Solo [Solo] Make Love Not Glass

[Montaine]

Make Love Not Glass Summer 16 512 AV Sequel to The Hard Sell The sixteenth day of summer, 512 AV, six bells past the day. Alexander groaned slightly and pulled the bed sheets further over his head as the light was brought in through the opening door. Montaine eyed the lump with an irrepressible grin on his face. Last night had been a long time coming and it was good to know that it was more than just his starved imagination. His guest was clearly much closer to consciousness than he was the dozen or so chimes ago when Monty had managed to slip out and dress. The man had slept soundly, snoring so loudly he even managed to drown out the glassworker’s laboured wheezing as he struggled to don his trousers. Evidently, during his brief visit to Calbert across the way his absence had been noticed on some level, rousing the wealthy merchant’s son from an impenetrable somnolence to a mere disgruntled stupor. ‘You know, Alex, I don’ normally let fellas stay over on the first night. Ain’t no romance in that at all,’ Monty said, sitting down heavily on his creaking palliasse. The lump bounced a little and groaned again. Finally, and begrudgingly, the bleary eyed face of Alexander Callay appeared out from under the sheets. ‘Why are you up so early? No decent people are up this early,’ Callay moaned, blinking slowly as he adjusted to the low light filtering in through the shuttered window. ‘Decent? I ain’t the one naked in some lad’s what he only met the day before’s bed at six bells. If anyone’s bein’ indecent here, I think it’s you,’ Callay threw a pillow and it hit Monty in the face, reigniting his wheezing. It took a few ticks for the merchant’s son to register what it was and he raised his eyebrows in surprise. ‘You’re still out of breath? Are you alright? I didn’t break you last night, did I?’ Monty snorted and returned the pillow, ‘Nah, I’m fine. S’usual, I told you,’ ‘Yeah,’ Callay said, but his brows furrowed. Monty didn’t sound fine. ‘Now, don’ you have places to be? Things to do, merchandise to-to merchandise? I’ve got the day off, but you can’t go round sleepin’ in bed all day,’ ‘It’s six bells!’ Callay said, gesturing wildly with his hands, ‘I’m never up this early! If six bells is all day to you, no wonder you’re tired all the time. Wait, you’ve got the day off?’ Monty nodded, his eyes slipping slowly south as Callay’s shifting revealed more and more of his torso and that serpentine tattoo, ‘Yeah, got it agreed ages ago with the old man,’ he muttered. That tattoo went on forever. Now that he thought of it, it was highly suspicious that Calbert’s carefully arranged plans for the merchant’s son to seduce him just happened to fall the day before his day off. It was only unfortunate that he had already made prior arrangements. ‘So you can spend the day with me?’ Callay asked, though it was less question and more statement. The young man had spent much of his life getting a lot of what he asked for and sense of entitlement that went right along with it. But he seemed genuinely happy at the prospect, which only served to increase Monty’s annoyance at the timing clash. ‘Sorry, I’ve got plans. A friend of mine an’ I’re doin’ some building work down in beggar town where I grew up, but you’re free to come along if’n you want?’ The eagerness was gone from Callay’s eyes, ‘Isn’t that part of town dangerous? You sure you want to go down there?’ ‘I grew up there, Alex, it’s my town. My friends grew up there, my friends’ families grew up there. They ain’t dangerous, not to me,’ Alex seemed to realise he had perhaps made an error, ‘Oh I know, but my father would kill me if went down that part of the city. He doesn’t let me do anything. Well, when do you have to go? Because, if you have some time?’ he said, raising an eyebrow and smirking in the most unsubtle way. Montaine feared briefly for his health but ultimately came to the conclusion that if there were worse ways to die than from exhaustion in this particular activity. He shrugged his shoulders and returned to bed.

[Montaine]

