A Storm Without Kisses

A Storm Without Kisses
by Nix Winter
copyright 2010, all rights reserved
Please do not archive.
Work count: 3800


Note: Okay... this story is my version of wish fulfillment.  All characters represent archetypes in my own imagination and do not represent any person, living or dead.

Second Note: I just finished it today... haven't really edited it today, but it was just a story for fun... so I hope it's enjoyable, at least a bit.



Soft, apathetic rain misted outside the windows, lazy and grey as life slept. Liet fastened the tool belt around his waist. "It's not going to take that long. I'll be back in time for dinner. We'll watch that movie like we talked about."

Nori padded to the windows. He laid a hand on the thick storm glass. "I could see the bay when I bought my house here. So many things have changed. I've seen storms rise like this. More turbines will go down before it's over. I have a month's worth of battery power. Everything will be okay."

"Other people don't have that. We need to get the turbine started again."

"Do you ever consider what you get into," Nori asked, hands on his hips, "Before you get us into it?"

Liet looked back over his shoulder, ruby red hair framing a wicked grin. Green eyes sparkled in the unsteady emerald fey light. "I didn't get you into anything. This is the best I've felt in months. I need the work. That's all."

The large one room loft that Nori shared with Liet felt warm, almost too warm. It had been Nori's apartment, his house, in the century before, but time and circumstances move forward. At a hundred and seventy-nine he was still fairly well to do, but that meant he owned a loft in downtown Seakyo, not the whole house he'd once had. The Shot ran between Seattle and Tokyo and made the space into a very premium location.

Other changes in those decades had erased years from him. It hadn't made him taller, but he looked fitter, younger than when he'd originally bought the house with profits from the 2015 boom. Long dark hair hung down his back, clasped off in three equidistant silver ties. Intelligent dark eyes watched his friend. He wore a thin tee-shirt with a swirly slogan for a local art school on the front and paint stains pretty much everywhere. His jeans were decades old, faded.

"It's dangerous work, Liet. The turbines are not to be taken lightly. Especially not in the coming storm. You don't need to do this. The city crew will take care of the issue. This isn't about work. It's about him saying that you're too flashy, that he feels smaller near you."

Liet's face clouded. "I don't want to talk about it. The quarter has been off the grid for twelve hours. There are people with batteries that won't last much longer. Some of them could be in real problems if the turbines don't get fixed."

They'd met at the train station.  Liet's relationship had already been waning, coming to a drizzling end like the ever present Seakyo rain. One just never knew when it stopped or when it might want to start again. Leit's move into Nori's space wasn't official or even stated, just growing up slowly around them.

"It's dangerous fix. If it was a simple reset, the watch would have taken care of it." Nori sat down in his data space, one slender leg tucked under the other. Fine golden fibers woke and reached out from the wall for the mated connections hidden in his hair. "You haven't finished installing my kitchen yet."

"I'm waiting for parts. Anyone could finish your kitchen. I'm grateful that you let me stay here and all, but fixing things is what I do. I'm licensed to work on the turbine. It'd be cowardly of me to leave it hosed when I could probably fix it. It'll pay enough to let me get a place of my own, you know."

"You've made up your mind then? You're not going back."

"I'm not what he needs." Liet said quietly. "I'm just a fixer. I don't think he's what I need. I'm bent in some ways, you know. I got mad when we fought, but he left me. He threatened me. He called me dishonest."

Nori blinked slowly, his eyes opening to a smokey silver color as the data connection firmed up. "I want to offer you a contract, one year. I desire you. I don't want you to leave, Liet. I'll expand my space here, give you your room."

Liet cocked his head and frowned. "Making sweet love in the mornings and mutually self validating love notes just isn't my thing right now. Hell, Nori, I don't even know what my thing is. I tried so hard to be right for him and I just feel confused right now."

The smile on Nori's face lifted even has lose dark hair floated up around him, the data connection dancing and flowing. "You're not confused. You know what you want.  You just don't want it to be true."

"Somethings I can't fix, no matter how much I want to."  Sadness bleached the color out of Liet's voice. Chin tucked towards, he closed his coat. "I'd better go."

"I'll come with you." Nori blinked again, the silver gone from his eyes. Eyes dark again very human again, he sought out Liet's eyes and locked with his friend's green eyes. "I've just paid for my license and downloaded the basics of turbine repair."

