(mostly) whump

The bus is still idling along the curb next to the stop, and the bus driver knows Kauri - sees him two or three times a week in variations on drunk or high or scared or elated. She leans down and calls out, “You gonna be okay, Kauri?”

Maybe one day he won’t. Maybe one day someone will murder him in a dark alley instead of hooking up or shove him into the trunk of a car or-

into a white van with no windows and the needle’s in his skin and his sister is screaming and there’s a hand over his mouth wearing black leather gloves and a man smiles at him and there are other men and zipties on his wrists and they tell him sucks to be you, gorgeous, but you couldn’t hide a face like that and then his head drops as whatever they gave him hits and Liam’s head drops onto the plastic mat that lines the van’s floor, his eyes close, and he’s gone-

Kauri lays there staring up at the spinning stars with his had pounding at the memory, but not enough to make it stop. When he’s really drunk, sometimes he can roll with the pain, let it wash through him and change nothing, mean nothing, do nothing at all.

He feels the way the earth rotates around the sun, every motion of the giant planet but it’s not big - it’s tiny, really, the Earth and all its purple mountains majesty, and Kauri is tinier, and whatever life lives in his head, somewhere underneath the layers of pain and fear, never mattered at all.

“‘m fine,” He slurs, trying to focus on one single star. Just one.

Please, just one star. 

“No, you’re not,” The woman says with a soft sigh. She glances back at the bus driver. “I’ll figure something out, Virginia,” She says, and waves one hand. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“G’night, Sadie,” The bus driver calls out over the low rumble of the big engines, then adds, “Get home safe, Kauri.”

Kauri closes his eyes. Why does everyone always want there to be a home?

“Where’m I taking you, then, Mr. Whiskey Breath?”

“T-Tequila,” Kauri corrects her, then gives a pale shadow of his effortless, airy smile. She takes him by the arm and pulls him to his feet and he overcorrects as he stumbles again, smacking into her side. She stays standing, if only just, and holds him more firmly. “’S... tequila. Good, good stuff, too, good...” His head drops against her shoulder, and he giggles again.

“Oh, honey,” She murmurs. They stand for a second while she thinks this through, and Kauri sees himself through her eyes - gorgeous and hammered, barely able to stand on his own, a piece of shit who can’t take care of himself or won’t or chooses not to, anyway. 

He tries to feel something, like maybe shame, but nothing happens.

He’s too numb for that.

“D’you have a phone?” Sadie asks after a pause. 

“Mmmmnyes,” Kauri responds, suddenly aware he hasn’t lifted his head off her shoulder yet. “I do have a phone. ‘s a very nice phone, too.”

“No doubt. Is there anyone we can call for you? I don’t-... I don’t think you’ll make it far on your own, um, Kauri? Did you say your name is Kauri?”

Kauri tilts his head back to look at her, and the world suddenly crashes hard to one side. His knees buckle and she quickly throws an arm around his waist to keep him up. He starts giggling again, shaking his head, mumbling what he hopes are apologies until he manages to locate his cell phone and pull it out of his back pocket. “M’name’s whatever you want it to be,” He says with his most charming, beautiful smile.

Sadie quirks an eyebrow as Kauri struggles to unlock his phone, then takes it once he manages, tapping over to his contacts list and scrolling. “Who do I call?” She asks, looking at the photos Kauri uses to identify everyone instead of names. “Who can I call to come get you?”

A wash of sadness so strong it feels like being hit by a wave made from bricks hits him and tears prick at his eyes, burning hot behind his eyelids. He feels a sudden wild urge to say Owen Grant, call Owen Grant, just take me back where I belong, this is too hard and I don’t want to do it anymore, being a person is just too hard but fights it off and instead, shaky and uncertain, he offers, “Th’ photo of th’ guy in th’ blue, blue shirt. That’s... thassss... Jake.”

“And he’ll come get you?” Sadie’s thumb hovers over the image, a picture Jake took of himself and sent to Kauri once, smiling over his iced coffee studying at school. “This guy will come get you, this Jake?”

Kauri whispers, “I hope so.”

Sadie looks at him, tilting her head. “Did you guys have a fight or something? Is that why you’re out here like blackout drunk?”

“No,” Kauri mumbles. “Fight... I fight with m’self.”

Sadie gives a soft sigh and a nod. “Well, I’ve been there done that. Okay.” She taps the photo of Jake, gives a low whistle and mumbles a soft damn, that guy’s hot, I see why you’re out here being schmoopy about him, and before Kauri can correct her that it doesn’t work that way, she’s got the phone up to her ear and Kauri can hear it softly ringing.

Jake must pick up because the ringing stops and Sadie says, “No, this isn’t-... I’m Sadie Williams, I’m on his phone. We’re at the bus stop on Penntuck Drive, do you know where-... oh, okay. Yeah, I live a couple blocks from here and this, uh, Kauri is way too drunk to go anywhere.”

“Am not,” Kauri protests, and his stomach suddenly flips and he swallows, eyes slightly widening. Oh no.

Sadie sighs and says wryly, “Trust me. Too drunk to get home on his own. Can you-... oh, okay. Cool. We’ll be here.” She hangs up the phone. “Okay, your buddy’s coming to get you. Let’s just sit on the bench in the bus stop, all right?”

Kauri nods, not trusting himself to speak, and lets Sadie maneuver him, fighting ripples of nausea that follow every movement, to sit down on the cold metal bench inside the shelter at the bus stop. As soon as she lets go, Kauri flops onto his side on the bench, letting the metal chill the sudden heat he feels, the sweat breaking out all over his body. 

“There we go. Just stay here for a while.” Sadie pats him on the shoulder and he wishes she would pet his head, suddenly, tell him he’s a good boy, good pet, and he turns his face to the bench to hide the tears that finally escape and drip down to pool there. Sadie stands and leans against the side of the shelter, scrolling through her own phone. Kauri twists to look at her and, after his dazed vision stops spinning and settles enough to focus, he thinks... she’s tired.

She’s tired, because it’s two o’clock in the fucking morning, and she probably just got off of work and rode the bus home in her scrubs still under her coat, and watched a drunk boy fall laughing into a bush, and decided to stay with him and make sure he didn’t get found there in the morning by a cop or the bus driver who does the early morning shift, Andrew something, and... 

“‘m okay,” Kauri says, and she doesn’t look up, but one eyebrow slowly quirks upward. “You could... go home. He’s comin’. I’m okay.”

“Oh, you are the exact opposite of that,” She says without looking at him. “Whatever’s got you fucking yourself up, I’m not gonna be the one who walks away from you. I’ve seen too many people like you wind up in the ER.” 

Is it his imagination, or do her eyes briefly drop to the thick leather bracelet Kauri always wears around his left wrist to cover up his barcode?

“You don’t know me,” He protests.

“I know enough,” She says, flatly, and he stops trying to argue. He knows that voice - Nat uses that voice when she’s getting you to do things, a voice that brooks no appeal. Kauri calls it her mom-voice, even though she doesn’t have kids and never will. It makes him think of TV moms, and maybe of his own, who must have existed, and is maybe still missing her dead son, whoever the fuck he was.

Kauri winces at the headache that pings around his skull and curls up on the bench on his left side. There’s silence, for a while, and then the sound of a car engine coming closer, the bright flash of headlights against Kauri’s closed eyes.

Jake’s new beat-up four-door - well, new to him, but it’s a Subaru that has seen better decades, not just better days - pulls up alongside the curb, idling as he opens the door and unfolds himself. Sadie, Kauri sees from the bench, tenses slightly at the sight of him, and Kauri wonders if she’s got her phone ready to dial for help.

He wouldn’t blame her - if you don’t know Jake and just see all that height and muscle alone with you in the middle of the night, you could see the threat, in that. If you didn’t know that Jake’s the guy who beats up your attacker, not the attacker himself.

Jake seems well aware of her tension and puts up both hands. “I’m Jake. You’re Sadie? You called for Kauri?”

Some of Sadie’s tension dissipates. “That’s me. Mind if I get a little distance while you pick him up?”

“Yeah, no problem. Go ahead.” Jake waits for Sadie to step away, and Kauri watches her hand move to her purse. He never thinks about stuff like that - she probably has pepper spray or a gun in there, and here is Kauri blackout drunk half-passed out on a bus bench, here is Kauri who passes out on park benches and underneath that big black box that doesn’t do anything over by downtown, Kauri who sleeps in alleys and grassy lawns and anywhere he thinks he’ll get a couple hours, here and there.

She’s careful - and Kauri is lucky.

“So fuckin’ lucky,” Kauri mumbles, then coughs out a bitter laugh, and Jake sighs as he moves over to him, sliding big arms gently between Kauri’s body and the bench. The world spins again as Jake picks him up and Kauri’s arms go around his neck, suddenly terrified he’ll fall and not hit the ground but fall up, up and up and up, and end up somewhere high above the clouds.

“D-don’t, don’-... let me-”

“I got you, Kaur,” Jake says, and his voice is low and it rumbles against Kauri in his chest and he relaxes, a little, but his hands tighten behind Jake’s neck. “Thanks for waiting with him,” He says to Sadie, moving Kauri to the passenger side of the car and leaning over to help him slide him in. Kauri flops to one side, eyes sliding closed.

