Page 34 of Suffer No Fools
"I am Aquarion. I have been split off from my original home, but my name remains the same."
Stan was tempted to stand and go look to the east again, to the island they'd left behind.
"In return for my protection, I have only one request from you. Take me home."
"Home?" Stan asked, turning to Bea. Something in his expression must have given away how angry he was at her coy responses to his earlier questions.
"Now you know why we only updated this island. The rest will have to wait until you merge them together. You and Jermain are the only two earth weavers skilled enough to do it. Our new weavers can feed Jermain power, but they're too unfamiliar with the island, and the tree."
"Where is Jermain?" Stan asked. "Shouldn't he be here, too?"
"Oh, no." Bea shook her head. "That man's deathly afraid of heights and as fragile as a teacup. We couldn't possibly ask him to come all the way up here."
No, she'd made Stan do it, instead. Stan was also deathly afraid of heights, but he was no teacup. He would do as asked.
"Looks like we're going back to Aquarion after all," he said. "Everyone grab onto something."
#
Tovey
From Tovey's perspective, the tree wasn't moving. The islands shifted around it, coming closer together and shoving the water back until only a small pool remained. Stan never left his spot on the floor, only the fingertip of his index finger touching the live branch, but he had acted as the anchor, pulling Jermain's weaves to him and building on them until the islands bowed to their will and shifted. Tovey had only enough earth power to see the intricate weaves as the earth obeyed them.
Even with his limited ability, Tovey appreciated Stan's raw power and control. Tovey used his air weaves whenever he could, but Stan was more deliberate. He only used earth to lift something he couldn't lift himself. Tovey had secretly admired him while berating him before the rest of the crew for taking unnecessary time.
Gods, he'd been an asshole. Worse, he'd let his fears get the better of him and ended a fun time with Hugo and Stan the night before. Now, they were stuck on guard duty in Aquarion for a while, in a treehouse with zero privacy, from what Tovey could tell. Anyone could walk or fly up to the giant open room. It would serve as a fantastic lookout post, but how were they supposed to resolve anything when people three floors down could hear every word carried on the wind?
Finally, the world stopped shifting around them, and Stan fell onto his back on the floor with a laugh. "I'm too tired to furnish the room now. You will have to carry a bed up here yourself."
"I may have left a few details out," Beatrice said. "This is where you will train and work, but this is not where you will be staying."
Great. They'd have a room further down the tree, and more prone to be overheard by others.
"This is the new barracks, but only the children without parents will live here with Frost and Jermain. You three will be living in Efren's old house."
"Damn," Stan said. "I wish I would have known that. It's a lot further from the ocean now."
"You're safer that way," Beatrice countered. "We can't have assassins sneaking in the back way while you are all asleep. Now, the tree's roots will add to your defenses."
The tension in Tovey's shoulders eased a bit as he stepped up to the railing and looked across the pool to the beach crowded with palm trees. Beyond that lay Efren's two-bedroom house. Tovey had visited often enough. The bed was definitely big enough for three, and the small back bedroom would be perfect to give Tovey alone time when it got to be too much. He worried that would be often.
"Well, let's get going," Beatrice said. "Efren and Niall have had plenty of time to move out, as long as you didn't sweep them off their feet with all that earth movement."
"Where are they going?" Stan asked. "One of the new houses near the beach?"
"Ah, so you were paying attention to more than your two boyfriends."
Tovey bristled at the word, "boyfriends." He was more than that to Stan, and less. They were fuck buddies, as he'd described to Hugo, but they were also friends. Even on the days when Tovey wouldn't dream of sharing his body with Stan, he counted him as his best friend.
That was why he'd balked when Stan had offered to suck his cock. One wrong move, and he could lose Stan forever. Not just the mind-blowing sex, but the friendship, too. Before, when he'd rejected Stan, Stan had seemed to understand. This time,pain had filled Stan's expression, and Tovey had been the cause. How long would it take before Stan sought comfort in Hugo alone?
Tovey didn't have time to worry about the future. Stan hauled Hugo's trunk back down the stairs and walkways to the base of the tree, and then they walked the short distance to Efren's old house, now vacant.
The floor plan had changed since his last visit. Another bedroom had been added to the main floor, and both were now the size of the living room instead of the tiny storage room Tovey remembered. On the second floor, a second bedroom, or fourth for the house, covered half of the new living area below, while a spacious open-air balcony covered the rest and overlooked the pool.
Hugo insisted they each take one of the smaller bedrooms as their own. "We'll probably rearrange a few things if we have overnight guests, but it would be nice to have a small place for naps or reading."
Tovey tried not to laugh at Hugo's use of the word, "small." The bedrooms were larger than most huts Tovey had lived in over the years, and three times the size of the room he'd rented at the boarding house. He picked one on the main floor, and Stan took the other, leaving Hugo with the room with the most windows, even though they overlooked the grove of palm trees instead of the pool.
