Arc 9 | Chapter 359: Let Me Repeat Myself a Thousand Times (all to gather my thoughts; all to distract you)

“Oh, fuck!” Emilia squealed, pushing herself up yet again to gape down at Olivier. “You already know what your cousin does in her free time!”

Oliver wasn’t sure

how

Emilia knew that

he knew

about Axelle’s long-running hobby of writing exceptionally smutty stories about her two favourite hackers—although he wouldn’t be surprised if Emilia had a more subtle version of the {Starlit Eyes} he was using, her own secret copy floating across her eyes without leaving a single trace—but she did.

“Did Halen… share some with you?” he asked, cringing when Emilia burst into laughter, burying herself into his neck as her chest shook against his.

“Yeah! He thinks it's just too funny! I have to agree. Poor girl. I don’t imagine she realizes she’s been sharing her smutty stories with one of the people who inspires them? Well, maybe more

inspired

? Halen has moved most of his releases to Hail since he founded it. Not all of them, but definitely most.”

“Axelle does not realize Halen is one of the hackers,” Olivier told her, contemplating what he knew of her and Halen both before adding, “I do not think she realizes she has reversed your genders either.”

“Oh, yeah,” Emilia sighed, clearly unaware of what she was revealing with her words, her relaxation into the moment and her amusement accidentally leaving reality bare to him. “That’s also too funny. Although, Halen pointed out that your cousin still writes me as—”

Silence splintered around them as Emilia’s brain caught up with her words. Through his enhanced vision, the silverstrain’s eyes were huge, her mouth hanging open just enough that Olivier could have leaned in and forced his tongue into her mouth without resistance.

“That Axelle writes you as the bottom, even when you are a man?” Olivier finished, unwilling to let the matter drop because here was a potential answer to his question of why Halen had been so intent on learning more about his favourite function—a function that Emilia had designed.

The problem with having so few friends—and most of those family members he was buried in a pile of conspiracies to ruin their parents’ cruel lives—was the friends he had knew they could push him farther than reasonable, and he would still continue being their friend.

In Gabrielle’s case, she made him take her shopping sometimes. It wasn’t something he usually minded, but there were only so many opinions on the clothing she was trying on that he could voice. Still, helping his cousin decide what looked good was infinitely better than the times she would take him shopping for his own clothing. Olivier enjoyed those shopping sprees—Gabrielle had wonderful taste, as did Henri, on the occasion he accompanied them. The problem was more that his mother hated his style, and most of what he bought with his cousin would end up in a closet; even if his teaching position granted him a little freedom, with the eyes of his bodyguards always on him, reporting his every breath back to his mother, there were few opportunities to wear any of it. The fact that he had become skilled at escaping his bodyguards for these trips, sneaking off at odd times and leaving them in such a lurch they never even reported to his mother that he had vanished into the Free Colonies, actually made them simultaneously the most risky things he would ever do and one of the rare moments of freedom he was allowed.

Louis would take him out to smaller events, such as art gallery openings, where there wouldn’t be so many people that he would be wishing for the ability to crawl inside the aether and hide. That said, Olivier would generally rather not attend such events, simply because Louis’ wife was one of the most unpleasant people he had ever met, rivalling even his mother in the more vile things that fell from her mouth.

Henri occasionally begged him to go out clubbing with him, having realized at some point that Olivier’s own experience with finding hookups at clubs rivalled even his brother’s. Their interests and preferences were quite different, but his mother’s bodyguards had never clued in as to where they were actually going, and were generally inclined to let him accompany his cousins anywhere without their shadows marring his own.

A small glimmer of freedom, in their inability to realize he and all his cousins were a rebellion that would eventually bring the de la Rue family’s corruption to a brutal end.

As for Axelle, she mostly just wanted someone to talk with. Olivier would never claim to be an expert on anything related to Censors or skills, but he knew enough to follow conversations with her. Actually, in some ways, he clearly knew too much, considering Axelle’s most outrageous request of him—which again, he was too soft and desperate for friendship to turn down, even knowing none of his cousins would ever rip their love from him over an erection of boundaries—was that he read and edit and discuss her ridiculous and mortifyingly smutty stories about her hacker idols.

Fuck. Just laying here, knowing Halen and Emilia were those hackers and knew about the smut was giving him secondhand embarrassment. Axelle may very well implode when she found out.

Well, that was a problem for later. The issue at the moment was that he knew the smut, and he knew the hackers behind them. As a result, he knew that the hacker who had designed his favourite skill was the one his cousin wrote as the bratty, male bottom, who loved being pegged by the finicky, female top version of Halen.

Honestly, given he had read as much about the pair of hackers as his cousin likely had—part of her attempts to

make sure he knew the source material

had involved forcing him to read everything that was available about them, from their descriptions of their functions and updates to speculation by other fans as to their identities and personalities—he was actually quite impressed Axelle had gotten so much about their personalities correct.

Perhaps, when she inevitably crashed out after realizing she had shared her smutty stories with one of the people she wrote about—who had then gone on to further share it with the other—she could find a new career as a writer? Certainly, Axelle was the sort of person to become a hermit when she realized what had happened.