“No problem. I’m going to head home. Take care of him.”

Jake gives a huff of laughter as he closes the door for Kauri. “I always do,” Kauri hears him say, a little muffled. There’s a pause and then Jake sits back down in the driver’s seat, leaning across to buckle Kauri’s seat belt for him as he half-sits, half-lays limp against the seat. 

“We’re going to get you home and you’re gonna drink some water,” Jake says firmly, slipping a hand behind Kauri’s head to help him reorient himself. Kauri shivers at the simple pleasure of the affectionate touch, eyes sliding closed, and turns his head, just barely pressing a kiss to Jake’s wrist.

Jake doesn’t pull away - Kauri will lose his balance if he does - but he goes still. “Hey. No, Kauri. The answer is still no.”

Kauri sniffs, nuzzles at his arm, and then pulls away, turning away from Jake to clumsily curl up against the car’s door, as far as he can get. “I know. But-... I just-...”

“I know. But we can’t, ever, not like this.”

Kauri tries to feel something other than the spin of the earth, his stomach flipping at the motion of the car as Jake slowly pulls his hand back and drives down the dark street, every house silent, everywhere around them still and quiet.

Jake’s speakers play music, softly, a man’s voice singing, well, let that lonely feeling wash away - maybe there's a reason to believe you'll be okay over the press of piano keys and hint of strings. 

"What is this?” Kauri asks, tries to point, fails.

“Um, Chris’s shit,” Jake says, but he doesn’t change the song. “I drove him to get some hair dye today, he must have put his playlist on. Musical shit.”

And oh, someone will come running and I know they’ll take you home

“When can it?” Kauri asks, softly. “When can it happen?”

“What?”

“Us. When can us happen, Jake?”

Even when the dark comes crashing through, when you need a friend to carry you and when you're broken on the ground, you will be found

“I hate this song,” Kauri mutters.

Jake doesn’t look at him as he signals a turn - Kauri fights a laugh at the sight of Jake, totally and utterly alone on the road in the earliest hours of the morning, fucking putting on his turn signal a careful distance back from the intersection - and takes a right.

“Jake-... I want you,” Kauri says, the last vestiges of tequila pressing the words onto his tongue, rolling them off and out into the soft air between them. “When can I stop wanting and-”

“Kauri.” Jake’s voice goes softer, not harder. It’s not chiding him, it’s not angry, but laced with something very different. 

He wants me, too, I know he does, I know it.

“Jake, I-”

“It can’t ever happen,” Jake says in that same soft voice, lost in something that some dim part of Kauri recognizes as an echo of his own feelings, “until it’s not like this.”

Jake reaches down to grab his phone, hits a button, and the song changes. Kauri fights back a laugh when he realizes it’s just a different song from the same fucking musical.

“Fucking Chris,” Kauri says, trapped between laughter and tears. 

Jake’s hand moves to rest on the console between the seats, and after a second, Kauri’s hand remembers how to listen to his brain and he lays his cold, thin, long fingers over Jake’s larger, warmer ones.

Jake doesn’t pull away from him.

By the time they get back to Nat’s house, their fingers have wrapped around each other, and Kauri feels a little warmer than he felt before. 

When you’re falling in a forest and there’s nobody around, all you want is for somebody to find you

“Next time, can it be your music playing?” Kauri asks, voice a little huskier and rougher than he means it to be. All the numbness that came with the drinking is gone, and Kauri hurts, inside himself, in a way he’s almost grateful for.

When you’re falling in a forest and when you hit the ground, all you need is for somebody to find you

“Uh, um, yeah,” Jake manages, and his voice is rough, too.

No one deserves to be forgotten, no one deserves to fade away

“I can get better, Jake,” Kauri says, voice low. “I can. But I’m never-... I’m never gonna be whoever was me before.”

No one deserves to disappear

“I know,” Jake says. “That isn’t who I care about, anyway, Kaur... I care about you.”

No one deserves to disappear

They sit in the driveway until the song ends. And through the next song, and the next. The streetlights shine down and the dark is otherwise total and the world slowly steadies in its constant spin around the sun. Kauri lets his head slowly lean back against the headrest.

“I’m-... so fucking lucky you found me,” Kauri whispers. Jake’s fingers twitch in his, and his eyes are locked on Nat’s front door, up on the porch. 

“No,” Jake says, softly. “We’re-... I’m lucky you found us.”

Neither of them wants to be the first to let go of the other one’s hand.

---

Antoni is quiet, but he moves to the side, setting the kettle on the stove full of water to boil, pulling down two mugs. Eli watches him with hazy eyes as he opens two different boxes of tea, the elaichithat Eli prefers, heavy and sweet with cardamom and ginger, his own strong black tea. “The day gets away from you,” Antoni says without looking at him.

Eli considers escaping back to his room from this… this moment that comes between them, uncomfortable intimacy.

Instead, he turns and leans against the fridge, lets the cold of it soothe the burn of his skin right through his shirt. “There are too many days,” He says, wiping at his mouth, looking down to find drips of Gatorade soaked into his shirt. Oh, well. It can join the sweat, can’t it? “Especially after my bonded was gone-... after I came back to my master. What else did I have to do, but learn while locked into my master’s bedroom?”

“Your bonded must miss you,” Antoni says, quietly. He stays on the other side of the room the span of the table and chairs between them, and Eli could cry with gratitude at the air Antoni gives him to breathe, so unlike the suffocating concern of therapists and doctors and Jakob Stanton.

“I assume he is dead,” Eli says, voice flat. “We don’t live long, away from each other. Everyone knows that.”

“But you are here,” Antoni counters, voice gentle. “You are still here, Eli.”

Eli raises his chin, jaw set, dark eyes flashing beneath the fog of his fever. “I am stronger than others.”

“Stronger than your bonded?”

His heart flutters, deep down, beneath the solid breastplate of bone where it is carefully shielded. He can withstand the blows.

“He was never the same kind of strong as I. Why are you making me tea?”

Antoni doesn’t answer at first, turning away to pull down honey in a little plastic jar shaped like a bear, tipping it upside down to add the cloying syrup first to Eli’s mug, then his own. Without looking back, he says quietly, “How else will you allow me to show you that we care if you are ill?”

“I don’t get sick,” Eli says, but he knows his appearance - pale, clammy, with the deep circles beneath his eyes - gives away his lie. “Good pets don’t-”

“We are neither of us very good pets,” Antoni says, and he smiles over his shoulder. Eli can’t help but return it, somehow.

He must be sicker than he thought.

“This is true. But I have always kept to myself, Antoni. I do not intend to stop now-”

“What was your bonded’s name?”

Eli stiffens all over again. “Why do you want to know?”

“Because… because…” The water in the kettle is starting to make a soft sound, as bubbles form on the bottom and break the surface. Not quite boiling, but close. “Because I think everyone should be remembered, this is all. I think we all of us deserve our names, and to be thought of.”

“I never stop thinking about him.” Eli looks down at his fingernails, still carefully filed and trimmed and cared for. “They don’t know what they’ve done to us, when they make us bonded. That it doesn’t stop, that you can’t turn it off. They don’t know what they’ve done-”

“Yes, they do.” The whistle of the kettle starts up, soft as a song, and Antoni pulls it off the stove immediately, pouring the steaming clear water into the mugs, one by one. There’s a silence, as he does it, the strong smell of cardamom rising in the air almost immediately. “They know exactly what they have done.”

“Yes.” Eli sighs heavily, and finally allows himself to sit at a chair at the kitchen table. His legs are nearly weak with relief, and he finds himself resting his forehead on his arms, slumped. Some part of him screams to straighten his posture, keep his chin up, smile warmly when he’s looked at, be seen and not heard, no one cares about his thoughts, recite the words he’s learning in his mind while they talk around and over him. After all, he’s just there to decorate.

Just there to be his master’s exotic trophy, as lifeless as the head of a lion on the wall.

But he’s not there any longer.

“I found him once, I was able-... able to send a package. But then he was gone again, the house was empty. I don’t know where he went. If he hurts as much as I do at not having each other… maybe he is dead.”

“I am sorry,” Antoni says, softly.

“Ne izvinyaysya.”

“‘Do not be sorry,’” Antoni echoes, opening the fridge. “I could hardly understand that one.”

“Well, I am sick, aren’t I? You can’t blame me for screwing up the emphasis.”

Antoni laughs. There’s an odd warmth in Eli at the sound. “That is fair.”

“In any case… Nine,” Eli says, muffled by the dark soothing prison of his own arms. “His name is-... it was Nine.”

There’s a thunk, the gurgle of liquid pouring out, and Eli looks up from his arms to see Antoni staring at him as milk pours onto the kitchen floor from the half-gallon tipped onto his side at his feet. “Did you say Nine?”

“My master never gave him a name,” Eli says, confused. He stumbles to his feet to grab at a towel, which seems to break Antoni from his strange trance, as he jerks back into motion and picks up the milk, splashing it into the cups before stashing it back in the fridge, nearly empty now.

