He has to do a double take when he sees her, because it doesn’t make sense.

She doesn’t go to places like this, let alone dressed like… that.

But no; it’s not a trick of the lights, nor the lingering haze of the BuzzBall he’d let Sabiya talk him into chugging before they’d come.

It’s really Osha, and—Jesus, he’s pretty sure he would be able to see her entire ass in that skirt, if it weren’t for the man she’s currently grinding it against.

Which—yeah, of course, it’s him.

So she hadn’t taken his warning to heart, then.

He’s disappointed, but not surprised. Osha’s been on a self-destructive spiral all year, and despite his best efforts, she didn’t seem to have any interest in pulling out of it.

And you couldn’t help someone who couldn’t help themself, or… something like that.

Maybe that BuzzBall had hit him a little harder than he’d thought.

Or maybe it’s that the music is too loud, and his costume is too heavy and too hot, and he should have gone with Sabiya to get the drinks, should have volunteered to get them himself, but he’s trying to see where that man—he refuses to call him ‘Qimir,’ because he doesn’t believe for a second that that’s his actual name—is taking Osha.

Because he’s taking her somewhere, he’s pulling her away from the dance floor, over to the side of the cavernous room, over to—

Yord watches, stomach squirming with a hot, twisting unease as he presses Osha against a shadowed pillar. He watches as he pins her hands above her; watches as he presses his thigh between hers; watches as he tips his head to kiss her with an open mouth; watches as her brow furrow in something like desperation; watches as she writhes and grinds onto his thigh; watches as she pants into his mouth, sounds swallowed up by his kiss, by the music around them. Sounds Yord can’t imagine, because he’s never heard them.

She’d always been so quiet.

She’d never been like… this.

He shouldn’t watch this, Yord knows. No one should; they shouldn’t be doing this, they’re in public for Christ’s sake. He should do something; he should tell someone. Get security, or something.

He watches as Osha shudders. Watches as she shakes. Watches as she…

Jesus fucking Christ…

He watches as this man releases her hands and she clings to him as if he were a lifeline, as if she can’t get enough. As he holds her waist and her cradles her face as if this were something tender moment between the two of them, and not some obscene violation.

He whispers something in her ear, and she nods, starry eyed and flushed, and she clings to him as he leads her towards the doors, their hands clasped tightly, fingers interlaced.

She looks at him as if he hung the stars in the sky.

She looks drunk. Or drugged, or…

Or fucked, a nasty little voice whispers in his head.

Yord swallows around a dry throat. He’s thankful, then, for the first time, for the heavy faux-chainmail shirt that just happens to fall low enough to hopefully disguise how painfully hard he suddenly finds himself.

They’re almost out the doors.

He can’t help it. He’s worried.

“Osha!”

If she hears him, she doesn’t react.

But he does.

He glances over, and his eyes snag on Yord.

It’s just a moment.

Just a few seconds.

A quick flicker, up and down. Sizing him up and dismissing him in the same moment.

Yord swears he sees his lips twitch into a smirk.

Osha stumbles a little, and his attention instantly shifts back to her. He wraps his arm around her shoulders as they leave, and she huddles close to his side.

Something bitter and cold burns in the pit of Yord’s stomach.

When Sabiya returns from the bar with their drinks, he downs his much too quickly, hoping to drown out the acrid taste.

When that doesn’t work, he agrees to take the pills that she’d brought, even though he’s never done anything like that before. She swears she got them from a reputable source, at least. Some local guy; “always has the good shit,” according to her.

Yord didn’t care where she’d got them from, as long as they helped him erase the image burned into the back of his eyelids of his ex-girlfriend creaming all over the thigh of the man that broke his nose a few months ago.