Tweak

Shin sat in a hot tub of water and soaked his sore muscles. Despite the fact that he had stopped growing up and had begun to fill out, his limbs hurt terribly after sitting still for so long. Muscles down his back, that he hadn’t even known he had had, were tense and tightened, like a bow strung too tightly. No matter which way he turned or bent, stretched or cracked, his back hurt.

As he lay in the bath, Ash entered the room and looked at Shin, “we need to speak.”

“About?” Shin asked, sinking lower in the tub.

“You said after dinner we would speak about what happened before dinner.” Ash said, standing in such a way that suggested the man would not be moved anytime soon.

Shin really did not want to talk about what had happened before dinner. He wasn’t entirely certain how to even react to what had happened. People in pornographies had pressed their lips together but not in public and members of his family had never pressed their lips against any part of another person, friend or lover. The idea that Ash had done such a thing in public was both horrifying and embarrassing. Shin didn’t even know how to bring up what Ash had done.

“Why are you avoiding talking about it?” Ash asked.

Submerging his hands in water, Shin looked at the distorted view he had of his fingers, it occurred to him, that Ash’s actions could be like his view of his hands under water. There was the reality, what Shin knew was right because he knew what his hands looked like, but through the water, everything looked differently.

“In your family,” Shin said, “is such a thing normal?”

“Yes,” Ash’s eyes narrowed, “kissing is an expression of affection, Shin, you kissed me.”

“Is that what it’s called?”

“Yes.”

“Well,” Shin lifted his hands above the water, “in my family such a thing is not done in public. You pressed your lips to mine in the middle of the hallway, anyone could have seen us and no one else does it in public. Just like no one has sex in public or touches.”

“My family,” Ash stepped up beside the bath, “touches all the time,” the man’s fingers grazed over the side of Shin’s face, “it is how we greet one another, how we speak even. One we are talking to, we touch that one, we rarely use names in my family, just. A hand on an arm or fingers along the jaw bone,” those fingers tickled Shin’s jaw, “is the same as saying a name.”

“Oh.”

“Just like how your family says the full name of a person when they introduce. I automatically translate that as a public name. Or, the council of six, they always say the council of six, they don’t say we or the council,” Ash settled on the floor and set his chin on the rim of the tub, “they were thanking us for what we did.”

“I know,” Shin growled quickly.

“Do you know,” Ash adjusted so that he was kneeling, his shoulders and part of his chest came above the lip of the tub. He tapped his heart and motioned outward, “means to be heartfelt? The council speaks very quickly with their hands. You missed the,” index finger and middle finger pressed against his thumb, Ash made a cutting motion, “that the Ishteshtin representative did when he said that they were investigating you. It means that the one speaking doesn’t believe what they are saying. Then when he said that you would be paying for them to investigate you, he slid his hand from the right side of his chest,” index finger grazing over his shirt, “and towards Joral, which I think might mean that Joral has no choice in the matter but the council has to ‘suggest’ that the head of the household does it.”

Shin pressed his lips together, “why are you explaining all of this?”

“You wanted to learn about social interaction, didn’t you?” Ash asked, “the genetic and tweaker families use a lot of sign language, our ears are sensitive to sounds. You talked a lot with your old head of house, didn’t you?”

“Meshnan, yes.”

“And you get along alright with Joral, do you have any trouble understanding him?”

“No,” Shin shook his head, “I can understand Joral quite well, though Meshnan was more straightforward with me.”

“It’s the generational gap, Shin,” Ash sighed and leaned on the lip of the tub once more, “Joral is a seventh generation. Each generation, as it matures, makes its own sign language, building one the one that its parents had. Each generation also has more finely tuned eardrums, we’re more sensitive to sound than our parents are.”

“So we communicate more with our hands?”

“How often do you sit in your room instead of going out? How often do you listen to music or actually talk? Or. Do you sit in silence?” Ash asked, falling quiet.