"Don't be stupid! Just installing some data does not give you the experience to go scaling wind turbines in a storm. If there's enough man left in you to want to bang me, there ought to be enough to fear getting diced up into little bits."

Data cables disengaged, dancing like golden static back towards their beds in the wall. "I fear you being diced up into little bits. I was so lonely before you came. I don't want you to leave me."

"I'm your friend," Liet said, looking up just a little, holding his hand out. "I don't want to go away. I just...."

The dark haired man had crossed to Liet already though, fingers caressing over pale skin.  Liet's breath caught as the slightly different texture of Nori's fingers traced over his skin.  Silkier, the finger prints long since transformed into data skin.  "I know what you want, Liet. I want it too. Trust me."

Liet backed away, lower lip between his teeth. "I have to go."

"No you don't," Nori said, following him. "Let me touch you. I want to bind you. I want to penetrate you. I want you to trust me. I trust you. I will trust you with all that I am."

"I can trust you?"

"You know you can trust me," Nori insisted. "I will never lie to you. I will never sulk because I don't carry a script around in my head. I like who I am and I love you. I love you, Liet."

"Crazy. You've only known me six months. I fix your kitchen, take care of your cables, that's all."

"No, you wake me, bring me to life. I love being in your aura, if it's only what I've had from you or if it's the next hundred years. I will never betray you, Liet."

"I don't need your kindnesses old man."

"You don't know what you need, little boy," Nori growled back, following Liet back until he had him against the wall.

"I'm not a little boy. I'm twenty-eight. Let me go, Nori." The sadness lowered his voice.  So many things he couldn't say, maybe not even say to himself. One disaster after another, betrayal on betrayal, he'd grown up in the sub-city with an addicted mother who had been willing to trade everything she had for what she needed. He'd learned young to trade whatever he had for survival. "I'm not going to give you anything! I haven't got anything to give, Nori! I'm broken, don't you get it? I gave him what I had and it was never enough. I don't have enough to give! I'm a worthless shit, Nori."

Wind crashed against the windows, rattling the thick glass.  A tear tried to hide behind wisps of red hair.

Nori's sensitive fingers caught that tear, traced along the side Liet's face. His lips followed, kissing Liet's cheek, then brushing lightly over warm lips. "To give a gift to the one,  one desires is a norm across species. Your flaw is that you give, regardless of what kind of pebbles you get back. I have something to give you and I want everything you can give me."

Liet's breath became a soft moan, pleasure sent will that should have stayed in his brain down to his cock. "I can't. This love shit... it's not good for me."

"Yes, it is good for you," Nori insisted, getting his knee between Liet's legs as red head tried to wiggle away. "You're just afraid."

"I'm not afraid of anything," Liet hissed. "You don't know me! I'm different!"

"As if I'm not different?" Nori's words were soft, gentle. Liet didn't avoid the kiss. Their lips touched. Nori moved his lips slowly over the shorter man's, not forcing the kiss deeper, just soft skin against soft skin.

Their breath mingled. When their eyes opened, Liet's were darker, bluer. Chocolate brown hair lay around his face and frightened eyes looked up at the data wizard. "Are you going to betray me?"

"No," Nori promised. "I only want to know you. I won't try to cling to you. I won't drown you to save myself. I'll be your safe port."

"But you want to have sex with me."

Nori backed off just a little, only a couple of centimeters, just enough to bring his hand up to touch the lips that this dark haired personality sharing a body with Liet. "I want to touch you, but I don't need to. Do you have a name?"

"I'm Chocolate. Liet does like you."

"I know he does. I like him too." Nori took a step back, hands relaxed at his sides. "Are you his protector or is he yours."

"We take care of each other." Chocolate said. "You won't love us. No one does."

Hands on his hips, Nori arched an eyebrow. "That's a little negative."

"You're not surprised that we ... swapped?"

"I'm a hundred and seventy-nine years old. You're not the first multi-soul I've met. I won't hurt you."

"How can you know that?" Chocolate asked.

"I suppose I can't, but I don't think I will and I'm willing to open the doors of my heart and trust to both of you."

"And Nyx? She's a woman."

Nori scratched his eyebrow, smirked. "I want to know Nyx too. Will you guys stay for a while?"

"Yes," Liet said.

It was only then that Nori realized the voice had changed too. "You can stay as long as you like."

"I won't pay for love or space with sex."

