LOG: BEAKER VILLA, HARTFORD, AUGUST

  Lee and Basil are left inside the gates of Madam Beaker’s villa for what feels like an eternity, but according to Basil’s implants is actually eight minutes. Lee keeps it together surprisingly well in that time, even though when a strutting peacock wanders fearlessly up to them and tries to peck their boots, Basil is pretty sure they barely restrain themself from punting the thing across the yard.

  …Basil’s arm prosthesis is itchy, in the weird way where it’s the flesh around the neural connectors itching and so the sensation carries all the way down the forearm and into his hand. He was already overdue for a cleaning when he took his emergency leave and headed landside, and he hasn’t had much of a chance to air it out, let alone do any maintenance. Even on the Fleet he was a little self-conscious about it, even though most people there just wanted to know more about the custom build Basil put together—could it access his implant screens, how was it so dextrous, did he have the schematics.

  Out here, when people stare it feels a lot less friendly. So the brace and the work glove stay on, even though it’s humid inside there, and the protective plates aren’t hermetically sealed, and it itches.

  At least there’s plenty to look at to distract himself. The house is just as ornate as it looked from outside the walls. The entrance is under a completely unnecessary marble awning held up by big stupid columns, with a ridiculous dangling chandelier hanging from it, and there are more twining peacocks on the front door.

  Basil is staring absently at the design, trying to figure out what about it is making him uneasy, when the door opens and a woman with a familiar intimidating, wall-broad build and a face like a disapproving statue steps outside, and Lee lets out a full-throated snarl and charges.

  Helen Bane kicks the door shut behind her and lowers her stance, and they slam into each other with a force that makes Basil flinch, jittering in place and completely out of his depth. It feels like he should help, but the Hastings in the security booth just stepped out to loom behind his shoulder, and Lee and their mom are growling like two furious dragons.

  It’s over before he can make up his mind. Lee knows how to fight, Basil knows they do—he’s heard both them and Rich talk about Lee’s weekends spent at the very unofficial Mall fight clubs and wrestling rings. But apparently there’s a difference between fighting for fun and show and being a Hastings soldier on active duty. Bane breaks the grapple they’re in, does some kind of practiced move, and slams Lee face-down on the ground with their arm twisted up behind their back.

  “Commander?” says the woman at the security booth. She doesn’t look concerned so much as entertained, staring shamelessly from Commander Bane to her kid and back again.

  “Back to your post,” says Commander Bane, and puts a knee on Lee’s back, riding out their snarling and struggling. “Angela, settle down.”

  Lee’s so startled they actually stop struggling for a second—then they give another roar and do their absolute best to rip their own arm out of its socket to get loose.

  “I’m not Angie!” they snarl. “You can’t even tell—You just left, you bitch, what’s wrong with you?! You’re just hanging out in some landside asshole’s yard?! We thought you were dead!”

  “You thought I was—” Commander Bane starts, marble-white forehead wrinkling, and then grunts as Lee almost wrenches their arm free. “Athena, stop that. What are you doing here?”

  “Dad’s dead,” Lee says viciously, and Basil can see that they’re hoping it’s a surprise and hoping it hurts. Commander Bane thins her lips and breathes out through her nose.

  “Yes,” she says, clipped and flat. “I’m aware. And I’m also aware that isn’t why you’ve found me. No daughter of Finn’s would take this many years to hunt down someone who’s on an easily-accessible continental registry.”

  “Uh,” says Basil, a much smaller noise than he meant to make. Commander Bane doesn’t even notice him.

  “I can’t fucking believe you,” Lee snarls into the finely-kept lawn, and Commander Bane gives a brief, frustrated grimace.

  “Finn knew I left under my own power,” she says. “He damn well knew why, too. What do you mean, you thought I was dead?”

  “I mean he told us you were dead!” Lee snaps, and tugs at their arms again, with no visible effect. “Maybe he knew it’d hurt less thinking you were dead than knowing you abandoned us!”