In that silence, Shin had to grudgingly agree with Ash. He didn’t like speaking to people because his head got all stuffy and when he was alone, it was just so much easier to focus. To work even.

After several minutes of silences Ash said, “I can teach you to talk with your hands, with your body and your face. When I am finished teaching you, you will only speak every fourth word or so. If I teach you to speak like a tweaker, and we combine that with the genetic vocabulary, we could have entire conversations with our hands.”

“You’re joking. If we wanted a conversation with our hands, we could just learn the commoner sign language, the one,” Shin waved his hand dismissively, “that they made for the deaf, hard of hearing and mute ones amongst them.”

“Back…” Ash murmured, “when they had deaf ones? Shin, there are no longer deaf, hard of hearing or mute commoners, just as there are not blind ones or ones born without feeling in their nerves. One in one thousand commoners are born with a disease, down from one in a hundred in the last generation. In the next generation it will be closer to one in one million. There may be a first generation alive who still knows the sign language, but not the second or third generations.”

Shin sat up in the tub, groaning as muscles pulled all the way down his back, “that’s bad though. What I know about the sign language, I learned from studying the commoner sign language. It’s very similar. If it dies out amongst the commoners, who exactly will teach the fourth generation to speak with their hands, when their ears start ringing?”

“We will, I suppose.”

“But we will be so far gone that we will hardly be verbal then,” Shin muttered, rolling his shoulders back, “there will be no in between people to help.”

“Generations of people will be able to help,” Ash murmured.

“Hmm,” Shin looked at Ash, and then to the cooling water, “could you go back to the bedroom so I can get out of the tub?”

Ash looked puzzled, “Shin, you do realise that the water isn’t exactly opaque, right? I can see everything.”

Shin felt his cheeks heat up, he hadn’t even thought about the fact that he was sitting in a tub of water. He hadn’t even used bubbles in the bath, because there was no point in bubbles. Iridescent spheres did not ease the ache in his muscles or the tension in his limbs.

“Is something paining you, Shin?” Ash asked as he stood and retrieved a towel from the rack on the wall.

“Everything,” Shin responded, “wait, how did you know I was in pain?”

“The way you hold yourself,” Ash returned to the tub and held out the towel, looking away even, “would you like me to rub your muscles for you? A massage could do your muscles good.”

“What is a massage?” Shin asked, stepping out of the tub and into the towel. He took it from Ash’s hands and wrapped it around his hips, “is that the rubbing of muscles you mentioned?”

“You’ve. Never had a massage?”

“No.”

Ash just frowned at him.

“What?”

“I just. I find it hard to believe that someone who has a toy collection as large as yours has never heard of massage before. I can understand you thinking that kissing is a thing for behind doors, but massaging is a way to relax muscles, to ease them and help your body. Doesn’t the Ishteshtin family have athletes?”

“No. Our only athletic pursuits are our private ones,” Shin murmured, walking back to his bedroom, “we are built for speed, mostly, Layaent is larger, built for being able to take the rest of us down. He’s an alpha, he needs more strength and stamina, but we do not enter in any sort of competition, that would not be proper. We have a genetic advantage, the commoners would say.”

In the living room, Ash stepped up beside Shin and motioned to the bed, “I really must drive your muscles and see what you are actually capable of. Lay on the bed and I will massage your body.”

“Massage my. Entire. Body?” Shin squeaked.

He had a thought, a very bad thought. That this would be the perfect start to a pornography. It would start with a massage and move on to sexual gratification. Shin wondered what Ash’s body would feel like when it wasn’t cold from a long dunk in a river. Wondered how his body would react when it wasn’t tired and wired up on drugs.

“Not the entire thing, but we will start with your back,” Ash motioned to the bed again, “do you have any body lotion? Something you rub into your skin to smooth it out?”

“Of course I do,” Shin murmured, “in the bathroom, I’ll-”

“No,” Ash said quickly, “you lay down and I will get the lotion. Where is it, in the little cupboard with all the bathing supplies?”