"I won't ask you to. I don't want you to. Do you think I have to pay someone to get my cock sucked?"  Nori glared out of narrowed eyes. "I have ways to take care of my own sexual needs. Just because I want you, doesn't mean you're the only heat I want to stir."

"Uh," Liet scratched the back of his head. "I guess that makes sense. I don't like letting people down."

"Don't worry about that with me," Nori said. "Likewise, if you bug me, I might kick your ass out."

Liet grinned, a bright toothy grin. Hair now a light strawberry blond, he gave Nori a wink.  "So don't fuck with me anymore right now. I have to go fix the turbine and Chocolate isn't mechanically inclined."

"I want to learn all about all of you." Nori said, holding out his hand.

Banging on the door drew both their attention. A long tendril of Nori's hair grew towards the jewel toned security pad, rapidly keying in the security code. The tendril then reached down and turned the burnished brass doorknob.  A little girl tumbled in, bright cooper hair, dark green eyes, black cotton knee pants and a frilly white shirt. "Mr. Liet! My dad went up to fix the turbine, but he ain't come back down. Mayor Wolf said you was the only body that could go up after'im. He said cuz you were crazy enough to do it."

"Liet-san is not crazy," Nori said firmly and the little girl shrank back. He snapped the dark tendril of hair back.

"I will go up. I was going anyway. Who's your father?" Liet grabbed up a box of tools.

"Mikan Justice. I'm Daisy."

Mikan was HIS lover, the man He had gone back to when Liet failed.

Nori blinked, slowly, and Liet could have sworn he saw data streams take over the cyborg's eyes. A couple of quick blinks and Nori reached out to grab Liet's arm. "This man, Mikan Justice, he's in public record for wishing you bodily harm."

"Uhn," Liet said, shrugging Nori's hand off. "I'll be back."

"I'll come with you."

"I said," Liet said firmly, "I'll be back."

Nori took a step back, bowing, arms out to either side, long tendrils of dark hair dancing around with angry nervous emotion. "As you will."

At the door, Liet turned back and gave his friend a smile. "We're not done, you know."

"You're reckless with your well being."

"Yeah," Liet agreed as he closed the door.

The quarter had only one main wind turbine. Many people had other smaller ones, but the main one supplied energy to residents of the quarter. As soon as they were outside, even in the valley between Yesler and Alice quads, the wind wiped them, pressing them back against Empress Tower for a moment. Liet grabbed Daisy by the arm and shoved her back into the building. "Stay! This storm is gonna be rough!"

As soon as he got her back inside and the door shut, he ran off towards the turbine, hoping she'd stay.

The wind turbine towered over the buildings around it. Just small little shops. The fourth quarter had been downtown Seattle once, one of the first places to be settled in this area by white people, way back when that label had meant something. It had been underwater for a while when the waters rose. There were really two kinds of people who lived in forth quarter.  There were the well to do like Nori of the people who served people like Nori.  Nori's class would have plenty of battery. Everyone  else could wait until the storm ended. They'd be okay, or they wouldn't. Either way the city crew wouldn't  be out until after the storm.

Liet made it through the empty streets fast. Numb inside, he focused on what needed to be done, but both His words and Nori's words rumbled around in his head. Really it wasn't just His words, but the lover before, and the one before that, going back for most of his life. He had no idea how to do it right, this relationship thing. Nori had called him a multi soul, but Liet expected there was a better name for what he was. Broken.

He couldn't pass judgement on His behavior. He didn't trust his own reactions to anything except mechanical fixings. For all he knew, his cock was supposed to be  working ways that it just didn't seem to do. Right or wrong it didn't rise on command. When he'd first gotten with his seemingly ex-boyfriend, there had been so much exploration. Nothing had filled his boyfriend up for long though. Then the rules had started.

Just kissing, exploring, doing what felt interesting hadn't been enough. For sex to be loving, it had to fit the definition. It had to go all the way through to orgasm and cuddle, no matter who got in late or when either of them had to be up. Failure to complete love making in the right way harmed Cory.

Liet ran the name through his mind, letting the harassing wind pick the name up and carry it away.  In the complicated rules of physics that Liet was harming another was one of the strongest taboos. To harm was... Unspeakable, taboo.

