the drawer of the beside table. It slid open in response to his touch. Riki, saying nothing, sucked his lower lip between his teeth and chewed at it. It was already chapped. If he kept it up, he would make it bleed. He turned onto his belly, and said to the sheet, "I hate this."
Iason pushed Riki's thighs farther apart, partly because it gave him more room to kneel, but mostly because he knew Riki didn't like having his legs spread. He brought a slick finger back into Riki's hole. "I think if you hated this, it would be easier for you."
"I hate you."
Riki could not see him with his cheek against the bed. Iason could smile if he wanted to, but he didn't. "Why do you think you hate me?"
"Because I don't want this!"
"You asked me for it."
"That doesn't mean anything," said Riki. He sounded abruptly like a petulant child. He looked nothing like one. Iason ran his free hand down Riki's back from nape to tailbone, gathering sweat, mixing it with the slickness already on his hands until he could work another finger inside of him.
"Of course it doesn't mean anything." Iason shoved hard and tugged up; Riki's hips twitched and followed his hand. Iason won a grunt from him. "You're a liar. And a thief." Riki kept silent. Iason added, "And a whore."
"Like hell I am," Riki snarled. Iason ground his hand forward; Riki pushed back.
Iason reached out and leaned over, and said against Riki's ear, "You're my pet. Isn't that the same thing?"
Riki tossed his head as he always did when Iason used that word to name him, like he would be bitten if he didn't shake it off. Iason, expecting it, pulled back, so that the ends of Riki's hair only skimmed across the corner of his mouth. "How would you know?" said Riki. "Blondies don't fuck. Not even whores."
"You haven't been paying attention, if you still think that. I proved you wrong weeks ago."
Iason withdrew enough to join a third finger to the first two, then twisted them back in until he was a deep as he could get. Riki hissed, and his cock softened. Iason took his time, never touching Riki's cock, but reaching up to touch him everywhere else, at his nipples, at his throat, over the lines of his lips, bending down to worry at his neck and his earlobe with his mouth, and moving his hand in Riki the way he'd learned Riki liked it. After a long while, when Riki was hard again and moaning, he stopped, sat back on his heels, and held Riki open, but gave him nothing more.
For the first time since he had turned over, Riki looked back over his shoulder, and met Iason's eyes. "What are you waiting for?"
"Nothing."
"Then hurry up." Riki rested his forehead against the mattress. "Get it over with."
In the clipped diction of the Midas slum, Iason said, "Blondies don't fuck." He curled his other hand into Riki's hair, feeling the shape of his skull, and how easy it would be to press Riki's face down and take away his air. Then he said, in his own voice, "This is a Blondie not fucking you."
Iason possessed all the patience Riki lacked. He did not move, but waited for Riki to break himself enough to ask for it. He gave him time, counted out in heartbeats, and let Riki take two breaths for every one he took for himself. Until Riki said, "Iason," and then Iason shivered, because to hear a pet say his name like that, like he was taking it in vain, was a transgression all the permutations of bare skin against bare skin that he knew could not match.
Iason said, "You have to tell me what you want."
Riki gritted it out between his teeth. "Let me go. Let me leave."
"Again. And this time, don't lie to me."
In a whisper, Riki said, "God damn you. Fuck me."
Since neither one of those was a lie, Iason did.
He took Riki's hip in one hand, and slid the other over his own cock, just once, which was enough to remind himself that there was a better clench and a sharper heat to be had. Then he was against Riki, then in Riki, and then he remembered that he always forgot the shock of this, this getting inside of the other. Part of it was sheer sensation. Part of it was the knowledge that this was him, with his pale hair and his perfect, ruthless reputation, doing this one thing that was denied to him, that he wasn't supposed to have, but that he had found and taken for himself anyway. And that it was his Riki he was inside of was the only way it could be, because a tame pet would be shocked, would be horrified, and would never thrust back and gasp like he could not handle both his breath and his desire at once.
He slid his hands under Riki's arms and pulled up, and Riki pushed himself away from the mattress and back against him, sliding his knees apart and his hips further down in a way that carried his gasps up into shouts. Iason held Riki's body against his chest and listened with a kind of wonder as Riki cried out like he dared everyone to hear him, dared Iason to fuck him until he cried himself hoarse.
For a long while, Iason tried to do just that. But when Riki brought his right hand up to his mouth and spit into his palm, Iason knew what Riki wanted. He caught Riki's wrist before he could touch himself. Riki tried to get his other hand down between his legs, but Iason blocked that one, too, and pinioned both of Riki's arms against his chest.
Riki shot a look at Iason through his eyelashes. He let his head fall back against Iason's shoulder and said, "I want it."
"No."
Riki twisted in his arms. Iason had to shift his hips to stay with him. "Fuck you. I want it."
"I don't care."
"Why the fuck not? You like watching me. It's what gets you off."
Iason wondered if Riki realized how little sense that made, to assume that because he got pleasure from watching, it would follow that he could find none in the act itself.
Riki was still talking, rambling, saying, "I asked. It's what you wanted. What do you want from me?" but Iason wasn't listening to him anymore. He only repeated "No," until Riki lost his words again, and fell back on cries.
