The Director has a sword.
The Director has a sword, an honest-to-god Excalibur sword, that stands on display on his westernmost wall, above his office chair. It makes for a striking tableau: Laverne Roseingrave, Director-In-Chief of the entire outfit, sat at his desk with his serious, elegant face in deep contemplation.
The sword has been there for the whole of Fray’s tenure at the Library. It has seen him ushered in, frightened and angry after being confined for three days, his reward for following the instructions given to him by a mysterious voice on the phone. It has seen him signing the papers that swore him to silence and cooperation, knowing how foolish he was being for the sake of someone he’s not even sure is alive. It has seen him being formally brought before Roseingrave and demonstrating the new, unreal capabilities the experimentation had granted him.
And—many times now, these past six months—it’s seen him like this: bent over Roseingrave’s regal oak desk, scrabbling to brace himself against its surface amid its many papers as Roseingrave drags Fray’s jeans down his hips and takes him from behind.
It’s a beautiful sword. Fray’s had a lot of time to study it, there on the desk. It’s a longsword, if those books from the school library are still clear in his memory. Very Arthurian, very classical. There’s not a speck of dust on its surface and its edge is not dulled for display. He asked Roseingrave about it, once. His superior officer had grinned in that way of his and said, “I don’t deal in fakes, St. Jadis. I want the real thing.”
Fray isn’t sure that’s true, but he’s not going to say that.
It’s slow, tonight. The day shift has left for the weekend, leaving the night crew and the pages that mind the “catalog.” Roseingrave should be gone, technically, but he and Fray have their arrangement on Friday afternoons. There’s other times, too, more sporadic and subject to both their schedules and hungers. But this started on a Friday afternoon, not long after Fray’s change, and so it has remained.
Roseingrave is taking his sweet time this particular Friday, making Fray twitch and flinch under him with hands that are precise and patient. It’s annoying; it’s not what Fray wants. He almost wants to tell him to hurry up and get on with it, but historically Roseingrave is not a man who takes critique well. He’ll get to what Fray wants eventually, no fear of that, so there’s little point complaining.
It might make him that little bit rougher, though, if Fray did.
Fray wets his chapped lips, feeling the sting. He’d given his chapstick to Kai yesterday, who used it and then looked Fray dead in the eye as they melted it to a useless puddle of plastic and grease. Cool, he’d thought. That wasn’t my last one or anything. Awesome. Some real breakthroughs happening here today, I think.
He did not say this sentiment. Instead he had smirked, like he used to when Kai showed him one of their sleight-of-hand tricks, and said—like he used to—“Sure, but can you do it backwards?”
“Eat shit,” Kai said, and ignored him for the rest of their mandated, daily ninety minutes.
So: his lips hurt, and his elbows are complaining from leaning on the desk, and it’s been fifteen minutes of boring foreplay that doesn’t seem like it’s going to stop soon. He licks his lips again and tries to ease his mouth into forming the words can you hurry up? No sound follows them, not yet. He does it twice, feeling his tongue rebel in the way it does when it decides to. His voice stuff always seems to rear its head around Roseingrave.
Maybe something else. Sometimes a different set of words comes out more easily. Don’t keep me waiting—too flirty. Put it in already—too much of a command. It would probably get him the rough treatment he’s craving, but he’ll pay for challenging Roseingrave’s authority in significantly less gratifying ways later. That’s how he got assigned to that pink rat creep, after all.
Fray’s thoughts scatter like frightened birds as two thick fingers press into him. He’s back again in a moment, and when he returns, it’s to his least favorite part of fucking his superior officer.
“You like that, Freya?” Roseingrave’s voice is as close to sultry as it’s capable of getting. It would probably be appealling if Fray were remotely interested. Instead it makes the hair on the back of Fray’s neck prickle, and not in the good way. The fingers move gently, easing forward, but Fray tenses against it regardless. Roseingrave takes no heed. His words stray into the floral as he does his work, and Fray tries to ignore it. If he calls Fray’s cunt a wellspring again—
This is not what Fray wants. He did not sign up to be the chief officer’s lover. He signed up to be his bitch. To have something to scratch the maddening itch he hasn’t been able to silence without Imogen. He’d thought that was the core of the arrangement, from the way Roseingrave had propositioned him that long-ago afternoon.