“Yes, of course, where else would you keep your body lotion? You rub it into your skin when you start scaling up and the best way it works is to rub it in after washing. Everyone knows that.”

“Scaling?” Ash muttered, more to himself than to Shin as he walked back to the bathroom.

Shin shrugged and climbed onto the bed, leaving the towel over his backside. He didn’t want Ash staring at him or touching him around there. Shin wasn’t certain why he didn’t want Ash touching his buttocks but he wasn’t going to question his own instincts.

Scaling happened once in a while, once in a long while. Each Ishteshtin was taught how to care for their skin if scaling happened. It was simply the flaking away of the old skin to reveal the newer, healthier skin underneath. Using an exfoliating brush scraped off the old skin, the one suffering from scaling would then bathe in warm water and rub the lotion into their skin to keep the new skin from drying out too quickly.

He had overheard several of the young women discussing the use of body lotion for pleasure purposes. The silky smooth feeling caused by many body lotions was such and to the point that the women had giggled over it.

But Shin had never heard of anyone using body lotion to massage a person before. As he waited for Ash to return from the bathroom, Shin wondered what exactly massaging was.

***

Ash found the bottle at the back of Shin’s cupboard, unopened and unused. He checked the expiration date before he walked back into the bedroom. It would be a very bad thing to use expired lotion. The stuff would stink the whole place up.

While commoners often used warm oils to massage, Ash preferred the body lotion. It soaked into the skin and didn’t leave a greasy residue on the person or Ash’s hands. Oils worked better for… other things, and that was another reason Ash liked to use lotion for massages, to separate sex and grooming.

He took the bottle of lotion back to the bedroom and found Shin laying facedown on the bed with the towel laying across his bottom half. The backside was nearly impossible to reach, but for those few tweakers who were blessed with the ability to bend and contort in strange angles. When families groomed one another, the buttocks and sexual organs were passed over, but the lower back and from the buttocks and down the legs was tended to.

Was Shin being shy? It wasn’t like Ash didn’t know what the young man looked like. The muscle tone, yes, that was new, but the basic shape of the body Ash knew.

“You’ve been favouring your left leg, there isn’t as much muscle on it as there is on the right,” Ash murmured, sitting on the bed beside Shin, “why is that?”

“I haven’t been favouring my leg,” Shin said, sounding confused as he pushed himself off the bed with one hand to look at Ash, “I’ve not idea what you mean.”

“The two legs have a different shape,” Ash grazed his hands over Shin’s legs, “can you tell how the muscles are shaped by my hands running over them? How the left is flatter than the right, the muscles connect to the back of the knee the same way but when you stand straight, you put your weight on your right leg, don’t you? You lean to the right. You’re not ambidextrous?”

“You are?” Shin squeaked a moment before he went red in the cheeks, “we have not altered the control of the hands. It is something we leave to nature, like gender. After the elder is born, of course.”

“What?” Ash stiffened.

“The elder, the elder is made male, because, well, look at the current one. Her eggs will be sold to the highest bidder, in and out of the families. What money is brought in will go to pay for her, and her family’s, debts…” Shin frowned, “but Uwahn was made to be an elder.”

“That’s…” what had occurred to Ash. It was well known amongst the tweakers that Uwahn acted the way she did because she had been created to be an elder. She was meant to be at the top of the command structure of her generation but was caught in the middle somewhere, “seriously, genetics create male elders?”

“That’s why most of the oldest are male,” Shin muttered, “and why the position of olderest was created. You never noticed that?”

“No.”

“Well,” Shin muttered, “I only realised that when I took my current rank and the files were opened up for me. Layaent’s child, the one they will be constructing soon, is already labelled as male, even though construction has yet to begin on it.”

“Oh,” Ash murmured, “lay down and try to relax.”

“What?”

“The massage.”

Shin made a sound and lay down once more, stretching his arms under the pillow that he rested his head on.

