Barrayaran fic: Gestures and Words Unspoken

[jmtorres]

niqaeli asked if I was ever planning to write cheerful Vorkosigan fic. Signs point to: No. Shows what I know!

Title: Gestures and Words Unspoken
Author: jmtorres
Length: ~2,000 words
Rating: not kid-safe
Warnings: Voyeurism. Exhibitionism. Not always concurrent. Not the generation you're probably expecting.
Summary: Illyan is Gregor's keeper.
AO3: http://archiveofourown.org/works/28062

---

"When I had sex," Gregor said haltingly, "with Cavilo," holding his coffee cup in both hands, close to his face, "it felt wrong." His eyes flicked quickly to Illyan, then back down as he took a sip. Illyan wasn't sure how he could stomach it; ImpSec's full record on Serg lay open on the table, transparent flimsies overlapping each other, an overlay of a hundred horrible images.

Illyan took a deep breath. "I understand that experience was uncomfortable for a number of reasons," he said.

"No," Gregor said. He didn't look back up. "Well, yes, but there was one reason in particular. I knew that whoever was on the other end of the security feed, it wasn't you."

---

They'd made a game of it, in time: Illyan would bring some exemplary soldier, for instance, to some social event or another, one of his own, usually, officially or unofficially. A young man or woman, trained and vetted and quite thoroughly loyal and perfectly discreet, unlikely ever to receive any formal recognition for service to the Imperium due to the nature of such services. Illyan would stand with one hand lightly resting on this exemplar's back and make the introductions to Gregor. Gregor would smile his small, grave smile, the polite one he gave everyone, and then, more tellingly, raise one eyebrow at Illyan, as if to say, This one? Illyan would nod slightly, or perhaps raise fingertips to forehead briefly in ironic analyst's salute. Gregor would go about his evening with Lady Alys's Vor maiden on his arm, but when the evening was over, he'd take not the Vor maiden but Illyan's offering upstairs.

Illyan suspects that this is the part of it which worries Gregor. That after the screaming fight, Illyan came around enough to play along instead of resisting, instead of insisting Gregor stop, instead of condemning him. It would have been more worrisome, Illyan thinks, if he had resisted and Gregor had ignored him, continued regardless, but Gregor isn't thinking of it that way. Gregor, Illyan is sure, is certain it was wrong, a first step on his father's path, and that Illyan didn't call it that is making Gregor doubt Illyan.

---

Only once did Illyan turn his face away. It was when Gregor went to visit Miles under arrest in ImpSec custody; Gregor took two bottles of wine and asked that the regular prisoner surveillance be rerouted. After, he said to Illyan, as was his custom, "Did you enjoy the show?"

"I didn't watch," Illyan replied. Ostensibly, that was what Gregor had requested, one eyebrow raised as the only indication that he meant something other.

"Ah," said Gregor. "Did you save it for later?" He favored Illyan with a sidelong glance, lascivious only to Illyan's practiced eye.

"Did you know Miles has called me Uncle Simon for most of his life?" Illyan asked. "I cannot help but think of him that way, especially since I have been put in charge of sending him to bed with no dinner. He calls me sir, now; he's trying to be a proper soldier. But then, he calls his father sir as well."

Gregor was silent for a few moments, regarding Illyan thoughtfully. "I apolgize," he said after awhile. "I did not consider your feelings on the matter."

Illyan dismissed this with a wave. "You should have something of your own choice," he said, meaning, someone not chosen for me.

"It is of my own choice," Gregor said peaceably. At the time, Illyan wondered how they could read one another's expressions and gestures so easily, but miscommunicate so in words. Later, in replay, Illyan wondered if Gregor had understood him perfectly and made a declaration in reply which Illyan himself had chosen not to hear.

---

"You should have told me this years ago," Gregor said. His voice was cold.

"Years ago," Illyan said, "it wasn't my place. Aral--"

"I have not been Aral Vorkosigan's ward for six years," Gregor said. His chin jerked up. "And you have always assured me, since then, you were my Chief of ImpSec, not my Regent's."

"Aral," Illyan repeated gently, "saw far more of it firsthand than I did. I saw--only the very end. What you're asking about, how something like his madness starts, I don't know. I don't think you'll find it in these files. And I chose to trust Aral's judgement that telling you about what we hoped was a very well-buried secret shame would do more harm than good."

"It starts like this," Gregor said. His voice had gone soft with lost accusation; Illyan could almost see the blade turning inward. "You should have told me what was buried in my genes, Simon. You should have warned me that it wasn't just paranoia I should guard against, that slaughtering my family wasn't the only insanity I might commit. You should have warned me about the part of the sickness that's tied up in sex. You knew."

"I know what you do doesn't compare to what your father did," Illyan said. "You're nothing like him, Gregor. I would have told you if you were. Don't you see? You chose the best keeper you could want, to watch you. I would have stopped you, if you were dangerous. I will stop you, if I see that in you--but I don't think I ever will. You do not have it in you to hurt people the way he did."

"You're saying," Gregor wet his lips, "that I am a harmless sort of monster."

"Not a monster at all," Illyan said.

"But not normal," Gregor insisted.

"That was practically guaranteed by your circumstances," Illyan said. "You cannot frame everything you do in terms of him and his sins. You are watched--you are Emperor, you will always be watched and guarded. I will always be watching out for you. If you were a beggar's baby swapped in at birth and no relation of his, that would still be true. That you have found a way to enjoy yourself within those bounds is not a crime and it's not the previous generations' madness visited upon your head."