He drops to a crouch to help Eli clean up the spreading pale liquid, shaking his head. “Eli-”

“I think I did not smile, after we were found,” Eli says, looking at the soaked-through towel, a pale cream with blue stripes. It’s spotted with old stains that never came out in the wash. His master would demand the towel be replaced when the first stain stuck, but here everything is kept until it is threadbare. “What did I have to smile about? Do you see?”

“I-”

“What will I ever have to smile about again?” Eli chuckles, then winces as his throat punishes him for even a hint of cynical, unhappy humor. “This is more than you have heard me speak ever before, I guess. He does that to me. Thinking about-... he could always get me talking when nothing else could. Even if he’s gone… even if he’s gone, he’s still here.”

Antoni is quiet, and then shifts to his feet. He drops a damp towel into the sink. “Eli, he is not gone.”

“No, I know. Memory is-”

“He was good with devices,” Antoni says, suddenly. “Was he not? Good at looking at a phone, a computer, and knowing how it would work inside? Good at knowing how to use them?”

“What? No, we were never allowed to touch anything like that.” Eli pauses. His brain feels too full of fog and his eyes ache too much to fully understand what Antoni is saying. The smell of cardamom is stronger, and it seeps into his mind, brings back to his thoughts the shadowy woman, the scent of her own teas steeping, the steaming samosas on the table, the way she would bring home mangos when he was sad without him having to ask, piling them high and watching as he demolished them-

The pain rises, and he puts his hands over his face, trying to force her back down again, but she doesn’t want to go. Her lips thinned with disappointment, her soft subtle proud smile when she didn’t think he would see it. She loved him in the things she did, not the things she said.

He has a sense of them both covered in color, vibrant as paint, a small boy in a woman’s arms.

His master never wanted him to wear colors at all.

His master talked about adoration but it was only in his words, and his actions were always suffocating and buried Eli, alone.

“I think I know your Nine,” Antoni says, a hand at Eli’s back. It hovers, not quite touching, but Eli can feel the weight of it even so, feel the pressure of the near-contact. He swallows the lump in his throat, pushes past how it hurts.

“My Nine,” He says, a breath. A sigh and nothing more. He doesn’t want to believe it, and so he doesn’t. It’s as simple as that. “It was years ago, Antoni. I was taken back to my master. I was alone for years, and the days were… so long. I’m sure you’ve met people like him. There are so many of us, there must be others who feel like me.”

“No, Eli. Nyet, listen to me, I know your Nine. He is hiding in a place north of the city, he is-... he is-... he helps us all now. Your Nine, I know it must be yours, he told me once he knew what it means to lose, and he asked if I had a bonded, then. I did not understand that he meant he had one.”

Eli’s body is frozen, torn with equal strength between denying it - he cannot grieve Nine all over again, his heart won’t withstand the pain of the loss, if it isn’t him Eli may lose his mind this time - and wanting to ask.

He settles on the question.

“What does he look like?”

“This Nine that I know is tall, but he slouches. His hair is brown-”

“Everyone’s hair is brown,” Eli says, acid-laced, his eyes closing at the memory of Nine and his wide bright smile, slouching in the heavy oversized sweats he wore day-in and day-out in shades of beige or gray, compared to Eli’s perfectly tailored suits and silk pajama sets. “It is a common color of hair and it means nothing-”

“He wears a brace when he works,” Antoni says, “and he is telling me once it is because his arm was broken so many times by his master that it never healed right in the end. He has scars-”

“Stop,” Eli says, and the heels of his hands push into his closed eyes, sparking bright colors behind the darkness of his eyelids. “Do not say-”

“His bonded loved stained glass, he tells me, one day we are working together. His bonded loved color but could not have any of his own, his bonded had dark eyes and dark hair, his bonded would sing sometimes in-”

“Hindi,” Eli cuts him off, and his voice sounds strangled. Hands around his throat that are nothing but memories of those bare moments of happiness they had together, lying on his master’s bed whiling away the day, teaching his bonded the songs he couldn’t forget, child rhymes from a home he couldn’t remember. "I like to sing in Hindi."

“Da,” Antoni breathes, and Eli opens his eyes to find Antoni setting the mug down in front of him, milky and pale brown, looking at him with his deep brown eyes, an urgent expression.

“Chto, yesli eto ne on?” It seems safer to ask in a language that isn’t his in any way.

“It is him,” Antoni whispers, and puts his cool hands over Eli’s. To be touched directly by Antoni is so rare that it occurs to Eli he has never seen Antoni touch anyone first, only react to be touched by others. But now, he puts his hands on Eli’s, and his fingers are cold but they warm to Eli’s skin quickly.

The sleeve of his sweater pulls back at the motion, and Eli seems circle-scars along the inside of his wrist, disappearing up inside his sleeve. When his eyes raise, he can see more through the shadowed neckline of Antoni’s shirt, traveling down his collarbone until the shadows overtake them.

“Eli, I am sure it is him.”

“If it isn’t, I won’t survive it,” Eli admits, voice cracking, his smooth soft singsong shattering beneath the insistence. “I won’t. I can’t lose him again, even if it is only a dream of him, I cannot lose him again-”

“But what if you find him, instead?” Antoni meets his gaze, his messy dark hair falling over his own eyes in contrast to how neatly short Eli keeps his. There is an uncertain, hopeful smile on his face. “Will you survive that?”

“I might.” Eli is whispering, now. “I might. But-”

“Then I will call him.” Antoni pulls out his cell phone, and Eli exhales, closing his eyes. He’s too sick to say no to hope, when he has kept himself safe by doing exactly that, over and over again, ever since he lost Nine in the first place.

The ring of the phone is audible, just barely, against Antoni’s ear.

Nothing will come of it.

Nothing has ever come of his hopes-

“I know I am waking you,” Antoni says, cutting off whoever is speaking on the other end. “I know.”

Eli looks to the clock over the oven, and it reads 11:34. Nine always could stay up all night and sleep the day away, if allowed to.

He fights the way his heart starts to flutter, as if trying to escape how tightly he has caged it under the stone of his skeleton to keep it safe. It isn’t him, he tells himself, desperate not to feel the tearing, screaming grief he has felt once before. It isn’t him, it isn’t him, it isn’t him.

“Just bear with me. I will put you on speaker.” Antoni sets the phone down in front of Eli on the table. “Say hello to one of our residents.”

There’s a pause. Then, tired and hazy, a familiar voice. A little deeper, with time, but still… familiar. “Hello? Is there a reason I’m saying hello to-”

“Nine,” Eli breathes, his fingers twitching towards the phone and stopping themselves. His vision blurs, and it takes him a few seconds to realize it’s because he can’t see through his tears. “Nine. Nine, my Nine, my Nine, it’s me.”

There’s a silence, and then a thunk, and a curse comes through the phone. Eli puts his hands over his mouth to hide the way he wants to laugh, high and crazy, because he knows exactly what happened.

“You fell out of bed, didn’t you?”

“I sleep on a mattress on the floor, but I managed to fall out of that anyway,” comes the voice on the other end. “I always-... is this really Eli?”

“It’s me,” He manages. “Did you g-... did you get my gift when I sent it-”

“Yes. Don’t leave that fucking house, I’m coming to you.” He can hear Nine moving, shuffling and rustling through the speakerphone, the jingle of keys. “Don’t you dare leave, don’t you dare, it’s going to take me like five hours to get to you, don’t you fucking leave-”

“I w-won’t, I’ll be right here, Nine, I’m right h-here-” He lets out a single, uncontrolled sob before he tightens himself, before he forces the emotion as deep down as he can force it to go.

“I’ve been keeping that stained glass in the window of my last four houses,” Nine says, breathless. Eli closes his eyes and imagines his bonded running down the stairs of some house somewhere, the focus on his face.

How has his face changed? Has it? Or will he look just the same?

“I couldn’t find you again,” He says, voice shaking still. Cautiously - he allows his heart to beat fast. He lets the cage of his emotions crack, just the slightest bit, open. Lets himself breathe. “You should know, I am very sick-”

“Let me guess, you’re telling all of them you’re fine and you can handle it and do it all yourself, like always.”

Eli laughs, startled into the freedom of the sound. “Yes.”

“Good to know I still know you as well as I used to.”

“We always knew each other best,” Eli says, and then his voice dips, and he leans forward to whisper. “I missed you so much.”

“I thought of you every day, Eli. Every damn day. I’ve been looking for you, every single day.”

“Well… here I am.”

“Don’t hang up the phone.” Eli hears Nine’s ignition start, the rumble of some ancient car. “Please. Please just keep talking to me, I’m afraid if you hang up I’ll wake up and this was just dreaming about you again.”

“Do you dream about me?”

“Always. Do you remember how we used to sing?”

“Yes.”

Antoni taps the back of Eli’s hand, lightly. His smile is wide, and there is a shimmer in his own eyes, too. “Take my phone to your room with your tea,” He offers. “I will bring you the charger.”

“Thank you,” Eli says, and he doesn’t just mean about the phone.

