Misconstrued, p.7
Misconstrued, page 7
“Can we just sit for a moment first?”
Romeo looked hugely surprised then nodded and sat down where he stood, a respectful distance away from me.
“You can understand English, you just can’t speak it, right?”
Nod.
I frowned for a moment. “Is that why you telegraph your facial expressions so much?”
Confusion.
“Yeah. Like that. You might not understand what I meant, but you just showed me over-the-top bafflement. You can’t possibly be that puzzled, so it makes more sense for you to be exaggerating to make sure I understand.”
He was suddenly full of smiles.
I sighed. “Okay. I think I can work with that. Can I ask you some questions, and trust you not to tell the others?”
Nod.
“I know you could be lying—”
Shock!
I rolled my eyes. “—but I’m trusting you anyway, because I need information and you're here. And not overly complicated.”
Hesitant nod.
“When I was told you had bought me, I thought it was a sex thing.” I stopped to watch his face suddenly be very worried. “But no one has even touched me, let alone … anything else.” I chewed my lip for a moment, then just decided to go for it. “I saw Mac and Tybalt together, and if they’re boyfriends, then I must be here for something else.”
His expression went flat.
“Except that Tybalt wanted me to sleep in his room, and Mac told me details about his dick this morning, so now I don’t know what to think. So my question is … why am I here? Which I know isn’t a yes/no question, but did you buy me for sex?”
He didn’t nod or shake his head, but just kept watching me with no expression on his face.
“Oh. Umm. I guess, in a roundabout way that answers my question.” I tensed at the thought.
His eyes got wide and he shook his head. “Mina,” he rumbled so low that it was nearly infrasonic.
“I don’t suppose I could talk you into going back into the school and giving me a twenty minute head start?”
He shook his head, no, before rumbling something else.
“I can’t understand you.”
He stood up, stepped back and fished in his pocket for something. What he pulled out looked a bit like a condom, but he rumbled, then it vibrated and a badly synthesized voice said, “Safe, uninjured, unscathed, unharmed. In present and future tense.”
“Okay, wow, that’s horrible, I can understand why you didn’t want to use that. Are you trying to say you aren’t going to hurt me?”
Nod.
“So did you buy me for sex?”
He growled softly in frustration, and the thing said, “attract, cultivate, entice, solicit - in future tense.”
“Future tense? Like in the future … sex?”
“Aspire, contemplate, foresee, wish. In future tense.”
“That thing is stuck on thesaurus mode, isn’t it?”
He frowned then tapped it. It rumbled back at him and he nodded frantically.
“Hmmm.”
“Protect, cherish, shelter, defend. In present tense.”
I stared at him. “Not the worst current goals.” I thought some more. “The thing is there is a huge difference between aspiring to future sex and foreseeing it. Foreseeing future sex makes it sound inevitable—”
He started frantically shaking his head, no.
“—and if it is inevitable, that kind of means that I won’t have any say in it when it happens.”
He looked absolutely horrified and stumbled backwards still shaking his head no. “Iago!”
“Iago is out hunting people, so I’m not sure if he is the best person to ask. And Tybalt and Mac have already made asking them complicated. That left me with you, but this is a complicated question, and you can’t talk to me.”
He looked incredibly worried. He stuffed the translator back in his pocket, pointed at the school and gave me a pleading look.
“Is future tense sex planned for tonight?”
He gave me an emphatic no.
“Okay. I am trusting you, Romeo J. Smith. I’ve given you three names now, so you owe me.”
He was so solemn when he nodded his agreement that I smiled a little. He returned my smile with a slightly more nervous one. Then he led me through the camp and stopped outside Erika’s tent. He pointed at the tent, beckoned, then pointed at the school.
“I get to bring Erika with me?”
Nod.
“Is she going to be safe?”
Nod.
Erika stuck her head out of her door. “Was that a yes?” she asked.
We both nodded.
“Awesome sa—um, sleepover!” She ducked back into her tent and was out a moment later, carrying her shoes. “I can’t wait to see your room!”
- - - -
“I thought you said there were bunk beds in the living room,” Erika said.
I looked up. “There were. Honestly, they were here this morning.” They had been replaced with a couch and three armchairs.
“Okay, that’s creepy.”
I was about to say that disappearing furniture wasn’t really creepy when I realized she was talking about how all the orcs had come over to stare at us.
“Yeah,” I mumbled, “they do that.” Looking around, there did seem to be fewer than there had been the first night I stayed here.
Someone snarled at Romeo.
