TITLE: Games People Play
AUTHOR: Viridian5
RATING: R.
SPOILERS: "Be All My Sins Remembered," "The Ties That Blind," and "The Pearls That Were His Eyes."
SUMMARY: Rafe plays like he owns the Maru and its crew....
ARCHIVAL/DISTRIBUTION: Anywhere, as long as you ask me first.
FEEDBACK: can be sent to Viridian5@aol.com.
DISCLAIMERS: All things Gene Roddenberry’s Andromeda belong to Gene Roddenberry’s estate, Tribune Entertainment Company, and Fireworks. None of them are mine at all, and I’m putting them back when I’m done with them, though I can’t promise that they won’t be disturbed in the process. No infringement intended.
NOTES: A pre-Andromeda story.
When I watched Rafe in "The Ties That Blind," my reaction was "Wow, you really are a vile little creature, aren’t you?" I'm also aware that "Ties" suggested that Rafe and Harper hadn't met, but that seems so impossible that I wrote this story anyway. If that makes this an AU, so be it.
"Beka! Your ship is pissing on me!"
I ran back to see Harper moving around in a flurry of activity, trying to stop any more oil from spraying out at him. I doubted his T-shirt and pants were salvageable. Especially the shirt, which wetly stuck to his chest in places.
"How come it’s ‘my ship’ when you’re annoyed with the Maru?" I asked as I tried not to smirk too hard. When happy, he called the Maru his baby. Despite the wear most of the Maru had and the problems that came with it, most days my ship made him happy.
Then again, he’d only been part of the crew for two months and had a fresh memory of the alternatives. At least he had a future on my rusted tugboat.
"Beka, you’re the owner. Therefore, it’s always your ship."
"Smart boy." I moved to ruffle his hair, but the amount of blackness visible in it stopped me. "You’re not breaking my ship, are you?"
"That would be salting the fucking sea," he muttered.
"Hey!"
"Yeah, smack my oily shoulder, boss. I believe in sharing the wealth."
"Beka," Rev said, "your brother is here." Rev, in his endearing yet passive-aggressive way, disapproved of my brother.
I didn’t want to see Rafe. Not after what he had and hadn’t done. "What does he want?"
"He says he has to tell you that."
Great. But refusing to see him wouldn’t stop whatever scam he had running right now. "Send him in."
Rafe smiled at us as he walked in like he owned the ship. "Rocket. Reverend. Kid?"
Harper raised an eyebrow at my nickname and waved at Rafe in what looked like annoyance at "kid."
"That’s Harper," I replied. "What do you want, Rafe? It’s way too late to help me take care of Dad."
Nothing dented his cool. "I just would have been in the way."
"You didn’t even come for the funeral."
"It’s a big galaxy. Besides, any ‘funeral’ would have been more like ‘eject pod: yes or no?’"
"What do you want, Rafe?"
"Okay, down to business then. I was just being polite. I have a friendly game going in the casino and the Maru is my stake."
It took me a moment to process that, since I kept tripping over the thought of "He fucking didn’t." Except that he would. And did. "The Maru is my ship. I own it. If you’d been here while Dad was dying, maybe you would’ve gotten a share but you weren’t. You didn’t take on the ship or its debts."
"You think that people who play at this level or the security officers backing them up would care? Think about all the people tapping you for Dad’s debts."
"And your debts."
"You don’t have any documentation saying that I can’t draw on the Maru."
That was gonna change, though it would take money I didn’t really have. But I couldn’t change it in time to fix this right now. "If this is all a done deal, what do you want from me?"
"I’m not gonna lose. I just figured you’d want to be there to watch, since I know how you hate wondering."
"You want me to be your fucking moll?" I watched Rev and Harper bare their teeth at Rafe.
"No, Rocket. Just my luck charm." He walked over to Harper and circled him, checking him out. "This Bobby’s replacement? I thought you liked ‘em big and stupid. And of legal age."
"Take a picture. It lasts longer," Harper snarled. His fingers flexed like he wanted a tool or a weapon.
"He’s just my mechanic. Studying to be engineer." Great, we could both insult Harper.
Rafe said, "Of course, Bobby would have murdered me for this without worrying about how guilty you’d feel if something happened to me."
"Yeah, I’m actually missing Bobby right now."
"The kid comes along with us."
Fuck, what plans did Rafe have for Harper? "Why?"