Antoni only turns away, leaving to head for his own room. Eli stands, balancing phone in one hand and mug in the other, moving slowly down the hall. Nine starts to talk to him about where he’s staying now, and Eli lets the familiarity of that voice wash over him. The empty spot they made inside of him during training starts to refill.

His bonded, after all, always meant far more to him than any master he was meant to love.

They didn’t know what they had done, when they came up with bonded pairs. They didn’t just give Eli a built-in nursemaid, companion, or servant. They didn’t make him a weakness.

They gave him a way to break through the love he was supposed to feel and remember what actual love felt like. They gave him the first steps towards escape, they made it so they couldn’t paint over the person he is with someone else he was supposed to be. Not entirely.

He showed through, an oil painting with a second one hidden just beneath the first.

Nine made it out earlier, but the love of Nine had led Eli here anyway.

“I can’t wait to see you again,” Nine says as Eli drops onto his bed, closing his eyes, letting the phone rest warm just beneath his collarbone.

Over his heart.

His fever burns, but the knowledge that Nine is coming burns brighter.

-

She gave them a gray cotton shirt sealed inside a clear evidence bag. It smelled of sweat, antiseptic, stale fear, and the sharp chemical residue that clung to everything inside WRU facilities. Beneath those dominant scents, 363 found the subtler traces Peterson expected them to isolate: cheap soap, damp concrete, blood, and something faintly citrus, perhaps shampoo used days earlier. They catalogued each detail without visibly reacting.

The target had been frightened when they wore the shirt. The blood smelled old enough to have dried before the fabric had been sealed. There was too much antiseptic around the collar and cuffs, as though someone had scrubbed the wearer without giving them clean clothing afterward.

Peterson watched their face. “Problem?”

“No.”

“Good.” She patted their cheek with proprietary approval. “I want clean work today.”

They left the facility in an unmarked black vehicle with Peterson, two armed handlers, and a driver. The windows had been darkened so heavily that 363 could barely distinguish the industrial streets passing outside. They counted turns anyway. Seven minutes south. Hard right. Three traffic lights. An overpass. A left turn onto older pavement. Rail lines nearby, judging by the vibration and intermittent metallic shriek beneath the tires.

Peterson spent most of the drive reviewing assessment criteria as though they were heading toward a controlled exercise yard. Speed. Discretion. Accuracy. Minimal property damage. No unnecessary civilian contact. 363 listened with their hands resting motionless on their thighs and their spine held precisely straight. They expected a WRU employee pretending to flee, perhaps a handler carrying the scent article’s match beneath their uniform. The facility enjoyed elaborate tests. Sometimes the lesson mattered less than whether the trainee noticed which rules had quietly changed.

The vehicle stopped behind an abandoned distribution warehouse near the freight tracks. Rain had passed through recently, leaving the cracked asphalt dark and the weeds along the fence burdened with water. Peterson opened the door and gestured for 363 to step out.

Cold air struck their face. They drew one careful breath.

The scent from the shirt was here.

It clung to the rusted fence, the wet weeds, and the corner of the warehouse where someone had pressed close to the brick before moving east. The trail didn’t follow the pattern of a planted exercise. It staggered. Doubled back. Paused beside places that offered momentary shelter. Drops of diluted blood marked the pavement beyond the fence, nearly erased by the rain.

363 crouched beside one of them. They didn’t touch it.

The blood was fresh.

Behind them, one of the handlers shifted his rifle against his chest. Peterson remained beneath a black umbrella, immaculate in her tailored coat and polished shoes.

“When did they leave?” 363 asked.

Peterson tilted her head. “You don’t need that information.”

“They’re injured.”

“Then they should be easier to find.”

363 looked past the warehouse toward the narrow streets beyond it. A laundromat. A closed auto shop. Apartment buildings with exterior staircases. Farther east, traffic moved steadily across a raised highway. There were too many uncontrolled variables for a training exercise and too many handlers for a harmless actor.

They rose slowly. “They escaped.”

Peterson’s smile sharpened.

The answer settled inside 363 with an unpleasant clarity. The target wasn’t an employee. They weren’t pretending. Somewhere beyond the warehouse, an injured captive believed they’d gotten away.

“This is a retrieval,” 363 said.

“This is an assessment,” Peterson corrected. “Your assessment.”

363 looked toward the nearest cross street. The trail went east, but a scuffed patch of mud suggested the escapee had considered turning south. A smear of blood marked the brick at shoulder height. They’d been using the wall for support.

Peterson touched the center of 363’s back. “Go on.”

363 followed the trail.

At first, they delayed only by seconds. They examined prints already clear enough to read. They paused at intersections and tested the air from multiple angles despite knowing which way the target had gone. They checked behind a dumpster the escapee couldn’t possibly have reached without leaving blood on the surrounding pavement. Each wasted moment remained small enough to defend as caution.

Peterson noticed anyway.

“You’re moving slowly,” she said through the earpiece.

“Rain disrupted the trail.”

“You identified the direction immediately.”

“There may be deliberate misdirection.”

A brief silence followed. 363 imagined Peterson reviewing the live feed from the device mounted against their collar, searching for the difference between methodical work and disobedience.

“Your target is frightened, injured, and untrained,” she said. “Don’t invent competence where there isn’t any.”

363 continued east.

The captive had crossed behind the laundromat, slipped through a gap in a chain-link fence, and entered an alley littered with shattered bottles and swollen cardboard. One footprint landed unevenly. The next dragged at the toe. Their right leg had begun failing. They’d stopped beside a drainpipe long enough to leave a handprint in the grime.

363 stood over the mark and listened.

Traffic. Water dripping from fire escapes. A washing machine thudding unevenly through the laundromat wall. A dog barking from an apartment window. The handlers’ footsteps stayed behind them, distant but never far enough. Peterson had ordered the team to give 363 room to work, not freedom to choose what happened when they succeeded.

The trail bent north.

363 went south.

They walked half a block before stopping beneath a rusted staircase and pretending to study a scrap of bloody fabric caught on a nail. It didn’t belong to the captive. Wrong color. Wrong blood. Too old.

“Incorrect direction,” Peterson said.

363 removed the fabric and held it toward the camera. “Possible transfer.”

“No.”

They let the scrap fall.

“North,” Peterson ordered.

The word carried the subtle cadence of a command drilled too deeply to ignore without consequence. 363 turned north.

The captive had made it another four blocks before slipping through the warped door of a condemned row house. The city had boarded the front windows, but someone had torn away part of the plywood over a basement entrance. Mud and blood marked the concrete steps. 363 could hear uneven breathing beyond the door before they touched it.

They stopped.

Behind them, the closest handler waited at the mouth of the alley with one hand near his weapon. Another circled toward the rear of the building. Peterson remained in the vehicle, watching through 363’s camera and tracking every movement through the cuff.

“Target located,” 363 said.

“Confirm visually.”

They opened the door.

The basement smelled of mold, wet plaster, rodents, and fresh blood. Light entered through narrow gaps in the boards overhead, laying thin gray stripes across the debris. A mattress had collapsed against one wall. Broken pipes protruded from the ceiling. There was a rear window, but it was too small for a quick exit, and a rusted metal grille covered it from outside.

The captive crouched behind an overturned table.

They wore WRU-issued gray trousers and a thin white undershirt stained brown-red along one side. One ankle had swollen above a bare foot. Bruises covered their arms in several stages of healing, and a restraint burn circled their left wrist. Someone had clipped their hair close to the scalp, leaving uneven patches where the blades had caught skin. Their eyes fixed on 363’s black uniform, then dropped immediately to the insignia at their collar.

The hope vanished from their face.

“No,” they whispered.

363 stepped inside and closed the door behind them.

The captive scrambled backward. Their injured ankle folded, and they struck the wall with a strangled sound. They grabbed a length of broken pipe from the floor, but their hand shook too violently to hold it steady.

“Don’t,” 363 said.

“Stay away.”

“There are two handlers outside.”

The captive’s gaze flicked toward the boarded windows.

“One at the alley entrance,” 363 continued. “One moving around the rear. Peterson has my location. Additional team in the vehicle.”

“You’re telling me that so I’ll give up?”

363 evaluated the room again.

Front door behind them. Rear stairs, mostly collapsed. Basement window barred. A narrow coal chute in the corner, sealed with concrete years ago.

The building next door shared a wall, but the masonry had no visible breach. Even if 363 disabled the handler at the alley entrance, the second would cut them off from the rear. Peterson could activate the tracking cuff’s compliance mechanism before they crossed the next street. The captive couldn’t run on the damaged ankle. Carrying them would reduce speed and leave 363 without a free hand.

One person might escape if the other stayed behind.

Not both.

“Please,” the captive said.

363 didn’t move.

The captive’s grip slipped on the pipe. It struck the concrete with a hollow clang, and they flinched as though the noise itself might summon the handlers. “Please. I didn’t do anything. I didn’t hurt anybody. I just left.”

363’s eyes settled on the restraint burn around their wrist.

“I got through a laundry vent,” the captive continued, words tumbling faster now. “There was a cart, and the door wasn’t locked, and I ran. That’s all I did. I didn’t steal anything. I didn’t attack anyone. I just ran.”