  Commander Bane doesn’t answer right away, and she’s a lot better at hiding how she feels than Rich is, but not good enough Basil can’t tell that shot hit home.

  “I had to,” she says harshly. “A good commander knows when she isn’t the woman for the job.”

  Lee makes a noise of breathless disbelieving rage. “The job?! Bullshit—”

  Commander Bane whacks them on the side of the head. Lee goes momentarily frozen and silent in shock, and then gives a thundering roar of renewed rage.

  “Stop that,” Commander Bane snaps again, moving to haul Lee up on their knees with their arm still locked behind them, and shakes them briskly. “You’re old enough to know sometimes we have to do things we don’t want to, to do what’s right for our family.”

  Lee growls low and bitter through their gritted teeth. “Yeah, sure, it was so fuckin’ noble how you ditched Dad and three kids.”

  “I knew how to raise soldiers, not children,” Commander Bane says soberly. Carefully. “Angie was already… overstrained, by the time I realized I wasn’t qualified. Seven years old and every time I so much as raised a hand to Finn she’d go and hit me with a chair.”

  Lee’s eyes widen, then narrow again, a colder, harsher judgment under the flashpaper rage. Basil, already ignored on the sidelines, winces and tries to make himself even less conspicuous, stomach turning over. It’s unsurprising, in a horrible way; everybody knows landside people don’t get raised right, they can be traumatized, they can lash out sometimes—and it’s not like Fleet-born couples can’t turn out seriously fucked up too, but. Somebody Commander Bane’s size getting violent with their partner could do a lot of damage.

  “She was starting to make weapons when she thought I couldn't see,” Commander Bane goes on, “and guard the two of you against me as well. I couldn't even give you a bath without her climbing in the tub with a hammer and the bravest little glare… I would have been proud of that from a girl five years older, but… it wasn't right. Finn knew it, I knew it, the whole damn Fleet knew it. And it isn't wrong for a Hastings mother to choose to leave her children to the care of any society she sees fit to raise them. I gave you three to the Lady Michigan, until any of you chose to follow your blood back to me.”

  “The only blood I’m following is my brother’s,” Lee snarls. “But gimme a chair and I’ll hit you all you want. Lemme loose.”

  Commander Bane lets them go and steps back sharply. Lee gets to their feet, rubbing their shoulder and scowling, and the two look at each other warily.

  “Then why now, Athena Merrill?” Commander Bane asks. “Not you nor your brother nor your sister so much as opened my messages all these years, and now all of a sudden you’re ambushing me in person. What are you looking for, if not me?”

  “Okay well one: none of us even knew the Hastings forum was a thing, so we didn’t get your messages,” Lee says. “Next time you jump ship on your kids maybe you should send a fucking postcard! Two: you can call me Lee, actually, gender neutral. And three: Rich is in trouble and I need to get him back from wherever he went. I thought maybe you could help with that. If you felt like it. Mom.”

  Commander Bane frowns, runs her hand over the short red fuzz of her scalp. She has knuckle tattoos that say SING, MUSE in a Gothic font, which is the least violent tattoo Basil’s seen on a Hastings since he came landside.

  She says, “Alright. Okay. And you brought your boyfriend along?”

  “What? Oh. That’s Rich’s boyfriend. He brought me along, technically.”

  Basil waves uncertainly.

  Commander Bane looks him up and down, and some of the iron in her spine and shoulders softens. The smile she gives Basil is startling on her cold, carved-marble face—sad and tired and kind, all at once. Just for a second, she really does look like the kind of woman who would be Rich and Lee’s mother.

  “It sounds like we have a lot to talk about,” she says, and glances up at the doors behind her. “Follow me.”

  –

  The pattern Basil was seeing on Ashleigh Beaker’s doors was a skull, hidden in the tails of the intertwined peacocks.

  He has plenty of time to decipher it; Madam Beaker is out, apparently, and until she comes back they’ve been escorted to a crowded, expensive-smelling sitting room, and there’s a giant, Roman-style mural of the skull-and-peacocks design on the wall between two enormous glass windows. The peacocks twine together, and the eyespots and swirls of feathers look like just decoration, but when Basil unfocuses his eyes the skull fades into view.

