Editing Venus' Burn (section)

==The Second Part==

Now it was my turn to stare.  “W…what?”

Venus quirked an eyebrow.  “Farah didn’t tell you when you two met?  I’ve never told you either?”

“Told me what?” I asked, completely in the dark.

“Oh.  Uh, well…Grandpa, the Emperor, decided that Dad and my uncles needed something to do when the Crusade was over.  It had lasted centuries longer than even the worst-case scenarios predicted, you know, and the death toll for Eldar and Humans alike was just obscene.  Grandpa figured that Dad and the other Primarchs would need something that gave them emotional attachments to the territories they conquered or they would basically stay on a war footing forever, which is never a good thing.  So,” she said, propping herself up on her elbows and staring at me as I gaped at her, “he used the same archive he used to create the Astartes Legions to basically make a second batch of Primarchs.  Only they weren’t generals.”

“You were family,” I said numbly.  “An emotional anchor.”  How the hell had I not known this?  “Was it public knowledge?”

“Oh FUCK no, it would have been the biggest possible target for the enemies of the Imperium.  Can you imagine what would have happened to the Imperium if the Emperor let the second batch of Primarchs get stolen like the first?  It would have been a permanent stain on morale.  So he let the Crusade wind down slowly, you know, adding a few more seats to the Astronomican’s Choir so the maximum range of the Navigators got bigger and there ‘just a few more’ systems to conquer until he was done with the Project, then he basically ordered Dad and my uncles to go and start a family.”

“Not literally,” she continued, scooting a few inches closer to me and dropping back down on the wide mattress.  “But in spirit, at least.  Not a problem for Uncle Roboute, who was already married, or Dad, since he was engaged to Mom already, but…well, those are their stories, I won’t tell them.  But there you go.”

“But you said you were born on Nocturne,” I said, confused.

“I was, kind of.  Decanted, maybe,” she said, shrugging as if she was discussing nothing more important than choosing the red or blue protein bars in the cafeteria at school.  I stared at her, the weirdest feeling of displacement crawling through me, prickling my skin.

“So…so it’s not something that was announced, even when it was over?  Nobody knows but you and your families?”

“And whoever the Twins have told, or Farah, that blabbermouth,” Venus trailed off, muttering.

“And you’re telling me?” I asked, shocked, my sense of unease crystallizing into fear.

It was Venus’ turn to stare, again.  “That’s not creepy, for you, is it?  That I’m, you know, vat-born?”

“Creepy?  No, I don’t mind, but…fuck!  I can barely keep a secret, what if I slip up or something and tell someone who doesn’t already know?  Or whatever?” I said in shock, sitting up.  “Are even you allowed to tell me?  Is this going to get the Custodes on my-”

“Whoa whoa whoa, Jake, chill the hell out,” she said, pushing me back down and dropping her torso bodily over mine, pinning me in place.  I imagine under more or less any other circumstances that would have been arousing as hell, but as it was, it barely calmed me down.

“Jake, I’m telling you because I trust you.  OK?”

“That’s what I’m worried about,” I said nervously.  “I can’t keep secrets at all, you know me.”

“Yeah.  Yeah, I do know you,” she said, narrowing her eyes.  Then, as if in a token acknowledgement of where we were and how we were physically arranged, she planted her hands on either side of my shoulders and kissed me.  I slid my arms up hers, trying to…I don’t know, keep talking maybe?  Then my brain switched back on and I squeezed her own shoulders, gently pulling her down, so she couldn’t return to her senses and stop.

It didn’t work.  She broke contact and lifted her head up a fraction.  I opened my eyes and saw that hers were still closed, with nothing but a faint red glow lighting the lids.  She stuck out her tongue a bit and ran it over my lips, as if checking for something, then cracked her eyes open.  All I could see of her was a tiny pair of red slits in her face; she was blocking the light from the viewscreen and the lights.

She eased her head back down and planted her lips on mine again, gentler.  I wrapped my arms around her back and laced my fingers behind her neck, not pulling, just resting there.  She breathed in slowly, and let it out as she craned her head back again, smiling.

