Page 18 of Guiding Desire
The one he decided to open because he felt he had to came from the Grounds’ Operational AI. Orrey’s eyes stung as he read it.
We congratulate you on being a Conduit strong enough to achieve S-class Guardian Senlas Yaran’s imprinting. The failure to recognize your status as a Conduit hurts us, but the Guardian & Conduit Center as well as the entire Grounds administration takes care of its own and will make your transition as easy as possible, especially now that you are a Guardian’s imprinted. After all, imprinting is rare, and over the past fifty years, it has happened only seventeen times in Argentea. You make it eighteen. Conduits bring pride and honor to their cities, but imprinted ones especially so.
The AI went on with a brief overview. Of the custody-ship. Of what would change.Hadchanged. Orrey knew he had every reason to be proud and feel special. He opened his supervisor’s message, informing him she hoped he had enjoyed his time with the protectors and wishing him all the best with his life as a Conduit. He swallowed, pulled his knees up to his chest under the covers. Coming to peace with being special and with having the job he loved taken from him wasn’t working out all that well for him.
It left him unsettled, and he took advantage of the sheets, pulled them up over his head, hiding in a bubble. He let the screen go dark, hoping that maybe once he activated it again, once he broke the spell of darkness, things would be back to normal.
The message from his mother almost was. She complained about how he hadn’t at least called her during the fireworks, which didn’t really make him feel any better. She’d sent it about a half hour after the fireworks would have ended, which had been hours ago.
Orrey had slept yesterday away and hadn’t woken once during the night. He dropped his screen and wrapped his arms around his knees under the unfamiliar covers, choosing to take what flimsy protection against reality they offered, at least for a little while longer.
Thethingaboutabad headache was that it wouldn’t let you sleep very long at all, even if you really wanted to. Orrey only managed to stay in bed for another hour, then gave up and made himself shower. He didn’t feel like it, but he didn’t think a Conduit would just stumble around all sweaty and wearing yesterday’s clothes.
The issue of sweaty and frankly gross clothes forced Orrey to confront the tote bag, the one which contained sex toys, unless that had been some sort of joke. His colleagues had done a bit of mild hazing with him during his first two weeks, sending him all over the protector building, making him look for specific types of reports that didn’t really exist. Maybe Guardians and Conduits did that too, only with things that vibrated and glowed in the dark.
“What Hound-fucking nonsense is this?” Orrey said when he went through the tote bag’s contents.
There were pants in there. Two pairs. The tamer one was black and white checkered, the other one was a neon floral pattern on a black background. The T-shirts neatly rolled up next to the pants were all either black or white, but the black one Orrey unfolded ended up having some cartoon character on the front, one he vaguely recognized as belonging to one of the more popular franchises.
Underneath the clothes, there were two dildos, both remote controlled, and mini bottles with lube in five different flavors. Also restraints and a blindfold. Honestly, it was less shocking than the only underwear contained in the bag. It came in three colors, yellow, pink, and dasia flower blue, and each pair was perfectly see-through.
“This has to be a joke,” Orrey said to the room, which had brightened with his increased activity, the calibration much smoother than back in Orrey’s shared apartment.
Thinking about home made Orrey jolt and drop some of the clothes he was still holding. He’d have to get back there, see—what exactly? If there was a way to convince his supervisor that he could keep his job? Orrey wasn’t sure, but he wanted his own bed, wanted to chat with his roommates if they were off duty, wanted some distance from this weirdness. He wanted the comfort of the familiar.
Custody-ship.The Guardian—Senlas—had custody-ship over him. The Op-AI had said as much.I can really only go to my own place if he lets me.
Everything Orrey had learned about custody-ship came back to him like the displeased teacher’s note at the end of an unsatisfying test in history, making Orrey feel guilty for being unhappy about his situation.
It was all of it too much to really deal with. He decided he wouldn’t. Instead, he turned toward those issues he could deal with, which were his clothing options.
“No underwear then. You and you,” he said, tossing the see-through underpants back in the bag and picking the black shirt, which aligned him with a fandom he didn’t even know, and the black and white pants. It was very far away from his style, which had mostly consisted of his school uniform, then the university uniform, then the protector uniform, and he felt uncomfortable, but ironically, the headache made the discomfort easier to bear.
Orrey tapped the smoother panel that hid the closet, and it turned reflective, a standard mirror in this less than standard place. He winced at his tired face, at the cropped shirt, at the very form-fitting pants. At least he and that high-ranking Conduit were about the same size.
Orrey let his hand hover above the door panel and focused on his breathing. He was at a loss. He’d always had a plan, a path—uni, graduating, protector training, rising in the ranks. He wasn’t sure what would happen to him next. It made his stomach clench. Hitting the door controls and walking out was like swallowing bitter medicine.
The apartment looked no less fantastical than it had the previous day. Orrey took a closer look at the gaming setup to make sure he hadn’t imagined it, hadn’t mistaken some high-tech Guardian training station for a simple game, but he spotted VR game discs neatly lined up in an inbuilt shelf that also held a selection of matte black controllers.
He left all that behind on his way to the living space. The servi-floor had changed overnight, had softened. It had been harder where all those moldable training dummies sat, but those lived in a cluster by what looked suspiciously like a movable wall Orrey hadn’t seen last night. A clutter-free desk and low-backed chair sat behind it, still getting good daylight but no glare from any direct sun. The grassy area by the window wall was unchanged, only opposite the couch, the windows had shifted to screen mode with the sound off, showing the fireworks Orrey had clearly missed last night.
“Slept okay?” a warm baritone voice said from behind Orrey.
He spun.
Guardian Senlas wore a bathrobe and no shoes. His black hair was damp, the tips of it falling into his eyes.
“I—yes. Very. Thank you, Guardian. Senlas.”
The Guardian sighed. “Just Senlas. No offense, but you look like someone who left sick ward a week early. What feels off?”
“No, it’s really fine. It was just a long day,” Orrey said.
Senlas didn’t respond. He simply stared. He didn’t look mad, not exactly, but he didn’t look not mad either.
Orrey cast his eyes to the ground. “I just have a bit of a headache. I’m sure it’ll clear up soon.”
Senlas grunted. “Thought you might. Muscle pain too?”