"You don’t give the kid any liberties? And is he 12?"
"20. And he talks," Harper answered.
20. Harper told me that he didn’t really know for sure, but maybe he didn’t want to show any uncertainties in front of Rafe. Good idea.
"I’d even ask Rev to come along if he weren’t a Magog. People get sensitive. Do you have any decent clothing for your mechanic?"
Rafe put my ship up as a stake in a card game, then tried to make me feel guilty for not having gotten eveningwear for Harper?
"Don’t worry, Harper," he said. "It won’t totally suck. I’ll even give you some cash for a game or two."
"You can’t buy me cheap," Harper said.
Rafe just smiled. I had such a bad feeling about this.
"Clean up and dress up," Rafe said. "Once you’re done, I can get back to my game."
High stakes and time outs suggested that Rafe had a game of Stars Wild going. Those could go on for days, thus the time outs. I said, "We have deliveries to make."
"I’ll win and get you off the hook to go in a few hours. You know, the faster you guys move, the faster that’ll happen."
Harper gave me a questioning look, and I nodded at him to go along. I could see fear in his eyes before he looked away. As much as the Maru was my home, it was his only home too. I’d sworn that if he obeyed me he would get to stay on the Maru as part of my crew, and now Rafe was making a liar out of me. I prided myself on keeping my promises.
"We’ll do that," I answered.
"Great. I’ll be waiting outside. Don’t take long, okay?"
After Rafe left, with that permanent grin on his face, I said to Rev, "Contact Legal Aid. I have some documentation to file."
Rev nodded, knowing exactly what I wanted, but said, "It will take time to go through. Rafe’s gambit will be over one way or another long before then."
"He’s going to win." He had to. "But I want to make sure he can’t pull this crap on me ever again."
"Understood. I’ll set things in motion." He could do that by comm links, which meant that nobody had to see that he was a Magog. As Rafe said, some people had understandable fears about Magog.
Speaking of people with understandable fears about Magog.... "Harper, we have some prettying up to do."
Harper rolled his eyes, doing his best to look nonchalant, but I could see the fear in him.
20 minutes later, Harper looked clean but still a bit shabby, even in the best clothing he had. I refused to feel guilty about that. Harper tended my ship. What did he need fancy dress for?
He pulled himself up into his bunk and started to do... something quickly. Edgy, I asked, "What the hell are you doing up there? We don’t have time!"
"Nothing. Hey, they must have lockers somewhere nearby, right? Since it’s the docks and all."
"Yeah. What do you need to store that you can’t leave here?"
Harper jumped down with a small duffel bag. "Not much. It can be a small locker."
"What’s in the bag?"
"Nothing."
"Harper."
He wilted under my glare. "My working documentation, tools, and some clothes. Not because I wanna run off--not at all that, boss!--but I was thinking that if your brother loses the new owners might not let us back in, and I need my permits and ID." He’d just gotten that ID finalized two weeks ago.
"My brother won’t lose." He couldn’t lose.
"But if he does--"
"He won’t."
"If he does, I need my ID and working permits. I don’t even have my license yet...." He spoke fast to try to get his words out before I could interrupt him again. "I couldn’t get a deal like I have here anywhere else, you know that. I still have fees to pay on my way to get the license, and I’d have to pay room and board somewhere, and the people who’d hire me would take total advantage of the fact that I can’t expect as much pay as a licensed engineer could get. They might deliberately make sure I couldn’t make enough money to get my license so they could use my experience without having to pay full price for it, or they could put me so far in debt to them that I’d never get out." Harper just about vibrated with nerves and earnestness. "I’m totally aware of how good you are to me, Beka."
He’d thought this out too fully for it to be just one shower’s worth of thinking. Harper had already been contemplating the exits... and seeing that nobody could do any better for him than I had. Of course he had. He’d grown up in Hell and couldn’t trust anything to work out.
Not even my promises. "I made you a promise."
"And if you had your way you’d keep it, but Rafe just showed that you don’t always get your way. It’s not your bad. Life sucks. People suck."
I put my hand on his shoulder and squeezed. "You’re my crew, whether I have a ship or not. Though I will have my ship."
He took a deep, shaky breath and put on a brittle smile. "Okay. Okay."
The next two hours passed in a daze but dragged on all at the same time. I smiled at the other two players as Rafe won and lost rounds. It went on forever. I wondered how Harper was doing, wasting time at some other game with the money Rafe had given him. I hoped he hadn’t vibrated himself to pieces from worry.