Riki fought, but he did not fight to get away. He was only what evolution could manage on its own, and no match for one of Jupiter's children. But blood and skin were still what they were, even in a Blondie, and when the vessels carrying the first broke, it stained the latter. Riki was going to leave his mark where he dug his fingers between the bones of Iason's arms. There would be another, on his thighs, where Riki slammed down his weight. Riki fought, because that was how he lived. Iason held onto him and made himself into the undefeatable opponent Riki needed, if Riki was going to fight without the fear that he would win.
And because Iason was strong enough, he held him and ignored everything else, and tangled himself up in the still-new things his body was telling him about wonderful it was to take someone who didn't care to please him, who made him work before he could get what he wanted. It told him simpler things, too, like how sex was about heat and friction, and how he needed to arch his back and cant his hips up just so if he was going to feel it where he wanted it to make himself come. Then wanting to come became needing to come, and Iason was left without a choice; he was nothing but skin stretched over that need. He fell apart.
He knew again, as he had the first time, that he would not give Riki up while they both yet lived.
The aftershocks rivaled his orgasm for sweetness. He buried his face in Riki's hair as he shuddered through them, listening to the pattern of his own breath. It seemed loud now that Riki had withdrawn into silence. When he finally pulled back, and brushed away the sweat-damp hair that clung to his cheekbones and temples, Riki shoved his way out of his arms, and turned to face him.
"Satisfied yet?"
Iason almost, but did not quite, smile. "Very nearly."
"I'm not." The words were clipped and flat.
Iason, with a laziness he wanted Riki to see, let his gaze drift down to Riki's cock, still hard, and run through by Iason's steel ring. Then he worked his way back up to Riki's face. He took Riki's chin in his hand, leaned forward, and kissed him.
Riki's mouth was unyielding.
Iason breathed, "Riki," against his lips, because it pleased him to hear it. Then he kissed him again. It was a gentle kiss, surprisingly chaste, nothing more than the reality of touching, nothing stronger than catching at the curves of Riki's lips. Riki did not respond. He didn't react at all.
Iason could force him to, of course. There were any number of ways he could do that. The difficulty there lay in the fact that none of them would mean anything in the end, unless Riki was given a choice.
This kiss, then, became a kind of diplomacy. A dangerous kind, because it was also another defiance. Iason found it to be a challenge. He found, too, that Riki tasted like black tea, and he smelled of salt, and that he could never quite manage to be completely silent when he was aroused.
When Riki's answer finally came, it came not through the kiss, but through his hands.
Iason felt one, clenched into a fist, dig into the small of his back. The other tugged at his hair, then curled around the back of his neck and pulled him closer. It was enough. Iason reached down and gripped Riki's cock.
Riki gave him everything at once: a moan from his throat, his mouth, open to whatever Iason wanted, his hips pushing fiercely into Iason's hand. Iason suddenly felt like laughing. He might have, except he knew Riki wouldn't understand. He pushed him back until he was sitting half against the headboard and tasted all the corners of his mouth, finding the pet ring with his thumb and tracing it from the underside to the slit. He broke away from the kiss because Riki had been right, all along, and Iason knew it; he was beautiful in his pleasure, and Iason wanted to watch him.
Then he thought of something better. Something he had not yet done. He slid down, bent his head, and pressed his lips to Riki's cock.
Riki froze.
It tasted like more than salt, very bitter, with the underlying tang of steel from the ring.
"No," said Riki. "Stop. What are you doing?" He sounded like he couldn't find his breath.
Iason took the pet ring between his teeth and pulled. He looked up.
Riki looked shocked. "Blondies don't do that," he said, faintly.
Iason did laugh at that. He released the ring, and brushed his cheek against it. "For a mongrel, you seem to know a great deal about what Blondies do and do not do."
"Everyone knows this."
Iason stared at Riki, unblinking, until he was certain he had his complete attention. Then, slowly, and with great precision, he said, "I don't care about everyone," bent down, and took Riki's cock into his mouth.
He never looked away from Riki's face. He needed a rhythm, found one in the rocking of Riki's hips, and when he came too near to thrusting, tightened his grip; making Riki moan. It wouldn't last long, Iason thought, and he was right about that, but he still had time to learn the feel of it, and the trick of blinking sweat away from his eyes, and he had time to reach down and touch where he had been, to find Riki wet with his come.
And he watched, intent, as Riki tensed, and strained, and came into him.
There was silence for a long while. Iason found the last traces with his tongue, which made Riki shiver, then moved up to kiss him once more. Riki sighed, but would not meet his eyes. He rarely did, afterwards. Iason lay down beside him, reaching out to touch his hair, and gently twisted the longest pieces between his thumb and forefinger. He thought about the different ways there were to be born.
"Satisfied yet?" whispered Riki.
"Yes," Iason said, which was most of the truth. Then he said, "For now," which was the rest of it.
Riki said nothing more, though Iason waited for him until he fell asleep. He slept deeply and did not dream. He woke, briefly, in the earliest part of the morning, to see Riki standing on the balcony, a backlit silhouette braced against a railing above all Eos. Iason closed his eyes and drifted back down.
Riki would be back in his bed by morning.