LOG: HARTFORD UNIVERSITY LIBRARY, HARTFORD, CONNECTICUT TERRITORY, SEPTEMBER

  Lee hauls themself out of bed as soon as the fever breaks, and only manages to lump around the barracks for a single day before they’re demanding to be taken back out to the library. Cygnus hesitates when Basil meets him at the villa entrance with another Hastings in tow, his handsome face looking uncharacteristically daunted.

  “What’s up? You okay?” Basil asks him, because it’s some kind of professionalism thing that Cygnus never makes a peep until Basil corners him into it.

  “Will Merrill be taking you to the library, now?” Cygnus asks cautiously.

  “You can take us both, big boy,” Lee says, their voice still hoarse. “I’m not gonna be much use right now unless Connecticut bad guys can get sneezed on to death.”

  “Oh! Uh… sure.” Cygnus gives Lee the kind of wary, baffled look that Basil’s earned his own share of. Whatever model of machismo Hastings men subscribe to, Lee and Basil consistently fall a couple fathoms short.

  But Cygnus, stoic paragon that he is, falls into his usual place at Basil’s shoulder and sticks there with every sign of satisfaction as they make the increasingly-familiar walk through town to the library.

  Lee doesn’t even pretend to stand at attention once they get there, which seems to confuse and reassure Cygnus in equal measure. He hangs around for a minute, frowning at Lee as they pull up a chair and sit down next to Basil, and then gives a familiar little rumbling chuff of manly disapproval in his chest and starts a slow, watchful circuit of the reading room they’ve commandeered.

  Lee wrinkles their nose at his retreating back and gives Basil a look and a quick, questioning hook of their fingers—what’s up with this guy?

  Basil does a sarcastic little salute, rolling his eyes—he takes his soldier stuff that seriously—and Lee makes their own dissatisfied rumble and then sniffs thickly, throws themself back up to their feet and, for the first time, strides over to one of the reference shelves.

  “So,” they say, determinedly casual, and hunt down the shelf, tracing a finger down the spines of the books. “I got really fuckin’ bored while I was storm docked.”

  “Okay?” says Basil.

  “Bored enough I was looking at cartography.”

  “Uh-huh,” Basil says patiently.

  “Yeah, so,” Lee says, and pulls down a binder, and then an atlas, and then another compilation binder, stacking them under an arm. “We can look up all the numbers we want, but sooner or later we gotta start looking at where to go next, right? Most Hastings troops out in the field’ve got somebody who can draw up paper maps, because the digital ones are pretty fucked out here. There’s satellites, but half of them are fried or worn out or knocked out of orbit or just fuckin’ stolen, and drone cams are fragile.”

  “Okay,” Basil says again, but with interest this time. He doesn’t usually have interests that overlap with Lee’s, he hasn’t heard them work through a problem, but he knows the tone their brother uses when he does it. “Yeah, even if the satellites are still up there they’re ancient, you should see the chains I have to ping to call back home.”

  “Yeah!” says Lee, and continues down the line, examining the atlases intently. “Plus, even if they were brand new, all the people rich enough to get a whole compound load up on antimemetic tech—”

  “Antimemetech?”

  “Sure. You fuckin’ nerd. Anyway, they gotta make sure nothing with a computer brain or glass eyes can spot them or tell anybody where they are, so. Cryptocartography. They can redact as much territory as they want, but if you sneak in and draw a map and then run back to base before they can catch you, all the processing power in the world can’t touch you.”

  “That sounds…” Basil considers the land they traveled through to get from New Orleans to Connecticut, and concludes, “…hazardous.”

  “I mean it’s not a walk on the Versailles,” Lee says, and tucks the next book under their massive arm, reaching up for another one. “But it’s pretty fuckin’ cool! Hastings archivists are always buying and copying paper maps and atlases, and college towns like this one have tons of maps, professional and civilian—‘vernacular,’ I mean—by date and territory, and I was thinking if we can lay out enough paper maps, and there’s digital ones to compare to, and we can see the places that are blanked out—”

  “Oh, shit, okay,” Basil says, caught up in Lee’s breathless enthusiasm, and scoots his swamp of books and papers down the table to let Lee set their much more modest stack down. He’s spent so much time trying to trace the man’s business, looking into financial agreements and trafficking economics and lykoi-run companies, he almost forgot about maps and locations, tracking him down to the building where they can actually find Rich.