“I trust you with more than my heroic origin story, all right, Jake?  Believe me,” she said languidly.  She broke my grip on her neck with an effortless tug.  “I told you because I trust you, and I love you, and because if you think of it as a secret to share with me, and not a secret to keep to yourself, I know you’ll never tell anyone.  You think my cousins never tell anybody either?  Or my uncles?”

I wasn’t actually thinking about her family, to be entirely honest.  Or at all.  I was just lying there, my face locked in neutral mode, my brain firing on every possible circuit.

She tilted her head a bit.  Her hair fell across my forehead.  “You sure you’re all right?” she asked.

“Never better,” I croaked.  She giggled and shifted a few inches back from me, then set her head down on my chest.  I reached down and slid my hands down her arms again, and she caught my hands with her own.

We must have laid there for almost ten minutes, her inscrutable from where I was lying, and me reflecting on how awesome I was.  After about that long, though, she sat back up and stretched.  “So…any questions?” she asked, mimicking our chemistry teacher’s voice.

I laughed, coughed, and tried again.  “Uh…not really.  But, hey, Venus…come here.”  I sat up too, and shifted my legs under me.  I reached out and slid my arms under hers, and pulled her in for a hug.  “I love you too.  Really.  Thanks for trusting me with this.”

“My pleasure,” she said contentedly, leaning her head on my shoulder and smiling.  “So…hey, what time is it?”

I glanced over her shoulder to the tiny LCD clock on her bedside table.  “Uh, 1348.”

“What?  Thought it would be later.  Well, I don’t want to waste-” she started to say, pulling away from me.

Waste?  Oh, no.  No no no no.  Nothing we did in that room was ‘waste.’  I didn’t even let her finish.  I clenched my hands on her back and stopped her.  Before she could say another word, I took the offensive, locking my lips over her in a rushed, though if I dare say, effective echo of her own attack earlier.  I twisted my shoulders a bit, and we toppled over on the huge bedspread.  She made a muffled squeak of surprise, but didn’t try to pull back again.

I slipped both hands around her back and pulled her body flush against mine from the stomach up, never even pausing to breathe.  She did the same, and one-upped me, sliding her leg between mine and entwining them.

Well, that was pretty great, too.  I wouldn’t have stopped what I was doing, ever, were it not for my pesky lungs.  I had to pull back, panting, after a few more seconds.  She lay there, staring at me, not even breathy.  “ ‘Waste my time?’” I asked, trying to keep my voice down.  “Never."

She stared at me, a small smile slowly creasing her lips.  “Well, if you put it that way,” she said, mirth creeping into her voice.  She disentangled herself from me and rolled away.  I thought we were done.

We weren’t done.


She immediately shuffled back, pressing her back against me from head to toe.  I slid my arms around her waist and hugged her across the stomach as she pulled her shoulder-length hair up out of my face, snuggling back against me.  I could hardly try to hide my rampaging erection at this point, obviously, so I didn’t try, I just held still against her back and hoped she didn’t mind.

Fortunately, she didn’t.  “You’re a bold one, aren’t you?” she asked, giggling.

“Huh?”

“I told you I never even touched Dad’s tools, but here you are, stealing one and hiding it in your jeans, and hoping I wouldn’t notice.  Shame on you,” she said, mock-sternly.

“Funny,” I said tightly, trying to determine if she was coming onto me or just poking fun.

“I know,” she said.  Poking fun then.  Oh well.

She reached up and grabbed a flat throw pillow from the head of the bed, and snugged it under both our heads.  That accomplished, she wrapped her own hands over mine and lay still.

I lay there, spooning against her, for probably ten more minutes, before I noticed her breathing was getting louder.  I raised my head up over hers, and sure enough, her eyes were closed, and her breaths were drawn and even.  She was fast asleep.  I wasn’t sure whether to be flattered that she had felt so comfortable in my arms, or insulted that she had done it so fast.

