Homecoming

[maculategiraffe]

First: due to a Series of Unfortunate Events (though nothing involving a count with a tattoo of an eye on his ankle), I still haven't mailed out people's perfume. I'm sorry. :( I do have it all packaged up in ziploc bags with people's addresses written on slips of paper, ready for the padded mailers, and I should be able to get to at least the extended-hours post office on Monday, barring more snow or unexpected emergency-room visits (no worries; total false alarm).

I'm also going through backlogged comments and messages tonight looking for important things I have doubtless missed or forgotten about. I've given up on catching up completely, but I am going to get to a point from which I feel comfortable moving on and doing better at staying on top of things in the future; I'm not sure what that point will be yet, but I'm hoping to determine and achieve it this weekend.

In the meantime, here is the "Yves comes home from university for the first time" story I promised.






"Oh, my goodness," said the woman sitting next to Yves, as the train pulled into the station. "I wonder what's happened?"

Yves blinked, drawn back from reverie, and focused politely. He hadn't been reading; he hadn't even brought a book, or packed any to bring home. For the past four months, and for once in his life, he'd had enough reading. Not too much-- probably never that-- but enough.

The university library had been beyond anything he'd dreamed of; his reaction had delighted and bemused his fellow students, who took such things for granted. The time he'd fallen asleep in the stacks and been discovered the next morning with his cheek pillowed on an open book had made it into the campus paper and prompted a lot of good-natured joking at his expense, but Yves didn't mind being the symbol of intellectual privation suddenly confronted with limitless plenty. Quite the contrary.

His actual classes had been almost disappointingly easy, but that had been just as well, considering that the simplicity of his assignments left him plenty of time to read on his own. Next semester he'd take more classes, and harder ones-- he'd already spoken with the dean of studies-- and he'd spend more time with other students, not just the professors he'd pursued relentlessly and asked so many questions they must have gotten sick of him, even though they were unfailingly courteous.

The only trouble with the library was something he hadn't expected of himself-- though it made perfect sense, after two decades of conditioning. Every one to two hours, no matter how absorbing his researches, he looked up, wondering where his master was, if his master wanted him for anything, and if he should go find out.

Sometimes, when the urge was too strong, he'd go write a letter to Holden to satisfy it, with the honesty he'd promised before he left:

You've interrupted me again; here I was, absorbed in an exciting new theory of cosmology, and as if a bell had rung, or your voice called out to me from the next room (politely, you understand; never "Yves, get in here!" but perhaps just "Yves? Do you have a second?"), or as if I'd sensed you standing in the doorway, watching me-- I stopped and looked up. Looked around for you.

I'll never get anything done at this rate...

He had gotten things done, though. And he'd earned his holiday. And by all the gods and the World Ash Tree, he was looking forward to nothing so much as having that voice in the next room be real.

"Look," the woman continued. "I wonder if there's been some sort of accident?"

Yves craned his neck to look around her, out the window, and saw a phalanx of-- unmistakably-- members of the press, some with notebooks, some with cameras, half turned towards the waiting train, half knotted around a standing human figure.

"Oh, fuck," he said, almost laughing, scandalizing the woman as he scrambled to his feet and slung the single canvas holdall that constituted his luggage over his shoulder, stepping out into the aisle before the train had even come to a complete stop. He grabbed the back of a seat to keep from falling, and then headed for the doors of the train, but there were already others ahead of him and he had to wait in an agony of impatience, trying to see out the windows to the one figure in the crowd who interested him. Yves had little doubt he was to be found at the center of the press corps. Of course the press would have bothered to look up the dates of his holiday-- the university he attended was public knowledge-- and the train schedules; he was still news, easy as it was to forget on a secluded campus where non-campus reporters got chased off by security, and his first homecoming was a story the press wouldn't want to miss. But poor Holden; as if he hadn't had enough trouble.

When he finally got a good look at Holden, who seemed to be alternately watching the doors of the train and yelling at the reporters, he had a small shock; Holden's hair, which when Yves left had still been raven-dark shot with silver, was now what some called salt-and-pepper. There was enough of the original dark left to see, but you could now accurately describe Holden as "gray-haired." Four months was too short a time for such a change-- unless they'd been an unusually stressful four months, of course. Like, say, if your live-in lover of two decades had decamped to live elsewhere and refused weekend visits on the grounds that he needed uninterrupted time to acclimate.

