In the end, Dracoâs as good as his word. People forget this about him, sometimes, which suits him as often as it nettles. He leaves the Orderâs safe house without saying goodbye to anyone at all, and for the most part, no one notices. Only Lupin passes him in one of the corridors on the second floor, the door to Dracoâs room â or whatâs been serving as Dracoâs room â firmly shut, Dracoâs long, black coat snug over his shoulders. Draco pauses at the top of the stairs, hearing Lupin do the same, several paces away. He waits for the man to say something, to ask questions, possibly even stop him.
He does none of those things. A soft breath, like a sigh, that sounds very tired, and then footsteps. Scant moments later, Draco finds himself alone on the landing, staring down at the steep, crooked stairs, heart beating a bruise into his chest.
 An alley a few blocks away from Grimmauld Place provides cover and a brick wall for Draco to lean against. He looks up, throat pale and exposed, at the dirty gutters, the mingled gray of clouds and city smog. He wonders if Potter will forgive him, then decides he doesnât care. It isnât really a choice, after all. Choice implies that Draco could do something different, and he canât. In this, he canât.
He closes his eyes and Apparates, knowing that the wards around the estate will always let him through.
And that the moment they do, every Death Eater at Malfoy Manor will know that the lone Malfoy heir has returned home.
+
âWhy has it taken you so long to come here?â
Dracoâs never liked the Carrows. In fact he hates both siblings nearly equally, even given that one of them presently has him held in a magical vise, paralyzing him, barely allowing the shallow movements of Dracoâs chest necessary for him to breathe.
He tries to open his mouth to speak. Alecto, somehow looking both bored and furious, flicks her wand carelessly, and suddenly the weights holding his jaw shut disappear.
âPotter may be an idiot,â Draco says coolly, eyes hard, âbut some of his friends arenât. I came when I could.â
Lucius steps forward. âIt is as I said â â
âQuiet,â drawls the other one, seeming more amused than angry. His gaze is abyssal, a dark crush where the light doesnât reach. He casts it over Draco casually, the corner of his mouth curled upward, sharp as a knifeâs edge. âWe will find out soon enough if it is, in fact, as you say.â Amycus turns his eyes to Dracoâs father, mouth cruel. âYou know what has to happen next.â
Draco has never seen his father quite so still as this.
âSurely that isnâtâheâs my son. I know him.â Lucius swallows, expression grim. He raises his hand, making an emphatic slashing motion in the air. âHis loyalty to the Dark Lord is beyond question.â
His loyalty to me, Draco hears.
âNo oneâs loyalty is beyond question,â Alecto snarls, her hair a blood red gleam pulled so tightly from her face that it looks almost mask-like, stiff and inhuman in spite of the vivid, dangerous spark in her eyes. âCertainly not the Malfoysâ.â She says the name like a curse. âNot anymore.â
âItâs all right,â Draco says, and to his great surprise, his voice manages to sound not only level but supremely unconcerned. Perhaps itâs the way his fatherâs hand is very faintly shaking, barely visible beneath the long, black sleeve of his robe. Something in it makes Draco feel powerful in comparison, ludicrous as it may seem given his current position. âIâm not hiding anything. Or do you really suppose Iâm that suicidal?â
He meets Amycusâs eyes unflinchingly, even over the pulse hammering in his throat.
Amycus chuckles, a dark, joyless sound. âWeâll see.â
+
Dracoâs been under the Cruciatus Curse before. It was even cast by the same hand. For a while, he has the presence of mind to feel grateful that his father hadnât been holding back then. He certainly isnât holding back now. To do so, Draco knows, would condemn them both.
A test of loyalty. A test of devotion.
Of course it had to be him. That wasnât the part that surprised him.
âHello, Draco.â The Dark Lordâs voice is colder than anything Draco has ever known. Soft and quiet as an air current, deceptive in the way it takes up room. âAre you ready?â It could almost be gentle.