“You’re bleeding.”

“I know.”

“Your ankle may be fractured.”

“I know.” Their voice cracked. “I can still move. I’ll crawl if I have to.”

363 calculated distances. Twenty-three feet to the door. Forty feet through the alley. Roughly eighty to the nearest intersecting street. The handler outside carried a rifle and restraint cable. The second carried a sidearm. Peterson likely had four more personnel waiting beyond visible range. Civilian traffic created witnesses, but WRU documentation would identify both captives as property and 363 as an authorized retrieval asset. Police involvement wouldn’t guarantee release. It might only make the return more public.

They could attack the first handler. Perhaps the second. They couldn’t neutralize Peterson’s control over the cuff before she used it. They couldn’t keep the captive upright. They couldn’t manufacture a viable route merely because the alternative was unbearable.

The captive studied their silence and seemed to understand that calculations were happening behind it.

“You’re like me,” they said.

363’s jaw tightened.

“You are.” The captive pushed themself higher against the wall, desperation briefly overpowering the pain in their ankle. “I saw your number. You belong to them too.”

“Don’t use that word.”

“What word? Belong?”

363 took one step closer.

The captive recoiled but didn’t stop. “They made you come after me. They put that thing on your wrist. You think I can’t see it?”

“It’s a tracker.”

“It’s a leash.”

363 heard a faint click through the earpiece as Peterson opened the communication channel, but she didn’t speak. She wanted to hear how they handled this. The assessment hadn’t ended when 363 found the target. This conversation was part of it.

The captive’s eyes darted toward the door. “You could say I wasn’t here.”

“They already know.”

“Then let me get past you.”

“You won’t get past them.”

“Help me.”

363 looked at the swollen ankle, the shallow breathing, and the blood soaking slowly through the captive’s shirt. They imagined supporting their weight through the alley. They imagined the first handler raising his weapon. They imagined twisting his wrist, driving him into the brick, taking the rifle before the second handler cleared the corner. They imagined the cuff locking every muscle in their body before they reached the street. They imagined falling while still holding the captive and leaving them both on the pavement.

Every route ended with retrieval.

Some ended with the captive more badly injured.

363 reached for them.

The captive swung the pipe.

363 caught their wrist before the blow landed. They used minimal force, turning the arm until the fingers opened. The pipe fell. The captive gasped and struck at them with the other hand, weakly at first and then with frantic, ragged fury. Their nails dragged across 363’s cheek. Their fist hit 363’s shoulder. They tried to bite when 363 secured both wrists.

363 absorbed every attempt without retaliation.

“Stop,” they said.

“Let me go!”

“You’ll worsen your injuries.”

“I don’t care!”

“You will when you’re returned.”

The captive went still for half a second. The terror in their face deepened into something raw and absolute.

“That’s why I can’t go back.”

363 knew.

They tightened their hold anyway.

The captive fought until their injured ankle slipped, then collapsed against 363’s chest. 363 caught them automatically. They weighed less than expected. Beneath the damp shirt, their ribs stood out sharply enough to count. Their breath came in panicked bursts against 363’s throat.

“Please,” they whispered again. “Please don’t make me go back.”

363 placed one arm behind their knees and lifted them.

The captive screamed.

The sound tore through the ruined basement and brought the handler at the alley entrance to the door. He opened it with his weapon ready, then relaxed when he saw the target in 363’s arms.

“Confirmed,” he said into his radio.

363 carried the captive into the alley.

Rainwater dripped from the fire escapes and struck the captive’s face. They twisted once, searching past 363’s shoulder for an opening that wasn’t there. The second handler emerged at the far end of the building, sealing the only remaining route. A reinforced transport van rolled slowly into view.

The captive stopped struggling.

That surrender felt worse than the fight.

They stared up at 363. Their face had gone strangely calm, although tears continued slipping toward their ears. “How can you do this?”

363 kept walking.

“How can you do this to someone like you?”

Their steps remained even. Their grip stayed secure. Their expression didn’t change, because Peterson watched through the camera and the handlers watched from both sides.

Inside, something recoiled.

363 couldn’t remember their own escape, if there had ever been one. They couldn’t remember a home, a family, or a name that hadn’t been stamped into paperwork. When they searched for the person they’d been before WRU, they found only blankness—a vast, chemically scoured absence surrounded by fragments that didn’t belong to a life. Languages without teachers. Skills without beginnings. Fear without its first cause.

They didn’t remember enough to tell the captive who they were.

They remembered enough to know they should’ve been better than this.

“I don’t know,” 363 said.

The captive looked at them as though the answer had confirmed something terrible.

The van doors opened. One handler reached for the captive, but they clutched suddenly at the front of 363’s uniform. Their fingers curled into the fabric with surprising strength.

“No. No, don’t give me to them. Please. You don’t have to. You don’t—”

The handler pried their fingers away one at a time.

363 allowed it.

They transferred the captive into waiting arms. The team forced them onto a padded bench and secured their wrists, ankles, chest, and throat with practiced efficiency. The captive didn’t look away from 363 until the doors closed between them.

The final thing 363 saw was their expression.

They knew exactly what 363 had chosen.

Peterson arrived a few minutes later. She stepped out of the black vehicle and approached beneath her umbrella, looking pleased.

“Excellent work.”

363 stared at the van.

“You compensated for poor weather, identified an attempted false trail, found a concealed target, and completed the retrieval with no civilian exposure.” She brushed a wet strand of hair away from their forehead. Her thumb passed over the scratch on their cheek. “And you controlled your strength beautifully. No unnecessary damage. I knew you could manage it.”

“They need medical treatment.”

“They’ll receive whatever treatment is appropriate.”

“The ankle may be fractured.”

“I heard you the first time.” Peterson’s voice stayed indulgent, as though 363 had expressed concern about a damaged piece of equipment. “You did very well. Don’t ruin it by fixating.”

The captive struck the inside of the van once. The impact sounded dull beneath the reinforced metal.

363 flinched so slightly that an ordinary observer might’ve missed it.

Peterson didn’t.

Her smile widened. “You’re getting a reward.”

“No.”

The single word fell between them.

One of the nearby handlers turned his head. Peterson’s expression remained pleasant, but her hand closed around 363’s chin.

“What did you say?”

“I don’t want one.”

“Rewards aren’t always about what you want. They reinforce successful behavior.”

363 looked directly at her. “Then don’t reinforce it.”

For one suspended moment, only rain filled the alley.

Peterson studied them with a new, intent stillness. Pride hadn’t left her face. It had merely changed shape, sharpening into fascination with a problem she intended to correct. Her thumb pressed into the hinge of their jaw.

“You located the target,” she said softly. “You overcame resistance. You completed the return. Whatever little moral objection you’re building now doesn’t change what you did.”

“I know.”

That answer pleased her most of all.

Peterson released their chin and patted their cheek. “Good. Then we agree the assessment was successful.”

She turned toward the vehicle and expected 363 to follow.

Behind them, the captive struck the van wall again.

363 stood in the rain for one second longer than permitted, staring at the closed doors and listening to a person like them beg from inside a locked box.

Then the tracking cuff tightened around their wrist.

Owen ignores the flare of rage at the judgment he’s sure Hanson is hiding. It doesn’t matter - he’ll have both his Vinces soon enough, he can give Hanson the last third of his payment and never see him again. He looks around, carefully, and sees a beat-up car a few spots down with a man inside. He doesn’t know the guy, not from this angle and from this far away, but he knows the boiling rage that opens and closes the man’s hands. He knows the intensity of the stare leveled Kauri’s way. 

“There he is,” Owen murmurs, and Hanson nods. He gets out of the passenger side, a hand on the gun carefully worn at his belt, ready to draw. Owen has one, too, just in case - not that he’s great with guns, but he does well enough. Goes to the range every week or so, tries to unload his stress there. 

It doesn’t help.

Not until he started picturing Vince’s face with every pull of the trigger.

When Owen steps out of the car, straightening up and heading that direction, Kauri’s pretty blue eyes swing to him. His hands tighten into fists where they sit carefully on his thighs, his shoulders lower and his chin raises. But Owen thinks he sees Kauri’s jaw trembling, just a little bit. 

How much will he shake, later, under Owen’s hands? How hard will he fight for air? It won't make any difference. He'll still be Owen's, in the end, right to the very last second and even afterward.

“Hey, Kor-Bore,” Owen says, keeping his voice casual, uncaring. He watches the shudder run through Kauri’s body from head to toe with a mix of delight and irritation - Kauri used to love that nickname. Didn’t he?

Didn’t he always say he loved it?

“Where’s Nat?” Kauri asks, instead of greeting him. He doesn’t move from the bench, but his eyes flicker to the side and back, catching the sight of Hanson lurking, watching the other car without trying to hide it. “You-... you said-”

“When I get you back,” Owen says, putting his hands up, showing how harmless he is, never mind the gun tucked into the back of his pants under his shirt. “Then we drive her and her pet to the outskirts of Berras and dump her at a bus stop.”

“He’s not her pet-”

“Shut up, I’m talking. Are you supposed to interrupt me? Were you trained to interrupt me, Romantic?"