Well, whatever.  Time to find out if she snored.  I lay there a bit longer, watching the moon and planet over our heads, almost motionless, until I had satisfied my curiosity, and decided she didn’t.  I gently extricated my hands and legs from hers and rolled her onto her back as gently as I could without waking her up.

Now, I’d like to think of myself as a fair, reasonable kinda guy.  I never even think of the worst possible thing to do in any given situation, most of the time.  Still, her lying there, fast asleep, was easily the most intensely arousing thing I had ever seen in my life, and it was all I could do keep my fingers from tracing the outline of her nipples on the green fabric of her shirt.  That said, I retained enough sanity through the dense fog of hormones in my brain to know that that would be a cataclysmically bad idea, so instead, I allowed myself a last, lingering look, and crept off the bed.
I tugged on my shoes and tiptoed out the door, closing it behind me and wondering if I would be overstaying my welcome if I stopped in the bathroom on my way out.  I glanced side to side, wondering where it was on this floor-



Vulkan was standing a few feet away.



I stood there like an idiot for several seconds, in which he didn’t move a micron, except to plant his dinner-plate sized hands on his hips and look terrifying.  Then again, any ten-foot-tall, onyx-skinned, glowing-eyed man looks kind of terrifying without trying, so I didn’t really notice.  I wondered if he would become less scary with the passage of time, as I got to see him more often, then realized that probably wasn’t going to happen, because he was going to kill me to death right there, and my miserable soul would be marinating in the Warp before I could even have time to pose for a holo.

Now…what could I say to avert that fate?  I thought for a moment.
“Hi.”

Like I said, I’m a master of language.

“Hi,” he said flatly.  He drew his hands up from his hips and crossed his arms over his gold and white Imperial military dress shirt, staring down at me.

I tried again.  “Lord Vulkan, I’m-”

“-About to explain why you’re creeping out of my daughter’s room,” he finished helpfully.

“Yes.  That.  Well, you know, Lord, I don’t want to wake her up,” I said, a surreal sense of finality saturating my voice.

“‘Wake her up?’” he echoed, raising his eyebrows, his eyes flashing terribly.

“Well, yeah, sir.  She’s asleep.  You know, sleeping…” my voice gave out on me.  I kept going.  “We kind of drifted off.”

“You don’t say.”  He wasn’t killing me, so I had to be doing something right.

“Well, yeah, she fell asleep after we were done.”  Oh no no no no no.  “With the tour, I mean.”

“What tour?” he asked in an exaggeratedly polite tone.

“She invited me over to tour the premises, my Lord,” I said, my sweat glands awakening to what was going on.  I shifted a bit as I felt a trickle run down my neck.  “She was showing me the viewscreen on her bedroom ceiling when she fell asleep on the bed.”

“Oh, all right,” he said, his tone deepening a bit more, somehow.  “She just happened to do so without asking me first?”

I was getting a bit scared on her behalf, too, at this point.  “She said she asked you first, my Lord,” I said defensively.  His eyebrows shot up, and he tilted his head forward in surprise at my tone, which I would have cursed at were it not for the chance he would have taken sudden profanity the wrong way.

After letting me sweat for another moment, he smiled, unclenching his arms and smirking.  “She did, I was just wondering if she told you.”

I stood there staring for a few more seconds before my nerves caught up and I nearly fell back against the door.  “You…you were fucking with me?” I asked, blessed relief getting ahead of my tongue.

“Well, now, that depends.  If I open that door, will I see my daughter fully dressed?” he asked, his tone darkening again.

“As far as I know, my Lord,” I managed.

“All right then.  See you around,” he said, walking on down the hallway to his own room.  I stared at him, completely beyond my normal range of emotions at that point.

The door opened behind me and I nearly jumped through my skin.  Venus walked out, wiping sleep from her eyes.  “Hey, Jake, did I hear Dad just now?”

“Y…yeah,” I stammered, my heart still pounding like an autocannon.  She looked at me, confused.

“What’s wrong?”

“He pretended he didn’t know I was coming over and nearly scared my soul out,” I said, leaning against the doorframe for support before my knees betrayed me.

