Taelor kept a firm grip on Emilia’s elbow as they exited the bubble into the main Roasalia station, located in the heart of the city. Immediately, a cacophony of voices surrounded them, unable to be held back by even the station attendants and occasional SecOps agent wandering through the crowd, running noise cancellation skills as they addressed traveller issues—mostly people asking for restaurant recommendations or directions here or there, because despite how Censors could provide that information just as easily, relying on them for too much was detrimental to brains, relations and society as a whole.
The building itself stretched up numerous levels, cafés and souvenir shops dotting each of the walkways that crisscrossed the open space, along with bubble stands that led to various destinations—only the most expensive bubbles could transfer lines, so most people had to get off at the main station and transfer to bubbles that would take them into other districts or move them to another city altogether. A collection of booths selling tickets for various airships and cruise lines were set up as well, each set before a bubble stand of their own, which would take guests off to the docks.
The station itself was a mix of people making their way home for the night at a reasonable rate and those who were late and rushing. In the central corridor of the lowest floor lay the slide lines, people letting the currents of the aethernet drag them to their destination, arms reaching out to grab hold of shimmering blue exit lines to reach other floors. Then, of course, there were the always present adults who insisted on giving unruly teens and young adults side eyes, but unwilling to call them out when station attendants and SecOps weren’t, and they’d only tell someone off if they were being unsafe.
Virtually everyone they passed sent their foursome looks of apprehension, and while Emilia was certainly making a nuisance of herself, her steps stumbling—and not due to the somewhat uneven stone flooring—as she giggled and whisper hissed about boys being mean to her, it wasn’t her they were looking at. Also, she was lying; she had brought punishment down on herself by attempting to get herself off—by pressing fingers between her thighs when she hadn’t been given leave to do so—during their tryst on the bubble.
Emilia
was not in charge of their time together. Neither were Baylor nor Valor, only ever him.
When he was with any of them, he was the one in charge, regardless of whether it was sex or something as small as carrying a bag, Emilia’s still slung over his shoulder despite the glittering pink fabric—not that anyone would ever comment on the bag.
Perhaps, if they didn’t see his face—if Baylor weren’t wandering ahead of him and Emilia, making a nuisance of himself as well while Valor gently cooed at him to get a grip—civilians would give him a second glance over the bag that neither matched his style nor general energy. Once, older clones and Emilia’s friends would have commented on his carrying her bag, but somewhere around the time she had started sharing their bed, Taelor had stopped trying to hide his propensity for burying the only three people he cared about in affection through acts of service and caretaking.
Even before he and his brothers had started to more obviously express their affection for not just Emilia but each other in public—although he doubted few people realized how far that affection went, their actions towards each other only ever betraying that they exceptionally close—some part of Taelor suspected that Loren had already known. For all that their guardian had always been a little distant, the way all Hyrat clones were to the children they raised—Emilia had once told them that guardian clones reminded her of much older brothers raising children after their parents died, loving but never quite sure how to interact with the child—he had loved them,
seen
them in ways that few people did.
While he had never confirmed it—never sat them down for a discussion on what it meant to be triplets, and yet not, within the complicated mechanics of also being a Hyrat clone—most likely, Loren had realized when he and his brothers were still young how much he took over caring for them as their guardian stepped away, leaving them to manage on their own with bedtime and morning routines, leaving them to mess up and learn how to be teenagers and then adults within the safety of their pod.
Hyrat clones took care of their youngest members in a perfectly acceptable manner, each transition supported by thousands of years of experience, all pressed into the younger generations, all offered up as manuals to the clones who chose to raise a new generation, even if they would never truly be
parent
and
child.
Yet, they were all different people, with different needs and wants, and Baylor had never wanted to grow up at the
proper
rate. So Taelor had stepped in, taking over as his brother’s caretaker, Valor content to follow along, rather than be left to the side in his brothers’ odd relationship. Then, they’d kept on like that, never shifting in their expectation that no matter what his brothers’ needed, he would be there to help them—would be standing there,
demanding
they let him be their hands.