Kauri swallows, hard. Owen watches his Adam’s apple bob. “... no.”

“Damn straight. In any case, you’ll be busy, but don’t worry, Kauri, you know I don’t mind letting you get in a goodbye. And you know I don’t want to kill anyone, or hurt anyone, if I can just have you. No one else has to get hurt if you come along with me.”

“You’ll hurt me, though.”

“Yeah.” Owen smiles, flashing perfect white teeth, obscenely perfect, in a wide smile. “I will. But just until I’m done.”

"When you're... when you're done?"

"Yeah. But then you won't hurt anymore, so that's good, right?"

"Sure." Kauri's voice is faint, and he has to clear his throat to find it again. His head tips to one side. "And... and Vince? Will you hurt him, too?"

“Too late for that, you should see what he looks like right now. Fucking hot shit like blood running down his face, you know? Just like I remembered... but nobody else gets hurt. Just you two." He holds out a hand, like when he would urge Kauri out of bed, folding those long thin fingers in his own larger hand, pulling Kauri to him for a good morning kiss, enjoying the soft laughter he’d receive and thinking of Vince, wondering why Vince never laughed that way, with him. 

Sometimes he’d push Kauri right back into bed and slot himself between those pretty legs, feel Kauri’s ankles hook behind his back, and listen to him laugh and moan and whimper and beg. It had been an amazing way to start the day.

Kauri’s eyes close, slowly. He takes a deep breath.

Owen wonders if he’s thinking about the mornings, too. How much fun they'd had, before Kauri got all those fucking ideas and took them all way too far.

Kauri pushes himself up to his feet, moving forward with the inevitability of any death, and puts his hand in Owen’s.

His fingers are cold.

Owen pulls them to his lips, breathing hot and feeling them twitch in his grip. “Your man over there going to try and fuck this up?” He asks, in a whisper. He kisses Kauri’s fingertips one by one, and his eyes are locked on the wide, warm blue.

Almost identical to Vince.

Almost.

He’ll cut them out, he thinks, before he lets Kauri die. Only Vince should get to die with those eyes. 

“No,” Kauri whispers. 

Dark eyelashes lay long enough to just brush his cheek when he closes his eyes. One black curl hangs over his thick eyebrow on one side, breaking the line of his pale forehead. Owen leans forward to kiss the little furrow between his eyes, just above his nose.

Kauri’s nose wrinkles, but he doesn’t pull away. “He knows how important Nat is.”

“More important than you,” Owen says, voice low. He trails his mouth down, pressing a kiss to the tip of Kauri’s nose, to his cheek. He keeps it all light, grazing, just enjoying Kauri’s stillness, his acceptance. 

“More important than me,” Kauri agrees, and when Owen pulls back there’s a slight, sad, wry smile on his beautiful face. “She’s saved a lot of lives, Owen. I’m just-... just-”

“Just a whore with delusions of grandeur,” Owen finishes for him, cutting him off and pressing a thumb to his lower lip. 

“I-I wouldn’t have phrased it that way-” Owen pushes the thumb into his mouth and it cuts off his words, makes him choke and gag a little before he pulls it back out.

“Doesn’t matter. I paid for a slut, and you stayed one, huh? I mean, look at you. How much are you fucking the guy in the car?”

“... as often as he wants to.” Kauri, the little shit, doesn’t even look ashamed of himself for it.

"And who else?"

"Jesus, is this really the time-"

"I said, who else?"

“Him. Antoni." Kauri's eyes suddenly flare into a wildness, a defiance that sends rage boiling through Owen's blood. "Chris. Everybody, I fuck anybody and everybody, Owen, that's how much I fucking love being away from you. It's been, what, about a hundred guys in the past ten years or so? Maybe two hundred? Or three?” Kauri’s lips twist, and it’s like he’s trying to hold it back but can’t. Like he can’t stop himself. “Can't even keep them all straight, I don't even know what half of their names were any longer. They bought me drinks and I paid the way you trained me to pay, didn't I? Spread my legs, because I couldn't read and I couldn't get a job and I couldn't-... do anything else! You paid for a slut, right, you told me that all the time. You paid for a fucking whore who couldn’t say no, what the fuck did you think I would do if I escaped you? Illiterate sluts can’t exactly spend their time playing Scrabble, now can they? What was I supposed to do to stay alive, Owen?! What did you think-”

Owen grabs his throat, thumb pressing into the racing pulse under his jaw, watching his eyes widen in alarm and his defiance cut off like a switched-off radio. Hearing the soft cry of surprise and fear that escapes around his constricted airway. His hands come up to grab at Owen’s, at his wrist, scrabbling and digging bitten fingernails in, but he was never strong enough to stop him and that, at least, hasn’t changed. 

“I never liked it when you got a tone with me, Kor-Bore,” He says, leaning forward until his forehead rests against Kauri’s. Until his wide blue eyes take up all of his vision, until he knows his own eyes are all that Kauri can see. He watches Kauri blink, rapidly, watches a tear run down his cheek on one side and then the other. "And I sure as fuck don't like you holding all that shit up to brag about it."

"I-I'm sorry-" Kauri whimpers, and Owen feels that familiar heat in his stomach again, pleasure just at the sound of his fear. "I'm sorry, Mr. Owen, I'm sorry-"

Behind him, he hears a car door slam. “Hey!” A deep voice calls out. “What the fuck are you doing?”

“Stay right the fuck where you are,” Hanson snaps. “Get back in your fucking car.”

“I’m not here so I can watch him choke Kauri out right here, asshole!”

“I said get back in your fucking car!”

“Oh, Prince Charming got pissed off,” Owen teases, and there - for just a second, there’s anger again in Kauri’s eyes. But it’s gone as fast as it came, replaced by the fear.

Always, by the fear.

Owen loves the fear. He always did, even when he pretended otherwise. It had felt so good to see Vince afraid of him, over and over and over again, afraid and unable to escape like he had in real life. To reenact the story, and this time have it end Owen’s way, with someone beautiful in bed, underneath him, existing in a kind of limbo until he walked in the door. 

Winking out of existence whenever Owen wasn’t looking directly at him. Curling into a ball whenever he wasn’t wanted. 

“I’m sorry,” Kauri whispers, “That I s-spoke to you that way. Just-... just get me in the car, please. I want to see-... to say g-goodbye to Nat. I’ve already said goodbye to-... to him. Them."

“Right. One second. Just need to check…” Owen lets go, and works his hands into Kauri’s hair, fingers over his scalp. He works his way down to his neck, noting the way his pale skin is already reddening from Owen’s brief grip on it, and then he pats him down, along the arms and the sides. He lingers a little longer around the hips than altogether necessary, maybe lets his hand stray while he’s touching the insides of his thighs. Kauri holds perfectly still for him, eyes closed now.

He accepts the touch, but he doesn’t enjoy it.

He’s ruined for that, Owen thinks, but that’s okay. Kauri isn’t supposed to survive very long after he gets him back to Vince’s house anyway.

He doesn’t find any hidden weapons. Not even a phone. 

Owen stands back up, leading Kauri to his car, opening the passenger door for him to slip inside. Once he’s there as well, he twists around to pull a box out of the backseat and flips open the top. Kauri sits with his hands in his lap again, staring fixedly at the bench he was on. Somewhere nearby, the bay is sparkling with reflected embers, the last hints of red light fading into the starless night.

He has to turn the dash light on, and watches Kauri jerk when he sees what’s inside the little cardboard box. “Owen-”

“It’s Mr. Owen, Kor-Bore.” Owen pulls the syringe out. It’s pre-loaded, he and Hanson had made sure it would be ready to go. The liquid inside is suspiciously, alarmingly clear. It could be anything. It could be death itself, and Kauri won’t know until he feels it in his veins. 

“I-... Mr. Owen, what is-... I’m not going to try and run-... pl-please don’t-”

“Shut the fuck up. It’s a five-hour drive where we’re going, Kor-Bore, and you’re going to take a little nap for the journey.” He taps, making sure there aren’t any bubbles. “Take out that little packet and wipe the inside of your elbow with it. How long since you’ve had a needle in your arm, huh?”

Kauri’s jaw tightens, briefly, and then he looks away, opening the single-use antiseptic wipe and drawing it across the inside of his right elbow, eyes closed. He shivers at the feeling. “Since I-... since the last… since my surgery.”

“Really? You never got into any of the hard shit while you were slutting it up all over California?”

“Not needles. Only-... only pills, drinking...”

“Good choice. I’d just kill you right now if you got into that dirty needle shit. Here we go.” Owen takes Kauri’s arm in his hand, pulling it out straight. Kauri closes his hand into a fist as Owen ties it off below his bicep and feels for the vein. He knows how to do this, sort of, in theory. He’s acted in some medical shows, played a drug addict a time or two, and he’s had it done to him for blood draws at the doctor. 

The needle slides into the skin easily enough, and he’s about… seventy percent sure he definitely hit the vein.