Ash opened the bottle of body lotion and squeezed a small amount into his hand. He rubbed it into Shin’s shoulders and pressed his fingers into the young man’s muscles. Knots had to be worked out and the skin felt dry. The lotion worked into the skin and would soften it. Ash’s fingers working into the muscles would loosen them up.

Starting with the shoulders, Ash rubbed downward. The muscles down Shin’s back slowly relaxed and began letting go of the stress that had built up. When entering puberty and second growth, this was good practice for muscles. What felt like a sore muscle might not be an actual muscle ache. That was the problem with adding genetic material from different animals, slicing and splicing how one pleased. Sometimes multiple limbs grew in later on in life. These limbs began as a muscle weary ache and got steadily worse. By massaging the muscles, one could feel if it was actually the body cringing away from an ingrown limb and the limb could be removed before it caused major problems.

Halfway down Shin’s back, just along the spine, was a spot that made Shin whimper. Despite the sounds the young man made, Ash concentrated on that spot. He worked his fingers into it and around it until he was absolutely certain that it was nothing more than a bundle of nerves. Having discovered as much, Ash moved on from the spot and worked at the rest of Shin’s back. Over the buttocks, Ash folded the towel up so that he could reach most of Shin’s legs and continued downward.

At Shin’s ankles, Ash stopped and watched Shin’s back. The young man gave no response to the ceasing of touch. His back moved up and down slowly and his eyes were closed. Shin had fallen asleep.

Not quite the point of receiving a massage, but that was fine. Ash went to the bathroom and washed his hands, then went back to the bedroom and closed the bottle of body lotion. Glancing at Shin, he decided it was better not to disturb the young man and instead he left the bedroom and closed the door quietly.

“Why are you sneaking out?” Bri muttered.

Ash leapt a foot in the air and let out a startled squeak. Bri had snuck up on him. It wasn’t something that she managed to do often, but when she did, it scared Ash something good.

“He’s sleeping,” Ash said, straightening his shirt, “why are you waiting outside?”

“It’s my duty, as your mentor and your friend, to inform you,” Bri sighed and pushed off the wall, “by the sounds of it, we’ve got the starting of a rebellion on our hands.”

“We always do,” Ash responded, motioning down the hallway and towards one of the sitting rooms, “twenty years ago, when Mysh went mad, there was something similar going on. Twenty years before that, there was another one. Seems every time a commoner generation comes to their age of maturity and are ready to begin reproducing, they get uppity. It’s nothing new.”

“They’re talking about using sound systems to render genetics unable to fight back.”

“That’s not new either,” Ash shook his head, “it also wouldn’t work, the estates are built to keep sound out and to keep sound in. The servants are sixth generations, multiple families who all serve on the basis of receiving genetic treatments that are above and beyond what commoners get. They’re very loyal. Those who are not, are quietly shown the door and told to find their own way. The servants don’t know all of the genetics’ weaknesses and they certainly don’t realise their strengths. I’m not even certain I know everything about them.”

“You? You grew up with them,” Bri muttered.

“Yeah, did you know they write in a command structure into the genetic material?” Ash muttered, “or that they actually create nurses on purpose? Create violent creatures on purpose? Shin’s parent’s, they weren’t just a random pair, they were both fighters for their generation. Not even Shin knew about them. The commoners will never successfully up rise against the genetics and if they rebelled at all the genetics would likely give in and try to make it so that both sides could live in harmony.

“Let’s keep in mind, the last time the people threatened to really rebel, the genetic families set up their companies and publicly opened their doors to anyone and everyone who wanted genetic alterations. This time, who knows? Maybe they’ll hand over a member of the Meita family and let the government pick him or her apart.”

Bri sighed out, “I just don’t want you to get hurt.”

“The Ishteshtin family is very good at keeping themselves safe. They obey the laws and when a law is broken, they deal with it quietly enough that commoners never hear about it.”

“Then why do commoners refer to the Ishteshtin as snakes?”

Ash frowned, “well Ishteshtin means anaconda.”

“Is an anaconda a snake?”

“Yes.”

“Oh.”