  “I dunno how much I can help,” Lee starts, and Basil shakes his head and leans over to bump his shoulder against theirs. Lee snorts, and opens a book of hand-drawn maps—vernacular, Basil is going to guess. Pencil, pen, even a photo print-out of one that had been scratched into a square of some kind of pale bark, each with a little set of coordinates printed neatly in the corner.

  “What kind of differential overlay are you using?” Basil asks. “To collate your raw data.”

  “Differ-what?” Lee asks.

  “You use overlays, don’t you? You were a courier. You needed to check wind speed and target headings, right…? You weren’t just flying raw?”

  “No, what, you just drive places, when you’re a courier. You wing it.”

  “Huh. Okay. Let me see your app suite.”

  Lee grimaces dramatically but taps their palm and rummages around in their implants’ directories. The screen they finally turn around and show him is deeply underwhelming.

  “This is just a personnel managing suite… full of girls.”

  “Excuse me for getting enough action that I need to organize it.”

  “You’re excused. Okay, open up for a transfer link, I’ll give you the intern suite of overlays you’ll need for crunching this kind of data. If you’re going to be comparing a lot of different kinds of maps over time… let’s see…”

  Basil gets them settled with a basic differential overlay, the kind he uses for comparing and contrasting densely tangled code, so Lee will be able to usefully aggregate all the maps they can scan. They probably don't have anything like their brother’s massively overdeveloped implant architecture, but they’re likely to be just as physically sturdy, so a couple hours of straightforward data caching and tagging isn’t going to give them so much as a headache.

  “Good?” he says when he’s done, and Lee flexes their fingers and shuffles their screens and then gives him a fierce, ready grin that’s nothing like their brother at all.

  “Good,” they say, and flip open a binder of paper scans, huge hands delicate with the fragile pages. “Come on, smart guy. Let’s get busy.”

  –

  Scene 23: Compound grounds.

  Rich looks tired the next morning: worn thin and subdued. The circles under his eyes are a dull plum-grey like smudged ink on cream paper, oddly dirty for such an anxiously clean man. He paces restlessly around the bedroom while Rafael pulls himself awake and gets dressed, but everything’s already so pristine he can’t even pretend to neaten anything further. Even the small marble bust of Shakespeare now perched beside the fruit bowl is perfectly squared with the edges of the bedside table.

  “You couldn’t sleep?” Rafael asks, touching Rich's elbow hesitantly as he completes another circuit of the room.

  Rich just shakes his head. “Nothing to drink, so. I get nightmares. Didn’t want to hurt you or anything.”

  “Oh.” Rafael chews this over. “Yesterday didn’t… help?”

  Rich shakes his head again, does another loop of the room, as tense and huge and relentless as a caged bear.

  “It was nice,” is all he says. “You were great.”

  He doesn’t say “but…” He doesn’t have to. The way he sighs and goes back to pacing speaks it as loudly as words ever could.

  “This fucking place,” he says after a moment or two, bleakly.

  His tense misery seems to suffuse the very air; Sol is terse at breakfast and viciously strict at swordplay, and it’s well that Connor arrives with his own half-frantic, hungry playfulness to demand his daily exercises, because Rafael is a few more scolding chastisements from bashing Signore King’s beautifully sculpted face in with a stray brick.

  The game of chase is desperate and breathless, and Rafael finds himself drawn along in it, despite his own laggard legs and failing breath. By the time Rich and Connor have run themselves out, Rafael has long since exhausted himself, and Rich jogs up to find him lying slumped at the bank of an ornamental pond, numbly contemplating a lazily-circling decorative fish.

  “Overdid it again, huh?” Rich murmurs, and helps him up. “You wanna go back to our bunk?”