“Emilia?” Olivier asked when the silence had gone on too long, the girl’s face still as hot red as it had been when she first accidentally revealed her own association with his cousin’s smut.

“Mhm?” The sound was cute—a sound that begged at him to be pushed back against. Were they in bed for other reasons, Olivier would have slid his hands through her hair, tugging her back until she was gazing down at him once again, tears threatening her eyes as he demanded she be a good girl and use her words.

It was an absolute travesty that he couldn’t do that, even if Byron had attempted to convince him that he could during their evening of drinking and chatting about Emilia. The Hyrat clone was convinced that he should just tell Emilia his mother had told him he couldn’t take the case—all while promising he himself wouldn’t tell her, as it wasn’t really any of his business and he wasn’t convinced Emilia wouldn’t break Olivier’s resolve, regardless of his mother’s wishes.

“She’ll understand… and probably offer to hook up with you again. It would be easier, without the weird not-teacher-student relationship, nor a future-lawyer-client relationship,”

the man had said before throwing back the last of his drink.

“I think you’d have fun together. Emmie is just… I mean, you know what they say about silverstrains? That virtually nothing is off limits? It’s basically true. I mean, Emmie definitely leans into being a bottom, content to just be used and pleasured, but she’ll try basically anything once, and will enjoy it more often than not.”

The smile the Hyrat clone had given Olivier had said more than enough for him to understand that Byron had not only had sex with Emilia but also potentially done some strange things with her, at least by Byron’s standards. Olivier had no idea where the Hyrat clones' standards for

normal

for sex lay, so that didn’t exactly tell him anything, but considering he wasn’t convinced the three Hyrat boys weren’t pushing the limits of social taboos with one another…

It didn’t matter. None of it mattered. Olivier couldn’t have Emilia, and imagining how well she would fit into every sexual scenario he could imagine was helping no one, especially not himself.

“You’re the one who created the function I use so much? The one Halen kept asking questions about?” he asked, pushing down all the urges his brief remembrance of Byron’s words had stirred up within him.

“Mm…” Emilia agreed—probably agreed.

“Why?”

“Why?” the girl repeated back, sounding so gone that Olivier worried he had broken her.

Perhaps he had. He wasn’t convinced it wasn’t just an act, Byron having mentioned something about how good an actor Emilia was during their conversation, his hands flying and almost knocking his glass over as he expounded upon all the times the girl had pretended to be upset, just so she could get her way.

“Emmie never did it with friends, or someone who would actually be hurt by her actions. It was more aimed at adults. Things like being upset she couldn’t come to Roasalia with me, the real reason being that she wanted to buy some limited time item at a specific store.”

Laughing—smiling with the energy of someone who had been fooled by Emilia before and would continue to be because they knew the silverstrain meant them no real harm—Byron had admitted he’d ended up trailing behind Emilia on her shopping mission, then buying her the item himself.

Olivier was increasingly concerned with the amount of affection the Hyrat clones had for Emilia, even if it was rather endearing on all their parts. There was just something about seeing so much love flowing out of each clone he had met, pooling together around Emilia until she was so safe he doubted anything could touch her—until he doubted there would be more than a handful of those

older

Hyrat clones left in Baalphoria, should Emilia leave the nation behind to make a home in one Free Colony or another if she were found guilty and decided to flee. Each of the clones who loved her would follow. Probably, many of her friends as well.

“Why was Halen asking about the function?” he clarified, although he had no doubt the girl knew exactly what he had been asking; rather, she was likely just hoping he would let the matter go. He wouldn’t.

Emilia’s feet fluttered and twitched against his legs, fingers scrunching and unscrunching until his shirt had been pulled into an uncomfortable position and he was twining their fingers together to make her stop, lest he be forced to rearrange them so he could fix it.

“Because I made it,” Emilia muttered into the dark as he was prying her fingers out of the fabric, “and I kinda… did a bad thing.”

Olivier’s heart stuttered—not because he thought whatever Emilia had done would actually be that bad, but because she just sounded so broken. He had never heard her sound like this, even when discussing the more complicated parts of her life and relationships. Sad? Yes—he had heard heartbreak in her voice often enough just this evening alone. Anger? Absolutely. As much as Emilia seemed able to control her anger and let it out in reasonable—if sometimes overly dramatic—ways, he also wouldn’t be surprised to turn around one day and find she’d killed someone for mostly reasonable reasons.

This, thought? This wasn’t sadness for what she had done, nor anger with her past self.

This was worse than even hatred for a younger version of herself—and given how old the function was, she must have only been a few months into even having a Censor when she created it.

This was regret—or worse, shame.

“What did you do?” Olivier asked, afraid for the answer—afraid for this girl who had been living with such heavy shame that even being physically near her was turning his own stomach over with anticipation, concern, fear.

Emilia buried herself further into him, her face a hot press against his neck, and if Emilia needed time to gather her truth and let it out, that was fine.

He could wait.

For this girl, he would wait. Probably, he would wait far too long.