  Liam is a beautiful, incredibly volatile little guy. From what Basil’s heard, Liam’s grandma is more… everything. More gorgeous, way more dangerous. Liam hasn’t said a whole lot about her, but what he’s said has been plenty evocative. Skulls hidden in peacock feathers seem pretty on-the-nose as far as metaphors go.

  Basil spends longer than he likes staring at the ostentatious decorations in the sitting room with him, because about two minutes into briefing their mom on the situation, Lee made one too many blatant digs about people cutting and running and now there’s a deeply stupid, painful argument happening, disguised as a polite conversation with a whole lot of extra growling involved.

  In front of the mural of peacocks, there’s a display case holding a skull covered in glittery rhinestones, with a fascinator of audacious peacock feathers. Basil considers it, waiting impatiently for a break in the passive-aggressive comments and half-swallowed growling, and then says, “Hey, quick question: what the fuck does this have to do with getting Rich back from this—werewolf guy?”

  That has the intended effect of getting Commander Bane to finally break eye contact with Lee.

  “Werewolf?” she says sharply.

  “I dug around until I found camera footage I could pull,” says Basil, as patiently as he can considering he was trying to say this five minutes ago and got completely derailed. “Rich and Liam went into one of the expensive boxes at the stadium in Norleans, and left with a really big guy—pointy ears, yellow eyes. We think he’s a—”

  “A lykoi,” says Commander Bane, and there’s a tight pang in Basil’s chest at the familiar sudden shift in her demeanor, tightening back in and going mission-focused like Rich does when someone sets him a task he knows how to do. She says, “That’s not good news.”

  “No, yeah, no,” says Basil. “He never came back to the hotel, and if anybody at the venue knows who all was in that top box, they’re not telling. Katrina—Rich’s hoverboarding coach, she hired a PI, and he got the names of a couple of the rich guys who were up there, but none of them are lykoi.”

  “They wouldn’t be,” says Commander Bane grimly. “Lykoi keep money moving, but not in ways that… Well. They wouldn’t show up on an invite list. The upland south territories have plenty of baseline land wars for territory, and lykoi clans are keeping up with the NPCs beat for beat. Their family alliances are tangled enough, but you’d be hard-pressed to find a lykoi down there that wasn’t part of some kind of rent-a-thug.” She rumbles disapprovingly. “At least the children of Minerva who’re up for hire can leave their business behind after the work is done and the contract is up. Nothing muddies up a garrison like lykoi hires holding clan grudges—”

  “If it’s not mission-critical to know why you’re racist about other mods, maybe we don’t need to get into that part,” Lee says, thank goodness. Their mother frowns and rumbles at them but doesn’t snap back.

  “My point being,” Commander Bane says, “NPCs won’t rat out a wolf, because they know exactly how damn dangerous they can be, and other lykoi aren’t going to be the ones who break five different alliances and twenty different ceasefires to point you at your man.” She rubs a hand back over her shaved scalp, stony face tight and implacable, preoccupied. “You said Madam Beaker’s grandson went with him too, though.”

  “Yeah,” says Basil. He’s been trying really hard not to think about what Liam would do if he found himself kidnapped, especially if he knew Rich was in danger. On the Fleet, Liam’s explosive temper just gets him scolded or talked to by administration sometimes, but everything’s different out here. Dangerous. And the guy they left with was big.

  “This has to be handled carefully,” says Commander Bane. “My employer is a very… direct woman. If she hears a lykoi took her grandson, she’ll have every hired gun from here to the Great Plains at our door, lining up for the biggest weapons money can buy.”

  “So?” says Lee fiercely. “Good! She’s got a million billion silver, right? People are always saying how dangerous rich people are, let her use her big stupid army and all her stupid money for something worthwhile—”

  Commander Bane is looking at them like they just started barking like a selkie. “We’re a domestic security garrison,” she says, when Lee catches that look and grinds to an irritable halt, and it stings sharply how much she sounds like her son when someone tells him their ship AI loves them back, no really. Incredulous and amused, civil but disbelieving. “We don’t have any army.”