The rush of guilt that threatened to overwhelm Yves was interrupted by the doors opening; Yves shook it off and poured out with the rest of the crowd, heading straight for his surrounded and furious quarry. He weaved his way deftly through the crowd, shouldered with pleasure past a few reporters, who grunted and then yelped and said his name, and half ran, half leaped at Holden, wrapping his arms around him and kissing him square on the swearing lips.

Holden's body went rigid, then quivery; his arms jumped around Yves and strained him close. His mouth seemed to expect the kiss to end soon, seemed to expect a chance to speak, but Yves was having none of it, and Holden slowly relaxed into the kiss, his whole body melting and leaning into Yves', his mouth hungry and speechless, recapturing the rhythms they'd practiced too long for a four-month's separation to make an iota of difference. Around them, cheers and catcalls and flashbulbs exploded; Yves refused to let go. If he hadn't minded being a photo op when the caption was "The morning after: former slave Yves Gilsen makes the most of his newfound freedom with a tome on modern physics," well, neither would he particularly mind being captioned with some variant of "Yves Gilsen, having had enough of his newfound freedom for the moment, attempts to lick his former master's tonsils."

When he finally broke the kiss, Holden gasped and said, "I'm sorry, I couldn't chase them off--"

"Who gives a flying fuck?" Yves asked, and kissed him again, harder.

After the second kiss, Holden said breathlessly, "Is that all your luggage?"

"Yep," said Yves, and threaded an arm firmly around Holden's waist. "Where's the car?"

"This way," said Holden, starting to walk. Reporters yelled questions as they went.

"Yves, are you going back for another semester?"

"Are you happy to be home?"

"Did you enjoy university?"

"Were you homesick?"

"Yes, yes, yes, and yes," Yves said to Holden.

"Don't think my hair's turned gray because I missed you," Holden whispered. "It just happened in the last half-hour, being yelled at by these people."

"You look very distinguished," Yves answered. "I can't wait to fuck your brains out."






It was true, so true that in the car on the way home, he couldn't keep his hands off Holden: nothing invasive, just a hungry stroking, recapturing the texture of Holden's hands, his arms, his neck, his hair, his cheeks, his thighs...

"I'm going to drive off the road," Holden warned.

"Spoilsport." Yves settled for stroking Holden's back and chest, half straddling the gear shift. "I understand now why Val used to come home gagging for it."

"Except Val was having some sex at university," said Holden.

Yves smiled. "That, I don't understand. Didn't they have a library where she went?"

"Sure. She probably had sex in it."

"Sacrilege," said Yves, only half jokingly. "I guess you've been having sex all over the place, while I was gone. Do you still fuck the trainees?"

"No," said Holden. "Now that I'm not training them for sexual slavery, it seemed... unwise."

"Is it hard?" Yves asked. "Not to?"

"Not really." Holden batted at Yves' probing hand with one of his own, keeping the other on the wheel. "I mean, it's not that I didn't enjoy it, but-- I was doing it for a good reason, before. Or I thought so. Now there's a good reason not to, so--"

"Mmm-hmm," said Yves. "Is that latest kid you wrote about still around? Jasen, right?"

"Yes," said Holden. "He's doing very well. Bran's been-- Yves, I'm serious, I am going to drive us into a ditch in a second--"

"Sorry. I can't wait to see Bran-- oh, is Jer visiting anytime soon?"

"I don't know," said Holden. "I wrote him with the dates you'd be home, but I haven't heard back. I'm hoping he'll just show up out of the blue."

"I hope so too," said Yves. "I've missed him. And Bran. And you."

"Try not to kill us before we get home, then," said Holden.




When they pulled up in front of the house, Yves was mildly shocked to see no reporters waiting.

"Alix called the police and had them run off, this morning," said Holden. "For trespassing and obstructing traffic. We didn't realize they'd all just decamped to the train station. They'll probably show up again later."

"Fuck 'em," said Yves, getting out of the car. "I don't care if they're all hiding under the bed upstairs, as long as none of them try to get between my salient parts and yours."

"Which are the salient parts?" Holden asked, as they started up the walk.

"Have you even forgotten that? What have you and Bran been doing all this time?"

Before Holden could answer, the front door banged open, and Bran himself came flying down the front walk and hit Yves like a ton of bricks, nearly hugging the life out of him. Yves kissed the boy's sweet, yielding mouth, reaching up to run his fingers through the silken curls of his hair; Bran was whimpering faintly, ecstatically, like an overexcited puppy.

"Hey, Bran," he said, pulling back slightly. "Missed you, kiddo."

"I missed you too!" Bran nearly shouted, bouncing on his toes. "I'm so happy you're home!"

