Work Text:
Azu’s seven pages into the latest Harrison Campbell novel when a notification pops up in her eye that someone’s knocking on her door.
Azu blinks the notification away and puts down both halves of her holographic tablet, the paragraph of text about Jennifer’s meet-cute with Hanako disappearing in a snap as the parts unsync. The faint blue glow fades from her room, along with her vague musings that perhaps Campbell is setting up for a ménage à trois with Jennifer, her new friend Hanako, and her long-time partner Amal.
Left with the gentle sputterings of imitation candlelight emanating from the walls of her room, Azu stands up out of the pillow-nest that’s become of her bed and opens the door.
As she’s grown used to, Hamid stands there, bronze metallic wings mantled behind him.
He looks up, gaze full of affection, with a faint apology laid overtop. “Azu? Can I--may I join you tonight?”
Azu smiles. “Of course, Hamid,” she says. “It’s not like I can’t read with you next to me, and I have no other plans for the evening.” And it’s good to have him close, with all the political machinations afoot, not to mention the assassination attempt not that long ago, but she’s not going to say that out loud.
The apology melts off of Hamid’s face, quickly replaced by relief, still backed by that same familiar fondness. She moves to the side of the doorway to let him in. The automatic sensors swing the door gently shut behind them both.
As the door closes, the artificial white light from the hallway leaves them behind. In the gentler yellow-orange candlelight, fake though it is, Hamid’s shoulders slump as his visage flickers, like a computer whose power source is ever-so-slightly unstable.
He turns to her, and Azu can see his true form now, freed from the holographic camouflage he wears in public, like loosening an old-fashioned corset and taking that first deep breath of the night.
Hamid smiles at her, sharpened canines glinting, as he scratches at one of the bronze scales lining the edge of his face. From afar, they appear to sparkle with their own light. Close up, where few are allowed the privilege of getting, those lights transform into tiny flares of electricity, running through the scale-patterned circuit boards inlaid into his skin.
Azu moves to the bed, and Hamid follows.
She settles back in to her nest, carefully rearranging a few pillows so that Hamid’s lower back is fully supported. She takes a moment to enable sleep-mode on her cybernetic eye, so that they’re not disturbed by any further notifications, before casting about for her tablet.
“Now, where has my book gotten to--ah, thank you, dear.”
Hamid hands over the tablet-ends, already leaning into her side. Azu sets one end of the tablet down, and syncs the other, so that she can read with one hand. She places her other hand between Hamid’s wings, and starts slowly stroking the tension out of his spine.
He’s tenser than usual, and Azu glances down at him, concern a furrow in her brow. “Bad day?”
Hamid turns his face into her shoulder. She imagines she can feel the tiny buzzes of electricity from his scales, ones and zeroes zipping around to keep his wings steady.
“It’s been a trying week, really,” he mumbles into her skin. “Between the discussions of upgrades to the Ceiling network and the Harlequins’ latest virus getting through the shields…” He trails off and huffs a laugh, before his voice gets quieter. “You know, I--I don’t think I want to talk about it. We’ve been talking all day. Do you--is it alright if I--can I just keep you company for a while?”
Azu strokes her hand up into his hair, careful of the ports in his neck, and then back down, gratified by the way Hamid melts into her even further. Her own shoulders slowly loosen, stiff from a hard day’s work with those who would petition Aphrodite for a place in the ward she maintains in this city. She finds it rewarding, but even good work takes its toll.
“Yes, of course,” she remembers to say after a moment. “You are always welcome here, Hamid. As I know I am with you.”
“I’m glad,” he whispers, warm breath ghosting close over the skin bared by her sleep shirt. He sounds half-asleep already. “I’d miss you, if you left. If the Temple reassigned you to another city-dome.”
“Luckily, I am quite fond of this one.” Azu keeps gently stroking his back, up and down, up and down. “And the people in it. I don’t think they’ll move me elsewhere, not without warning.”
Hamid hums. His wings, still held carefully behind them both, slowly lower with the barest whir of machinery. They are surprisingly modern, for cybernetics installed at such an early age--though Hamid won’t tell her about it, they must have been, for him to be so comfortable with them, and for them to be so well-integrated with his body, and surrounded as they are by old stretch marks. Azu wonders if Hamid has gotten upgrades over the years, or if his family splurged on what must have been one of the most expensive models at the time. Perhaps both.
As a wing settles over her shoulders, Azu turns back to her book, careful not to elbow the synth-silk that stretches between the carbon-fiber bones. She knows it’s strong enough to hold up in even the most stringent of gale-force winds, but she can’t help treating them as though they’re the most fragile porcelain.
They’re part of Hamid, and he is worth being gentle with.
So Azu is careful, as she reads about Jennifer and Amal with one hand, and absently continues petting Hamid with the other. The book, and the motion, come together to make up something nearly meditative, an indulgence of the romance that her Temple’s most dedicated still adhere to, even in this age of the Technocracy’s sophisticated city-domes.
Tomorrow, she will have to return to the world outside, as Hamid must as well. Their jobs keep them both busy, between her work as one of Aphrodite’s consular paladins, and his as a liaison to the Technocracy. Moments like this are few and far between.
Tonight, together, they carve themselves a chance to rest.