“WHAT?” she yelled, startling me again.  Before I could say a word – or even attempt to stop her – she stomped down the hall after her royal father.  She pried his door open and stormed in.

“Hello, Venus, what’s – ow!  What was that for – ow!  What the hell?  Knock it off!” Vulkan’s voice drifted out through his door, interspersed with what sounded like a few punches to the arm.

“Dad you asshole, I told you not to scare Jake like that!” Venus yelled, sounding genuinely pissed off.

“What?  All I did was ask a few questions –ow!”

“Questions?  He’s white as a sheet!  Jake, get in here!” she called through the open door.

“No, no, that’s all right, I’m gonna stay out here and…not die,” I said, running my hand over my pounding heart.

“DAD YOU JERK”

“Ow!  Okay, okay, I’m sorry.  You never let me have any fun.  Sorry Jake!” he said a bit louder.

“No…harm done, Lord,” I managed, and slunk back into Venus’ room.

A few minutes later, she came barging back in and slammed the door.  “I swear he’s more trouble than he’s worth,” she growled, her eyes flashing brighter than I had ever seen them.

“I imagine I’ll look back on this and laugh,” I said, feeling the cold spiking sensation of fading adrenaline in my fingers.  I sat down on the edge of her bed and stared at the carpet.

Her voice paused for a moment.  I looked up and saw her looking at me contemplatively.  “Jake, I meant it.  I love you.  I made Dad promise he wouldn’t do that anymore.  Really.  I’m sorry.”

I smiled a bit and sat back on the bed a little farther.  “I know.  I love you too.  It’s OK.”

She smiled back and sat lengthwise across my lap.  “Good to hear.”  She snuggled her head down on my shoulder.  I slid my hands under her thighs and wiggled her up against my stomach, and she cooed happily.  “Hey, Jake.  Did you think about the thing on Thursday?” she asked after a calming moment.
“What?  The thing Farah mentioned?” I asked.

“Yeah.”  She tugged loose of me and walked over to the pair of desk chairs at her computer table.

“I don’t know what sort of a thing it is,” I asserted.  Funny how snuggling with Venus restores one’s charisma.

“Roberta’s booking the ballroom at the Cordovum Hotel.  Officially, it’s the date we chose to celebrate our birthdays, since we don’t get the chance to get all nineteen of us together outside school much.  Unofficially…well, you know.  ‘Decanting-day’ isn’t something they make cards for, I don’t think,” she mused, rubbing her chin.

She was trying to weird me out, I could tell.  “I’m surprised you can be so cavalier about that,” I said.

“Why?” she countered, grabbing a fresh pair of socks off a table and pulling them on.  “It is what it is, I can’t change it.  Why dwell?”

“Well, I guess.  Uh, sure, I’d love to come.  When is it?  And what’s the cover?” I asked, taking her queue and tying my shoes back on.

“Thursday at six, dinner will be served.  No cover, Roberta’s got it,” she said.

I blinked in surprise.  “Really?”

“Roberta could buy the hotel and the hab block it’s built in,” she said, something funny in her tone.  Bitterness?

“Right,” I said, resolving not to step on that landmine in addition to all the other crazy shit that happened to me since I arrived.  I finished tying my shoes on and stood, still feeling a bit wobbly.  “So…I’m just gonna head out.”

“What?  Why?” Venus asked in surprise.

“I, uh, thought we were leaving.”

“No.  You want to stay for dinner?” she asked.

“I’d…sure, thank you,” I said, surprised.  “Uh, just so that I don’t, you know, die…Lord Vulkan was kidding, right?”

“Oh for fuck’s sake, YES!” she said, exasperated.

“All right, just making sure.  It was hard to tell.”

“And he won’t do it again if he values his life,” Venus said angrily, standing up.  “Anyway.  Dinner probably won’t be until 1800, so…want to watch a movie in the theater again?”

“Mmm…actually, if you don’t mind, can we just walk around the grounds a bit?” I asked.  I felt like I needed to get out of the house for a while, and, in honesty, anything to get to see real outdoors.  Living in a hive adjacent to a place this nice is a pain, sometimes.  “And, can I use your bathroom first?”