He set his box down at the base of the turbine. High above the turbine didn't seem damaged, just stalled. A bit of yellow cloth fluttered in the wind just below the stalled blades. If Cory's new, er old, lover were up there, too close to the blades and the city crew sent a successful restart pulse that could be really bad. A flash of burning need ricochet through Liet. He needed Cory to be happy. He couldn't make that happen himself, but maybe Mikan could.

A tiny flash of hope flared. Maybe Nori would be good to Chocolate. He pulled a scale hook from his box, found a Jack point  to imbed the long metal spike in the responsive skin of the turbine tower. He grabbed a couple more tools and shoved them into his belt.       He took hold of the bar with both hands, thought 'fuse' then 'up'.  The bar shot upwards, moving through the skin of the tower like it was butter. The pathway healed over the moment the bar moved on, carrying Liet stories up as fas as an elevator might. Wind clawed at him, twisting and lifting him, but the fuse command held. As soon as he got to the control booth, the skin opened a door sized space to let him in.  He thought the release command. He shook off the cold, batted at his wind matted hair.

"What are you doing here?" Cory demanded, angry, accusatory eyes raking Liet over.

"Uh."

"I thought so. Sorry we're in your way!"

Liet took a step back. "I came to help."

"I don't need you."

The blades groaned, straining to turn to start collecting wind energy again. "Where's Mikan?"

"That is not your concern! You better get out of here! He wants to pound you for breaking my heart."

There had been a time, when this last phase of their arguing had come up when he'd thought that there could be a trio for them, maybe that moment hadn't fully let go until that very moment. "What did you tell him about me?"

"I've been very protective of you! But he knows you... you broke my heart!"

"How'd I break your heart? By not fucking you according to the numbers well enough?"

"You left me alone too much and you didn't desire me! I felt abandoned and unwanted. You abandoned me!" Cory wrapped his arms around his chest. "You only want me when I'm behaving like you want me to! I want to be loved all the time, not just when you're happy with me!"

What was there to say to that?  Liet remembered the day Cory had said he'd be going back to Mikan. He'd held his lover that night, smoothed his hair, lain awake for hours wanting to find a waybto comfort Cory, to find a way to make things right, to find some measure of love for himself, to give love to his lover.  Maybe that hadn't counted as love because there'd been no sex that night. "I'm glad you have him to take care of you."

Cory clenched his fists. "You don't care what I do, do you?"

Those words echoed around inside Liet, banging into old taboos, fears, pains older than either Liet or Chocolate, older and deeper in his mental system even than Nyx. The question confused him, bewildered Chocolate. Of course he cared, needed Cory's love and attention. He didn't know what he'd done to make it seem otherwise. Even if all they were was friends, he cared. He wanted Cory to be happy and Cory said that happy was Mikan. "I just want you to be happy!"

"Then why are you making him cry?" Mikan growled.

Liet failed to duck and got a large fist to the face.  He hit the wall behind him and came back with a blow of his own. His strike became little more than a blocking blow to Mikan's next punch, but it was enough to let them both get into good combat positions.

"Stop!" Cory screamed. "Don't fight!"

"He deserves ton have his ass kicked for not taking better care of you! He's neglectful and stingy! I won't let Jim make you cry anymore. He's a fucking asexual whiny bastard!"

The blades shuttered and started, whirring to blurring speed with the storm winds.

One eye swelling shut, Liet bowed. As he bowed a bit of scaring showed on his chest.

"and you're a flashy show boating son of a bitch!" Mikan growled.

Liet smirked bitterly. "I guess I am." he held up his hand, near the wall and the hook zoomed through the wall to meet his hand. With his free hand he gave a flourishing motion.

"Wait!" Cory called. "I just want us to stop being dishonest with each other! I want you to tell me what you're not saying."

Liet's eyes shifted to a dark forest emerald color. His voice edged with dangerous rage. Inside though, he felt nothing. He couldn't have told Cory what Cory thought needed to be said to save his life or heart. "I am not a liar. Such a behavior is taboo."

"What does that even mean? People lie and hide things about themselves all the time! Why can't you be honest with me?"

"I have been honest with you. I have loved you. I have shared and shared who I am with you and you don't see me. You don't feel loved by me. It is you who only loves when you get what you want, not me."

"Fine then! I suppose you're leaving me?"

"I can't leave you. You never saw me in the first place, Cory. Merry meet. Merry part." Liet put both hands on the hook. The door opened in the skin. Hurricane winds roared and the skin closed just as fast as it had opened. The drop back to the ground only barely stayed within the parameters of safety.