  “You just said she can get one!” Lee argues, and then turns their glare on Basil instead when he grimaces. “What?!”

  “New parts, new problems,” Basil says reluctantly, and Commander Bane’s terrifying red eyes turn to him thoughtfully. “I mean, uh. The more things you introduce to a system, the more room there is for error. There’s a threshold where the extra functionality you might get out of patching something for a whole new purpose isn’t worth all the other stuff it’ll break.”

  “Yes,” says Commander Bane slowly. “Something like that, I suppose. Yes, we could hire more troops and try to engage this wolf in outright war. Troops with no cohesion as a unit, outfitted with whatever unfamiliar weapons Madame Beaker can purchase with her millions and billions of silver, with commanders they barely know and don’t respect. Wading into the territory of a dozen different lykoi clans to fight a man with an unknown quantity of alliances, manpower and weaponry, on his home turf. For custody of his valuable hostages.”

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  Lee gets it. Basil can tell, because they don’t answer, just give a low, throbbing growl and cross their arms, nails digging into their own biceps.

  Commander Bane says, “The fact that we haven’t had Madame Beaker’s grandson immediately dropped on our doorstep with an apology letter taped to his chest means this lykoi, whoever he is, thinks he can take us. Which means that either he’s an idiot, or he runs a well-established garrison, most likely with a wide-reaching levy of other lykoi alliances. And the former doesn’t usually manage the latter.” She sits back and blows out a breath, jaw set. “An economic siege might be the best we can hope for, and Madame Beaker isn’t going to want to hear that.”

  “We’ll just have to make a good argument,” says Basil, with a confidence he doesn’t really feel, and Commander Bane gives him that thoughtful look again, more pointed this time.

  “I know why my… why Lee thinks she can—thinks they can be useful on this mission,” she says. “What exactly do you think you can contribute?”

  Nobody’s asked that question yet, including Basil. And unfortunately, for once in this conversation, Lee doesn’t seem interested in derailing to argue. Both of them turning to look at him at the same time is a lot more intimidating than he would have figured.

  “I’m… I’m smart,” he says after a second, and his face goes hot at the shift of Commander Bane’s expression, a slide into something grimly amused and unconvinced. “I’m an Intelligent Systems Technician, I’m good at what I do, and nobody landside was going to believe us Rich was gone, and they wouldn’t help us if they did. Somebody had to do something.”

  Nobody on land has recognized the job title of IST since they left the Fleet, and he’s not expecting it to make much impact, but there’s a flicker of recognition across Commander Bane’s face, and the next look she gives him is a little more thoughtful.

  “Well, we have about an hour before the boss comes back from the shooting range,” she says, and silently shifts the mountain of her body to face his way, turning her full attention on him. It’s like being watched by a tiger. “Alright, smart kid. Why don’t we discuss strategy?”

  –

  Scene 10: Rich's quarters.

  Rafael is vaguely aware of the warm arms around him pulling away, the covers shifting as someone gets up, but sleep swallows him again before he can think about it.

  He wakes to Rich's hand on his shoulder, shaking him gently.

  “Hey, man, it’s seven hundred. You ready to get up?”

  “Mmgh,” Rafael mumbles. “Yes, I'll… be there directly.” Rich pats him and moves away, and Rafael lies there gathering the will to open his eyes, sit up, begin the day. His body is so heavy.

  Somewhere in the middle of trying to make himself get up, he falls asleep again.

  When he next wakes, Rich is standing over him in a broad ray of golden sunlight, with a mug in one hand and the other on Rafael's shoulder.

  “Hey, babe,” Rich says, smiling. “Can you sit up?”

  Rafael blinks at him. “You tried to wake me before, and I fell back asleep. I'm so sorry, I can—nnh.” He can't help groaning as he tries to push himself up. All his muscles ache, his arms and shoulders especially. That's right, Sol and his blasted swordplay.