---

The screaming fight was after the first boy. That was when Illyan realized what Gregor was doing, because he realized that Gregor was altering his choices based on what Illyan had to say about them over the security-briefing-cum-breakfast they always shared. After the latest kitchen maid, Illyan had made some acerbic remark about Imperial scandals and how if Gregor really meant to be shocking, he should start sleeping with men--and Gregor had. A stable hand.

There was no scandal, of course. The only person who knew--the only person to be shocked--was Illyan. All of Gregor's displays were for Illyan. All of the emotional response he sought, he looked to find in Illyan.

"Do you think this is a game?" Illyan demanded. "Mocking your security with sordid nonsense? What is point of exhibiting yourself like a--like a--" Words failed; anger washed past Gregor's tightly wound calm.

"And if it is so very wrong for me to do so," Gregor said, "why do you watch? You could avert your eyes. Turn your monitor off. Give me a shred of privacy."

"Maybe I would if you would stop taking strangers to bed," Illyan snapped. "You don't know what kind of risks you're taking--you barely know any of them--"

"But you do, I'm sure," Gregor said. "Intimately. Every detail of their lives at your fingertips. Or do you expect me to believe that you allow anyone you haven't checked over thoroughly to work at the Residence? Or even to stand within a hundred meters of me, for that matter?"

"That doesn't mean you can forget all personal sense of self-preservation," Illyan said. "Do you want me to watch over you constantly, because you won't watch out for yourself?"

"Yes," Gregor said, so coolly Illyan took it for sarcasm at first. "Yes, I want you to watch me. As you always do. You are my safety, Simon. I want your eyes on me. And you--for your part, it seems as if it may not be to your pleasure, and yet you cannot tear yourself away."

Illyan drew an unsteady breath. "Do you think I should take pleasure in it--Sire?"

Gregor met his gaze levelly. "Do you think you shouldn't?"

"I do not wish," Illyan bit out, "to make what is a necessary intrusion more of a violation that it need be."

"A violation of what?" Gregor asked.

"Of your privacy," Illyan began.

"I have none," Gregor said.

"Then of your trust," Illyan replied.

"I trust you," said Gregor.

---

In retrospect, Illyan cannot decipher whether Gregor did it on purpose, the first time, meant to discomfit and seduce him to this role even then, or if Illyan's reaction inspired him to transform an accidental action into a purposeful one. It was one of Lady Alys's Vor maidens, the first time, and that was why Illyan reacted. "One last thing," Illyan said, that particular breakfast. "About the girl."

"Ah," Gregor said, with something like smugness: purely over the act with her, or over Illyan's inclusion? Illyan's replayed this moment in his head a hundred times. He cannot tell. "Did you enjoy the show?"

Sarcasm? A fatalism about the well-monitored gilded cage in which he lived? Genuine curiosity? Illyan in the moment assumed the first, and did not bother to answer the question. Illyan after the fact cannot discern, no matter how many times he listens to those words.

(He could ask. He doubts Gregor would welcome the question just now. He is unsure he wants the answer.)

"I must recommend," Illyan in the moment said, "that you desist in deflowering Vor buds you don't intend to marry. You'll only lead them on, and then their fathers will be after you with sharp knives and make my job the more difficult."

"I cannot possibly intend to marry her?" Gregor asked.

Illyan merely frowned at him, exasperated.

"How well you know me," Gregor said, breaking into his small, grave smile.

It's not the smile that's telling. It's the eyes. Rewind. Replay. Freeze frame. This is the moment Illyan is sure of. If Gregor had no intent before, he formed it here. If Gregor did before, this is the moment in which he got what he wanted in Illyan's reaction. In Illyan's knowledge and surety of him.

After this, Gregor swore off Vor maidens. The cleaning and kitchen staff all became fair game.

---

Replay. "It starts like this. You should have told me what was buried in my genes, Simon."

Skip ahead. Replay. "When I had sex--with Cavilo--it felt wrong."

Fast forward. Replay. "I knew that whoever was on the other end of the security feed, it wasn't you."

Illyan thinks he knows the right reply here, the balance between reassurance and castigation Gregor might accept, if he can guide Gregor through the steps in the right order. "ImpSec retrieved records from her troops," he tells Gregor. "Including that record." Gregor's eyes are locked to his now. "I reviewed it."

"Too late," Gregor murmurs, "to protect her from me, if I had been--"

"Violent?" Illyan suggests, eyebrow raised to point out how contradictory a worry that should be, in that circumstance. Gregor was her prisoner; if he fought her, how would that have been unreasonable? Gregor averts his gaze: he understands Illyan's position, but he disagrees. It's unimportant, or Illyan would have vocalized the argument so Gregor would have to hear how ridiculous his own answer is. No, the important part is this: "Not too late, however, to protect you from yourself. If I judged it necessary. I did not."

Gregor's eyes are on him again. "You did not," he repeats, a question in his tone.

Illyan cocks his head, as if to imply that he is about to state something exceedingly obvious, which Gregor should know without him saying. "I am your safety, Gregor. I know you." In fact, he's giving Gregor's own words back to him, an acknowledgement he should have given--years ago. And didn't, because he didn't fully understand. Moved by some impulse he cannot quite name, even now, Illyan reaches out to touch Gregor's face with his fingertips. "You trust me."

It is not a question, but Gregor answers, "Yes." He turns his cheek to Illyan's palm.