An hour later it was Chocolate that showed up at Nori's place. Soaked to the bone, long brown hair hanging around him, he searched the almond shaped eyes of Liet's bus stop friend.

Nori didn't say anything. He just held open the door.  He pointed to an open doorway, a door that hadn't been there before. Inside was a new bedroom, a set of clean and dry clothes folded on the narrow little bed. He changed. Studying himself in the mirror, Chocolate wondered when Liet would come back. It didn't really matter. He'd be back when he was ready.

Peeking his head out the door, Chocolate chewed his lower lip. "What's a contract?"

"Doesn't matter rig now. Come watch a movie with me? You're safe here. I promise."

"Don't you want to know where Liet is?"

"He said he'd be back. I trust him. Want a soda?"

And that was the storm without kisses....

One Star

So I found this rating of one of my stories.
One star.

I can't say that I blame them.
I'd do that story differently now, and I will.

I could explain why I did the story the way I did then, the concept I had, the plan... *manical laugh* THE PLAN!

I has such plans!

In those plans I forgot about having fun. I forgot about being satisfied with myself.

I ground myself down into dust.

So.. I accept. I'm not going to be great and famous by the force of my will. I might not be great and famous ever.

I might not have family the way I'd planned it.. the way I imagined it.

I have great family thought.  I love writing my stories, making my art. Even if only a few people ever enjoy them other than myself... that's enough :)

So I want to re do The Pet.. from the very beginning.

I want to write the story without explicit sex.

There have been so many times in my life where I've traded sex in one form or another for what I wanted.

Sex for love.
Sex for safety.
Sex for the right to be able to love someone.
Sex for forgiveness.
Sex for roller skates.

I want to save sex... hide it away, treasure it until it flowers into something that only casts the slightest shadow over me now.

Black's Medicine

Black’s Medicine

by Nix Winter
all rights reserved
copyright 2009

please do not archive or transmit
please just share the link




They’d fought.

Not that such an event would be difficult. A rich Englishman and a poor Irishman, even living in China couldn’t take away the sting of heritage. Dr. Black straightened, tongue pushing against the inside of his upper lip. Chinese night wrapped around him, soaking into short dark hair. Shoulders tense, he moved down the wooden sidewalk in the British Quarter with a firm step. The muted lights and laughter, drunken conversation, filtered out into the street. Chin to chest, Dr. Black glanced back over a shoulder, tingles across shoulders worried about being followed, about all manner of things that could hunt a lone, diminutive Irish person into the night.

His thumb smoothed over Derringer in his coat pocket, the metal warm under his touch. Some secrets could not be... ignored. Panic was cold black iron in his throat, knotting up his breath.

Whitehall lacked all honor and even basic reasoning skills. Black’s jaw clenched.

“Hello, honey,” a female voice said, softly honeyed English draped in Chinese mystery and temptation. “You lonely?”

Dr. Black pulled his hand from his pocket and cleared his throat. The woman leaning closer to him wore what once had been a lady’s dress, but had, quite obviously, seen several owners. Thick black hair pulled up into a bun, pinned with jeweled, but unmated hair pins, powder lightened her face, but dark eyes still watched her prey.

“No, really, I’m looking for a British man, dark hair, violet eyes,” Black said, taking a step backwards.

The woman titled her head, red painted lips parting slightly, then slowly rising into a smile. “He not like men, like that.” The smile broadened a little. “You dress wrong.”

Black’s lips drew into a tight line, nervous energy tingling over deft surgeon hands. “Do you know this personally,” Black asked in Chinese.

Tittering, nightingale laughter, and a cunning smile, the woman pointed across the dirt road to a stone building, warm light filtering through closed shutters. “Dice there,” she said, staying with English. “Everyone know Dice. Even the men.” The last carried a suggestive smile, the flick of a pink tongue against red lip.

Backing away, Black lost his balance when the side walk ended, but kept his footing on the half mud road. Glaring up at her as she walked on, Black’s hair stood on end. Turning on his heel, he picked his way across the muddy street towards the bar, brothel, tavern, whatever it was on the other side. He stepped up to the other sidewalk, jerking his coat tight around him, face grimacing.