  “Here you go, you got it,” Rich says, helping him sit up with a hand on his back, and then presses the enormous mug into Rafael’s hands, where it reveals itself to be full to the brim with fresh coffee.

  “You, oh,” says Rafael, touched and sheepish in equal measures. “I'm sorry, you didn't have to go to the trouble—”

  “It wasn't any trouble,” Rich says, stroking his back. “Seemed like you were having a hard time waking up, and Sol swears by coffee to fix pretty much everything that could ever go wrong with a guy, so I thought it might help. Did I make it right?”

  Rafael takes a sip. It has almost the perfect amount of cream in it. “Yes, it's wonderful. Thank you. I promise I'll try to be more help today.”

  “Man, you were fine yesterday,” Rich sighs. “Cut yourself some slack, okay? I, uh, I have a pretty full schedule, I guess. Never really thought about it before, but y'know, I like to stay busy, and you're just not used to it yet! So it's fine, you're fine.”

  “You're very kind,” Rafael murmurs, and Rich pats him. His nails have changed yet again: cool gray today, with black storm clouds painted at the cuticles and blue glitter raining down. His thumbnails have white lightning bolts.

  Drinking more coffee, Rafael contemplates the oddly charming existence of Rich’s hands with sleepy appreciation before waking up enough to realize—“Oh, you don’t have to wait for me. You can go down to breakfast and I’ll—dress and everything, and be right down.”

  “Yeah? You sure you’re gonna make it, man?” Rich offers a smile. “I’m happy to wait if you don’t feel steady on your feet, I can carry you again.”

  “I appreciate the offer,” Rafael says, smiling back, “but I think I’ll be alright, thank you.”

  “Okay. I’ll come check on you if you’re not down in half an hour, how’s that?”

  “A gracious sufficiency,” Rafael assures him, and Rich grins bemusedly and leaves.

  Rafael has finished his coffee by the time he can persuade himself to get out of bed, and yes, everything aches just as much standing up. He stumbles into the bathroom and turns the water on as hot as he can stand, which helps ease the soreness from his muscles enough that at least he isn’t limping and hobbling by the time he steps out. Dressing as quickly as he can, he hurries down to the dining room.

  It’s less crowded this morning but Sol, of course, has contrived to sit with Rich again. By the way he pins his ears and jabs his fork at Rich, Rich has made some teasing advance which the patrician feels compelled to counter; by the softness of his glare, even Sol’s stiff pride is insufficient to protect him from Rich’s laughing charm.

  Rafael finds himself struggling to surmount the ugly, roiling feeling that rises in him—he has no illusions about it, he knows himself well enough by now to recognize the taste of envy, petty and hungry. He doesn’t want to be the poor broken bird that Rich has to make graceful allowances for, he wants to be beautiful and sharp-witted and charming, to make Rich laugh like that himself instead of watching someone else do it.

  The fact that he’d also like to be the kind of man that Sol would tease and flirt with doesn’t help the twisting feeling at all. Rafael swallows painfully, breathing through it, and then crosses the room to settle deliberately by Rich’s other side, as though he had every right to this place.

  “Hey, there you are!” Rich says happily. “That was quick. Lemme go grab you some food, you want muffins? They’ve got muffins this morning!” And he’s off to the kitchen with that rapid stride, taking Rafael’s startled smile for answer.

  Sol lifts his mug to Rafael in lazy greeting, but seems content to sip his coffee without further conversation. A moment later Rich comes striding back, a loaded plate in one hand and a mug in the other.

  “Here you go,” he says, sliding the plate in front of Rafael with an odd but appealing assortment of foods, including three blueberry muffins. “I didn’t know if you’d want more coffee,” Rich adds, setting the mug down by the plate, “but there it is if you do.”

  “Next time just bring back the whole buffet, if you're going to play wait-staff,” Sol says, all sharply elegant disdain down to the expansive gesture of one hand.

  Rich rolls his eyes at him. “Like you’d actually enjoy a buffet if I brought it,” he says. “I swear, you’d make a teaspoon feel like a freeloader.”