The bathroom attached to her bedroom was larger than my bathroom and bedroom combined.  I have to admit, when I was in there, the word “profligacy” wandered through my head.  I tried very hard to ignore it.

The tub was a full-size hot tub, which could easily have seated six or seven people.  The shower next to it was a four-head, and the stall looked big enough to accommodate at least as many.  There was a laundry servitor slot next to the sink, which was about the only thing in the room that wasn’t huge.  The toilet and bidet themselves were behind a waist-high wall in the corner, so it actually took me a minute to even find them.

When I came out, Venus had already put on her shoes and jacket.  “What, did you fall in?”

“Hurr hurr hurr,” I replied.  “I would have been sooner, but someone decided to hide the toilet.”  I sat down on the bed and pulled my jacket back on.

“Oh…yeah, I should have mentioned that,” she said idly.  The two of us walked back down to the ground floor and out the front door, past Taxi, who was out cold on the porch.

The grounds were well maintained, but now that Venus had mentioned it, I could see where a few of the turrets she had mentioned were hidden.  Square depressions in the ankle-deep grass betrayed where the weapons lay, and we avoided them on our way around.

We weren’t talkative, and what we did talk about was just bullshit, school and life.  As we approached the cover of a small thicket of trees (and how they grew in the shadow of a hive wall I’ll never know), Venus slowed down and pointed out a small monument in the copse.

“My Dad built that.  It’s to remember the First Sons, the Terran volunteers who first enlisted in the Salamanders before he was given control.  Fewer than twenty of them lived to see the Crusade end, out of over ten thousand.”

I stared at the monument.  “Wow.  That’s depressing…” I sat down on a wrought-iron chair facing the black monolith, and Venus leaned on the edge of the seat back.  The metal block stuck out of the ground like a plinth for a column that had been eroded by time, until nothing remained but the foundation.  Fitting imagery for a Space Marine Legion, I supposed; the original Legion had been destroyed and replaced during the horrors of the Crusade, and reforged stronger.

Venus sank down onto my lap, staring up at the hive wall.  “This is about the only place back here where I can’t see the house.”  She smiled at me from a few inches away.  “Can’t tell you how many times I’ve come out here to do homework.  I’m way too easily distracted to do it in the house.”

“I usually just stay after at school,” I said, sliding my arms around her waist and snugging her head on my shoulder.  “I drive home if I need to.  If I had a place like this, though, I might use it.”  She nodded, just enjoying the quiet.  It was hard to imagine that there were several billion people on the other side of the massive wall a few dozen feet to the north.  I had to wonder if any of them didn’t know that the Primarch’s mansion was just a few hundred feet away from their self-contained universe.

Then I had to stop and mentally smack myself.  I fucking lived in that hive; my elementary and middle schools were in there, I was probably going to die in there.  Was I so conditioned by being outside for school and hanging out with Venus that I had stopped thinking of myself as a hiver?

For that matter, when did I become so used to this sort of proximity to her?  I didn’t mind – believe me – but I had barely even noticed it at first.  We had just been making out on her bed; did her father’s ninja trick spook me that badly?  Whatever the case, she didn’t stay there long enough for it to get awkward.  After a minute of the two of us sitting there in the shadow of the hive wall, she stood up and stretched.  “Hey, I just remembered.  We have about four hours before dinner.  Do you want to go on another tour?”

“Of the house?” I asked, standing up and following her back.

“No, of the Salamander training outpost here on Terra,” she said nonchalantly.

I stopped cold.  “…Are you serious?”

She looked back at me over her shoulder.  “Yeesssss…why wouldn’t I be?” she asked, raising her eyebrows.

“Venus, baby, I’m not in the military,” I said, stepping forward, trying to impart just how out of my depth I felt.  “Your house is one thing, an Astartes base is another.  Can even you get us in?”

“Well, I’d have to ask Dad, but I think he’d say yes,” she said.  “But if you think you’d be uncomfortable, we don’t have to.”

