75 Godiva Road, Saturday Morning

[geniuswithasmartphone]

Noah often didn't want to get up in the mornings when that arrogant overseer, Cato, rang the bell calling the field hands to work. Being a blacksmith was easier than picking cotton--no worries about getting whipped if he didn't make weight, for one--but it was still long hours and hard work, making sure that all the horses were shoed and the tools repaired and every bit of metal on the plantation was bright and shining.

Waking up this morning was even harder. His bed felt soft, like a cloud, and his blankets like the gentlest cotton, wouldn't scratch a baby's naked ass. His sheets felt clean and crisp and the soft breathing from behind him--

Sheets?

Breathing?

Noah's eyes snapped open but he made himself lie perfectly still. Sure, last night had been one of Bareback Shaw's parties, but that didn't explain why he was asleep in one of the white folks' rooms! He didn't even wanna guess what kinda punishment that would entail if he was found here. Never mind the one he'd get for not being back in his quarters by sunup.

Another muffled noise behind him. Noah wasn't sure he wanted to look over and see who it was. He was praying that it would be another slave. Getting caught in a white woman's bed would result in something far worse than just more stripes on his back.

Maybe he could just...eeeeease on out of this bed and be out the door and on his way back to Macon before anyone was the wiser.

[For thems that live here! Also TRIGGER WARNING! Hardison is Noah from WGN's Underground and is a slave from 1850's Georgia. That means there will be references to slavery, beatings, lynchings, sexual assault and rape/coercion and pretty much every other horrible topic that comes up in conjunction with treating humans like chattel.]

Comments

[vdistinctive]

Shit shit shit.

"We're in Maryland." Eliot really wished he could say they were further north. McRory's in Boston would be great. "You ain't gonna believe me on this but it's 2017. You ain't a slave here. Your kinda slavery, it's been gone more'n 150 years."

Fuck, what was he going to do if Noah wanted to leave? Miss Parker or whatever over there he could just yell at to sit down and shut up, but he was not going to be a white guy ordering a damn slave around.

Shit shit shit shit shit. . . .

[geniuswithasmartphone]

"Uhhh..." There was a moment of sheer disbelief on Noah's face before it was smoothed away under a mask of obedience. "Oh, of course, suh. That makes perfect sense."

[vdistinctive]

Eliot felt sick, hearing that obsequious tone from someone who looked so much like Hardison. He sighed. "I know you've got a brain, man," he said. "Look, just -- gimme a minute to get some pants on and I'll show you." He nodded to Hardison's dresser. "Should be stuff that'll fit you in there if you want to get dressed yourself. You can take your time -- anyone comes lookin' for you, I promise they'll haveta go through me first, okay?"

[geniuswithasmartphone]

That flash of utter disbelief again. "I'm sure my own clothes are somewhere 'round here, suh. I wouldn't wanna mess up nothin' all fancy, suh."

He leaned forward again, the scars and ink on his back stark against his skin. "Suh, I ain't tryna tell you your business or nothin' but if Massa sent someone to come lookin' for me, if you interfere, they could arrest you for abettin' a runaway slave. Which I ain't!" he hastened to clarify. "I'se gon' head back jes' as soon as I can!"

He wasn't ready to run yet. Too many unknowns still.

[vdistinctive]

"Ain't afraid of anyone arrestin' me," Eliot said. The way he disarmed Miss Parker probably added credence to that.

He'd noticed those scars and tats; they only added to the horrible taste in the back of his mouth. "Wear whatever you want, man. I'm gonna get this 'lady' set up with some coffee. You're welcome to join us, get some food in your stomach."

And see all the high tech gadgets in the rest of the house, which might help with the whole "no really, you're in the future" thing.

[geniuswithasmartphone]

"Join you?" The very concept was foreign. Clearly, he'd misunderstood. "I 'ppreciate the offer of gettin' somethin' from your kitchen Negroes, suh."

Again, not the word he used.

"Thank you."

[vdistinctive]

"I don't have any --" Eliot broke off sharply before using That Word. "There's no one here except you, me, the lady, and my dog." What the hell was he going to do if Noah was afraid of Val? She wasn't exactly a hunting hound, but he couldn't assume this guy didn't have bad associations with dogs. "Look. I ain't a slave owner, I'm from Oklahoma -- Indian Territory. I think slavery's disgusting. You ain't. A slave. In my house."

[geniuswithasmartphone]

"Respectfully, suh, your house is in the South, so I'm still a slave no matter whose house I'm stadin' in."

Did this guy think he was some kind of runaway ringleader? Was this an interrogation? He needed to be better at it then.

