Like every southern urban sprawl everywhere,
Central City was hot, and muggy, and dirty, and the light that filtered
through the smog was oddly brownish in color. This was the price you paid
for living in the heart of the action on Nede: you sweated through your
clothes and pretended not to notice that the air was hazy and stank, and
at night you closed yourself up in your home and gave thanks for air conditioning
and cold beer.
Unless, of course, you were staying in Central
City's lone hotel, ancient and dark with narrow windows. The owners of
the hotel (who, of course, never had to stay there) hadn't bothered to
install air conditioning. Or, for that matter, cold beer. Central City
was so overcrowded and overbuilt that no other hotel could possibly be
wedged anywhere within ten miles of the city center; the lack of competition
made the owners spectacularly reluctant to provide any amenities at all.
Why bother? Where else would visitors to the city stay?
"Anywhere but here," Dias growled, resting
his head against the narrow window and giving up on his fruitless struggle
to open it. "Anywhere but Central Fucking City. Even Giveaway is
better than this." Strands of his hair clung wetly to the sweat that
shone on his forehead, and the fabric of his thin shirt was stuck to his
back.
A few straggling rays of the late afternoon
sunlight managed to find their way through the window and past Dias, outlining
the furniture in dim sepia light but doing very little else to pierce the
gloom. Not that the room, or the furniture, would be all that pleasant
to look at, even if there was enough light to see by. After a long,
exhausted moment, Dias pulled back from the window; his forehead came away
with a wet sticky sound, leaving a large half-moon of sweat on the dirty
windowglass. Almost an improvement, aesthetically. From behind him came
a long, tired sigh.
"For half a, a fol I'd let Ururun breathe
on me right now," Ashton mumbled, sprawled out on his stomach on one of
the room's two beds. Ururun, however, didn't seem inclined to breathe on
anyone, or even to move; he and Gyoro sprawled on the bed to either side
of Ashton, touching him as little as they possibly could. Sweat shone on
Ashton's bare back and glued his loose thin pants to his legs, darkening
the pale gray material in huge blotches. He looked exhausted and hot and
miserable, with his eyes shut and his mouth half-open; Dias knew that he
himself probably didn't look any better. He certainly felt about that heat-sick.
Pushing himself away from the window, Dias
sprawled face-down on the other bed, reaching up to yank his hair up and
away from his back. "Days like this that I hate my hair," he muttered.
"Like wearing a damn fur coat or something..." Now that his hair was safely
out of the way, Dias roused himself enough to shrug out of his unpleasantly
sodden shirt, dropping it onto the floor without caring in the least about
where it landed. His chest and the side of his face were already stuck
to the blankets with sweat; nothing to be done about that. At least his
back was bared to what little air there was.
Ashton cracked his eyes open slightly and
offered Dias a small, tired smile, reaching out across the gap between
the two beds. Dias took the offered hand and squeezed it once, briefly,
before letting it fall again. Closing his eyes again, Ashton laughed, just
a little. "Yeah... I know... too hot..."
"Too hot," Dias agreed, closing his own eyes.
"Too fucking hot."
The hours after midnight brought relief from
the dim brownish light, at least, if not the suffocating wet heat. The
hotel was dark and silent, its guests unconscious in the miasma of heat.
Ashton woke abruptly from his restless doze, finding himself nestled into
a hollow of steaming blanket. His chest itched. His face itched. His sweat-soaked
hair was plastered to his skull and down the back of his neck, and those
parts of his shoulders that the dragons couldn't help but touch were sticky
and wet underneath their heavy scaled bodies. There was no way Ashton was
getting back to sleep. Not like this.
Swinging his legs over the edge of the bed,
Ashton sat up, scratching idly at his chest and running his fingers through
his hair, separating the wet strands from the back of his neck. The dragons
rolled about on the bed behind him, half-awake and unhappy about it. Picking
gingerly at the sodden pants which clung to his legs, Ashton glanced at
the other bed; a large Dias-shaped hollow was carved in the blankets, but
Dias himself was nowhere to be seen. His boots were missing from beside
the door, so he was out somewhere. Ashton didn't blame him. Anywhere was
better than here.
Ashton stood up, peeling off his pants with
a soft groan of disgust and tossing them aside. Behind him, the dragons
grumped themselves into a more or less upright position, arching away from
Ashton's back as best they could. Naked now, Ashton padded into the closet
that tried to pass itself off as a bathroom, stepping into the claustrophobic
shower stall and turning on the cold water full blast. The water that he
actually got was just a shade below tepid; good enough. Anything was a
relief from the oven of the room.