“Maybe we should go,” I whispered, grabbing her arm.
“What was that?”
“I’m not sure, but I do know that he speaks English, so whatever he said, he’s hiding it from us.”
Mr. Helpful came over and quietly said, “He told Romeo that he does not get two. It is unfair.”
Erika and I looked at each other. “He doesn’t ‘get’ either of us. If us being here is a problem, we can easily go back to the school yard,” she declared.
That drew their attention back to me.
“I’m not entirely sure we’ll be allowed to leave,” I replied. I could see the colour drain from Erika’s face at that. “Mr. Smith,” I said firmly. “You promised she would be safe. If this is going to go wrong, you need to take her back to the school.”
“Who’s Mr. Smith?” Erika asked. Looking around the room, I could see she wasn’t the only one wondering.
“Romeo J. Smith promised we would be safe,” I explained.
Erika blinked, “His last name is Smith?” She looked at him. “Well, he’s no Brangelina, but I guess it works.”
I nodded, we both looked at him and the guy he was arguing with.
They were watching us in confusion.
“I’m feeling really outnumbered,” Erika mumbled.
“I know, right? I mean, nothing has happened yet. But it doesn’t mean nothing is going to happen,” I pointed out.
Mr. Helpful asked, “What makes it better?”
“Well, not having to worry about them getting into a fight would be a good start.” I thought some more. “Is it safe for me to show Erika the room you made for me?”
Romeo took a step towards us, that was also a step away from the orc who didn’t like Erika being here, and gestured down the hallway.
Erika waited until the door to my room was almost closed to say, “Yeah, I can see why you’re so worried all the time. That was a horror movie level of creepy.” She stopped and looked around. “Nice room! Are you getting a dog?”
I smiled. “Apparently not. But that was the first thing I asked, too.” I grinned a little harder when she looked in the drawers.
“Huh. So … do you sleep naked or in the coveralls?”
“In the coveralls. I don’t like being naked around them, but it took a while to get used to sleeping in a bed while fully dressed.”
“Is it that much different from sleeping in a tent?”
How could I begin to explain that? “It is. Mostly it’s psychological, I think, but the way the fabric presses and bunches isn’t really comfortable.”
She looked around. “It’s a bit like a bird cage, or one of those hamster habitats. Pretty and interesting and all, but still a cage.”
“Yeah.”
She ran her fingers through her hair. “Right! How do we get you out of here?”
“Damned if I know. I’m not sure I'll get to run away. I’ve probably been GPS tagged by now.”
“Ew.” She shuddered. “Okay, let’s pretend for a moment that isn’t a thing. Am I the only one who is still wondering about Mac?”
I snorted. “Probably,” I lied.
“How upset would you be if I asked to see?”
I blinked. “Why would I be upset?”
She rolled her eyes at me. “Because he’s clearly into you.”
“What? Oh come on! They’re all male, this isn’t a case of he’s into me. It’s the equivalent of a lonely shepherd starting to really like his sheep.”
“Mina. You can’t have a conversation with a sheep. This is clearly different.”
“Erika. You can’t get a sheep pregnant either,” I pointed out.
She opened her mouth to rebut that, then closed it and sagged. “Yeah. I’m not sure I like the pull-and-pray method of birth control. It clearly doesn’t work. Miriam isn’t the only one with a bun in the oven any more.”
My eyes went wide. “You?”
“Fuck no! If I was getting any, you would hear about it.” She looked around the room some more, then tried to turn on one of the lamps.
“They’re just for show, but the light in the bathroom works. I guess they get the idea of not showering in the dark.”
“Yup, hamster cage. Cool looking tunnels that don’t work for burrowing because they don’t understand our behavior.”
“That sounds about right.”
- - - -
I woke up when the sun moved around to shine in my eyes. There hadn’t been a morning wake-up knock. That was new. Erika was still asleep, and I wasn’t in a rush to move either. We had stayed up talking in the dark for what felt like a very long time. This was the best sleep I’d had in weeks, since before the first time Tybalt had disapproved of me skipping a meal.
I was torn between wanting to just stay in bed, and wondering what the hell they were up to now.
I just sort of dozed until Erika started moving around a bit, like she was starting to wake up. Her eyes opened and she sat bolt upright, looking around.
“We missed breakfast!”
“Yeah, but I, for one, needed the sleep.”
She nodded and snuggled back down. “Me too, I suppose. I have to say, I have enjoyed our doggy play date and will be happy to go back to doggy daycare, but I don’t envy you whatever the fuck is going on with your owners.”