“Thanks,” I said, sighing in relief.  “I really appreciate it, but I’d feel awkward as hell.”

Venus nodded slowly, thinking.  After a moment, she slowly headed for the house, still lost in thought.  After a few minutes passed in silence, and the house was looming over us, she stopped and looked at me pensively.

“Jake, can I ask you something kinda personal?” she asked.  Well, that’s always a good thing to hear when you’re already feeling apprehensive.

“Sure,” I said, steeling myself.

“Why are you so nervous around Dad when he specifically told you at the party that he didn’t want you to be?” she asked.  I felt my shoulders slump in frustration.

“Venus…he’s an intimidating guy on his own.  Forget the fact that he’s over a thousand years old.  Forget the fact that he’s your father, which is scary enough.  He’s a noble, and that means I feel like I have to watch my tongue around him even if he did say I didn’t have to.  And-”

Venus held up a hand to stop me.  I was anxious enough to keep going, but she interrupted.  “Okay.  I’m sorry.  I just don’t want you to feel like you need to watch your step around my family.”  She leaned back on one foot and jerked her head at the building.  “When I met your parents, they didn’t know how to react around me.  I was sort of expecting it, but it gets old fast.  My parents really like you, Jake.  If you treat them like family, they’ll do the same.”

I nodded, trying to picture myself fitting in with her family.  It wasn’t easy.  “I’ll try.”

“All I can ask for,” she said.

We spent the rest of the time before dinner watching some shitty holo film about vampires, which I don’t even really remember.  I did call my parents as soon as we got back in the house, letting them know that I wouldn’t be home for dinner.  The meal itself was surreal in the extreme.  The food was great, of course, Misja was a good cook, but the same sense of displacement I had felt at the party was still there.  Venus noticed, and sent me an encouraging smile or two as the meal wore on.  Vulkan himself was only there for a while, apparently whatever had called him to the Palace that day would need his attention that evening as well.  The brief interrogation he gave me was memorable, though.

“So, Jake,” he said, subtle as a blow to the skull.  “I heard Venus offered to take you on a tour of the Salamanders base here on Terra,” he said, devouring his turkey.  “You turned her down?”

I paused, nervous.  Venus glanced at me sidelong, but didn’t say a word.

“Yeah, I felt like I would be intruding on something.  I’m not a warrior,” I said, keeping her advice in mind.

“Well, neither is she, but she never feels out of place there,” he said, nodding at his own wisdom.

“Dad, I’ve been going there for stuff since I was two,” she put in.

“True,” he said, shrugging.

“I was honored, don’t get me wrong, sir, but…I mean, even the PDF doesn’t get to go to Astartes bases,” I said.

“Well, it’s your choice,” he said, nonchalantly.  The butler servitor trundled up and deposited a few small pretzel rolls on a dish near the edge of the table.  Misja passed it around and I grabbed one, hoping that Vulkan wouldn’t ask more questions.

I decided to take the initiative.  “Well, if I may, sir, what do you need to head off to the Palace for again?”

“Oh, the damned Green Fangs are threatening the Segmentum Tempestus shipyards at Corlsic III again,” he grumbled.  “Wouldn’t even be an Astartes problem if the Navy could figure out where the scum were breeding.”

“Orks, then,” I ventured, as if I had a damn clue what I was talking about.  “Don’t the shipyards have guards?”

“Oh, naturally, an entire subsector fleet, but Orks are annoying like that,” Vulkan muttered.  “Hell, I may have to go out there and take command.”

Well, THAT got Venus’s attention.  “Whoa, wait, Dad, what?  You’re leaving again?” she said in surprise, sounding distinctly hurt.

“Probably not, the Navy guys can clean up after themselves, but you never know,” he hedged.  She just sat there looking hurt.

“Dad, I really hope you found about this today,” she said.  “I wouldn’t feel in the loop here if you knew earlier but didn’t tell me.”

“Yeah, I did.  Don’t look at me like that,” he said sternly.

I thought I felt awkward before…