Draco tries to steel his mind, tries to reinforce the shields in place without seeming like he is. They cannot even appear to be there in the first place. He thinks he can manage it now. He thinks it will get harder, the longer heâs put under, the longer he writhes under the curse his father keeps casting.
The Dark Lord doesnât wait for an answer. He doesnât expect one.
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The most difficult thing about being at a Manor in the hands of the deatheaters is how little has changed. Blaise wanders through the long, silent hallways, blindly following a path he has taken countless times before. He hesitates only briefly at the door, hand resting against the polished wood, finding sanctuary, before slipping quietly into Dracoâs room.
Dracoâs presence here was always subtle. Only a few things are left that truly bear the mark of their owner, and these Blaise knows by heart, has seen them here for longer than he can remember. He finds each one of them in turn. A slender dagger, silver handle carved with a very old design that curls, serpentine, along the grip. An encyclopedia of potions ingredients, pages scribbled with notes and stained by use. A mirror shard with jagged edges that doesnât reflect the room, or Blaise when he looks into it. A weathered coin, ages out of use, the metal so worn he can barely make out the design of a threeheaded snake there. A dark leather bracelet, soft from use, shaped for a delicate wrist. The long wingfeather from a falcon. Finally, a dried yellow orchid pressed between the pages of a book of tales. He finds but doesnât touch the delicately ornamented box under the bed. Instead, he settles in the window sill, sliding the leather bracelet on to his left wrist, and turning the orchid over and over between his fingers until the fragile edges turn to dust in his hands.
When Lucius finds him there the first night, he loses his temper and throws Blaise into the wall, screams at him to get out. Blaise doesnât fight back, but presses against the wall and doesnât move, not even when Lucius hits him hard enough to make the room swim, the taste of blood vivid and coppery on his tongue. Snape shows up then, stepping out of the shadows and gripping Luciusâ shoulder to stop the next blow, murmuring something with an icy calm that makes Lucius clamp his jaw shut and stalk out of the room, leaving the door hanging open on itâs hinges. Snape spares a single unreadable glance for Blaise, huddled against the wall with blood in his mouth, before he leaves as well, black robes whispering tracks across the dusty floor.
When Blaise finally moves, it is to limp across the floor to the bed, only carefully putting weight on his left leg, twisted under him when he fell. He curls up on the right side of the bed, fingers clenching in the crisp sheets. It takes him a breath to realise that he has left room for another body beside his own, one that would find comfort in being closer to the wall and the shelter of the arched ceiling.
âBlaise. You are stealing the covers.â An imperious tug, and a touch of cool night air. A faint scent of roses from the open window. âMother ordered them from Italy and there is /mud/ on your shirt.â Dracoâs voice is sleepy, a touch of impatience overlaid with languid amusement. Lazy fingers tangling in his hair. Blaise shifts enough to look over his shoulder, brown eyes meeting grey. Quiet murmur; âI will be cold.â Draco arches a brow. âItâs May, Blaise.â Silence. A curve of lips in the soft darkness. âCome closer, then.â
In the dark he can only barely make out the smears of blood he is making on the white linen but he closes his eyes anyway, and then covers them with his hands. The inside of his wrist aches and stings as though the mark has penetrated skin and muscle to burn itself into the delicate bones there. In the silence he can almost hear it thrumming with malevolence against his senses. His breath catches, a strangling pain pressing down on his chest. The next breath becomes a shudder, and finally a sob, stifled and broken against his palms.
 He doesnât sleep until the morning light turns the room a soft grey and the stains have dried on the sheets.
He doesnât go near the front entrance of the Manor. In spite of the late hour, there are still guests coming and going, and he has no wish to be seen by anyone. He knows, though, that Draco is here and that Nott, called away urgently to a situation developing in one of his focus zones, is not and will not be for days. Blaise doesnât think he can see him again, now or ever, without doing something terrible.
