Chapter 4 – A Rose by Any Other Name #5
"And what is it? What does it mean?" I asked, curious.
"It is difficult to explain, but I will try, Sashen." His fingers toyed with the looped tie at his trim waist. "Virra are good at speaking to others, at…" He swallowed. "Hm, at getting what they want. They're persuasive, warm, charming."
"I don't mind the sound of that," I said slowly, watching Araxis very carefully.
His mouth curved. "They're a bit dangerous, because they're so…
alluring. And they tend to be quite voracious.
They – Hm." Araxis stopped, shifting back on his heels.
He cleared his throat, a soft sound in a room that suddenly felt about three times smaller, as if it were just the two of us locked in close proximity, and then he took a step away, ostensibly to fiddle with a loose door on a storage compartment.
I see you, I thought. I see what you're saying.
"Voracious is an interesting word," I observed. "Do you mean that they fuck a lot of people?"
The line of Araxis's spine stiffened immediately. He said nothing, and I let the question crackle in the air between us, not in any rush to get the answer I knew was coming.
"I have fucked a lot of people," I said. "Is that bad?" It might seem that way, to someone as shy and isolated as Araxis. For people like abaya who were apparently pretty sexually repressed.
He looked back at me, surprised. "Of course not. You're virra – and you are very virra. It is who you are."
So it sounded, more or less, like my gender was hot slut. And that was something I was sure Seraphim would agree with.
I snorted, gathering up my swords and Araxis's jacket.
The heat I'd felt just a moment before, the crackle between me and Araxis, was gone.
All I could think about was Seraphim and the poison they'd been sure to get into me, and how long I'd worked to get it out.
I wondered if I'd ever be able to purge it entirely. Doubtful.
I didn't want to think about Seraphim. I really didn't want to think that they might have been right when they saw something in me, something they called evil indelibly etched into who I was. Foundational.
Araxis watched me packing up, and the colour left his cheeks. "I have said something to upset you." A soft, whining sound left his throat, humming beneath his words – distress?
"No, it's fine. It's just – it was bad where I grew up.
" I clutched Araxis's jacket to my chest, my swords bundled inside, holding them tight enough to ease some of the pressure building beneath my ribs.
"It was bad that I liked boys. It was bad that I liked aliens.
It was bad that I thought about sex. It was bad that I wanted to have sex.
It was all bad, and I was, you know, broken and awful and disgusting for all of that.
It's just – I don't know, it's strange to think that a whole species can smell me and know all the things about who I am that I tried to hide for so long. "
The thin whining, almost a trill, continued as Araxis listened.
"It's not bad to be virra in our culture," he said.
"Virra are treasured, cherished. A virra who declares for a house brings status and respect; declared virra are honoured by all houses.
To win a virra's steadfast attention and devotion is…
it is the achievement of one's lifetime. "
I wasn't sure I had the patience to unpack that one – you got status from making someone go against their supposed nature?
I was pretty sure that was what steadfast devotion meant for a gender like hot slut – and I definitely didn't have the patience to unpack it when I was tired and getting a free ride from someone who was awfully cute but who thought I just smelled like a whore, apparently.
No wonder he blushed around me all the time.
I swallowed, my throat suddenly tight and hot.
I glanced down at my wrist to catch the time.
It was late enough that bed was a passable excuse; I probably should have skipped all of this and gone straight to bed anyway.
"I'm tired, so I'm going to go to bed, I think.
Do you have much piloting to do tomorrow, or can we start with training early?
" Right now, all I wanted was to hole up and not think about swords or combat at all, but there was at least a tiny sliver of my consciousness – probably the bit that would maybe like to live – that could acknowledge that getting in some practice with a real person before the Tournament could be important.
Araxis stared at me for a long moment, blinking.
Then his head dropped a little, like he was ashamed or upset.
At least the whining had stopped. "It will take some time tomorrow to chart our initial course, and I am required at the helm as we leave the asteroid's gravity field.
Should I find you when I am done for the day? "
"Sure," I said, stepping around him with lots of room and heading for the door.
"If you need food, there are stores off the dining room where we had tea," he said. I could hear his quiet footfalls as he walked a few steps behind me, and I picked up the pace and opened the door to the cargo hold.
"Great."
"If you need anything, I will just be next door to your room."
"I appreciate it," I said flatly, not looking back.
Araxis's footfalls stopped, and I headed to the top deck by myself.
It was a good size ship with hardly anyone on it, so there was no one to look at the expression I couldn't quite wipe from my face, too burned out and brittle for pretending.
I stopped in my room long enough to dump my things on my bed, then scurried into Araxis's room – still empty, thank god – to brush my teeth and scrub my face with cold water, before silently retreating to my room and closing the door firmly.
I even dug out the fresh linens and made the bed, stripping out of my clothes before settling in under the blankets and hoping they'd keep me warm enough.
I didn't know why I felt so unbalanced by finding out about this abayan gender thing, why it made my chest ache like I'd been bruised.
But I didn't need to know why. I just needed to stop feeling that way, so I found the switch to turn off the overheads and lay for a long time in the dark, unable to sleep.
It was probably the cold keeping me up, so I finally gave up and groped around in the dark until I found Araxis's jacket, draping it on top of the covers for an added layer of warmth and burying my nose in the collar.
I finally fell asleep, carried away by the scent of spice and the gentle pool of warmth his jacket offered.