  “Maybe to clean up,” Rafael says, and fingers self-consciously at the stark brown stain of mud along his tight white halter-top. “I’ll be fit for work, though, you know I wouldn’t leave you to it on your own.”

  Rich smiles at him like the sun. “You’re great,” he says, and ducks down to press a kiss to Rafael’s temple. Rafael abruptly realizes he’s got mud dried across half his face, as well as his shirt, and that Rich is holding him at a careful remove.

  “I’ll walk,” Rafael reassures him.

  “Oh, well, I was gonna change anyway,” Rich says gamely, but the stiff caution on his face paints an entirely different picture. His own pale skin shows only the green of grass stains along his bare feet and shins, and he pauses at the door to fish up another hidden packet of wipes, and meticulously scrubs away even that.

  “If you grew up on boats,” Rafael starts, then realizes he has no way to finish the sentence without being incredibly rude.

  Rich glances back at him, quizzical, his huge hands absently folding the little wipe in half, then to quarters, then dropping it into a uselessly ornate waste bin. “Yeah?”

  “Is that why you’re so…” Rafael hesitates again, then hazards, “…clean?”

  Rich just laughs, low and rueful. “No, not really,” he says. “That’s just because I’m neurotic. Trimmer says, anyway. My—my best friend. The Sympatico, the boat I picked up most of my bad habits on, it was filthy. The Fleet is a good place, you know, but there's still, uh, cracks people fall through. Bad places guys can end up, and this was… Shit excuse for a captain, dysfunctional crew, broken AI, and we did engine repair, so y’know—lotta grease, oil, dust, metal shavings, grit, just, everything. It all just built up, and it’d get everywhere, and if you had to—” his strong jaw sets, his massive shoulders bunch, and he continues tersely, “—to kneel in it. It’d stain your knees, your hands. The smell would just dig into you, into your head, you know? You’d just feel dirty and gross all over, even on the inside. So I kept my berth as clean as I could, just to stay sane.” He huffs a soft almost-laugh and deliberately shrugs off the tension. “If you ask Trimmer, it didn’t work so good. But… we do what we can with what we’ve got. Uh. Especially when we don’t have much.”

  Rafael can’t bear it anymore: he takes a quick step forward, and wraps his arms around one of Rich’s, pressing his face to Rich’s shoulder.

  “I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Aw, hey,” Rich sighs, and gently palms the back of Rafael’s head. “It’s okay. I’m okay.”

  Rafael gives a disbelieving snort, and feels Rich’s chest shake in a silent answering laugh. Neither of them are anything like okay.

  “So you’ve been somewhere like here before,” Rafael says. “You’ve been through this—this degradation before.”

  “No. I mean, maybe. I don’t know. I get to eat as much as I want here, and everything's beautiful, and about as clean as landside gets. Company’s nicer, too.” Rich’s broad, hard palm gently rubs the back of Rafael’s head, then his neck. “It could be worse. C’mon, let’s get you washed up. You’ll feel better.”

  Being clean does make Rafael feel better, although the soft heat of the shower makes it increasingly hard to stay awake. He finds himself leaning against the wall with his eyes shut, face turned up into the spray, and it takes a force of will to tear himself away, knowing what’s waiting for him.

  Rich works quickly and quietly this morning, with a frantic focus even before Carraway arrives in the office to join them. His eyes are even brighter for the painful shadows under them, and they dart desperately from screen to screen like he’s looking for something and constantly, endlessly failing to find it.