His hands are trembling slightly when he sets one of them to the door, meaning to push it open, but it resists his touch, the wards flaring in warning and Blaise stills, frozen in place, pulse hammering in his throat. This particular door in the side of the manor, red paint peeling and half overgrown with vines and wild roses, has been keyed to his touch since he was six years old. It still was the last time he was here, though he canât remember with certainty when that was. There was snow on the ground, then. A fire burning in Dracoâs room, the warm light softening the grey of his eyes, his pale skin. Fire and moonlight. An image presses against the inside of his lids; the curve of Dracoâs shoulderblades, arched like wings under skin, Blaiseâs fingers tracing, caressing, finding the slight irregularity where the left one was once broken. Pressing his lips there, open-mouthed, whispering passion and magic into pale skin.
He almost leaves. Does turn, in fact, swallowing down the bitter taste in his mouth, not feeling the pricks and tears of thorns against his hands in the dark. Stops a few paces down the path, shaking violently, his throat closed around a choking lump. He cannot go in.
Tell him the truth, Ginny had said, late one night after too many drinks, too many nights spent like that, too many times closing his wounds after missions where he hasnât cared enough about being wounded. Blood spilling out between ribs, running down his chest, covering his hands. Tell him the truth. Even if it changes nothing for him, you have to stop carrying it. It belongs to Draco. Give it to him.
So simple and so shatteringly impossible. He remembers her eyes, deep blue and soft with compassion. He had wanted badly to hit her. Had only restrained the impulse with the barest grasp of control, and ended up fucking her instead, leaving bruises for days on hipbones and wrists, her lower lip a swollen, bloody mess where heâd bitten through it. She had forgiven him, but he wasnât sure he had forgiven himself.
The truth.
The spell comes out more forceful than he meant it to, and rather than pushing through the wards he feels them shimmer and die, the delicate magic withering under his own. Before itâs too late, he cups the dying magic in bleeding hands and redoes the weaving so no one within will be alerted to his presence. He means to be a ghost here. He is a ghost.
The door to Dracoâs old room is closed. Blaise doesnât want to try it, doesnât want to feel it reject his touch. Instead he sets his hand to the door and splinters the magic, recklessly close to triggering one of the hidden blade wards that would have sliced open his chest if he didnât block at the last second. He doesnât let himself hesitate. Knows that if he stops now, on this threshold, he will never be able to cross it. The door, defeated, yields under his hand, a smear of deep red blood on the white polish.
Draco is there, as Blaise knew, somehow, he would be. He has turned to face the door, and for a moment Blaise is brought up short by the sight of him. Itâs been months. Seasons. He has survived a winter and a spring without seeing Draco, but now that he does he has utterly forgotten how. Even distant as they have been, Dracoâs is a presence he has never done well without. He takes a step, just one, feet heavy as though heâs been rooted to the floor. Draco is wearing a dark suit with slender lines, shirt open at his throat. His hair is shorter than Blaise remembers, and the sight of that makes something twinge achingly in his chest. The grey eyes are mirrors in the soft light, opaque and uninviting. His gaze flicks once to Blaiseâs bloodstained hands, and then away.
âBlaise. What the fuck - â
âCale-se!â The Portugese words come out without thought, breathless, past the ache in his chest. Dracoâs expression is blank, the delicate lines of his mouth drawn taut, but he holds his tongue. Blaise cuts his eyes away, realising with something like despair that he cannot speak with Draco looking at him like that, like he is a stranger. He cannot. He closes his eyes and does it anyway.
âI always thought you were set on marrying because of your father.â The words sound thick and foreign to his ears, clumsy things that cannot possibly hope convey the way this, here, is a break forming in the world. He can feel Draco going still, some quality of the air in the room changing, and wishes he had stopped near enough to the wall to lean against it.
âI understand⌠needing to obey that kind of demand. Mother has asked things of me I couldnât refuse.â Draco knows this. At least Blaise thinks, hopes Draco hasnât forgotten, but perhaps there is nothing left to hope for.
