Orion was looking at him with his face doing a soft thing and Dante had gone still in a way that wasn’t performing, his hand back on Orion’s thigh, and this time Orion wasn’t removing it. “You really don’t care?”
“No.”
Riot turned his head fully and looked at Cass, his eyes wide and that crooked grin on his face that always made him look younger. “If you don’t care, then I don’t either.”
They talked a bit longer about how things might be difficult, managing emotions and sensation that bled through unintentionally, but Cass was only half listening. He didn’t care about the science. He was just happy that his body, the thing he had felt was always so wrong, did something right. When they walked out together into the cool night air of the Collective, Dante and Orion went one direction (Cass could hear them bickering before they’d gone ten steps), and Cass and Riot went the other way, holding hands and decidedly not bickering.
Chapter fifty
Cherry Tomatoes
Cass
Thecherrytomatoeswereripe.
Cass checked them every morning for two weeks, pressing his thumb gently against the skins, waiting for the give that meant the sugars finished concentrating, and today six of them were ready. Bright red and warm, each one the size of the end of his thumb. He picked them carefully and put them in the front pocket of his overalls, which were Riot’s overalls and thereforeenormous on him, the legs rolled up four times and the shoulder straps safety-pinned to fit.
The overalls were better than any robes he had ever worn back in Springfield Gardens. They had pockets and Riot made a face every time he saw Cass in them that was somewhere between amused and undone, like he wanted to laugh and also push Cass against a wall, and Cass was learning to enjoy both reactions equally.
Their house was on the west side of the Collective, , the third one in from the old cul-de-sac. Before the Adjustment, it had been someone’s regular house—three bedrooms, a kitchen with a window over the sink, and a porch that was being slowly eaten by wisteria. Cass refused to cut the wisteria back because it had been growing for longer than he’d been alive and he felt like it earned the right to go where it wanted. Also it was beautiful. Also Riot had kissed him against it on their second night here and the flowers had gotten in both their hair and Riot had laughed. So Cass decided the wisteria was staying forever.
All the houses here were like that. The bones of a neighborhood that people had left behind, filled back up by people who chose to be here and by plants that didn’t need to be chosen. Vines grew up the walls. Trees pushed through cracked driveways. The empty house next door had a rose bush growing through the bathroom floor and Cass left it there because it was happy, and who was he to argue with a happy rose bush?
Riot used to live on the edge of the community with Stave and Prepper in the Berserker house, set apart because three modified Alphas with episodes was the kind of thing that made neighbors nervous in a reasonable way. Now Riot was here, with Cass, because having a bonded Omega around two unbonded Berserkers would have been unfair to everyone and biology didn’t need extra homework. But Riot still walked over every morning to bother them, which meant he came backsmelling like coffee and cordite and whatever Prepper burned for breakfast, and Cass would kiss him at the door and taste all three.
He braided a wildflower into his hair while his own coffee finished, taking a step back from the pot because he could feel the heat of it on his skin. This had become his morning routine, the prairie flowers stayed fresh for a couple days when woven through the braids, and the colors were better than the clay beads had ever been.
“You’re humming,” Riot said from the kitchen table, sharpening a knife with the meditative focus of a man who found making things deadlier genuinely soothing. He did this every morning with his coffee and Cass had stopped finding it strange around the second week.
“Am I?”
“Something cheerful. Very off-key.”
“I don’t think I’m off-key.”
“You are devastatingly, heroically off-key. It’s one of my favorite things about you.” Riot set the blade down and watched Cass work the flower into place behind his ear before settling the silver circlet on his head, which always made Riot grin. He loved seeing Riot grin. “Good dreams?”
“I dreamed about the irrigation system again. The water pressure in the southeast beds is uneven because the grade drops off and everything pools and the tomatoes on that side are getting soggy roots while the northwest ones—”
“Riveting.”
“It is riveting. If I don’t fix the grade the—”
“I meant you’re riveting.” Riot picked up his coffee. “The tomato infrastructure is a close second.”
Community breakfast wasn’t mandatory, but a lot of people still came anyway, even if they didn’t eat. There were rows of long tables, and it was always filled with the noise of forty people eating, planning, and arguing about things that mattered and things that didn’t. Cass liked the sound of it. It sounded like people choosing to be in the same place instead of people being told to be in the same place, which was a difference he hadn’t known existed until he lived on both sides of it.
Honey was already there, saving seats the way she always did—two places together, one across from her for Riot, the arrangement precise because Honey’s arrangements were always precise. She was harder to miss now than she’d been at Springfield Gardens. Taller, Cass thought, or maybe she’d always been this tall and the robes had been hiding it, which made him angry in a way he was still getting used to being angry about.
The locs had new beads. Wooden ones, hand-carved by Sage, each one different. Cass watched Sage make them, sitting on Honey’s porch with a knife and a block of oak, not talking, just carving, while Honey leaned against her and read supply manifests. Honey was helping run the Collective’s supply logistics now and she was terrifyingly good at it in the way she was good at everything, which was completely and without mercy.
She was quieter, though. There were moments, midsentence, where her face would go still, like someone paused her, and Cass could see her go somewhere inside herself where he couldn’t follow. It only happened when they would sit and talk together like they did as children. Then she’d come back, her voice would be the same and whatever had taken her away would settle back into wherever it lived.
Sage had told him not to press the issue. Cass was pretty sure something about him was making her sad, but he decided hewould wait for her to talk about it. He just hoped she didn’t hate him.
“Morning, Cass,” Honey said, making room. “Sleep well?”
“Very well. I had the most interesting dream about the greenhouse irrigation.”