  “Takes a lot of self-control to look this good, you slab-sided hedonist,” Sol says tartly. “You ought to know better than anyone that most of us aren't born with the ideal waistline.” He throws an appraising look over at Rafael, lingering. Rafael almost twitches away from the look, then returns it as hard and defiant as he dares. So what if he's naturally built slim and spare? He's had no more choice in the matter than any genemod.

  “Like you could stop looking good if you tried,” Rich snorts, missing or ignoring the byplay, and dives back into eating his serving bowl of some kind of stir fry.

  “All of you,” Rich mumbles before swallowing his mouthful, “just gorgeous, and smart, and talented as hell—I seriously don't get the boss’s whole deal. Hires good cooks, though.”

  It’s true. Rafael breathes in deeply, picks up one of the muffins and takes a cautious bite, and is surprised by a rumble of sudden hunger. He devours the rest of the muffin like he used to when he was on the road after a show, has a second one, and then has to stop, breathing hard, as his stomach churns from being so quickly filled. He drinks some coffee, then picks at his fruit salad more cautiously, and that helps.

  He still doesn't come close to clearing his plate of the massive meal Rich assembled for him, but he eats more of it than he did the day before, and finishes feeling more awake, if still sore and tired.

  Unfortunately, as soon as Rich finishes his tea he's off again, out to the garage to consult with the mechanics on getting more distance per charge out of a hovercar’s antigravity rigging, and then in to talk with one of the senior housekeepers about where some particular cleaning contraption might have been misemployed. A new maid turns out to have mistaken it for an art object and posed it atop a random plinth in a distant hall. Then Rich hies off to deliver an additional toolkit and an esoteric set of instructions to one of the compound’s maintenance men who’s busy dredging dead frogs out one of the more intricately appointed fountains, and Rafael jogs after him on this errand like all the rest, aching and exhausted.

  –

  Scene 11: Carraway's office.

  Carraway has not yet grown tired of his new game, it transpires, when he arrives at his office to affect the guise of work. This time Rafael’s dread and guilt are softened by pure exhaustion. There’s fear in him, yes, but it’s an old, practiced fear that saps his energy and gives nothing back but leaden resignation. When he’s ordered, he rouses himself to come to Rich’s chair and tease him; as soon as he sits to work again, he struggles to lift the leaden lids of his eyes. His arms give a ferocious, stiff ache when he lifts them to type, and his head nods heavily over the spreadsheet he’s struggling to fill out. It would be… so very sweet, to just close his eyes for a moment…

  “Raf,” Rich says softly, and nudges his foot under the desk. Rafael blinks, head jolting up, and then winces and swallows a groan as that strains the muscles of his back and shoulders.

  “All tired out already, doll?” says Carraway, and Rafael swallows, a sharper prickle of nerves running down his spine. Carraway is watching him thoughtfully, jaw propped on a hand. “Barely lunchtime yet.”

  He doesn’t sound disapproving, just… interested. Intrigued, like a predator scenting blood. Rafael breathes deeply, and manages to keep it slow and steady.

  “Yes, sir,” he says, torn behind his mask of coy hesitation. He couldn’t be of use to Rich yesterday—but he can do this. He can distract Carraway from tormenting Rich, at least.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” he says, and stretches a little, rolling his neck, baring his throat. Allowing himself a high, shivering little moan of pain, letting all the soreness show. “I’ve been well put to use, and I’m afraid it’s, ah. Taken more out of me than I’ve grown accustomed to.”

  The implication that Rich knows how to make better use of him than Carraway could is just enough of a dig to the man’s pride, a tease to his curiosity, and it connects just as Rafael hoped it would. Glancing back at Rich, Rafael has just enough time to give him a meaningful look and a flash of a smile, before Carraway sets down his papers and pulls off his silver claw rings.

  “That so? C’mere, sugar.”

  Rafael gets up and goes to him, trying to strike a balance between grace and the halting stiffness of his aching body. He pauses by Carraway's chair with a cautious, attentive smile. God, he's so tired.