  For want of anything better to do, Rafael looks too. He’s organizing notes and memos today, and names keep popping up that he’s familiar with, though it’s been a few years since he’s heard them. He used to try to keep up with what politics he could, put faces to names to motivations, struggle to piece together an understanding of what was going on outside his gilded cage. What sort of challenges his troupe might be facing, out in the world… He doesn’t even know if his troupe is still together, nearly five years after he was plucked from it. Hubris to imagine it fell apart without him. Naive to imagine nothing could have happened to it…

  Carraway arrives then, and Rafael glances up at the sound of the door opening and then goes still, uncertain. Even Carraway himself is unsmiling this morning; his jaw is tightly-set, his usual warm, self-assured smile is entirely absent. He looks… older, wearier, than Rafael is used to seeing him. He doesn’t say a word to either of them, just strides silently to his desk and settles down, knuckles at one of his eyes as though he rested as poorly as Rich did, and then pulls up a screen and starts picking at it. He’s wearing his claws on both hands this morning.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  “Good… morning, sir,” says Rich uncertainly. Rafael tries to shoot Rich a prohibitive look, but Rich is looking at Carraway, not paying attention, his big, pale hands knotted up uncertainly on the desk. “Are you, uh…”

  Carraway pauses, claws going still on his screen. He doesn’t look over, but there’s a tightness to his jaw and his narrow yellow eyes that sends cold dread up Rafael’s spine. Only rarely is their smiling jailer so grim, so tense and sleepless; on those days the games have always been crueler and the rewards entirely absent.

  “Rich,” Rafael says very softly, and this time Rich looks at him and catches Rafael’s look of wide-eyed warning.

  “Sorry sir,” Rich says quickly. “I sent you the budget summary, sir.”

  Carraway doesn’t acknowledge the news, but he starts moving again and doesn’t throw anyone to Sandgren either. Rafael breathes out, clenches his hands until they stop trembling, and then puts his head down and goes back to work.

  He doesn’t feel like he’s being very productive, despite his best efforts. Every time Rafael moves too quickly, or Rich shifts his weight in his creaking chair, Carraway’s head twitches in their direction and his clawed hands pause again, curling and clenching like he’s ready to tear someone’s throat out. Rafael is wound so tightly, so hyper-aware of the man’s every move, he can barely focus enough to read his own screen.

  The shock is almost a relief when, finally, Carraway shoves his chair back and stalks over to a locked cabinet in the corner of the room, pressing a finger to the face of the heavy, austere lock and reaching within to shift something inside with a distinct, heavy clunk of glass.

  Rich’s head jerks sharply up. Carraway takes no notice, only closes the cabinet and returns to his desk with a pair of dark bottles in hand. Sets them down, pries the top off of one with his metal claws and throws back several heavy swallows of it.

  Rich’s throat works as he watches, his tongue darts out to wet his lips. Rafael reaches over to tap his knee, trying to get his attention before he’s caught staring; Rich waves a hand absently at him, an empty gesture of acknowledgement with no attention behind it. Caught in an agony of uncertainty, Rafael hesitates, then flinches back to his own place as Carraway lowers the bottle and looks over at them.

  “You look dry, treasure,” he says, and Rich shifts eagerly in his seat even as Rafael's stomach drops sickeningly. It's clear to see the bloodsport of the day, just as it's clear that Rich will be helpless to withstand it. The look in his green eyes when he said nothing to drink, so I get nightmares was so tense as to be almost wild, and he paced the room as if trapped there, fixing every detail over and over again…

  “This what you need, sweet thing?” Carraway says, and there’s a naked edge of cruelty in his voice, not hidden as he usually keeps it but bare and gleaming as a drawn sword. He raises the bottle between them and swirls it slowly, watching Rich’s face, drinking in his pained, hungry eyes and the way his hand is clenched on the arm of his chair as a shipwrecked man might cling to a scrap of wood. In his own way, Carraway seems as thirsty for it as Rich does for the liquor.

  “You need something to take the edge off?”

  “Yessir,” says Rich, low and tight, carefully restrained. Carraway gives a brief, sharp snarl of a laugh and settles back in his chair, takes another long drink. The office is quiet as he lowers the bottle and considers it thoughtfully.

  Then he says, “Come here then,” and Rich is already moving, hurrying over to stand by the desk, hands pressed nervously to his thighs, shoulders hunched as if he wants to make himself smaller.