âI could bear you marrying for that reason. Or - â his voice shakes, cracks, but he presses on in a rush, needing to say what must be said before words fail him utterly. âNo, in truth, I couldnât, but I would understand. I would. But now - â
His heart feels like itâs trying to choke him. Tell him the truth.
âYou chose him. Draco.â
Without realising, he has drawn out the a, left the last syllable short. Echo of a boyâs voice. And here, finally, the words are lost to the ache in his chest. He cannot say why didnât you choose me. He knows a million reasons why Draco wouldnât, all of them compelling. That was never the question. There never was any question, not truly. Nothing but a whisper.
âI will not - I will do nothing to stand in your way. I could not.â For a moment the bitterness comes through, desperately harsh edges on the words, and he wills himself to ask the next, last question softly.A prayer. His pulse stutters in his throat. He opens his eyes.
âI will never trouble you again. I swear it. But you - will you please - will you hear me, Draco? May I tell you the truth?â
You just wanted to prove there was one safe place, just one safe place where you could love him. You have not found that place yet. You have not made that place yet. You are here. You are here. You are still right here.
Blaiseâs first impression of London is cold sleet, glowering grey skies and masses of people dressed so heavily in dark, bled-out clothes that their faces become a rain-blurred parade of ghosts. The apparition point is in a building partly destroyed in the recent skirmishes, and cold drops sting his face the moment theyâre through, the shock stealing his breath while he still struggles to feel solid ground after the transition. The air tastes like ash. Despite the recent tidings, it hardly feels like a place of victory.
A gaunt-looking mage comes forward to receive them. Blaise looks at the way the manâs cheekbones and eyes are shadowed in the grey light, and remembers Raquel saying theyâve been starving.
âBrazil?â The man is frowning, looking at a ragged piece of parchment in his hand. Raquel, bright and outspoken, steps forward and makes the introductions. Thereâs five of them, and even as they stand there, he can see others arriving by twos and threes in what must have been an impressive hall when it still had itâs roof. Cracked, black stone pillars holding up nothing stand sentry over the arrivals, and he stills a bonedeep shiver. The struggles that has shadowed the place hangs like a bitterness in the stones, presses on his chest. He doesnât hear Raquel until she touches his arm, pulling his attention from the resonance. He canât quite focus on the British mageâs welcome speech, and it hardly matters. Theyâve all heard it before. Reconstruction efforts. Cooperation across borders. The risk of sleeper detection. Stories of monsters in search of immortality. Blaise, no stranger to myths coming alive, wonders how it will feel nearer to the place where the war has been finally won, where the frozen ground has drunk so much blood, and finds himself hoping with some urgency that he won't need to go there.
By the time they reach the castle, his head is throbbing dully, and there is a lingering metallic taste in the back of his mouth. Raquel, too keen, laces her fingers through his and murmurs, âI told you to wear an amulet. You look like a ghost.â He draws his hand out of hers, although a part of him is reluctant to give up the warmth of her touch, the steadying sunlight brightness of her resonance. âIâm fine. Plenty of other ghosts here.â
âSure you are, rei. A spirit prodigy in a war zone. Iâm sure youâre having a wonderful time.â Her expression plainly says she doesnât believe him, and just as plainly on your head be it, my dear.
Here, too, the battles have left the landscape ravaged. The castle lies lies a wounded leviathan, snow settling over broken stones. There are people at work among the rubble, clearing paths, sorting stones that will later be used to rebuild. A large lake stretches, steel grey and still like a mirror almost to the castle gates. The feel of it makes Blaise shiver with something deeper than cold and avert his eyes. He feels ill for minutes afterwards.
He is jolted harshly out of his reverie when someone grips his arm from behind. Blaise jerks hard against the grip, hisses a word, and then tumbles free when the other lets go with a cry of pain. He whirls, and comes face to face with a boy about his own age with a shock of dark hair, clutching his arm and staring at Blaise with sharp hostility. Around them, people have fallen silent, staring.