When they had brought her on vacation, following whatever the fuck had caused Rafe to break her heart, Emilia had also allowed herself to be dragged into his sphere of loving, harsh control. While she would never be a permanent part of their arrangement, Emilia had fallen into an easy pattern with them.
Alone, she was the fierce, unstoppable girl she had almost always been, save in the first months of their friendship and the weeks before Rafe had killed their classmate—someone who neither he nor Emilia had ever confirmed had hurt her, but none of them were stupid enough to assume the guy hadn’t been the cause of her broken state.
Together, she was theirs—theirs to touch and love, his to care for in ways she definitely hadn’t been in those first few years of life, when she’d been trapped in
that place.
In that way, she fit so perfectly into their lives: just as Baylor still wanted to be cared for, pampered, so did Emilia; just as Baylor enjoyed pushing the rules Taelor had laid out for them, so did Emilia—not everyone could be as well-behaved, if perpetually too inside his head as Valor.
Fortunately, Taelor loved when they were pushy little brats and was always for punishing them for it, in both fun and miserable ways, although the sparsity of Emilia in their life meant he generally only issued her enjoyable punishments, pressing affection onto her when she truly did something
bad
—the giggling smiles she shot his way, even as she continued muttering about how mean he was, proof enough of that.
“Talie~” Emilia laughed, tugging him closer, closer, until Taelor had to stop, lest they actually trip.
“Emmie,” he replied, gazing down at her, wondering if she would let him kiss her here. For as much as they touched and teased in public, it was rare that they did something so overt that someone could snap a picture of them and make claims that a Hyrat clone had a girlfriend.
Not that any of them—neither their trio nor the clones as a whole—cared much about that. It wouldn’t be the first time a clone had entered a relationship, although virtually all of those relationships had been kept private. Why? For the same reason he wouldn’t lean down and take Emilia’s lips now, wouldn’t let himself be more than her very close friend in public—something that he knew already caused her problems occasionally, even if she’d never seemed to care about that; to be touched by a Hyrat clone risked making yourself a pariah.
If word got out that Emilia was fucking around with them, that would be bad enough, but easily dealt with. As a silverstrain, Emilia already carried the curse of forever being called a slut, accused of using her cunt to open doors for herself. If a rumour got out that she was dating one of them—dating all three of them, in an even worse scenario…
Well, Taelor wasn’t sure if she’d be able to come back from that, and while he and his brothers ached to keep her, they couldn’t. They
couldn't,
and they wouldn’t risk turning their friend—the woman they loved—into some monster who had been willing to love them back and was therefore fucked up, untouchable, unloveable.
Resisting the urge to growl over the stupidity of the fact that so many people expected those connected with black knots—with Hyrat clones in particular—to never love them back with the ferocity they inevitably found themselves loved, Taelor tugged Emilia along.
“Talie…” Emilia said, softer this time, always so aware of each of their feelings, even when they did nothing more than clench their jaw, narrow their eyes.
“It’s fine, Emmie,” he replied as they exited the glittering light and chaos of the station, people making way for them as they went, eyes shifting over him and his brothers while ignoring Emilia’s existence, as though she weren’t always to most beautiful creature in the room—or on the street, as they now were.
Around them, people continued rushing about in the cooling evening air, but at least it was less cramped, less stuffy because that many people inevitably made the air thick with breath and scent and sweat. People laughed, teenagers slid by, earning them rebukes from older adults for sliding too close to the entrance without actually being on a slide line. When Emilia connected their Censors, though, their shoes lighting up as they began to slide, swerving past Baylor and Valor because even they hadn’t been expecting her to activate a slide so close to the doorway, no one dared tell them off.
They bolted through the streets, skidding down dark, unmonitored alleys that separated the tall, crystalline buildings of the capital’s central district, where the Hyrat dorms were located. The boring grey building many clones called home, however, was not in this direction.