  “You too, doll,” says Carraway, and Rafael’s heart jumps up into his mouth when those yellow eyes seek him out. He does his best to approach gracefully, not to run just because that gaze is fixed on him, but it’s a difficult urge to master. It doesn’t ease his unhappy heart at all that even when he stands by Rich’s elbow, Rich barely notices him.

  “Here,” says Carraway, and Rafael steps forward smartly to his beckoning hand, allowing no flicker of his uncertainty past the mask of pleasant attentiveness. He finds himself pulled into the man’s lap, the needle-sharp points of five metal claws prickling his hip. More surprising, and even more unwelcome, Carraway lifts the bottle to him and taps the rim of it against Rafael’s lips in unspoken command.

  It burns going down: heavy bourbon, a fiery ache all the way to his stomach. Rafael swallows with an effort, and is forced to swallow again before Carraway takes the bottle away, and then has to cough, gasping, eyes watering hard. Carraway laughs at him unkindly, stroking his side in a mockery of comfort. “How’s it taste, sweetheart?” he says.

  “It’s—strong, sir,” Rafael manages, and swallows again, roughly. “Th—hha. Thank you.” He can feel Rich’s eyes on him, on the bottle, yearning for it, and he feels the strange urge to apologize even as the drink churns like a volcano in his stomach. This was not his choice, not his fault, any more than any other time he’s been forced to torment Rich for Carraway’s approval. Still, the guilt burns as deeply as the drink, and brings the same hot sting to his eyes.

  “I-I think,” Rafael manages, with a swell of suicidal bravery. “I think Rich would appreciate it—more than I would, sir.”

  “Mm,” says Carraway, and presses the bottle to Rafael’s lips again. He only gives a sip this time, and Rafael manages without coughing, but he has little tolerance for strong drink and already he feels heat-flushed and disoriented. And still Rich watches.

  “Mr Carraway,” Rich says in his low, gentle rumble, tight with misery and need. “Please, sir?”

  “Alright, alright,” Carraway says, and Rafael blinks his stinging eyes to see Rich pulled down next to the chair, kneeling. Carraway threads his fingers through Rich’s vivid hair, stroking it back absently, and this time despite Rich’s hard

  flinch he makes no motion to remove his wicked silver claws. Rich bears it, trembling with tension, motionless as the very tips of the blades trace the curve of his skull and the nape of his neck.

  Carraway doesn’t torment him for long. As soon as the claws are drawn away and the bottle offered in its turn, Rich takes it eagerly and clutches it to his chest. He looks up at Carraway hopefully, and he must see some sign in the man’s face because a moment later he’s tipping it back, drinking long and deep, draining a startling amount of the bottle before he’s able to pull himself away. He gives a rough noise of relief as he does, gasps for breath and blinks hard, and Carraway gives one of his low, hungry growls in return, claws stinging as they dig into Rafael’s side.

  “Thank you sir,” Rich says, and shifts his grip uncertainly on the bottle, as if he’s wondering if he should hand it back. Carraway takes the second bottle from his desk and tugs the top roughly off it, barely even looking at him. Takes a drink. Gestures for Rich to do the same.

  For a long while that’s all the sound in the office; the clink of glass, the soft exhale as each man drinks in silence. Rafael is left largely alone except for the occasional deep, unwilling draught from Carraway’s bottle. He can only be drinking a fraction of what Rich and Carraway are, but it’s more than enough to make his head swim and his face heat.

  At long last, as Carraway nears the bottom of his bottle, he finally speaks again. His voice is very soft, but abrupt and startling in its mildness, as if he’s addressing some point of conversation they only briefly let lapse.

  “You been to war yet, treasure?” he asks.

  Rafael goes still, and trades a fast, unsettled look with Rich.

  “No, sir,” Rich says, very cautiously.

  “Right, right. I remember now. That Fleet of yours minds its own business…” Carraway nods slowly to himself, takes another drink. Rich follows suit. He seems to be trying to ration himself, stretching out the remnant at the bottom of his bottle, although he must know that’s a futile effort at this point. His paper-white cheeks are washed over with pink, deepening as the minutes go by.