âYou're wearing a knife!â The boy exclaims, with hard accusation in his tone, and Blaise feels the response in the onlookers, the sudden palpable tension, stances shifting defensively. Pale faces, wide eyes, a metallic tang of fear against his senses. With an effort, he relaxes, and slowly draws the sleeve back, revealing the slender blade in itâs sheath strapped to the inside of his forearm.
âI am indeed.â Blaise holds the other boyâs eyes, speaking the foreign words precisely. âIs there an interdiction against that?â
The boy has flushed slightly, and is looking at him with sharp dislike. âWhat was that spell you used?â His tone is inexcusably accusatory. Blaise narrows his eyes slightly, and crosses his arms over his chest, aware of the hushed, complicated silence surrounding them, and trying to decipher it.
âHarry!â A girl with startlingly red hair pushes past the onlookers, taking in the scene with a frown. âWhat are you doing? Is this one of the guest workers?â She turns her gaze to Blaise, appraisingly, before turning back to the darkhaired boy - Harry, apparently - who is scowling.
âHe has a knife. And he did - I donât know, it felt an awful lot like a dark spell.â
Blaise raises an eyebrow, tempted to respond with the truth - the pain spell, albeit relatively harmless, probably does fall under the European mage laws as dark magic, but he doesnât get the chance before the redhead puts her hands on her hips. âHarry. All the guest workers are checked at the entry points. The Aurors are logging everything. Heâs allowed to have a knife. And Iâm not even touching your dark magic paranoia with a ten foot pole. No one is trying to kill you.â
Her tone is mildly exasperated, almost fond, but Blaise catches the faint resistance in the way she stands, angling her body as if she doesnât want to be too close to the boy, who seems oblivious to it. Harry. That makes something fall into place. Potter. Tales of the boy hero who killed the monster. This boy, scowling and looking at Blaise like he is an enemy, doesnât seem like any kind of hero, but the way the crowd is watching him speaks to something else. Resisting the temptation to push and see what happens, Blaise schools his expression and inclines his head. Barely a bow. Potter goes from looking pissed off to looking perplexed, while the redhead tilts her head thoughtfully, before turning back to him. âI actually came to tell you Hermione wants you in the great hall. Something about the ceiling, I donât know. Please go before you harass any more guests, okay?â She half pushes Potter around and back towards the castle, giving Blaise a last look over her shoulder. Heâs still trying to decide about that when Raquel shows up at his elbow, regarding the retreating pair with curious eyes. âMaking friends already, rei?â
Blaise doesnât answer. He is watching the steps to the castle where a slender, pale-haired boy has appeared, wrapped in a black cloak against the snow and evidently waiting for the other two to reach the doors. The distance blurs his features a little, but the way he stands, alone against the freezing wind, a tableau of a prince on the steps of a ruin, makes Blaiseâs heart stutter ever so slightly in his chest.
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Blaise stood in the middle of the training room, face turned up the skylight, and watched the sun come and go with the blown clouds. More going than coming. The katana rested lightly in his right hand, the engraved runes glittering softly in the occasional brightness. The room was heavy shadow, weak light. Dark, massive wood and arched ceiling, floorboards worn smooth from a hundred years of use and weapons glittering on the walls.Â
His was the only katana in the room. Nephilim in England did not practice the art of eastern weapons. He did, and the elegant grip of the Japanese sword was as much a comfort in his hand as the whisper of stronger sunlight momentarily brightening the window, making him blink. He lifted the weapon and let a finger run along the edge of the blade, barely feeling the sting before the warmth of blood welled on his finger, spilling down across the warm steel in scattered drops. âMy hungry sword,â he whispered to the blade, tracing a rune in the blood with a finger, taking care to shape it precisely. A memory, brief, of his fatherâs hand over his own, the litany of Japanese murmurs in his ear.