Turning his face up to the thin and grudging
spray, Ashton shut his eyes and mumbled, "Central City... god, I, I hate
Central City..." The cool water, with a slight metallic tang to it that
Ashton did his best to ignore, sluiced over his face and chest, washing
away the itching and the sweat; finally Ashton let his head fall forward,
reaching up with one hand to ruffle his sweat-soaked hair under the spray.
The water flowed down his back and over the necks of the dragons, who muttered
soft reptilian sighs of relief and ducked their heads under the water as
well.
Almost ten minutes had passed before Ashton
felt anywhere near clean. He'd stopped sweating, for the moment, although
his body threatened to start again the moment he stepped out from under
the stingy tepid spray. Ignoring the threat as best he could, Ashton scrubbed
at his skin with one of the hotel's ancient threadbare towels. Somewhere
along the line the beads of cool water mingled with the first hint of sweat
again; resigned, he slung the towel back onto the rack and stepped out
into the bedroom, automatically snapping off the dim bathroom light behind
him and plunging his world into darkness.
A very little moonlight managed to find its
way through the narrow dirty window, and slowly -- very slowly -- Ashton's
eyes once again got used to the darkness, the edges of the furniture seeming
to evolve slowly out of the void. It was still hot, of course, the humidity
laying on Ashton's shoulders like a sopping-wet blanket as he dug a spare
pair of pants out of his pack. Already sweating lightly, he eyed the loose
linen pants in his hand, then tossed them onto the bureau. No point in
sweating through more clothing just yet.
Padding naked over to the window, Ashton placed
his hands lightly against the glass, staring out at nothing. The window
looked out over the flat dull rooftops of the shorter buildings which huddled
around the base of the hotel, ugly brown rectangles spilling away from
him in a seemingly endless landslide. Behind him, the dragons shifted and
muttered, doing their best to touch neither Ashton nor each other. Eventually,
Ashton pulled one of his hands away from the window and studied it idly
in the pale grey moonlight, flipping his hand over and flexing his fingers.
"... hey."
Ashton jerked away from the window and nearly
fell over, flailing his arms, a little strangled squeak of surprise dying
in his throat. Part of the darkness suddenly shifted and moved, just a
little, resolving itself as Dias, leaning up against the other dresser
with his arms crossed. For the space of several heartbeats Dias was silent,
his expression hidden in the dark; finally, in a mostly uninflected voice
with only the faintest hint of amusement hidden in it, Dias murmured, "Sorry."
From somewhere Ashton summoned up a tiny nervous
laugh, a brilliant pink flush spilling across his cheeks. He opened his
mouth to stammer something inane, along the lines of "I didn't know you
were there"; but Dias' voice overrode his easily, silencing Ashton before
the second word. "... put your pants on. And your boots. I want to show
you something."
Ashton hesitated for just a moment, and Dias
shoved himself off the dresser and crossed to where Ashton had left his
clean pants, picking them up and tossing them across the room to Ashton.
Reflexively Ashton's hands snapped out and closed on them, but he continued
to stare at Dias uncomprehendingly for a moment, his fingers splayed out
across the rough material. He couldn't quite see Dias' face in the
darkness, but something about Dias radiated a quiet amusement. "... go
on. Put them on."
"Oh! I... yeah..." Quickly Ashton shook them
out and stepped into them, tying the drawstring. The folds of linen stuck
to the light sweat on his legs, and Ashton spent a couple of moments trying
to shake them loose, without much success. When he straightened up, Dias
was standing there, dimly outlined in the moonlight, holding out his boots.
And smiling. Very very faintly (what passed for a smile on Dias was more
the absence of a frown than anything else), but smiling just the same.
Ashton reached up tentatively and took the
boots from Dias, searching the taller man's face curiously as he did so.
Dias just shook his head and folded his arms, leaning against the wall,
that faint smile widening almost imperceptibly. Despite the heavy still
heat, despite the sheen of sweat that was just now beginning to shine on
his forehead and make his light shirt cling to his back, Dias seemed relatively
content to wait, and his voice was uncommonly patient as he said, again,
"... go on."
And Ashton did. Straightening back up, Ashton
headed towards his pack and the spare robe that was folded up within, but
Dias' hand flashed out and closed on his, halting him in mid-step. "You
don't need that. It's late. No one's going to see you." And with that,
Dias strode towards the door, dragging Ashton stumbling in his wake. The
dragons managed to duck just in time as Ashton passed (or was
passed) through the door, one hand flailing out to slam it behind them
as Dias tugged him towards the stairwell.