  “You’ve been blooded, though, haven’t you?” Carraway probes, just as mildly. “Don’t tell me you got those scars of yours from paper cuts.”

  Rich goes very tense, his broad jaw setting in obvious discomfort. Rafael shifts, takes a deep breath and then curses himself for it when that brings Carraway’s attention to him yet again, the bottle tapping meaningfully against his lips. This draught has a different flavor, softer and much sweeter, but it’s no less painful to swallow, and Rafael is almost too distracted by getting his coughing fit under control to hear Rich’s answer.

  “Yes, sir,” Rich says in a low voice, like the words are being dragged from him. “I’ve been in some fights. Sir.” He doesn’t require prompting this time to drink, and lingers on it, savoring it, before he has to lower the bottle again.

  “Mm.” Carraway glances down, a brief flash of interest in the twitch of one brow. “Any kills?”

  Rich twitches all over. “No,” he says, sharp and hard, and Rafael draws a fast breath as Carraway tenses, grip hardening, claws digging at his skin.

  “—Sir,” Rich finishes, rough and fast, and ducks his head, miserable remorse in every line of his body. I’m sorry, don’t hurt us. “No, sir. There was a real bad fight, once. I think I hurt some people really bad, on my way down. I’m too big, and I get scared… But if I’d ever hurt anybody so bad it couldn't be fixed… They’d have run me aground. And they didn't. They didn't. I’m still… I’ve never killed.”

  “Mm,” Carraway says again, and his grip on Rafael relaxes. Rough fingerpads drag over Rafael’s stinging skin, a brutal mockery of a caress. “Not such a smart thing to brag on, boy, leavin’ your enemies alive behind you. I never much liked leaving loose ends, myself.”

  “Yes, sir,” Rich murmurs. “I’ve noticed that about you, sir.”

  Carraway gives a terrible, amused little hah, and drinks again. “Aren't you diplomatic today, treasure. I’ve heard that Hastings aren’t considered full-grown men until they’ve been to war. You’re not finished until then, not a real player in the game, don’t own yourselves, somethin' like that. Did I hear right?”

  “I don’t give a shit, sir,” Rich says bluntly. “S’all Hastings stuff, it’s, it’s fucking stupid. Fightin’ and hurtin’ people doesn't prove you can do anythin’ useful, and it sure doesn't prove you're grown up. That’s what there is to get right. Sir.”

  “I don't need your sweet-talkin’ but I won't take your lip, doll,” Carraway says with a quiet snarl under the words. “I let you have a drink now and then because I know how you need it, but I don’t feel like letting you make a mouthy fool of yourself on my dollar.”

  “Yes, sir. Sorry, sir.”

  Rafael’s head is a disjointed mess by now, sodden with drink, but he tries to say, “Sir—he really is—” only Carraway jiggles him impatiently and he finds himself reeling mutely back against the man’s broad chest. God, he’s hot, boiling from the inside.

  “I’ve been full fuckin’ grown since I was seventeen, sir,” Rich says slowly. “Worked m’ass off, passed all my exams t’graduate my internship a year early, scored’n adult’s placement on a fuckin’ nightmare that lasted four goddamn years.” His strange accent’s thicker now, like it gets when he’s tired or excited, consonants slushed together and vowels oddly inflected. He shakes his head back and forth, eyes trained on the last scrim of liquid in his bottle.

  “I did good work,” he says. He looks up at Carraway, and there’s fire in his eyes and a mountain’s strength in the stubborn set of his jaw. “Even in hell, I do good work. Sir. That’s what being an adult means. You don’t lie down and die just because you hate what’s happening. Just because you didn't mean to wind up… where you got to. Doesn't matter. You gotta do the work that needs doing. And I do.”

  “Well, then,” Carraway says softly, and holds his nearly-empty bottle out towards Rich’s. “I’ll drink to that.”

  Rich’s broad mouth quirks up at both sides, and it transforms his strange, rough-hewn face as beautifully as it ever has: renders it sweet and lovely and alive, and Rafael sees the way it hits Carraway, the intent thoughtful regard in his eyes, and hates him all the more fiercely for it. The bottles click together, and both men tilt theirs back.