  He’s expecting the hand that touches the side of his neck—he’s not expecting it to wrap around and knead at the aching muscles there, and it startles a breathless groan out of him. Carraway’s smile sharpens, and he squeezes again, slow and firm, and Rafael obliges with another pained noise, plaintive and just a little throatier than before.

  “Why don’t you c’mere, sweetheart, and let me see if I can get you softened up?” Carraway says.

  “Nnh, please,” Rafael manages, weak knees buckling and heart knocking frantically behind his breastbone, and Carraway chuckles and turns him around, settles him perched on the edge of the man’s chair between his thighs. There’s a soft, hungry growl from behind Rafael, and a rough thumb pad brushes over the old, darkened scars on the back of his neck, tracing the marks Carraway has left.

  Rich is watching, Rafael can tell. Can see him from the corner of one eye, leaning forward in his chair like he’s unsure if he should intervene or not. Rafael rolls his aching shoulders, stretches his neck, catches Rich’s eye and gives him a look as firm and stern as he can manage. Sees Rich’s eyes widen before Rafael drops his head meekly forward again, feeling big hands fold gently over his shoulders.

  It feels damnably good, as it always does at first. The man has been playing his games for an unconscionable number of years, long before Rafael fell into his web, and he knows precisely when to be forceful and when to let gentleness carry the measure of his cruelty. Rafael sits as he was put, swaying now and then, trying to breathe evenly through the swells of exquisite pain as that terribly gentle touch unravels him.

  It’s a surprise, although it shouldn’t be, when the touch is interrupted by something cool smoothing onto the nape of his neck. Rafael was shivering already, groaning, hearing the faint, hungry sounds of interest from behind him—it’s senseless to expect that such muted reactions would be enough to keep Carraway’s interest without something extra added to the game. It’s more senseless still to be hurt that they were insufficient.

  At least the patch is one that Rafael’s familiar with. The feeling that begins to wash through him, the warm, dizzy waves—the primary effect of this drug is that of a profoundly disorienting euphoria. The aftermath will leave him a giggling fool for a day or so, careless and sloppy and so easily compromised in word or deed or principle, but the arousal that will dog him throughout is stupid, bubbly, soft. Not the fierce, painful desperation of drugs he’s been given before, the sort that leave him nothing more than a beast, imprisoned by torturous lusts. This is as manageable as he could reasonably hope for.

  “How’s that, sugar?” rumbles a soft, low voice behind him, and Rafael opens his mouth to answer and then gasps, words catching in his throat, as Carraway’s thumbs find the exact knot along his spine and press. It aches fiercely, but through the fog that’s rising in him all he can manage is a long moan and a self-conscious hiccup of a laugh.

  “I’m sorry,” he says, still giggling guiltily, and then recalls he needs to answer the question. Amends, “I’m, it’s so, so very g-good, sir, hha…” the pressure has gentled, rolling the sore muscle softly back and forth, and Rafael sways into it, finds the arm of the chair and then a sturdy thigh, holds onto it dizzily. He can’t quite stop laughing. Carraway chuckles at him, indulgent and condescending, and gentles his touch even further, stroking up and down the nape of Rafael’s neck, along his hairline, teasing the shell of his ear. Back down, and up, and down, and back up again—

  “Sir, I,” Rafael mumbles, before he can stop himself, and blinks, trying to focus. To recall what would be best, how to steer the man and keep his interest. It’s so hard, with those big fingers tickling up and down the nape of his neck. “Sir, thank you, should I…?” he half-turns, almost falls, lets himself fall onto an arm, gripping one bicep, looking up through his eyelashes and letting the man see his weakness in full. Feeling the hand on his neck still and then knead slowly, possessively.

  “Can I…?” Rafael says, softer, and twists to kiss glancingly at a hand as it kneads the side of his neck, blinking slowly, trying to pretend the room isn’t rocking like a storm-tossed ship under him. “Sir?”