Ignoring the rigid and nervous dragons as
best he could (they'd never liked stairs and Ashton couldn't figure out
why), Ashton started to head downwards, but found himself being pulled
upwards instead. "We're going this way." And up they went, winding around
the dark and stifling stairway, Ashton trailing confusedly in Dias' wake.
For a moment he thought they were going to someone else's room, and a faint
flush crept across his cheeks at the idea of showing up dressed as he was;
but they reached the top floor and kept going up, Ashton stumbling
over stairs he could barely see, following the dark shape that was Dias.
Finally, the dark stairway ended at a small and unremarkable door, wedged
open with a small chunk of masonry, and Dias pushed it open, tugging Ashton
out into the night.
Ashton found himself on the wide flat roof
of the hotel, pebbles crunching softly underfoot. Stars shone faintly through
the characteristic haze, in unfamiliar patterns, and Central City spread
silently out below them like a variegated quilt of tans and browns; but
for the moment all of Ashton's attention was focused on the breeze that
whispered and teased around him, bearing just the faintest cool and damp
promise of rain with it. Startled, Ashton turned his face into the wind,
and saw the heavy clouds massing on the horizon. Dias let go of his hand
and moved to the edge of the roof, leaning on the waist-high guard wall
that ran around the building. And shortly, Ashton moved to join him, crossing
his arms on the wall and closing his eyes, letting the breeze play gently
over his face. Behind him, the dragons arched and rose, leaning into the
breeze with nearly identical blissful expressions.
The sweat on their skins dried, chased away
by the breeze that got stronger, and cooler, and fresher by the moment.
Dias' arm found its way around Ashton's waist, and for the first time all
day, the heat didn't drive that arm away. For a matter of ten brief glorious
minutes, the stars became brighter as the wind caught the haze and drew
it away, revealing Central City to the sky; and one by one those same stars
faded and vanished, as the clouds rolled over them.
A drop of water fell on Ashton's cheek, followed
shortly by another, and another; the dragons arched upwards and grumbled
in contentment, forked tongues flicking out to taste the rain. Dias' arm
tightened about Ashton's waist, just slightly, as the rain slowly rolled
in around them, fat heavy droplets splashing onto Ashton's bare shoulders
and darkening Dias' shirt. Thunder rumbled overhead. Leaning down, so close
to Ashton that his lips almost touched the smaller man's ear, Dias murmured,
"I don't want to head back downstairs just yet... do you?"
Pushing his wet hair back with one hand, Ashton
shook his head, leaning into Dias' chest and closing his eyes as the rain
washed over them both. Dias' other arm slid about Ashton's waist as well,
and Ashton hid his face against the damp fabric of Dias' shirt; they were
both rapidly becoming soaked, but neither man made the slightest movement
towards the door and the furnace waiting below.
Lightning crackled overhead, and the thunder
boomed not a second later. Dias' fingers slid idly upwards, drawing long
gentle trails in the wetness that beaded on Ashton's bare back. Shivering,
Ashton pressed himself more firmly against Dias' chest, his fingers drifting
up to pluck gently at the buttons of Dias' shirt. And soon Dias' fingers
became more purposeful on Ashton's skin, eventually slipping down to close
about the drawstring of Ashton's pants...
Outside the windows of the hotel, the rain
fell and the wind moaned quietly; thunder growled and snarled in the distance.
Two hours later, they made their way back to
the room, completely soaked and disheveled, wandering slowly and silently
down the quiet hallways. Ashton was carrying his sopping-wet and useless
boots in one hand, his other hand twined firmly about one of Dias'; Dias'
shirt was only half-buttoned, plastered wetly against his back and chest.
The room was an oven, just as it had been
when they left, but against their rain-chilled skins, it almost felt pleasant.
Towel slung over his shoulders, Dias made one more attempt to open the
small and narrow window to the night, ultimately futile. Finally Dias gave
up, cursing the window and its water-swollen frame without much real heat.
"Here... um... let me..." Briskly toweling
off his hair, Ashton stepped past Dias to the window. With a single, forceful
movement Ashton drove the pommel of one of his swords through the lower
half of the window, shattering the glass with a loud crack and startling
Dias; with unusual calm Ashton knocked the rest of the glass out of the
frame, until the cool wind sighed through and ruffled their damp hair.
Then -- and only then -- Ashton turned to smile up at Dias, putting his
swords away. "... I guess they'll... just have to bill us for it..."
A soft chuckle escaped Dias. "Guess they will." |