Occasionally, they passed someone tucked into a dark corner, and although she never looked their way, Taelor knew Emilia was leaving them money, transferring it into their Censors anonymously with the ease of a hacker. Not everyone was as blessed as they were, with friends and family who would never let them be homeless, impressive academic careers standing firm behind them, and weighty trust funds accruing interest every day. While the entirety of The Penns—and to a lesser extent all of Baalphoria—was raised to view helping those in need as a social responsibility, they all knew people were, at their heart, selfish, hoarding wealth and power where they could.
Emilia, of course, was the sort of person who would donate enough for every selfish person in the country if she thought it would actually fix anything. It wouldn’t—there were always people who needed more help, who couldn’t or wouldn’t accept what help was offered to them—but when she came across someone in need, she would help them.
One day, it was liable to get her killed, and not just because she was the sort of person to jump into any fight she stumbled across.
“Emmie!” he called as his terrible, chaotic friend took them through the district much too fast, the world blurring by so quickly his Censor could barely keep up with tracking where they were. His eyes saw the world but retained virtually nothing or it, not even the hazards filling it. Fucking non-devs. One would think after knowing two for the majority of his life, Taelor would be used to their confidence in things like this, and yet.
A giggle erupted out of Emilia as she tugged him closer, her control of the slide the only thing keeping them from crashing into a wall or any of the people they were definitely startling as they hurtled past—not that Taelor cared about scaring them. He only cared about keeping Emilia safe, about none of them being hurt.
Luckily, Baylor and Valor had quickly decided there wasn’t a chance in the galaxy they were keeping up and had taken a more sensible route back to the dorms. As time passed and Emilia continued winding them through the city, her path eventually taking them to the boardwalk that edged along the bay—more sensible people would have taken a bubble from the station to the bay, given how far apart they were—Taelor noted that his brothers had made a stop at a clothing shop along the way.
Probably, they were picking up a dress for Emilia to wear to dinner. Hopefully they wouldn’t scare the workers at the shop too bad—it was a shop Emilia went into often, and it would be just like Baylor to mention her by name and inadvertently have her unofficially banned.
Said silverstrain’s speed had slowed as they made their way along the boardwalk, although they were still passing people as they moved along the slide path, their arms still linked. While virtually all vehicles in Baalphoria had been silent for generations, the boats pulling in and out of the nearby pier still sent waves lapping up the shore line, while children playing there giggled and dared each other to go further in—it was a little cold yet for swimming. A Free Colony airship was making its way out of the docks as well, sending a quiet rumble through the air as it rose on its way southward.
Smells from a restaurant they passed wafted over them, and while they were speeding like suicidal children, Taelor adjusted their dinner reservation—there was no way they were making their current time if Emilia took them on as much of a detour as he suspected she was intending to.
Indeed, a few minutes of companionable silence later, his friend tugged them down a less popular section of the boardwalk, the path eventually leading them upwards to a spot that had likely once offered a view of the bay, but was now covered by trees the city had let grow wild in exchange for clearing more land below to expand the city limits.
It didn’t surprise him when Emilia pulled them down an even more overgrown side path, dark in the dimming light and towering trees of soft, trailing branches of pink and purple leaves. The aether fluctuated as they came to a bench, tucked so deeply into the trees that even if someone came down the path after them, they would go unseen. Still, Emilia checked to make sure they were alone before she disconnected their slide and pushed him down.
“Pushy,” he noted, accepting her into his lap, her thighs sliding onto either side of his. “Such a little brat,” he added, hands sliding up over her bare thighs and slipping under her shirt as her mouth found his, wet and warm.
Emilia’s own soft, loving hands found their way into his hair, making sure that his brothers would know exactly what they’d been doing while separated—not that he thought they didn’t already suspect as much, their group chat quiet since they’d separated. Clearly, they knew exactly what Emilia intended to do with him here, tucked away from prying eyes. Fortunately, the only jealously they ever felt for one another was silly and teasing, never grounded in anything more than a desire to touch someone they knew would one day disappear from their bed, where she had been a constant presence for years.
“You like it when I try to take what I want,” she noted when their kiss broke, a thin line of spit sliding down her chin as she pulled back, hips shifting, “and you didn’t get a turn.”
.
!
Arc 8 | Chapter 281: The Chaos of a Non-Dev
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