"You are?" Yves smiled. "You realize I'm here to kick you out of bed, right? At least for tonight."

"Of course," said Bran, laughing. "It's okay. I've got--"

He gestured back towards the house, where a stocky, brown-haired, teenaged stranger in the familiar green tunic stood watching them with folded arms.

Yves raised his eyebrows. "I thought Holden said--"

"We don't have sex," said Bran, grabbing a hand each of Yves and Holden and pulling them towards the house. "But Jasen hasn't been sleeping well. It's nice for him to have someone there when he wakes up. Yves, this is Jasen."

"Hi," said Jasen, stepping back slightly to let Yves pass through the door.

"Hey," said Yves, and then he was enfolded in Alix's arms, and he kissed the top of her head, grinning at Greta, who hugged him too when Alix let go.

"Hey," he said again, to both of them, to all of them, Bran glowing like a sunbeam, Alix with her gentle smile of welcome, Greta smiling too, maybe even a little surprised by how glad she was to see him, and Jasen watching with his arms still crossed, face carefully neutral. "I'll tell you all about university at dinner, okay? Holden and I have some stuff to catch up on, first. Alone."






When the bedroom door had closed behind them, Yves scrambled out of his clothes-- the stupidly cumbersome clothes of a free man: belt, boots, trimmed and tailored tunic-- while Holden watched him from the edge of the bed, eyes dark and avid. Then he went to Holden and knelt down at his feet, tugging at one of his boots. Holden let him pull off first one, then the other, and then stood when Yves pulled him to his feet, unbuckled his belt, and let it drop to the floor. Holden made as if to pull off his own tunic, but Yves got there first and pulled it over his head, rumpling up his hair, and then pushed him back down on the bed; Holden lay back and silently clasped his hands above his head. Yves opened the nightstand drawer, took out the lubricant, and eyed Holden.

"Brace yourself," he ordered. "I've got an entire semester's worth of pent-up energy here."

Holden looked up at him with half-lidded eyes. "You talk so pretty."






"We're not going to make it to dinner, are we?" he added two hours later, as they both lay spent and sweaty, curled face-to-face.

Yves considered. "I'm not sure... I am going to need to just stare at you for a few hours, if that's okay. I haven't seen you in four months, after all. My mental pictures all need updating."

"Yeah, sorry about that," said Holden. "Don't roll your eyes-- I'm not fishing for compliments. I just-- I know I've aged."

Yves smiled. "It happens to us all."

"You look ten years younger."

"Which would still make me ten years older than any of my classmates."

"I wouldn't think that would be a problem," said Holden.

"Well, no," said Yves. "I mean, I didn't lack for volunteers or anything, if that's what you mean."

He'd meant it as a casually teasing remark, like a thousand others he'd made to Holden, but when Holden went still and blank-faced in the way he only did when he was badly hurt, Yves wanted to bite his own tongue out.

"Holden," he said softly, honestly. "I haven't even been tempted."

"I can't believe that," said Holden. "A whole campus full of brilliant young students--"

"Too young," said Yves, and then, "No, it's not that, exactly. They aren't much younger than Bran, and they're definitely not younger than some of the trainees I've fucked for you. But-- speaking of fucking the trainees-- you know what you were saying in the car, about how you'd had a good reason before? And now you don't? That's kind of how I feel, too, at the university."

Holden was watching his face.

"I mean," Yves said hesitantly. "Well. The first few years I was a slave, I had sex because it was my job. I mean, when anyone would have me. And that's why I had sex with you, at first-- and then I fell in love with you, which seemed like an even better reason to have sex. I mean, it didn't hurt that you were sweet and creative and nine kinds of gorgeous--"

"Only nine?" Holden asked, with a flicker of his usual willingness to banter, and Yves said, "I'll count again in a minute. But-- and with Val, I loved her too, and I'd always-- taught her, it just seemed natural. And Jer and Bran-- that was a bonding thing at first, you know, welcome to the family. Not that I didn't want to, but it wasn't just for the hell of it-- and then I got to love both of them too, of course, so that was a good reason not to stop. And the trainees, that was part of my job, I was helping with the business, and you enjoyed it so much, watching-- what I'm saying is, I've never had sex for no reason."

"Not that I'm an expert on casual, non-job-related fucking," said Holden, "but I think the fact that it feels good constitutes a reason, for some people."

"I don't think it's enough," said Yves. "Not for me. I don't know. That could change. What, do you want me sleeping around?"

"I want you chained to my bedpost," said Holden. "But it's not what I want that matters."

"It does to me," said Yves.