  “One more, I think…” Carraway says, dropping his empty bottle carelessly in the wastebasket to the side of his desk. Rich places his down by his side with the last mouthful of whiskey still gilding the very bottom, then sits there at taut attention while Carraway gets up, Rafael tucked absently in one arm, and walks with a rolling gait back over to his cabinet. His stride has none of Rich's careful, gliding control; Rafael clutches on to Carraway’s shirtfront, desperately hoping the swooping lightness in his stomach and the reeling vertigo in his head won’t transition to nausea. Carraway gets out another bottle and brings it back to his desk, and Rafael breathes out a silent, shaky sigh when the man sits down and settles Rafael in the relative stability of his lap again.

  “Look at me, treasure,” Carraway says, and he takes the front of Rich’s shirt, jerks sharply to pull Rich around so he can examine the man’s face. Rafael twitches at the suddenness of the motion, over-stretched nerves humming like plucked strings forced to some harsh chord. It’s uncharacteristically bold to manhandle Rich so blatantly, to be so forceful with him—but then, Rich is well-flushed with his drink now, the sturdy marble pillars of his limbs sliding loose from their foundations, falling to ruin. He catches himself on one heavy arm against Carraway’s desk with a loud thump of impact, and it’s the first clumsy motion that Rafael can remember seeing him make. Even when he was bolting in a panic the other day, he brought himself over the desk with perfect grace.

  “Sir,” Rich says, uncertain and apologetic. He shifts his weight—not so much bracing himself as calculating his own position—and tugs cautiously back against Carraway’s hold on his shirtfront. When Carraway makes a small chiding noise and holds him in place, he subsides, looking lost.

  “Always so scared of your own size, aren’t you,” Carraway murmurs, and pulls him forward and upward. “Come here, sweet thing, don’t be shy…”

  For a moment Rafael is crushed uncomfortably between two huge, hard bodies, and then Rich makes a muffled, apologetic noise and shifts again, catching the arms of Carraway’s chair and holding himself stiffly away from Rafael as he lets Carraway have his mouth.

  Rafael closes his eyes dizzily, takes careful, steady breaths, and loses himself for minutes at a time. He never had much tolerance for drink, never cared for it, but he's familiar with the hot, forgetful oblivion of a blackout and the way it presses at the edges of his mind. He mustn't lose control of himself, not here, not now. It's far too dangerous…

  The heavy bodies shift around him, and the motion that would once have tipped Rafael neatly onto his feet sends him sliding down someone's front instead, grabbing for a handhold he doesn't find, tumbling sidelong and graceless to the floor. He hits his arm against the side of the desk and curls around it, gasping at the muted throb of pain.

  The room’s a blurry, swimming confusion, but he can make out Carraway and Rich looking down at him, and he flounders in embarrassment before finding his way to his knees again.

  “Sorry, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to,” he says, tongue loud and clumsy, and it comes out in the wrong accent, the cut-glass Queen’s English more suitable for Ren Faires than whatever use he's now to be put to. “Sorry, there, that’s better,” he says again, and gets it right this time, pleasantly precise nothing-English, newscaster standard. They used to call it Mid-Atlantic, a century ago…

  “I forgot, you used to do voices,” Carraway says, and he sounds amused. “Awful cute.”

  He’s got Rich between his legs, the open bottle in the hand that isn’t in Rich’s red hair, all of him tawny gold and brown and russet against the rose-red and white of Rich’s body, and Rafael is terrified he’s going to need to throw up. He doesn’t feel sick yet, but god he’s so drunk. He needs to get them out of here.

  “Sir, can I please, can I just—can I—” he mumbles, and pushes vaguely at Rich’s shoulder. As if he could push Rich away to take his place. As if he’d actually want to of his own accord. He ends up half draped over Rich’s forearm and loses track of what he was trying to do in the rush of comfort and longing to just stay right where he is, breathing the reassuring salt-and-soap scent of Rich’s body underneath the poisonously sweet tang of bourbon.