“Where have you been for the past couple of hours?” Ash growled, “it’s almost curfew and you’ve got leave soon.”

“Right, well,” Bri sighed, “after our encounter with you-know-who, I went back to the office and called a few old witnesses. I gave them the description and it didn’t ring a bell. I then mentioned the colour purple and they all recall it. Except, get this, they didn’t say she was wearing purple, they said she was purple.”

“Very odd.”

“I talked to the precinct’s shrink.”

“Now that is even odder.”

“Be nice,” Bri growled, batting at Ash’s arm, “you know the blue and green screens they use for movies? To make the CGI effects?”

“Of course I do, who doesn’t know about blue and green screens?” Ash asked.

“Well, purple is the blue screen for the mind. We see purple and we automatically un-focus. Her wearing purple is like some quack wearing one of those giant hypnotism wheel things, except it actually works. Our not be able to focus on her, has nothing to do with her powers, it’s the purple. When presented with purple very few people pay attention to anything else. Unlike with yellow, which draws our eye directly to it and then what is around it, purple sort of pushes your vision away from what’s directly around it. That’s why it’s not allowed in billboards.”

“So. You’re telling me that someone could walk into a place, covered in purple, head to toe, and just walk wherever they please because…”

“Everyone would be able to see them, but no one would be able to focus enough to actually notice them. It’s how she steals things. She doesn’t need power, she just needs a purple cat suit and a purple back to drop the loot in! Walks right out the front door and then uses her powers to trick the cameras.”

“That’s amusing. And frightening at the same time. Why-”

“Hasn’t it been put to use before? Because, officers and robbers, doesn’t matter if you’re genetic or tweaker or commoner, everyone reacts to purple the same way. If an officer wore purple to take down robbers, robbers would wear purple to steal, but if an officer met a robber in the middle of an empty room and both were dressed in purple, neither would see the other.”

“So it’s never been implemented.”

“And people don’t much talk about the colour they can’t quite see. Did you know there are purple fruits and purple flowers? We have a certain shades of purple that we can see, which is why we have things like plums and hydrangea flowers, but most of the colour is in that basic area.”

“But we recall that she was wearing purple.” Ash muttered.

“What was the cut of her dress? The way her hair fell, the curve of her jaw?” Bri asked, “when she was at the after party, how big were her breasts? Did she have any fat on her body?”

None of it registered at all. Ash hadn’t even recalled that the thief was wearing a dress. He didn’t know what kind of clothing the thief had been wearing, Ash only remembered that she had been wearing the colour purple.

“Point taken,” Ash muttered, “have you looked into the ring at all?”

“I was only gone a couple of hours and you would likely have as much luck as I would, doing a simple search on the internet for what you want,” Bri growled, “maybe there are ring scholars someplace who would fill you in on the information, or maybe the museum had curators working on the project. Curators who are still alive, preferably.”

All Ash could do was shrug, “If I had access to a computer, I’d do it tonight. But all laptops and computers,” he sighed when Bri motioned to the flat screen hanging on the wall, “and flat screens, are keyed to specific people. If I touch it, the computer will melt down and break. They haven’t issued me a computer, therefore I can’t get on the internet.”

“So, what, you’re like a hostage in the estate? Why would they hold you hostage?” Bri asked, frowning.

“I’m not being held hostage, I think my father’s words were fostering out,” Ash growled, “the genetics don’t hold hostages.”

“Sure, like the Emperor didn’t hold hostages, he just took in the children of his enemies and taught them his ways, then sent them back home when daddy died to take over the family business,” Bri muttered.

“I’m also bound to Shin because of…” Ash trailed off as a servant walked past them.

“Right. So that means you’re being punished so you aren’t allowed a computer, you bad, bad boy, you.” Bri shook her head, “I have to get going, because curfew will start in like ten minutes. Why don’t you run back to your room like a good little grounded, hostage boy and suck up to master. Maybe he’ll go looking on a computer for the information he needs to get the damned ring off.”


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