âI give you my sins. Burn them up. I pledge you my hand, my life in battle. Burn up my sins.â
It had been three months since he had arrived in the midst of a snowstorm. He had wondered at first, shivering under all the blankets he could find in an unfamiliar room at night, if this country ever turned warm. A punishingly cold late winter had dissolved into a reluctant, wet spring, and suddenly the grime on the London Institute windows was visible in fleeting glimpses of weak sunlight, or what passed for sunlight here. Not enough to warm his blood, and for weeks he had despaired of ever being warm again. But London, it had turned out, had itâs own treasures.
With a soft breath, Blaise lowered the blade, a few drops of blood falling to the floor and disappearing there like many before them. His finger stung, dully. Curling his fingers inwards on the palm, Blaise traced a simple sigil there, and felt the cut close, the pain fade, leaving only a red smear behind.
The door opened behind him with a faint sound. The line of Blaiseâs lips softened a fraction with the knowledge that he had been found.Â
Itâs late at night. Theyâre seated on a high walkway close to the hangarâs ceiling while James watches the maintenance crew at work on YĹŤrei Kitsune and Scorpius practises writing out kanji in a notebook, now and then glancing up at Jamesâ profile outlined in the light of flying sparks.
He looks at ease, leaned against the railing with his feet dangling precariously over the edge, watching the proceedings with curious intent and occasionally making remarks on the crewâs work - See that coating theyâre working with? One of the bi-techs told me it protects from the kaiju acid. Hey, remind me to tell them that cable above you in the cockpit is loose. Did you know the strips that light up along her side is actually a kind of bioluminescence? Isnât that amazing? I wonder how they did that. I mean, do you think itâs like tiny jellyfish? That would be weird. - Scorpius knows he isnât expected to answer, and he doesnât. Instead he watches the bright lights tease highlights out of Jamesâ unruly hair and thinks why me? As if sensing the thought, James glances at him with an almost wry curve to his lips.
âHey. You have that look. What are you thinking about?â
Scorpius holds up his notebook and James makes a face. âStill? Donât you know the alphabet by now? Youâve been drawing squiggles for days.â
âThere are 2000 in common use,â Scorpius informs him, returning to tracing the kanji for âheroâ on the paper, his hand only slightly unsteady. A moment later he feels the solid warmth of a shoulder against his own as James settles next to him, watching the pages covered in neat, scripted symbols with mild curiosity. âWhat does that one mean?â
Scorpius carefully finishes the symbol, and closes the book, raising his eyes to the spectacle of the jaeger across from them, a dragon in captivity. âYou,â he murmurs, and, daring greatly, puts his head down on Jamesâ shoulder.Â
Theyâre in Jamesâ quarters, seated at the long, overflowing worktable constructed from repurposed probably-not-stolen metal plates. James looks up from the mess of maps and schematics heâs been irreverently doodling on to give Scorpius a wounded look.
âScore, Iâm not Japanese.â
âYouâre telling me. Itâs KaijĹŤ with a long u-sound. Similarly, my name is Scorpius, not Score or Scor or whatever other iterations you and Jezebel come up with when youâve been drinking that appalling moonshine the Chinese mechanic keeps trying to kill people with.â
Jamesâ expression slides from puzzled into a sunlit smile with such mercurial brightness Scorpius would be disinclined to believe its sincerity if he didnât feel the accompanying spark across the drift. He still has to focus not to catch his breath when it happens, as it all too frequently does. He doesnât recall the orientation saying anything about oneâs co-pilotâs manic cheerfulness disrupting what is otherwise a carefully cultivated equilibrium. He thinks the scientists who make the orientation likely hadnât considered the contingency of James Potter, madman, who is currently regarding him with alarming delight in his gaze. Â Â
âScore. Score. I must have you taste that moonshine. Iâve never seen you drunk! I bet youâre a really maudlin drunk. No, a really cute one - like, you like to sit in peopleâs laps and have your hair petted.â
Scorpius regards him with the horror appropriate to this heretic suggestion, silently promising himself never to accept a cup from James ever again.