Dice’s voice was light, floating among the others, his Chinese lovely and nuanced as he called for another round. Black stood there, just the dark side of the threshold, listening. Violet eyes, fine black hair that could catch the sunlight or rise on the breeze, a little too long for a properly groomed gentleman, Emile ‘Dice’ Whitehall was what one got when one mixed British nobility with too much intelligence, too much money, and a spirit that couldn’t be bound by anything short of death.

Explaining anything to him required a language that had not been taught in Dublin, nor Boston, and certainly would not adapt to broken medical centric Chinese. Black’s stomach dropped, the iron panic sinking from throat down to pin feet to the wood sidewalk. He was a siren, with twilight eyes and reckless poetry spilling from soft lips. There are some thresholds in life that one crosses, knowing that they can never be uncrossed.

Head held high, Dr. Patrick Black walked into the noise of Dice’s foxhole. The argument wasn’t over until it was over. Explosions, memories, made white noise in Black’s thoughts, wiping out much of treasured reason. Pistol out, pressed casually behind him, he was seventeen again, with great secrets, entering a building to find his captain and the American. The scent of mustard colored the air with fear and his pistol felt wrong in his hand.

Someone screamed at him in Chinese, which was so out of place, jarring, and he suddenly found himself back in a bar in China, a man the size of a German tank and inked in black dragons glaring at him.

“No entry. Members only!”

“Oh yes,” Black growled, pistol under the man’s jaw so quickly. “I want Dice. Dice Whitehall.”

Dr. Black backed the man through a curtain of jade beads into the light and opium din of the room beyond.

A lovely woman, willowy and graceful, slipped her fingers between the guard and the four barrels of the little pistol. “Now, such difficulties do not belong in The Lotus of Joy. I don’t want you shooting my best customer, Dr. Black,” Bai Lian said.

Black blinked, a couple of times, drawing his pistol back. “I don’t want to shot him. I want to... talk to him.”

Bai Lian trailed her fingers over Dr. Black’s hand, up to one neatly starched cuffs. “You smell like you want to fuck him. I know the smell of another woman who is ready to fuck, especially one that doesn’t work for me. Trousers alone don’t change what you are, Doctor.”

“I’m,” Dr. Black started, licking thin pale lips, chin dropping slightly, “I’m Dr. Patrick Black. I fought in The Great War. I don’t know what you’re talking about, woman.”

Long nails touched Dr. Black’s cheek, lightly tracing towards a softly curved jaw, over towards the curve of a lip. “Europeans are blind. I will not forgive you if you take away so much of my profits.”

“Blackie,” Dice said. He emerged from the smoke that puffed out around him, but he cut it in half when he closed the door. “What the hell are you doing here?”

Dr. Black hastily slipped the gun back into a coat pocket. “I needed... to talk to you.”

“She wants to fuck you,” Bai Lian complained, “Probably for free. You know the rules about bringing other people’s women into my places.”

Dice ran a hand through wild black hair, pushing it back from his face. “Black’s my friend. He’s small, but... He’s no woman. He’s a doctor, for shit’s sake.”

“Whitehall,” Black snapped, gaze snapping back through the path he’d entered from, eyes and soul on the floor. “I’m sorry.”

Just walking away shouldn’t have hurt so badly. The pain only made Black walk faster.

“Black!” Dice yelled. His voice already faded with distance. “You sodding idiot! Come back! Patrick!

Of the two of them, Dice knew the city’s streets and back ways much better than the doctor ever would. The doctor ran from demons more frightening that a British playboy would probably understand. Closer to dawn, the vaporish yellow light fingering between buildings, the playboy caught the doctor. On his hands and knees, forehead to the filthy road, arms over his head, Dr. Black cried.

Dice plopped down on the open dirt of the alley, arms around his bent knees. “You’re really not a girl.”

“Really,” Black asked sarcastically.
“Hell yeah, even some crazy Irish woman won’t try to shot someone for asking her to marry them.”

“I wasn’t going to,” Dr. Black started, then sat up, running a hand through short hair the color of a dark mouse, mouse brown hair, “I wasn’t going to shoot you. I just, I just didn’t want to go through the streets unprotected and well, I needed to see you.”

“So you see me? Look, I just... what was I supposed to say?”

Dr. Black reached out a hand, brushing dirt from Dice’s trousers. “You say what it is you mean. Why on Earth, just because you found out.... that.. why would you ask me to marry you?”