Fray remembers it in flashes and flickers, memories that are more in his body than his head. He’d been in that chair, there, the one he can see shoved out of the way in the corner of his eye, the one with the green stain on the left leg. He had been exhausted from another battery of tests and another day of trying to calm half a dozen frightened or sullen or angry CNs. Another day of desperately trying to coax Kai into speaking to him. He just wanted to return to his room and check out, but instead he was here, delivering his report to Roseingrave. By the time he’s done the man had smoked his third cigarette in fifteen minutes, pacing silently around Fray in his chair.
Will that be all? Fray had asked.
Roseingrave, suddenly, was in front of him. Was leaning over him, one of his hands planted on the armrest Fray had neglected to use.
Almost, St. Jadis. I think we should talk.
Sir?
I’ve seen the way you look at me.
Fray had never looked at Roseingrave in any particular kind of way. Certainly not in the way Roseingrave seems to be convinced of, describing how Fray had been giving him bedroom eyes for months, how every minute motion made screamed that he wanted Roseingrave to touch him. If Fray had been sending signs of any kind, he had thought at the time, they would have all been the kind you don’t want to see: DEAD END. POLICE LINE. DANGER.
Fray had been about to decline as politely as he knew how, ready to call on his newly minted strength if necessary. Then Roseingrave had done two things: one, he had taken Fray by the chin and tilted his head back. In the same movement he leaned in deep enough to be fully over Fray, close enough to smell the cologne under the cigarettes. The scents mixed in a strange way, into a melange of acrid smoke and clean musk. It went straight through Fray. And two: he’d closed his hand down on the meat of Fray’s thigh, squeezing just a little too tight. His thumb rubbed circles on the inside of Fray’s leg as he said, I know what you’re after. I can read people like that, you know. And you … you want someone to eclipse you, don’t you? Someone to keep hold of you. Control you.
Fray remembers the way he tried to swallow, only to discover his mouth had gone dry. He should get out of here, he’d thought. He should really get out of here, and quickly. Before he did something foolish.
I could be that for you, Freya.
Roseingrave dug in his nails, and it hurt. Fray bit his lips against it and did not try to hide it.
Y … yeah?
Fray felt hot. Dizzy. Hungry.
Would you like that?
Yes.
The kiss was all cigarette.
The desk had been fastidiously tidy when Roseingrave pushed him down onto it. By the time Fray peeled himself off it again, sweat-soaked and electric-feeling, the papers and knick-knacks and pens were all askew. His head felt like it was a television with its antenna wrong, all sparkling, soft static. Even now his memory of that first encounter is fuzzy, more sensation than thought. His hair tangled around Roseingrave’s fist, used like reins. A hand pinning his wrists together. Teeth on his neck. His heart hammering in his chest, unable to decide if it was from fear or want as Roseingrave took him like an animal would.
It was exactly what Fray needed. Afterward, after cleaning up and finding his way back to his room, he had collapsed into bed and luxuriated in the sense of calm and quiet that settled over him. He hadn’t felt that clear-minded in months. Life in the Library was, is still difficult for him, with his duties and his isolation and the hundred-and-one rules he must remember lest he earn the wrath of Uncle Sam. The time he spends under Roseingrave is at least something he can look forward to. Somewhere he can relax and surrender control. The pit in his stomach that had formed when Roseingrave kissed him was easy enough to ignore in light of that.
Or, it was. Because Roseingrave has been doing this lately. Whatever this is. The foreplay. The talking. The … tenderness. These things that Fray doesn’t want. That pit inside him seems to draw them into itself, widening. Destroying.
Fortunately, there is a solution. Fray tilts his head back to eye Roseingrave, a little haughty, and says, “I’m not your wife.”
Four little words. An instant cure for what ails you. Roseingrave seems to hate being reminded that he is married. Fray’s never met the woman, doesn’t know her name. He wouldn’t know she existed at all if not for the single picture of his family that Roseingrave keeps at his desk, and the ring he never takes off, even when he’s hilted himself in Fray’s body.
So: the black look that passes over Roseingrave’s artfully crafted features at the reminder of her sends a jolt of apprehension along Fray’s spine. A burst of anticipatory pleasure follows, ebbing between his legs. That’s what he wants. Bitch, not lover. The look is gone again in an instant, replaced by something predatory that makes Fray’s breath catch. “You’re not,” Roseingrave agrees. With a jerk that makes Fray yelp he yanks his hand away. “You’re not even a woman,” he says, and the way he says it gives Fray the sense that it’s not being said to him. “I guess I shouldn’t fuck you like one. Right, boy?”