âYou know alcohol is against the rules, Potter,â he responds dryly, a few months of experience having taught him that itâs better to refrain from direct refusals, as these seem to incur a kind of gleeful determination in James that it is wiser to avoid. âThe commander will skin you. And me. And youâll be banned from the hangar for at least a week.â
He can see James already forming counterarguments, doubtless to the effect that what the commander doesnât know wonât hurt anyone but the immediate bystanders and non-permanent structures, but the last remark effectively halts him in his tracks, as Scorpius knew it would. He drops his eyes to the delicate mess of fine wires and metal plates in his hands rather than watch the other pilot frown. James has the poetic name of a monster edged into the skin over his heart. That he doesnât want to be separated from it is a reliable fact.Â
If Scorpius is being honest with himself, he is a little afraid of the jaeger. When he puts his hand on the shining, cold metal, it hums in his bones, a foreign, almost-heard growl. It doesnât sound like the voice of a creature that means him well. He wakes sometimes from nightmares of crashing into the sea, surrounded by the tons of living metal, itâs whispered voice becoming a scream in his spine. When James inevitably comes into his room, solid warmth and steady hands in the darkness, and murmurs questions, Scorpius only shakes his head.
The YĹŤrei Kitsune is a mark 6 jaeger, all coldly gleaming alloys and nearly organic shapes that remind Scorpius disquietingly of the monsters from the deep itâs built to kill, and from whom the biotech engineers have taken more than a few cues for itâs construction. He has tried to ask Shendo, the most forthcoming of a decidedly taciturn group of scientists in charge of developing the technology, exactly how much of the machine is living tissue and what the impact of that might be, but either his smattering of Japanese is insufficient to make the question comprehensible, or she simply doesnât want to answer him. He rather suspects the latter, and in the brief time since he arrived on base has developed a habit of never being alone in the hangar with the YĹŤrei. He knows, rationally, that the titan cannot move or function without its pilots, the heart and mind that must animate it, but without James he feels like a child trying to tether a dragon.
James on the other hand treats the monstrous machine in much the same manner a proud owner might treat a newly acquired puppy.
In the mess hall, he talks animatedly about speed and strike force, illustrating complicated maneuvers with cutlery and laughing when the re-imagined battle of Tokyo ends up with his own and Scorpiusâ dinner exploding across the table to a chorus of amused protests and a stern look from the commander. The sparse rations are appallingly tasteless, and Scorpius doesnât mind the loss. He watches James pick grey vegetables out of his hair, grinning triumphantly, and feels the bright spark of uncomplicated joy through the drift like the touch of sunlight.
See, I told you, Kitsurei has better ranged accuracy than any other Jaeger!
You just accurately demolished your plate, Potter. Perhaps the commander will give you a medal.
A careless, warm touch to the back of his neck, just over the sensitive place where the neural interface rests under the skin.
Us. Give us a medal. Arenât you so fond of telling me your accuracy score is at least 7% higher than mine? Or anyone elseâs?
James smiles impishly, and Scorpius refrains from telling him it is actually 9.86% by the latest analysis. One of the twins - he can never tell which one - rolls her eyes across the table and says something in Russian to her sister. He understands enough now to recognise that the remark has nothing to do with tactical accuracy and everything to do with Jamesâ blatant disregard for uniform protocol, resulting in him apparently wearing nothing at all under the jumpsuit which has been ill advisedly zipped down to the middle of his chest, affording their part of the table a view of smooth skin and the short vertical row of kanji tattooed over his breastbone in rusty red ink. Scorpius knows the shape of them by heart. Theyâre the same ones that adorn the breastplate of their jaeger in red metallic glyphs larger than a man. ĺš˝éç. YĹŤrei Kitsune. Ghost fox.Â
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