  “I don’t think he can suck a dick like this?” Rich rumbles uncertainly. “Man, he’s wasted.”

  “I can,” Rafael argues. “I don’t, I’m not—” his thrice-damned accent’s slipped again, L.A intelligencia, Silicon royalty. “I can suck any dick I want,” he says haughtily, in the exact tone of a West Coast techno-godking.

  Rich starts laughing. That wasn’t the intent, but Rafael’s ruined heart lifts anyway, and he finds himself laughing along, so hard it hurts his stomach and leaves him gasping. He can suck any dick he damn well wants to.

  “Sir, can we put him t’bed?” Rich asks. “S’gonna be a big fuckin’ mess if we let him get anythin’ down his throat.”

  “Mm. I don’t know about that, sweetheart, he does look nice down there.” A big clawed hand cups the back of Rafael’s head, teases warm silver over his lips. Rafael obediently opens his mouth for it, feels a wet streak of drool spill down his chin. He hates this, how off-balance and sloppy he’s gotten, like he’s clinging to possession of his own body by increasingly numb fingertips.

  “S’rr,” he slurs, his tongue working against the claw pressing his lips to his teeth. The sting it draws is very distant, little more than an abstract heat. “Sngh.”

  “You used to have more hair,” Carraway muses, and his own accent's turned thicker, intoxication slowing his drawl much as it thickens Rich's slurring. Indolent with ownership, as the knife-edges of his claws pick through Rafael's short-clipped curls.

  "Gave a man somethin' to hold on to," says Carraway, and the blades of his claws leave stinging lines across Rafael's scalp as he makes a fist, trying for purchase. Clicking his tongue in distant disappointment. "…Pity."

  Time slips a little, or possibly the room does: Rafael gets the impression of being slumped back against Rich’s side, draped uncomfortably over a broad thigh. Rich’s chest and shoulders are moving rhythmically, there’s wet noises—he pulls back with a final gasp, pants for breath a few moments, and Rafael blinks hazily awake to see him pounding back the second bottle Carraway brought him, all the rest in one long draught.

  “Good boy,” Carraway says, low and slow and pleased. “You want another?”

  “Yeah, yes, sir, if you’ll gimme—whatever you c’n gimme, please—”

  “Arm out, sugar. I don’t want you passin’ out on me like your little helper did.”

  “‘Kay. Okay.”

  The desk drawer opens, closes. Rich makes a soft, achingly lovely sound of pleasure as Carraway licks the snowy underside of his wrist, then smooths the patch on.

  “This oughta keep you up,” Carraway says.

  “And—Rafael, can we—please—”

  “One for him, too?”

  “No! No, I mean, th’couch, can I please put him t’bed, sir? Please, he’s out, he’s done, I don’t wanna squash him…”

  “Are you sure? We could wake him up easy, you know. Get you some attention down there.”

  “I’m sure, I want, I jus’ want him safe, sir, please don’t try’n make me hurt him, I’m not safe for the little guys like this, please?”

  “It’s not the end of the world if you leave a couple bruises, sweet thing. One of these days you'll stop being scared of your own shadow…”

  “Okay. But please?”

  “Alright, alright. Make it quick.”

  Rich scoops Rafael up immediately and carries him in a couple staggering strides across the room. He catches himself against the wall over the couch with a huge thump, drops Rafael into an inelegant sprawl.

  “Be safe, okay,” Rich tells him, and pats the side of his face and neck with a hand that feels like getting smacked with a damp leather suitcase.

  “What?” Rafael says, still trying to process the sudden change of location. But Rich is gone, and the couch has a really difficult local gravity. Try as he might, Rafael can’t get out of it, and subsides, breathing unevenly. He’ll just close his eyes for a minute. Just to get his bearings.

  Smashwords as well as your (but not Amazon yet except for After the Storm), under the series title, Stories From The Michigan Fleet. If you missed book one, After the Storm, you can . And check out our !