He depresses the plunger, and Kauri gasps, eyes opening wide, whites around the pretty blue. “It’s-... that’s from WRU-”

“Cold as shit when they go in, huh?” Owen laughs, and discards the needle back into the box, dumping the whole thing into the backseat. A drop of red blood sits at the crease of Kauri’s elbow, nearly black in the near-darkness, the dash light the only thing that adds a hint of red. Owen wipes it away and rubs it off on Kauri’s cheekbone, smearing a streak of red there through the drying tear tracks. “They do that on purpose, you know. It’s part of the development process. They want you to know you’re being drugged.”

Kauri licks at his lips, pulling his arm back to his side. “I know… I know that. My handler... my handler told me that."

“All right, Kor-Bore. Here we go.” His pretty Vince clone sits, silently, as Owen buckles him safely into his seatbelt. He stares back at the park bench when Owen’s hand touches his face and does nothing more than shiver a little when Owen’s fingers trace the side of his neck, find his collarbone, toy with the neckline of his hoodie. Owen has to pull it down to see the twisted scar. 

“Was it worth it?” Owen asks, voice low. He leans forward and his lips move against Kauri’s hair. Soft, the heat of his body warming them when you get close to his scalp. Owen inhales deeply, the scent of Kauri’s inexpensive shampoo and whatever product he’s using these days. Kisses down to his earlobe, toying with a piercing there, lips around the small black hoop. “Going on TV, telling everybody all that bullshit, was it worth it? Was it worth it, to have to come back home with me?”

Kauri holds still for him, even when Owen’s hand drops, even when it moves between his legs, palming him idly. He even spreads his knees apart, slightly, in an easy conditioned obedience that he’s never entirely lost. “Seventy-eight,” He says, voice hoarse.

“What?” Owen’s hand pauses, a weight pressing over the fly of Kauri’s jeans. He pulls back and away from his ear.  

“That’s how many people have been released since we did it. Another sixty-something investigations, they’ll probably get freed, too. There’s a law they’re going to pass making it not illegal anymore to help us. Making what Nat does, what Jake does… legit. Hell, they even found that one guy from Germany who was some guy’s homemade pet because of it a couple weeks ago.” Kauri shakes his head. “Chris is safe now, too. Really, truly safe. It was worth it.”

“But you aren’t safe.”

“No, but... but I wasn't going to be. It wasn't about making me safe, I lied about that. I lied to Jake, I knew I wasn’t ever safe. Not with you still… still looking for me. I wasn’t ever safe.”

“No. I never stopped looking for you.” Owen’s voice is low and loving, but Kauri doesn’t react to it like he used to. Those big eyes don’t search his for sincerity, he doesn’t blush or smile or seem pleased. He only tips his head back against the seat, slowly closing his eyes. 

“I know,” He says. “It’s-... it’s kickin’ in, now. Just take me wherever you’re going. Just get it over with.”

Something about this isn’t right - Kauri was supposed to fight more than this, maybe. Or show more feeling, more emotion. This isn’t the script Owen had written. Instead, the drug makes him limp and he looks like he’s being dragged to a concert for a band he doesn’t like, not taken somewhere to go right back to the life he was designed for, made for, at least until Owen is done with him.

 It’s with irritation that he rolls his window down. “Hanson, get in the car. We’re going.”

Hanson backs up until he’s at the door and gets in with the gun still in his hand. Owen looks over and sees a tall, muscular blond man leaning back against the hood of his own beat-up little junker of a shitty car, arms crossed, watching them. 

Just... staring, as Owen backs up and out of the spot. Then he stands up, and walks with deliberate slowness to his own driver’s side door as Owen pulls out of the small parking lot, leaving him behind.

“Make sure he doesn’t follow us,” Owen says, under his breath. Hanson nods and twists around to look out the back windshield. But no headlights pull out behind them. Nothing happens.

They’re on the interstate in minutes, headed south, back towards Hollywood. They don’t notice an entirely different car that falls in with them, because it isn’t the car they’re watching for or any of the ones they've taken care to find out about over the past few weeks prepping for this. Just another vehicle on the road. 

Beside him, Kauri’s breath goes slow and deep, and he slips under, the sedatives helping him into a heavy, unnatural sleep. He looks already dead, like this, except for the rise and fall of his chest. 

It’s a practice run.

Owen takes glances at him, so he can kind of… prepare, for what it’s going to look like when even that chest isn’t moving any longer. Thinking over how he’ll arrange him, then, where he’ll keep him until he’s done with Vince, too. 

“What do you think?” Hanson asks, settling back in to relax now that the initial danger is passed. Owen has to shake himself out of his daydream. “That guy going to leave us alone?”

“Oh, fuck no. He’s fucking Kauri, he won’t want to give that up. Kauri probably told him to go my condo, go rescue him there. I guarantee he’s going to drive like the goddamn devil and thinks he’ll surprise me when we get there.” He laughs, switching lanes without a signal, earning an angry honk from an SUV behind him. He flips his middle finger up automatically, even though it’s dark and she almost certainly can’t see him do it. 

“He knows where your condo is?”

“Yeah, I bet he does. I mean. They’re not that hard to find.” Owen shrugs. “But that’ll be their plan. Pretend to be all good and easy like he used to be, and then a big strong man comes to save him.” He chuckles, dropping one hand to rest it on Kauri’s thigh. There’s no resistance, nothing but the slow and steady breathing beside him.

“Oh, Kor-Bore… You’re going to be so surprised,” Owen whispers to himself with a smile. “When I get you in that door and you realize it’s not my house I took you to. Who's going to save you when your Prince Charming goes to the wrong fucking house?"

Kauri’s head tips to the side, he hitches in a breath and exhales. Owen looks back at the road.

He doesn’t see the way Kauri smiles, reflected against the window. 

-

There’s an arm around his waist as the man comes up beside him, looking like two people taking a stroll towards the alley next to the grocery store, the thin strip of pavement and trash and feral cats that separates it from the restaurant and hippie boutique beside it. Antoni chances a glance to the side, but the gun jams hard against his ribs and the man says, softly, “Don’t fucking look until I tell you to look.”

Antoni tells himself he’ll take the bullet if they leave the alley. Never, ever allow yourself to be taken, it’s taught at every group safety class, again and again. Never let them remove you from where you are, or you will never come home.

Never let WRU put you in a van.

He can take a beating, but he isn't going to let himself be taken, not again.

With each step, he steels himself for what he’ll have to do next. Elbow the man in the side, knock the gun away, turn on a dime and then run without hesitation. Once they’re in the alley, he’ll do it. Once there aren’t other people who might get hurt.

But as soon as they’re shielded by the rise of brick walls and the shadows, the man shoves his back up against the wall, blocked from view by a dumpster. Antoni sees green eyes, shaggy ash-blond hair, and the man pulls the facemask he’s wearing down to reveal sneering lips, too-white, too-perfect teeth. 

“Are you the one fucking him?” The man's voice is breathless, as if he’s been holding the viciously snapped words inside too long, eating away at him. Acid corroding the inside of his lungs. Antoni stares, simply not comprehending the question, but then the gun jabs harder into his ribs and he coughs at the flash of pain, the ache.

And he knows.

“... you are Owen Grant,” Antoni says. 

The perfect calm in his voice enrages the man, he can tell - those pupils get smaller, his face flushes, and the gun jams itself right underneath his chin. Antoni tips his head back but it follows him, metal warmed by contact with his skin. If the trigger pulls this angle won't kill him, but it will leave him with the front part of his face simply obliterated, shatter his teeth to shards of glass.

The scent of smoke is stronger, more acrid, and there’s a sweetness threading in underneath.

He closes his eyes, feeling his heart shudder to a stop before it beats again. Wildfires burning don't smell like this.

“I’m asking a question.” 

“No,” Antoni answers, letting his hands drop, pressing the palms to the wall behind him. Decay and trash flood his senses, and remind him too much of-

moving the body, misha grumbling about how much harder it was to handle after a week, artyom snapping at his little brother that it wouldn’t have been so difficult if he’d only told him earlier, the smell makes him vomit along the roots of a tree before they wrap the body in a tarp to drag up the hill to his waiting car, misha goes back with a shovel to bury the remnants of artyom’s dinner so it can’t be tracked back to him, the smell won’t come out of his trunk for weeks no matter what he does

-something he doesn’t want to remember, not now. Not when he needs to be able to think.

“No,” he repeats, shivering, suddenly cold even while the air is still an oven baking the world around him. “I do not have sex with Kauri.”

“So it’s the other one, then,” Owen Grant says, thinking now, his eyes searching Antoni’s face. “The big one. He’s the one fucking him.”

Antoni doesn’t answer. He doesn’t have to, it’s not really a question at all. 

Owen makes a sound of frustrated fury and then Antoni’s world cracks white. He goes down hard, falling into a puddle made from something that definitely isn’t rainwater that smells like freezer burnt food and asphalt. The throbbing in the side of his face is the way he knows he was just hit with the gun itself. 

The last person to pistol-whip me-

A boot slams into his side and he grunts, curling up protectively, the thought gone before it can finish. The butt of the gun comes down on the top of his head, and Antoni sees stars, going suddenly limp. He might… go away for a second. He might not. 

No, he does.

He does, because he smells a different smoke entirely when he comes back to himself. 