“Well,” Dice said, drawing the word out. “It’s just, I, well, for the longest time, I’ve found myself happier when I’m with you than when I’m not and it’s not like the world is a good place for a woman alone. I wanted to, you know, protect you.”

“Be my knight in shining armor,” Black snapped, arms across a very flat chest. “I don’t need such a thing. I won’t marry you.”

“I should still like to kiss you,” Dice said, tentative, voice soft. “I’ve thought of little else, since, I realized really.”

“And when was that,” Black snapped, chin tucked away to a shoulder, face hidden.

“That time, when we were out with London, Christmas shopping. Black, Christ’s Hell, I just want to do things honorably with you.”

“That would be marrying me? Can’t you want me as I am? London and Jonathan don’t have any trouble being together.”

“I pity the poor bastard that gets in London’s way,” Dice muttered. He reached out, dirty fingers ruffling over Black’s short hair. “Has your hair always been short?”

“No. Before my parents died, it was down to my waist. I was a poor example of a girl, bookish and awkward. I couldn’t stand the idea of being’s someone wife or someone’s whore. When my mother died, and I loved my mother. If I could have been a woman like her, that would have been a different thing. She was so brave and strong, but I’m not. I just wanted to work, to make my way, and when Dr. Lamb took me under his wing... Medicine just was easy and made so much sense. I started being able to help people, and I wasn’t going back. I wasn’t going to be nothing, just something to be owned by some man.”

Dice scratched his chin with the back of his thumb, a foot sneaking closer over to Black’s foot. “You never knew my mother. I guess I don’t understand, but that doesn’t mean I don’t... love you, cuz I do.” Dice leaned back a little, watching the sunrise turn the edge of the building golden. “So, when you said I was attractive? What did you really mean?”

“I meant that I wanted to have sex with you,” Black said, words coming out in a rush. “I’ve never and well, I thought, because, well, you’re very beautiful and I didn’t think....” Black turned to look at him, their eyes meeting, souls clinging to each other. “The last thing I thought was that you’d ask me to marry you.”

Dice raked his hair back from his face. “I could only think of one reason you’d just come out and ask me to have sex with you.”

Reborn anger sparkled in hazel eyes. Black rose up a little, a dark eye brow arching, challenging. “And what would that reason have been?”

Sheepish, Dice tugged at his ear and shifted his gaze away from Black’s. “I thought.. maybe you might be pregnant already.”

“And you thought I’d trap you? So why not just jump full hog into something with a woman who would try to trap you in marriage? Is that so?” Black’s voice had become a touch shrill.

“Well,” he tucked his chin, scratching his head, “It’s not like that!” He got to his knees, putting himself slightly above Black, violet eyes smiling down. “It’s just that if you were in trouble, I’d want to be there with you. I just wanted to protect you.”

Black pushed up to his feet. “I can’t believe you’d think so little of me. Did I not take a bullet out of your buttocks without so much as flinching? I saved lives in The Great War! I studied medicine in Boston. Marriage would be more of a trap for me than for you, in any case.”

Also on his feet, Dice pulled a silver cigarette case from his vest pocket. “It’s not like I’m the one made to wear skirts.”

“The more I talk to you, the more I do believe we could have descended from apes. If you’ll excuse me, Mr. Whitehall!”

Black stalked off, shoes a sharp rhythm against the sidewalk. “OH yeah? Some of us descended from shrews, but I’m a child of god!”

“Oh?” Black paused and shouted from the other side of the street. “I didn’t know God had by blows! I’ll be sure to let your father know!”

“Bastard,” Dice growled, taking out a smoke. He was smiling though, and after a moment pushed off the corner he was leaning on to follow the indignant doctor home.

He didn’t know why, but by the time he’d reached the academy grounds, he was smirking as if he’d made the best conquest of his life.

“Mr. Whitehall,” Jonathan greeted him, as they both half jogged up the stairs to the administration section. “Far be it for me to mention, but perhaps you might wish to change prior to reporting for work and what have you been up to? Did you win substantial amounts last night?”

Winking, Dice found his grin only grew. “I’ve a change of clothes in my office. I lost badly last night, but I do believe I’ve finally found the right game.”

“All the better then!” Jonathan said, nodding politely before pivoting and striding off with a sheath of papers under one arm.

Dice waved to one of the staff maids, asked for washing water in Chinese and slipped into his office. Still smiling, he wondered if the good Dr. Black would like poetry. It was going to be a lovely day!