  “Now, hate to say no to that,” says Carraway, and the hands take hold of him, wrapping around his chest and lifting him like a ragdoll to fold him under an arm, against a mountainous side. Rafael groans unsteadily—more from the sudden renewed pitching of the room than from any pain or arousal, but Carraway doesn’t need to know that. Not when he makes his own low sound in return, a soft, hungry rumble from deep in his chest.

  “Don’t want you to fall asleep down there,” Carraway says, and Rafael closes his eyes and breathes as one hand takes his throat, the other slides under the hem of his shirt. “Mm… you make ‘wore out’ look real tasty, sweet thing…”

  It’s an unexpected mercy, the combination of the drug and Rafael’s exhaustion. It detaches him, cuts him adrift, so the touches on his skin are a distant, unhappy dream. It’s familiar and unfamiliar at once; a pale imitation of the warm, half-sleeping pleasure of the previous night. Yet again, Rafael’s held in someone’s arms, drifting in and out, only aware enough to moan—without reassurance this time, though. Without kindness. When he hears Carraway’s voice through the fog, it isn’t to tell him he’s taken care of. Carraway tells him “Careful, doll, don’t forget your manners,” and “You fallin’ asleep, sugar? Can’t hardly tell, you’re so quiet,” and the pleasure still builds in him but it’s incidental to the rising distress, the confusion.

  He’s lost in a maze built from his own body, chemicals and cruel touch and confusion, he can’t escape. There’s no escape. He just leans against the walls and feels hot breath against his neck and the world twists itself into knots, stranger and tighter and irrevocably constricting…

  Rafael must manage to entertain enough, in his helpless hopeless inadequacy, because finally the touches stop, leaving him breathless and blinking in confusion. Carraway is saying something, laughing, “—Looks about ready to fall right off my lap, bless his little heart—” and Rafael is lifted up onto his feet and dumped forward into a new pair of arms, even sturdier, just as warm, supporting him gently. No fur along the forearms, and it takes him an aching bewildered second to realize who must have him before he convulses forward, desperate to hold on. Rich, yes, this, he wants him, he wants this. An even less familiar maze to thread but so much sweeter, please, he just wants this…

  “Put him down a minute, treasure,” says Carraway, and Rafael clings, protesting faintly, when Rich says, “Yessir,” and peels Rafael away. He is left curled into a chair all by himself, weak right down to his dusty bones and blinking hard against the dark rainbows of the office’s lighting. Everything’s all shadow and shimmer, like this.

  Carraway is saying things, but Rafael can’t stop staring at the pattern of woodwork along the border of the ceiling, his gaze tracing the carved vines over and over as he shifts restlessly. He’s aware, but from a long way away, that he’s achingly, desperately aroused. It takes intense focus to remember, every minute anew, that he’s not allowed to do anything about that. Rafael is…

  He’s…

  “Such a good boy, treasure,” Carraway is saying in a low, satisfied voice, sated, and Rich mumbles something, hoarse and soft. “Go on and get outta here for the day. Don’t think I didn’t see you get all worked up watching your pretty little shadow, over there. You use him how you want, tonight.” He laughs, and Rafael blinks again. That’s him, he’s being discussed. A secret, a ghost, a shadow. So quiet, creeping along only where he’s directed, less substantial than a breath of air. Rafael doesn’t like this new pet name, but Carraway laughs like he thinks it’s funny. “Got him all softened up for you.”

  “Thank you, sir,” says Rich, so poorly, a bad imitation of gratitude. “I can—so I can get him off, he’s allowed?”

  “If you like,” says Carraway, magnanimous and amused. Then, with a wicked twist of his forked tongue, a devil’s smile Rafael can all but see in front of his swimming eyes—“But just the one of you tonight, I think, sugar. I’ll let you figure out who.”

  “Oh,” says Rich, and there’s a second of taut and rebelling quiet before he repeats, “Thank you, sir,” polite and softly mutinous, and the floorboards creak. Rafael frowns at the carved vines in the woodwork and then sucks in a startled breath as a pair of huge arms scoops him up and bears him lightly away.

  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 new !