Holden made a quick, shrugging gesture. "You know what I mean."

"I know you don't have the right to give me orders, any more," said Yves. "But if you ask me not to have sex with anyone else, I'll do that for you."

Holden looked slightly startled. "You would?"

Yves nodded.

"What about Jer?" Holden asked. "And Bran?"

"I'd give them up too, if you asked me to," said Yves. "I don't need anyone but you, Holden."

Holden's brow knitted. "I couldn't do the same for you."

"I wouldn't ask you to," said Yves. "In fact, I'm not sure I'd love you any more if you did that to them. Aside from that, though, Holden-- I really don't care who you fuck, when I'm not around. It's not one of the things that matters to me. But it matters to you, doesn't it? What I do, I mean."

Holden nodded.

"Then I won't," Yves said. "I promise. No sex, no kissing, no moonlit hand-holding. Not with anyone but you. And Jer and Bran, if you don't mind."

Holden was still for a minute, and then he said, "Thank you."

Then he said, "If I asked you to stay-- not to go back--"

"No," said Yves, quickly and a little sharply. "You have no right to ask that of me."

"No," said Holden, and he actually looked relieved. "I know. I wouldn't. I just-- I was just-- making sure you weren't--"

"Oh." Yves smiled, relieved too. "No, I'm not having a fit of heroic hormone-fueled self-immolation or anything. It's just-- getting an education, that's important to me. Dooming a bunch of overprivileged schoolkids to a lifetime of inflated sexual expectations-- not so much."

Holden laughed for a while, and then he stopped laughing and said, "Here's the thing," and then he didn't say anything else.

Yves waited, and eventually said, "What's the thing?"

"The thing is," said Holden slowly, his eyes on Yves', "I should have let you go twenty years ago. I know that-- and I know you couldn't ask me while you were a slave. I know on some level, you couldn't even let yourself risk wanting it. So that's on me. And the reason-- at least a reason-- why I didn't set you free before, was because I was scared. Because I knew the only way someone like you would ever look twice at someone like me was if you didn't have any other choice."

"Untrue," said Yves. "I would have looked a lot more than twice. You were a damn good-looking kid."

"Okay," said Holden, not smiling, "so you would have looked twice. Maybe we would have had a nice long weekend. And then I would have gotten weird and jealous and temperamental, and you would have gotten bored with the drama of it all, or noticed I had a mean streak that you didn't need in your life, and I never would have seen you again."

"If I hadn't been a slave, you mean," said Yves. "When we met."

Holden nodded.

"What if you hadn't been a slave?" Yves asked gently. "Would you have been mean and jealous and temperamental then? If we'd met as ordinary citizens-- no slavery in the mix, no history of slavery, no damage?"

"I don't know," said Holden.

"Neither do I," said Yves. "We can't know-- and it doesn't matter-- what it would have been like, if things had been completely different from how they actually were. What if I were stupid? What if you were a girl? What if we were both born blind? It wasn't-- it didn't happen like that."

"Okay," said Holden, "but you're not denying-- and don't, because there's no point-- that you've always been too good for the likes of me. And now you have the freedom to act on that. And now," he added, on an elaborately plaintive, self-mocking note, "I'm not even pretty any more."

Yves reached up, after a moment, and touched Holden's face.

"Do you remember," he asked, "the time-- it was just a couple of weeks after you bought me-- you were asking me something about my past, and you said not to worry, you wouldn't be jealous, because you knew you were the most beautiful man I'd ever seen?"

Holden laughed, startled, and blushed. "I-- no, I don't remember that."

"It was true, at the time," said Yves, tracing the creases in Holden's forehead, the deep groove between his eyebrows, old laughter like parentheses around his mouth. "It's also true-- you're right-- that you weren't the nicest kid in the world, or the most stable. But now." He touched Holden's lips, swallowing past a sudden tightening in his throat. "Your face. It's all-- there. Everything you've been to me, everything that makes you the one I'll always come back to, always. Holden, your hair's been turning gray because, as scared as you were-- and are-- you let me go. Because you love me that much. Do you think-- could you possibly think-- that I'll ever see anyone or anything else this beautiful?"

Holden didn't answer. After a moment, Yves reached out and gathered him up, cradling his lover to his chest. Holden put his head down on Yves' shoulder, pushing his forehead against Yves' neck with a little convulsive shiver.

"It's all right," Yves said softly. "It's all right now, Holden. You made it right."

"I'm trying," Holden whispered, and they lay there in silence for a while, Holden's heart beating hard against Yves' own, while Yves gently stroked the soft, iron-gray hair.