[vdistinctive]

Eliot rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Right. Yes, okay, that probably woulda been true. But you ain't my slave. And anyway, it's 2017, and --" Dammit. There was no actual good way to handle this was there. "Here." He picked his phone up off the nightstand, unlocked the display, and held it out for Noah to take. "What d'ya make of that, then? I'm guessin' antebellum Georgia didn't have a whole lot of smart phones."

[geniuswithasmartphone]

"Well, suh, I sho don't know what a smart phone is," Noah said, carefully keeping his hands behind his back. It was, in fact, so far out of his realm of experience that he couldn't make heads or tails of it.

Alexander Graham Bell was still a boy, his famous invention decades away. This looked like nothing Noah had ever seen or experienced, wasn't even a material he recognized, but then, the same could be said about the letters on the bright surface.

"Want me t'hold that for you?" He was going to keep playing the good darky until he could make a break for it. He couldn't see any other choice.

[vdistinctive]

"Yeah, sure." Eliot didn't have anything sensitive on there -- it wasn't like he was handing Noah one of Hardison's great technical wonders or anything. "Actually, here, lemme see. . . ." He opened the photo app and scrolled through until he found a photo Parker had sneakily took a few weeks ago, of Eliot cooking dinner while Hardison worked on his laptop and fussed at him about using fancy vegetables. They were standing close together in the shot, and Eliot, at least, though they looked pretty damn smitten with each other -- or as much as you could tell from the weird high angle Parker had used. . . .

"You heard of photography?" he asked, as he held the phone out for Noah to take again. "When're you from, anyway?"

[geniuswithasmartphone]

Noah shook his head, staring at the image in patented disbelief. "I don't...I ain't..."

That was him. His face. But what...?

[vdistinctive]

Eliot nodded, sighing heavily. "I know, man. This ain't even close to somethin' you've ever experienced before, right? And hell, you got no reason to trust me. None at all. You want to leave, I'm not going to stop you. But it ain't gonna make any more sense out there. And I will help you if you let me."

[geniuswithasmartphone]

"Help me out how?" Noah asked, suspicious. "...Suh."

It was obviously tacked on at the end.

[vdistinctive]

That was a good question.

"Explainin' things," Eliot offered. "Gettin' you some clothes, since you don't seem to have shown up with any. Some food." He offered a tentative smile. "I'm a pretty good cook, and my kitchen's fully stocked. Whatever you wanna ask me for, and if I can't do it, I'll tell you why."

He was reasonably certain that people didn't usually give explanations for things, back during the slave era. At least, not aggressively, explicitly racist ones.

[geniuswithasmartphone]

Those that did were usually pretty racist in their explanations anyway.

"...Why you helpin' me, then?" he asked, taking a gamble. "Law ain't gon' look real kindly on you if'n they think you're helpin' a slave escape."

[vdistinctive]

"Well hell. I ain't never had much care what the law thought of me anyway."

His accent was just getting thicker, talking to someone with a similar accent of their own. If he were wearing a hat he'd be tipping it.

[geniuswithasmartphone]

"White folks been hung for it," Noah pointed out.

He didn't get into what happened to the slaves as well.

[vdistinctive]

"Ain't even close to what they do to black folks," Eliot said. "And I been threatened with worse."

[geniuswithasmartphone]

Noah kept giving him the look a feral animal might give to a hand that was outstretched to either feed or hit, but slowly nodded. "You parta the Underground?" he asked.

[vdistinctive]

"The what?" Look, Eliot had learned about a lot of underground political movements in his time, and without the word "railroad" attached, runaway slaves wasn't the first thing he thought of. "Right. I, uh. No. I ain't affiliated with anyone else."

He could have liked, he supposed. But it wasn't as though he could offer a lot of concrete detail to this guy about running north in the 19th century. Besides, Noah probably had enough people doing that already.

[geniuswithasmartphone]

"So you jes' some random do-gooder that helps out every Negro what wakes up naked in bed with you an' some angry white lady?"

That slipped out before he thought. Dammit, he was supposed to be better at playing the part of a cowed slave!

[vdistinctive]

"This whole situation is a first for me, too," Eliot pointed out. "But yes, I try to help out black folks when I see they need it."

[geniuswithasmartphone]

"Well, how I get here, then?" Noah asked. "Last thing I 'member is goin' to Miz Shaw's gatherin'."

[vdistinctive]

Eliot shook his head. "Dunno for sure. Last coupla times this happened I was the one who got swapped out -- uh, ended up somewhere else." It wasn't quite what happened, but Eliot wasn't looking to explain to anyone that they weren't real, they were just someone else who'd been transformed for the weekend. "Best answer I can give ain't much of one at all: magic."