- - - -
We got up to find Iago sitting at the kitchen table doing something that looked suspiciously like cleaning his guns. This was surprising, because when we came in last night, there had been bunk beds in the space, not a table.
There was some fruit waiting for us, and after we ate he walked us back to the school, where I said good-bye to Erika. He then took me back to the house.
He politely indicated I was to sit at the table, and then fussed about before bringing over a hot drink and setting it down. I frowned at it. I had no idea what it was, but it seemed too thick to be served warm and in a glass.
“Do you like living here?” he asked.
“That’s a loaded question,” I pointed out. “What happens if I say yes? What happens if I say no?”
He got up from the table and paced the small space for a moment. “We want you to be happy here. I will arrange for us to live in a different house if you would be happier and less afraid all the time.”
I thought about that. “How many of us are you including in that ‘different house for us’ suggestion?”
“Whoever you want to live there.”
“You’re getting people to leave this house, aren’t you?”
He nodded. “So you aren’t as outnumbered.”
I snorted, trying not to laugh. “Look at you, Iago! Even in a one-on-one situation, I’m always going to be outnumbered.”
He didn’t say anything for a long moment. Long enough that I started to fidget. “You and your friend decided to start looking for an acceptable penis while I was gone.”
I winced. “Not my idea, but I don’t want you going after her, either.”
“Why not ask one of us?”
“She wanted to see me and needed something to trade to arrange it.”
His eyes narrowed dangerously. “Someone told her she needed to trade to be able to see you?”
I swallowed. “I don’t know if they told her that, or if she just decided to get the price upfront instead of owing him a favour later on.”
“Hmm.”
“What?” I asked wearily. “Please just tell me. I’m not good at ‘hmm’ when it’s people, let alone a whole other species.”
He tensed. I just looked at him and tried to radiate the idea that I was too tired to deal with his dicking around, read-my-mind-bullshit either.
“I would have liked to be asked.”
I closed my eyes and wondered how the hell to even start to address that, when I was pretty sure he had just gotten back from hunting people. I didn’t even open them to look at him when I said, “Iago, do you want to show me your dick?”
“No!” He managed to sound so affronted that I opened my eyes to stare at him. “I want you to want to see it,” he mumbled, ducking his head.
I shook my head. “Hopefully aspiring to sex, future tense,” I muttered.
“What?”
“Something Romeo said last night. Or used a condom to say last night. Or at least a condom-shaped object to say last night,” I added when he looked upset. That did not seem to help.
“I don’t understand you,” he growled. “You do not react the way I expect.”
“Welcome to the club!”
“What club, Mina?”
I groaned. “It means that I don’t understand you, either.”
“Ah.”
We sat lost in our own thoughts for a while.
“There are things you need to know while you are hopefully anticipating sex. I don’t want to get pregnant more than I want to get—” I was going to say laid, but switched to “—sex.” at the last moment.
That was the wrong thing to say. He stiffened and was extremely tense when he replied, “You do not find me to be an acceptable father?”
“What? No! Look! I don’t want to accidentally get pregnant, no matter who the father is. Or what the circumstances are. I liked being on birth control, because then I didn’t have to worry about accidentally getting pregnant.”
He blinked, looking stunned for a moment. Clearly that was not a statement he was prepared to process.
“You bought me with three of your friends. I have no idea how you saw that working, but that’s a little scary all on its own.”
“We were hoping you would find one or more of us acceptable, and be able to tolerate the rest of us,” he answered warily.
“Acceptable for what? What are you expecting me to tolerate?”
“Tolerate us in your living space?” He sounded hesitantly hopeful.
“Do I have a choice?”
“Yes! Of course you have a choice!” He seemed offended by the very idea.
“I’m guessing, based on your previous comment, that you want me to pop out a son for you?”
His nervousness was back. “I would be willing to be sterilized if that was what it took to at some point have you touch me.”
“You’re joking!”
He looked up at me.
“You’re not joking! Holy shit, Iago! Where did that come from?”
“You do not want children. I do not want children more than I want you,” he explained. “It is a simple enough problem to solve.”
I just stared at him, completely at a loss for words. Until I wasn’t. “That’s a really easy thing to lie about, Iago. I wouldn’t know if it was true until it was too late.”
He stood up, angrily, then promptly sat down again. When he spoke, his voice was slow and even. “Your culture is different. Lying about contraception is rape in my culture. Rape is punishable by death. They told you I was hunting. That is what I was hunting. I would not lie about that. It would be beyond dishonourable.”