The nineteenth day of summer, 512 AV, thirteen bells past the day. ‘Listen, you useless piece of shyke and skin, I have made up my mind and it will not be changed by the feeble whimpers that come from your gullet, you scrawny disappointment of a son! I tolerate your petching around with all sorts of vagrants and bad sorts only because I have no other son. Don’t think for a single chime of the petching bell that I would ever hesitate to kick your disgusting body out onto the street had I any other option. I should never have let your mother coddle you so and turn you so far from what you should have been,’ ‘Father, please!’ ‘No! You have degraded this family’s name far enough, boy! Don’t think I don’t know about your activities with the page, and the lad from Ravok, and that whole business on board the Marietta Bella. It’s gone round half the city. You know how you’ve embarrassed me, boy? Simone Dubois gave me sympathy. Simone Dubois! She runs half the trade up the northern coast and she gave me sympathy. You know what you’ve done to our business’ prospects with your philandering with not just the working class, which is a condemnable offence in and of itself, but with men? What makes this one so special, eh? You petched him, now he’s sick. Just be glad he probably won’t live long enough to go boasting of taking a member of the esteemed Callays! Now get out of my sight, you’re not worth the effort of a beating,’ The ‘esteemed’ Harold J. R. Callay slammed the door shut on his son, his face red, his cheeks puffed, and his eyes wild. Alexander had rarely seen him so incensed. He had seen him angry often enough, too often rather. In fact he struggled to remember the last time he had seen his father happy. Apparently he was perfectly charming when schmoozing potential business partners, or making the rounds at the seasonal society soirées, but something about his son infuriated him to the point of breaking. Alexander never should have asked permission. He had spent but a single evening, and subsequent morning, in the company of the up and coming young glassworker and yet he was desperate to see him again. The total conversation the two had shared, outside of lewd remarks and improper implications, had been riveting, refreshingly honest, and really rather remarkable. Ideas that Callay had never taken serious consideration of before seemed more realistic coming from the mouth of one who seemed so free as the glassworker. He had planned on waiting for him to return home after his errands that first morning, but he had never come back. He only learned days later that he had been taken ill and was recovering at his father’s home. In beggar town. There was the catch. One of the very things that so intrigued Callay about the young man, his dirt poor roots, was precisely what was keeping him away. His father spoke so badly about the working class. Well, he spoke badly about the merchant class too. He didn’t speak all too fondly of the upper class either, but there was a respect there, and a deep envy. There was nothing for it. He would have to send a man in his stead, subtly. No one on his father’s staff, they couldn’t be trusted. He’d hire a man from less reputable sources to pose as his valet, deliver a gift, some words of gentle sympathy too, and a not-so-subtle request of his company once he was recovered. His father had asked him what made this one so special. He needed to find out.

[Montaine]

The thirty-second day of summer, 512 AV, a little after midnight. ‘So if you never had a mother, who looked after when your father was at work?’ Montaine shifted uncomfortably. A piece of straw was poking up through the skin of his old mattress and scratching roughly against his leg. Conversely the thin sheets that covered his bed were sticking, in a most unpleasant manner, to his body where the sweat had soaked through. He was still recovering from the rasping breathlessness that always followed certain lively activities when Callay asked his question. It was odd. During the time they spent with one another during the day he was a perfectly courteous gentleman, fun, witty, a good drinker. But in these sexual twilights he seemed to be touched by a certain post-coital reverie. The discussions they had were always interesting to be sure, but it was curious to the glassmaker why it they always occurred at this most intimate of times. ‘Well, I looked after meself often enough. Me da told me not to leave the house, so I didn’, not often. He worked so hard to keep’us fed that he’d come home after dark all tired an’ worn out an’ I caused him enough trouble with me dodgy innards that it seemed, I don’t know, wrong to cause him more by misbehavin’. I loved me Da, I love me Da, but he had enough on his plate without havin’ to worry ‘bout me when he were at work,’ Callay ran his hand down the glassworker’s arm until he reached the young man’s hand and caressed the scars and burns and calluses that dotted them, ‘But didn’t you ever want to go outside? Didn’t you ever want to see what you were missing?’ ‘Of course! That’s what I wanted more’n anythin’, but all I had to go on were me Da’s stories an’ what I could see when we did go out to the market on occasion, an’ what I saw from me window. But that all seemed so-so-’ Montaine looked around the darkened room, searching for the right word, before finally ending back up on the brown eyes of the merchant’s son, ‘-distant, I guess. It was like it was out of my reach’n nothin’ would change that, y’know?’ Callay’s hand stopped and after a moment he said, ‘Yeah, yeah I understand,’ ‘But then when I were eight, me’n’me Da got separated an’, well, an’ nothin’ bad happened. It was like a wake-up. All those things I thought I couldn’ do, all those things that seemed so distant, an’ impossible, suddenly they were just within my grasp, an’ all I had to do was push a little bit further,’ ‘What happened then?’ Monty raised an eyebrow, ‘Well, this,’ he said, gesturing to the room, ‘I got out of beggar town, didn’t I? I got a job, doin’ somethin’ I love with people I care about. I made enough money to live off an’ help me ol’ man. I’m havin’ sex with a deeply attractive rich boy from the posh side o’ town. If I hadn’t trie to do what I thought were impossible, I’d still be sittin’ in me Da’s house, starin’ out the window an’ watchin’ the life I wanted to lead pass me by, an’ that’s no way to live,’ ‘No, no I guess it isn’t,’