Loud future

They cleared the last of Nasha by evening, past the workshop and the last stretch of mismatched iron, and put the town at their backs.

One more man tried. Middle-aged, close enough to smell beer, a hand already half-lifted toward Rosaria’s waist as if the street had promised him the rest. She did not bother with a warning. The look she gave him was enough. He stopped mid-step, color gone, and found somewhere else to be. After that the road to the water was just a road.

They made camp on the shore with Hiisi sitting across the dark channel, a blacker shape against a blacker sky. Fire. Packs. Lynette moving between them with cups because no one had told her to sit. Ineffa faced the water and did not pretend to need the warmth.

Shenhe did not sit still.

The grab in the alley had not frightened her. It had lit something and left it on. All afternoon she had stayed near Aether’s shoulder, near his hands, near the place a person stood if they wanted to be touched and did not know how to ask like a person. When they finally stopped walking she put herself in front of him with her usual blankness and the opposite of patience underneath it.

“Now,” she said.

He knew that now. It was not romance. It was the need to replace the wrong hands with the only ones she accepted.

He took her down on the sand just off the firelight, clothes shoved aside, and gave her the molesting she had been aiming herself at all day — palms on her breasts, mouth at her throat, a grip on her hip that said this is mine without requiring her to invent language for it. She let out a small sound when he pushed into her, then locked her legs around him as if the alley might send a second man if she left any space.

He fucked her without the duel in it. No test. No Cloud Retainer watching for smoke on a rope. Just deep, steady work until the stoic arrangement of her face gave way. Color in her cheeks. Mouth open. The rare, unguarded bloom that meant she had dropped the distance and was only a body taking him. She came on a breath that almost became a word, and he followed her, finishing in her while her hands stayed fisted like she still expected to be pulled away.

(https://im.ge/i/QQOP68a)
(artist: 鸽鸽下面羊死了)

When he drew back she stayed a moment longer, forehead into the travel matt, just enjoying the touch of the one she likes.

That was when he saw Citlali.

She had put herself away from the fire, not in the circle. Knees up. Both hands in her hair, pressing at her skull like she could squeeze a thought out of it or keep one from coming in. Her face was turned toward Hiisi, but she was not looking at the island. She was looking through pain.

He went to her naked, because putting pants on first would have been a lie he was already too late for.

Citlali saw the whole of it — the slick still on him from Shenhe, the fact that he had not gone down — and clicked her tongue like the headache had found extra work.

“Do not loom,” she said. “You look like an idiot. A moist idiot.”

He sat anyway. Close enough that his shoulder touched hers. She did not lean in. She also did not shuffle away, which for her was the same as grabbing his sleeve.

“Head,” he said.

“Obviously the head.”
She pressed her palms harder against her temples, eyes shut.
“If you came over to ask if I am dying, I am not. If you came over to be useful, sit and stop dripping on the sand.”

“I’m not leaving.”

“I did not tell you to leave.”
Too fast. Then, sour, as if the sentence had betrayed her:
“The quiet helps. Your quiet. Not your commentary.”

He waited. The fire popped behind them. Hiisi sat on the water and did not care.

Citlali exhaled through her teeth.

“I looked,”
she said.
“Your quest. I thought if I touched the line of it I might steal a piece we could use. A turn. A warning. Something with a shape.”
Her fingers dug into her hair.
“What arrived was not a shape. Voices. Thousands. Angry. All of them at once. It was like being shouted at by a library that hated me. I could not sort island from tomorrow. I do not know if Hiisi is screaming or if we are walking into a crowd that has not happened yet. I only know I cannot push past that horde without tearing something I need.”

Aether put an arm around her shoulders the way he would have around anyone shaking and pretending they were not. No quip. Just heat and the fact of him.

Citlali made a disgusted noise and stayed where she was.

Then her hand found him anyway.

Not a caress. A grip. She started stroking him off to the side of the hug, tight and practical, as if his cock were a problem she could organize. He looked at her. She stared at the dark channel and refused the look.

“Do not get the wrong idea,”
she muttered.
“This is not comfort. In sex I can keep the field small. Two people. The next things we do to each other. I can hold that. I like—”
The last of it almost died in her throat.
“—that.”

He heard it. He had heard her version of begging before: an insult, a rule, a volume drop. He let the arm around her shoulders slide down, both hands covering her breasts through the thin fabric, a firm hold instead of a gentle one so she would not have to admit she had asked.

(https://im.ge/i/QQOtDFK)
Citlali’s breath caught. Her wrist kept working him, slick from Shenhe, stubborn. The headache was still in her face. Under it, the focus she wanted was already arriving — not a thousand voices, just his mouth near her ear and his hands on her and the narrow, filthy future she could stand to see.