I awoke with my lips brushing against Maverick's. I gave Maverick's lower lip a soft nibble, and felt, rather than saw, the corners of his mouth turn upwards in a smile, as he came fully awake and tightened his arms around me.
Last night we had showered together when we'd made it back to our room, excitedly exchanging summaries of our experiences at the party, continuing as we went to bed. Maverick had laughed in delight when I told about my encounter with Andrew. We had managed to make love only once before exhaustion caught up with us, and we slept through the breakfast hour. Both awake now, we stretched our muscles without letting go of each other. I felt Maverick squeeze one of my legs between his, a preliminary to another lovemaking session. And I felt a need for love right now, to clear away the unfocussed gloom I had awakened with. I sighed as I felt Maverick's hands brushing up and down my back. They suddenly stopped. I opened my eyes in surprise. "What's wrong?" I saw Maverick him frowning at me.
"Are you thinking he's going to file a complaint about last night?"
My eyes popped wide open. "You reading minds now?"
Maverick gave a small shake of his head. "Only works with you."
"How'd you know I was thinking about my brother?"
"That's the only thing that would give you that expression. You think I haven't seen that enough in the last week to recognize it?"
My sigh this time was a symbol of deflation. "Okay, I guess I made it too easy for you. No, I'm pretty sure he won't complain to the Dean. I know him well enough to know he'd rather be an alley bum than let anybody know he was gullible enough to be played like that. But the next time I'm on host duty for a party he'll be back. Even madder than before." The First Years would host another party in two months, but I would be monitoring Zuchter for that one. But the party after that... I shuddered. "Four months seemed like forever last night. But now it feels like tomorrow. And that trick won't work again. Dammit! I offered him an olive branch. I thought I had him convinced, all he had to do was keep coming back and I would love him and let him buy me when I graduate. I did my best, acting like I really loved him. But he left the party early, and he wouldn't have done that if he'd still been in a good mood."
Maverick gave me a comforting squeeze with his arms. "Four months is plenty of time to figure out what to do. We can make a plan, like we did for last night." He frowned and rolled his eyes. "Okay, I know that one didn't work..."
I smiled at him and reached up to brush his headfur. "Well, we've got longer this time. But..." I drew another sigh from what now seemed an endless supply. "Anybody I talk to at a party might be standing in for him. I don't see any way to know if he's going to suddenly show up for a private session, or what I can do about it if he does. And I've got to be a host for a bunch more parties before we graduate. The only way to get out of bedding down guests is to be the entertainment, like Sequoia."
Maverick nodded solemnly, and then suddenly gasped, his eyes flying open, his body twitching with excitement. I said quickly, "No, hon, I wasn't thinking of volunteering to die just to get out of seeing Andrew. Kind of defeats the purpose..."
Maverick shook his head emphatically. "No, that's not what I was thinking!"
He was excited, and I looked at him, baffled. "What are you thinking, then?"
"You were talking about being the entertainment. I'm wondering if the Dean might be willing to approve something new along those lines."
I was still at sea, but beginning to absorb Maverick's excitement. I gave him a hand-twirling, get-on-with-it gesture.
Maverick grinned. "I've been thinking since last night about that fantasy you did with Benjamin, about us being hanged together and making love while we did it. Don't you figure all the members would want to see that?"
I gaped at him. "What, do it in front of everybody at a party?"
"Yes! They'd pay to see that! That's why the Dean would be willing to let us do it!"
"Maverick, I'd love to go out that way, but I was just saying I'm not ready to be snuffed yet..."
"No, this is something different! Not a snuff show! They'd still hang a boy at the end of the party. We could be sort of an optional extra show. We'd live though it!" His eyes glowed. "We don't need to die for it. Just being able to do it at all — that's what people will come to see. We can do it! You know that!"
I had the idea completely at last. "Yes! We'd..." I paused as my mind spun around the possibilities. "We don't want to take anything away from the boy who's going to die. It's his special night."
Maverick nodded emphatically. "Of course! We could be at the beginning, and the snuff would be hours later, the big culmination."
"Wait, wouldn't the Dean still expect us to do private parties anyway, afterwards?"
Maverick bit his lip, thinking, then his eyes lit up and he flashed another grin. "After our show, the guests who watched us can bid on us. We'd go as a pair, and spend the rest of the evening with whoever offered the most money. Could Andrew afford that? There's a lot of members a lot richer than he is."
I gasped and then laughed, then tightened my arms around Maverick and pulled him closer for a long, long kiss. We laughed as we came up for air. I beamed at him. "I love you."
"I love you too." The soft expression on Maverick's face was not one any of the other students would have recognized.
I untangled myself from Maverick and bounced out of bed, almost exploding with energy. "Let's figure out how to do this. We're going to need to work out a show and practice..." My eyes caught sight of the clock. "Oh! We've got get ready for the luncheon!"
Maverick scrambled out of bed as well. Lunch for us First Years would be a big banquet in Sequioa's honor. No student would miss it. "Okay. First lunch , then planning."
We stood side by side in our room after the banquet, both looking up at the safety drop built into the ceiling, the mechanism that released the rope in case of emergency during hanging practice. I absently fingered my lower lip as I thought. "I can't think of anywhere in the school where there are two of them close enough together."
Maverick stood with his arms folded, barely blinking as he concentrated. "The Dean could have the staff build us a second one."
I shook my head. "We don't want to tell him what we're doing until we have something we can show him. You know how he is about departing from the standard training regimen. We'll need to practice at least a few weeks before we go to him with it."
Biting his lip in frustration, Maverick murmured, "We'll have to use one safety drop, somehow. It'll hold two ropes, won't it?"
I tapped my foot unconsciously on the floor, lost in thought, frowning deeply. "I think two ropes hanging down from the same point would keep us too close together. I mean, we have to be close, but if we're so smushed against each other we can't maneuver, it won't work."
Maverick nodded. Barely audibly, he began, "Have to make the nooses hang about a foot apart..." He gasped suddenly. "Oh! Like this!" He spun around and yanked open the drawer of his desk, pulling out a piece of paper, and drew a quick diagram with a pencil, too excited to take time to sit in his chair. He whipped up the paper and held it up for me. "See?"
I nodded excitedly. "Right! What do we use for that?" I pointed at a horizontal line separating the ropes in the diagram. "Oh! Spreader bar! They've got them in a bunch of sizes in the toy drawers in the party pavilion."
"Yes!" Maverick started for the door, and stopped. "Wait, they'd be suspicious if we started rummaging around in the pavilion now. Student store! They'd have them, and nobody would think anything about it if we got one from there. They'd figure they knew why we wanted it." He giggled.
I laughed. "Maybe we can use it for that too." I kissed Maverick, and laughed again. "Some of the food there was pretty spicy; we still taste of it."
"Yeah, we do. Anyway, let's go to the store."