"And you’ve lost, Rafe," the guy across from us said with a big smile. The other player threw down her cards in disgust.
No. No way. I looked at Rafe with terror and murder in my heart.
Rafe said, "It can’t.... If I threw something else of some value into the pot, can I get a chance to win it back?"
My ship. He was talking about winning back my ship....
The guy smiled. I would kill him. Rafe and him. "I can be magnanimous. If the new stake is interesting enough."
Rafe thought hard. At least that’s how he looked. If I knew him, he had a backup. Or this had been the little bastard’s plan all along. It better be. "I have an engineer."
Where the hell was this going?
The guy, Campan, looked bored. "So do most ships."
"From Earth? I know, it doesn’t sound like a good idea, but this kid is a savant."
Something in Rafe’s words had hooked Campan’s interest a little. "Why would that interest me?"
"If I don’t have a ship, I can’t keep him anyway, and the Maru is his only home...."
The woman asked incredulously, "Are you offering to sell your engineer?"
"Not my engineer," Rafe said quickly, "because that would be slavery. His contract." Then Rafe took on this look that said "I have something I don’t want to tell you; ask me about it." I hoped it only looked so blatantly fake to me because I knew him.
"There better be something else, some other reason why you think I might be interested," Campan said.
"This kid... is really grateful that we rescued him from Earth. Really grateful. To all of us." Rafe jumped as my hand closed on his wrist and his bones started to grind together in my grip. "Beka, I know you don’t want to lose him, but this is our only chance to win our ship back."
Grateful. Rafe had made Harper my ship’s engineer and whore.
And now Campan was definitely interested. "How old is he?"
"We’re not sure. Maybe 19. He looks 12 most of the time."
Campan just about drooled. Fuck. Rafe was dangling Harper in front of a pedophile, and damned if he hadn’t known ahead of time.
Harper had talked about how other people would try to take advantage of him, but it had never crossed my mind that this would be another way they could, because I personally didn’t find him attractive. At best he was cute, in a baby animal kind of way. But now I saw how that youth and his desperate straits would be an aphrodisiac to all kinds of creepy people.
How was Harper reacting right now with Rafe’s words going directly into his ear through that tiny comm? Eventually Rafe would call him over--it was inevitable--and Harper would have to play at being a bright, cute slut for the benefit of the pervert Rafe was trying to sell him to.
"He’ll miss us, but I’m sure he’d be grateful to the person who gave him a good home and a job he loves doing." Rafe looked down. "Not that you’re going to win."
The woman stood in disgust. "I’ll leave you to it. I’m not interested." She walked away, gaining some of my respect.
I wish I could walk away, but that wouldn’t get me anything. I had to make this work in a way that wouldn’t involve losing my ship and selling my engineer into prostitution to a kid diddler. I was going to fucking kill Rafe.
"Does he have gender preferences?" Campan asked, unperturbed by the woman’s show of disapproval.
"None that we’ve seen."
"Call him over. I want to see the stake."
"Shay!" Rafe shouted. I never told him Harper’s first name. He’d researched us thoroughly before he set this in motion.
Harper walked over with his usual swagger and a smile for me and Rafe. "Beka," he said, his voice so warm that it did weird things to my stomach. I expected him to take advantage of the opportunity to feel me up--hell, I wouldn’t even have blamed him considering the situation--but instead he crouched down, put his arm around my neck, and rested the side of his face against mine, his eyes closed, his expression blissed out.
"Shay," Rafe said.
Harper turned to him, gave him a grin, and moved away from me to put an arm around his neck. "What’s up, Rafe? Uh, hi." Harper waved at Campan. Harper had almost no trace of his usual grating accent.
Rafe smiled back at Harper. "It’s been an interesting game. Did you lose everything yet?"
"You didn’t give me much. I’m glad you called me over. I was getting bored." Harper slid his hand down Rafe’s chest, then further down, and then even further down into Rafe’s pants. "Are you done here yet?"
"No, I think I have at least one round to go."
Harper stroked, and Rafe writhed a little under his hand. "How about now?" Harper asked, his lips against Rafe’s ear. It looked like Harper had acting talents I hadn’t suspected. Of course, I figured that he was fighting to urge to yank Rafe’s dick right off....
Campan looked hungry, which made me sick. He said, "I accept the stake."