His fingers move upward from their prior point of intrusion, probing. Fray flinches as he feels them press against a much tighter part of him. This is entirely new, both from the Director and for Fray. He has to tame an instinct to kick, pull away, object.
“Wait,” he gasps. He needs a second. He just needs a second. That boredom is gone, lit to flame and burned to ash with this development. The question that always comes creeping back when he finds himself here slithers into his head. Does he want this? Does he want any of this?
Behind him, Roseingrave stills. There’s an annoyed growl that goes with it, and he keeps kneading Fray’s ass with his other hand, but the probing stops.
Okay. Okay.
Fray curls his fingers into his palm, feeling the bite of his nails. He takes a deep breath. The sword looks down at him, imperious. Lacking any better point of focus, he fixes his eyes upon it, like it will tell him what to do.
He wants this. He doesn’t want this. He wants this but it’s not what he really wants. He wants to hear Lexy call him a dipshit for getting himself into this. He wants Kai to look him in the eye with anything other than pain and betrayal. He wants to see his parents, see them, not just hear their concerned voices over the phone. He wants to curl into Imogen’s lap and tell her every stupid move he’s made in the last year, so she might tell him things aren’t as dire as they feel. He wants to go home.
None of those things are in any future he can glimpse. The only future he can see is what he catches reflected in the blade of the Director’s sword: himself held fast in the grip of people he knows he cannot trust. People with unknown purpose.
“Well?” says Roseingrave, his impatience poorly disguised. Fray shakes himself back into the present.
Does he want this?
Does he want to know what happens if he says he doesn’t?
Fray lets out his breath and says, “Okay. Just g, go slow.”
He wants this, he finds, despite what his better sense tells him he should want. He feels his body grow more eager as Roseingrave returns to his pawing. His heart begins to pound. He wants it to hurt, just a little. He wants to be afraid of what’s going to be done to him. Just a little. Just enough to keep him from having to be afraid of what’s happening outside of this room for a while.
He gets what he wants. Roseingrave has to shove his fingers into Fray’s mouth to keep him quiet at first. Later Roseingrave wraps his hand around Fray’s neck, and breathing becomes a struggle. Roseingrave seems to work him most savagely when he’s reminded that Fray is a man, and Fray is okay with that. The names Roseingrave calls him sting pleasantly before rolling off him to disappear: Bitch. Whore. Faggot. The words are nothing to him past how it feels to be called them in that instant. He suspects they say more about Roseingrave than himself.
When it’s over Fray is limp and quivering, exhausted and on the edge of his own finish. The moment his superior officer pulls away he’s reaching down to seek it out, soaking his fingers. He can dimly hear Roseingrave’s harsh breathing. There’s a rough, gargling cough. “Get dressed,” Roseingrave says around his thin voice, “and get out.”
“Okay,” Fray hisses. He’s so close. “G, give me a second—”
“Now.”
In disbelief, Fray again looks back at him. Roseingrave glares back even as he tucks himself away into the bottom half of his suit. Fray says, “I’m n-not finished.”
“Was I unclear in my language, St. Jadis?” Every word is precise and bitten-off. “We’re done here. Get out.”
“… Yes, sir.”
Fray’s heart sinks as he dresses himself. Not from the insistent throb between his legs, that’s an annoyance at worst, but from the cold stare Roseingrave follows him with until the door closes behind him. His little snipe about the wife is going to be punished. Not that Fray will be the one taking the blow; Fray has hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of governmental research pumping through his veins. He costs too much to treat badly. He’s like an expensive racehorse or an exotic pet.
But Roseingrave knows what Kai means to Fray, and in the eyes of that man, Kai is no more than a mongrel off the street.
In the dim light of the hallway, Fray slumps against the door. His body whines at him, but his interest is gone. Now he just feels stupid, irresponsible, prideful … Maybe, he thinks with the desperation of someone with their back to the wall, maybe he can drop in Monday morning and distract Roseingrave. Get back on his good side.
Talking, down the hall and coming nearer. Fray scrambles to his feet and makes for the other direction, hastily working his loose hair into its braid. He does not want to be asked what he’s doing lurking outside the Director’s door. He needs to call his parents before the public phones are disabled for the night, and eat dinner, and go for his run, and not think about what his indiscretion will mean for Kai. He needs to find something to distract him from his fear, the fear Roseingrave was supposed to give him in a different way. A safer way.
But before any of that, he thinks with a bitter irritation, he has to go get cleaned up.