His breath hitches, heart racing, adrenaline screaming at him to run, and dares to look up. He can smell Mr. Davies, the scent of his clove cigarette heavy like a hand holding the nameless pet down, pushing the heat into his back, laughing while he burns. 

But it’s only Owen, looking down at him, lighting the clove cigarette and then dropping it.

It falls on Antoni and he scrambles backwards in clothes soaked in dirty water to get away. It sizzles out when it hits the puddle, too. Owen grins, and lights another.

There’s a mad light in his eyes that makes Antoni think-

of misha, bent over someone struggling to live, his hands wrapped around the victim’s neck, their eyes bulging while their lips move begging not to die but misha doesn’t need anyone to live he never leaves a survivor he always wants to see every last moment of love and life and light leave the eyes of whoever was unfortunate enough to be his chosen and artyom watches, dulled heavy-lidded eyes taking in the murder he will help to cover up

-of some faint faded memory hidden so far back within him, better left buried there with all the other graves Antoni’s life has created.

“Scream for help,” Owen says, watching Antoni push himself back against the wall. He pulls out another clove cigarette, lighting it slowly, idly. This one he lets burn for a while. The cloying sweet smell pushes its fingers into Antoni’s mouth, lingers on his tongue and down his throat, filling all the space he needs for breathing. “Go ahead. Scream.”

Antoni stares up at him. His phone’s in his pocket. He could grab it, he could call. He could scream, he-

He can’t.

If he screams, someone might call the police, which means they might find out too much. Kauri and Chris are safe, after going on TV, but the rest of them… the other rescues, some of them might be genuinely willing sign-ups, which means going right back into that hell. 

He can’t risk it.

His mouth closes with a snap.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought.” Owen flicks the cigarette at him, watching him flinch violently and sweep it off of himself as fast as he can. Ash is on his shirt now, smeared like blood, marking his fingertips. 

Owen considers.

Lights another cigarette.

“I want back what’s mine,” Owen says, almost conversationally. “I do. None of you had to be a part of this, but you’re all protecting him, and that’s bullshit. He’s mine. Thanks to that little stunt he pulled, I know who you all are. I have my own ways of finding out shit, you know? Made some calls, paid some people. I know who you all are.”

“You do not kn-know me,” Antoni says, but his voice falters, and he holds on with desperate internal white knuckles to his identity, his understanding of himself. “You do not-”

“Sorry about your brother,” Owen interrupts. He lights a third cigarette, watching as Antoni goes still, prey in the sights of a larger predator. “By the way. He got what was coming to him, though, don’t you think?”

“My brothers are all alive,” Antoni says. His accent is getting thicker, heavier, as he starts to panic. “My brothers-”

“Your brother was shot dead by cops. You should be in prison, too, I bet, but instead you-... what? Ran away to WRU to escape the consequences? Fucking pathetic. All of you, that’s all you know how to do, run run run. Run away, run away from me. All you… all of you.” Owen’s gaze goes distant, and Antoni’s eyes shift. He can see the lights of the parking lot, so very very close. If he makes a break for it and goes for his car-

He doesn’t see the kick coming.

Owen’s foot slams down directly between his legs and the pain explodes through every nerve, followed on its heels by a new burst of white when he is hit in the face again, forced onto his stomach on the dirty pavement. He chokes, gags on pain that tries to force him to throw up everything he’s eaten, somehow he doesn’t. Somehow he manages.

Owen drops onto him and Antoni gasps, breathless, vaguely aware through the haze of pain that his shirt is being shoved up, baring the skin of his back. He throbs, between his legs, inside his head, along his cheekbone.

“Holy shit,” Owen whispers. Antoni can’t help his soft, whimpered whine as rough fingers press into old, old scars. 

“That’s fucking hideous,” Owen says, then gives an odd little giggle. His fingers are tracing little designs, like making constellations out of stars. “No wonder my Kor-Bore doesn’t fuck you. I wouldn't either."

Antoni’s face burns, and he gets his hands under him, trying to push himself up onto to have Owen’s fingers tangle in his messy hair and shove his face back into the pavement so hard he feels skin scrape off his cheekbone, the sting of gravel being forced into a new wound. His nose pulses in time with his heartbeat. 

“No worries, man,” Owen says, running his palm over Antoni’s lower back, around to his side, just feeling the bumps and texture of his uneven scars. “I don't care about you. I just want my slut back, you know? That’s all I want. So this is a message.”

“I won’t-... will not give the message,” Antoni manages, muffled against the ground.

“Oh, you will. It's not a message that really needs words."

Owen uses the grip on his hair to pull his head back, then slams it forward into the ground. Antoni sees white flashes and black, red against the inside of his eye lids. Another slam into the ground, a burst of something from his nose, and he can’t remember how to use his arms and legs anymore. He’s limp, and hears only distantly the sound of the lighter again.

The edge of a cigarette presses into the back of his neck, directly where a collar once covered his skin, and the pet burns. He whines like an animal, jerks against the weight on top of him, but it does nothing. He’s too weak, his head spinning and throbbing. He fights-

they fight, misha’s victims, they thrash and struggle and sometimes get a scratch in along his cheekbone or the side of his neck and in the winter he wears turtlenecks to hide any signs of those who tried to live and in the summer he blames the cat, who has never scratched anyone but who misha’s mother believes is vicious thanks to misha’s lies and artyom watches them die and buries the dead and cuts them apart and doesn’t say, that was a fingernail and not a claw, he doesn’t say this one had daughters or this one had a brother or their parents probably loved them, they had so much to fight for but misha thinks

-but he can’t fight hard enough.

“I’m going to hurt everyone around him,” Owen whispers, and presses a new burn just below the last. He starts to make a perfect straight line down the center of the pet’s spine, laughter in his smug voice as the pet jerks and whimpers and can’t make enough noise to get anyone’s attention. Time draws out, terrible impossible seconds that feel like hours. “One by one by one." Each use of 'one' is another bright new burn. "Until he comes back to me. And I’m not done yet, do you hear me? I’m not remotely done. No… but he can stop it. He can come to me, and he can stop it. If he doesn’t…”

The hand in his hair moves, fingers scratching lightly at his scalp, watching the pet shudder in disgust at the touch. 

“If he doesn’t, there’s still more I can do. Worse than I’ve done. I’ll give him a couple days to come back to me, and then I’ll show him just how much I missed him, you know? I’ll show him he still belongs to me, they both do, Vincent Shield is mine.”

“Kauri-... Kauri is not-”

“Ssssshhhh. He might as well be, right? But that’s okay. That's just fine." One last burn, and then the cigarette is dropped right next to the pet’s face, the heady smoke up his nose and over his tongue. Owen ruffles his hair, and then pushes himself up to standing. “Go home, you’re a fucking mess.”

Owen walks away, leaving the pet lying there.

Time passes. The pet doesn't know how much.

Eventually he staggers up and to his feet, the world spinning sickly around him. A headache throbs behind his temples, blood trickling down his face. His nose might be broken again. He can still smell the smoke. 

He can still smell-

misha takes a pack of cigarettes out of the body’s pocket and lights one, the trail of bitter smoke rising into the air, tobacco and chemicals stinging artyom’s own nose, making him wrinkle it as he lays out the plastic tarp and misha looks over at him, smiling and sated for the moment, his eyes sparkling, artyom’s sickly younger brother all grown up into a monster that must be sacrificed to to keep their family intact and the smoke makes artyom cough

The pet coughs as he stumbles back out of the alleyway into the evening light, moving mindlessly back to Jake’s car, the smell of decay, dirty water, and clove cigarettes clinging to his body, new burns itching and aching all the way down his spine. 

He stares at four flat tires, slashed open, the gleam of metal along the side where someone had keyed through the paint.

Owen Grant isn't working alone, he catalogues dully. Someone is helping him. Someone did this while he was hurting the pet in an alley.

He can't go home.

The pet remembers his phone only when he’s sitting in the driver’s seat, looking sightlessly through the windshield wondering if the cold things will have gone warm and started going bad in the trunk.

He looks at Jake’s number for a while, thinks about the small plain bands the three of them wear for each other, and then slowly leans his aching head against the steering wheel.

Jake picks up on the second ring. "Antoni?"

Right. That's his name.

"I need you to call Nat," Antoni says, his voice rough. He pushes down the tears that try to prick his eyes. There is no time for crying, not now. No time at all.

"Why? Ant, you're late coming back from-"

"I met Owen," Antoni says, voice heavy. He feels dizzy, still, and a little sleepy. "I need you to come get me."

There's a pause. "Fuck. And you have my car."

"Mmmhmm." Antoni's going to fall asleep right here and now, the crash of adrenaline and the pulse of pain throughout his body working together to drag him into the dark.

He always liked the darkness best anyway.

"Well... okay, Laken's here and they have a car, we'll be there in fifteen minutes, okay?"

"Okay," Antoni manages, and then hangs up. He doesn't move his head from the steering wheel.

Inside of him, determination grows.

Owen Grant cannot have Kauri.

Not ever again.

Antoni has never allowed his family to come to harm if he could prevent it, and he will not allow this.

-