"Looks like I’ll be sticking around," Rafe said, his voice a bit breathy. "Sit with us, Shay."
"Sure." Harper took the abandoned chair and set it in the space Rafe cleared between him and me.
The game continued, but Campan didn’t seem to be playing as well, which struck me as darkly hilarious, since how badly he wanted to win was mucking up his concentration. Harper doing his restless pretzel routine in his chair didn’t help, as Campan had to be imagining what all of that flexibility could do for him. When Harper rested his fluffy blond head on my shoulder as a show of affection, I could feel him trembling a little. Poor kid. I stroked his arm to calm him, and he sighed softly and made a show of relaxing a bit. Campan nearly creased his cards as his fingers tightened on them.
"I call," Rafe finally said. Campan paled. Rafe said, "C’mon, I call."
Campan laid his cards down face up. He had shit. We’d won. My heart stopped and started again.
Rafe put on a show of relief, then let his face turn hard. "Pay up."
"This can’t be over!"
"You have a stake big enough to continue on with?"
Judging from the look on Campan’s face, he didn’t. He put his chip into the machine, forking over his cash. As he got up, Harper gave him a doe-eyed look and said softly, "Sorry it worked out this way." Campan’s breathing hitched, then he stalked out. Harper’s expression settled into something more hard-edged once the guy left the room.
"Let me pick up my winnings, then we can blow this joint," Rafe said, his usual smile back in place.
Once we were in the Maru, Rafe tossed a chip to me. I read it, then said, "You put my ship on the block and nearly sold my engineer into prostitution to a pedophile. This isn’t enough for our troubles."
He shrugged. "I could give you nothing."
"Did I say I wanted nothing?" I asked. "This is an insult, and Harper should get something too."
"My plan, my work bringing it off, my spoils. That’s why I’m Valentine Smarter. There was no real danger here."
And only my stupid family loyalty to you and Harper’s knowledge that I wouldn’t approve of an accident for you was keeping you alive, Rafe.
Then Rafe looked behind me to focus on Harper, who shifted his small duffel from hand to hand to keep them occupied. And off Rafe’s neck probably. "That was some acting back there," Rafe said. "I knew Campan had a fetish, but I never expected him to get hooked that bad."
Harper had a feral look in his eyes. "The kiddie sex was the bait, but the promise of genuine affection from his kinderwhore was the hook. I looked like I really loved you guys." That nasal Boston thing of his was back in his voice.
"He wanted someone who would say his name as warmly as Harper said mine," I said. Hell, I wanted someone who’d say my name with that kind of warmth for real.
I had bad suspicions as to how Harper had done the whore routine so smoothly and well, and I didn’t want to think about them.
"You ever think of going into the confidence business?" Rafe asked.
"I never left the business. You making some kind of offer?"
"Maybe."
Harper put on a poisonously sweet smile that made him look like a 12-year-old with murder on his mind. "I don’t work with people I don’t like, and the only person who gets to sell me is me."
Yeah, I would have been more worried about and offended by Rafe’s attempt to poach my crew if I hadn’t known he’d be shot down trying.
Rafe must have known too, because he just shrugged. "See you around, Rocket. We should get together more often."
Like it was up to me. "Go to hell, Rafe."
He smiled. "I love family. ‘Bye, all."
Harper made an eloquent hand gesture at his back as he left. I even caught Rev baring his teeth a little. Then Rev said, "The process will take another week."
"I don’t think he’s going to try this again that soon. He doesn’t want to be too predictable," I answered. "But I’ll feel a hell of a lot better once it goes through and gets published on the BBS. Thanks, Rev." That insulting pittance Rafe threw me would help my legal fees at least.
"What’s up?" Harper asked. He still looked unsettled and insecure.
"I’m making it so that little bastard won’t be able to drag my ship into his games ever again. He’ll be cut off by law. Harper, I made you a promise, and that means something to me."
Harper beamed, looked down at the floor in a way that suggested that he had to get a hold of himself, then said, "You know, boss, I’m really broken up over being staked out as tenderloin for a pedophile. I could really use some comforting." Back to normal.
"I hear that work is good therapy."
Harper rolled his eyes and stuck his tongue out at me, then walked back to the engineering area, murmuring as he petted the railings, "Did my baby miss her daddy?"
Funny how a kid I’d known for two months could be more my family than my own brother was, but I could get used to it.