Very quickly and much less dramatically, he found himself deposited back. Quickly he pulled up his hood, dropped down his sleeves. The world was still on fire for the rest of humanity. A flash of hatred seared over his soul. So much power and so much selfishness! Whatever faint idea of getting a new outfit, of flirting and dancing at the rave, all of it turned to ash. It wasn’t like such an event wasn’t just as selfish. Aliens! Really! Aliens. It was Aliens!
Growing more irritated by the breath, he gestured and AI he wore as nearly invisible lines over his hands summoned him a car. It was just a fine line between wearing computer power and internalizing it to the point that one has forgotten what it is to be human in the first place! It was a world where self-love was the only love!
When his car arrived, he stomped into it, sat down and crossed his arms over his chest, emoticon a red glaring face. The car had four benches, each able to hold four or five people and it already had a group of teenagers, sitting on each other, and dressed like walking holiday decorations. The car started moving and he still moved himself to the back, slumped against the side, and remembered that he worked nights for a reason. It wasn’t like he meant to fall asleep.
When he woke, the sun was down and Fai Talbot was sitting on the bench opposite of him. He tried to keep eyes only squinty open so that the sleep emoticon on his veil wouldn’t change.
The man had definitely dressed for the celebration. Black pants, strong legs, a white shirt with full sleeves that tightened to lace cuffs, a black vest with shimmering fleur de lis painted in slightly reflective black across it, and he looked like a gothic prince. His lips were just a bit darker, with dark eyeliner that seemed to make his eyes bluer, then the tips of his hair were blue too. It was enough to make Liberty wonder if he could lose his virginity just by looking. When Fai smiled, broad and confident, Liberty was pretty sure such a thing might actually possible or at least that he was never going to be the same again.
“Doctor,” Fai said, elbows on his knees, that cat ate the canary grin on his face. “Come to my hotel room. Have a shower, we’ll eat some dinner?”
“You’re so forward,” Liberty said, pushing himself up right. “What makes you think I like you?”
“The emoticon on your veil is a waterfall of hearts.”
“Oh.” Liberty pushed his hood back, letting it pool around his shoulders. “You’re a very popular man. One of the enhanced community had me over today to tell me you’re an alien.”
“Shocking,” Fai said, leaning back, fingers lacing behind the back of his head, knees spread.
Simple physicality should not have an impact on reason. It just shouldn’t. Which didn’t mean that Liberty wasn’t catching glances at Fai’s ‘waist’. Fai wasn’t nearly as shy, so he leaned back a little more, pulled one knee back, boot tapping against the floor. “I like color in your cheeks.”
Liberty huffed and jumped out of the car. Thousands of others in suncoats roamed through a festival set up and staffed by androids that did not mind the heat. The heat immediately had him pulling his hood back up. Now his emoji was a big sweat drop.
Fai smiled at him, no suncoat to be seen, just this gorgeous dark haired man with the most impossibly lovely blue eyes and not a drop of sweat. That grin was almost insufferable, so confident and together. Leaning his head back, he traced his finger around a silver medallion that lay on his chest. “It’s the latest and best,” Fai said with a wink. He threw his hands up, just as music began to roar from the dome. Dancing a little, those hips swaying, arms up, lips parted with a vulnerability Fai backed into the festival crowd.
Liberty rolled his eyes, not even caring that his veil would emoji that for him, but followed. “Are you made of money? Wait. Are you enhanced?”
“I am not enhanced. Where’s the fun in that?”
Liberty wanted to ask if his blue eyed boy was a criminal, but there were old instincts in his mind, in any man’s mind, he expected, and he wanted. ‘So are you a criminal?’ is not a question that often pops cherries. “And you like fun?”
“I do,” Fai agreed, enthusiastically.
In just the moment that Fai caught his hand, fireworks shoot up over the forest of spirals rising like a henge over the deep skeleton of the old dome. In the previous century the dome had been a feat and a splendid monument to the society that created it. As Liberty watched it in that moment, more opening fireworks splashed color across the faded twilight sky. The original frame of it was in the tide, below the level of land built up and over the hungry dark. Columns and spirals rose up a very modern henge for music and dance, and as he watched the new dome switched on. A rush of cool air flowed over him. He pulled his hand back so he could push his hood back. Thumbs on the sensitive retracted veil, he triggered it to shrink, to rearrange into a slightly reflective white vest with red crosses on arms, chest, and back. “I hope you have a lot of fun at the festival, Mr. Talbot. It’s a working event for me.”
“Can I be your apprentice?”
“What? Doctors don’t have apprentices,” Liberty said, a little confused, as he spun on his heel and walked off. He meant to go to first aid booth. He wanted to find a way to clear his head. A lot had happened, but compared to crazy enhanced paranoia, Fai Talbot was still the biggest upset his world had ever had. “Go enjoy the festival, Mr. Talbot.”
“That’s not what I read,” Fai said, weaving through the crowd to keep near Liberty. “Come on! There’s all these people! You could use a little help, couldn’t you?”
“Look you!” Liberty rounded on him. “I don’t really know you. I got practically abducted today and I’m just a simple guy. I’m a small town doctor. It is true, I want to dance tonight, but I mostly just want to keep people from dying. For all I know you’re a gangster of some kind!”
As Liberty ranted, he wanted everything he was saying to be all that he felt. He didn’t want anything complicating up his life! By the time he was out of breath, Fai was standing right in front of him. “So you don’t want me to kiss you?”
Just a little bit taller than the other man, Liberty looked down into the blue eyes, so honest and vulnerable, and he couldn’t honestly say he didn’t want to be kissed, because he was sure he’d never been quite as aware of his lips as he was in that moment. “Promise me you’re not a criminal, that you don’t hurt anyone?”
“I promise I don’t hurt anyone,” Fai said, fingers now so tender and nearly reverent, as he reached up to brush through soft ginger hair, “Self defense excluded.”
“Of course,” Liberty nearly squeaked. It might as well have been just the two of them, alone on a beautiful overheated blue world. “Don’t let yourself get hurt.”
“I’ll do my best,” Fai said, his lips touching Liberty’s, softly brushing over them, polite, asking rather than taking, but asking with a kind of force that no sane person could refuse.
Liberty leaned into the kiss, clumsy, mostly just mashing forward because it wasn’t like there was a class on that in university.
Fai’s fingers soaked into his hair, taking a very gently fist full of hair, and then he took the kiss, tongue circling across upper, then lower, marking his territory, before sliding slowly in. Primal connection, communication beyond language or culture.
That made everything hard, harder than Liberty knew how to deal with at that moment. He bent his knees, pulling down a little, then back, lips wet and parted, violet eyes all lit up like maybe the world wasn’t going to end.
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