Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

“Everyone has a line. You just haven’t found yours yet.”
— Bad Influence (1990)

The street sprawled wet under a single lamp—yellow-white glow, thin film of rain—and you could sense someone had been here before. Most of the city is built on that exact principle. Things that do not need to stand out because no one is really looking for them. The brick has lost its color from the weather, not from time. A storefront that closed at some point never reopened. The gate is pulled down, as if it is part of the building’s design.

Somebody left a light on upstairs.

The glow stays dim. Not even interesting. Just a dull, bluish square sitting in the window, the kind of thing you would expect if someone fell asleep with something running. Xavier has been sitting here long enough. Something should have happened by now.

He shifts against the worn-vinyl driver’s seat, glances at his watch. Almost one in the morning. Long enough for a break-in. A change. Someone getting up to turn it off—or even just someone passing in front of it the wrong way.

Nothing.

He shifts his weight again, more to check that he can than because he needs to. The cigarette between his fingers has burned down farther than he remembers. He turns it once, watching the ash hold for a second before tapping it out the window. He is not a fan of that.

Three weeks ago, it was a bar. A neon sign flickered in the window—jittery light, cheap glass—and he kept looking away, then back. Before that, it was apartments. They were emptied too fast. Stripped down—bare wood, dead bulbs—in a way that made the whole place feel abandoned before it actually was.

Water dripped—cold, steady—from somewhere up high, striking metal out of sight.

Plink. Plink.

Addresses. Times. Small details that might matter later. The Moleskine on the passenger seat held every last scrap. The same notebook he uses now. Write it down before it slips—that's the rule.

He has kept this ritual for nearly three years. Longer, if he counted the time before he left the department and started taking jobs people preferred not to put on paper. Not very consistently, though. Not in a way he could explain cleanly if someone pressed.

Real investigations have shape: reports. Timelines. A beginning that leads to something else. This never has. Everything is fragmented. Names that do not belong together. Buildings that change too quickly. Men who disappear, leaving too little behind.

This was never his case. He never expected the trail to lead him here—dead ends that only look alike after you stare too long.

Back then he still wore a detective’s shield. An older woman sat across the station table, hands clasped around a chipped coffee cup. Another missing person case. Low priority.

The mother did not wait long before coming in. Her son did not come home. No struggle, he wrote. No reason to suspect anything worse than a deliberate no-show. That is what Xavier believed that day. Just another runaway. A kid old enough to leave home who did not want ties.

Still, as he filled the form, numbers blurred—a bad-luck echo—and the file felt too neat. Not a real gut feeling. Nothing that dramatic. No French Connection. No magic cop instinct. No spotlight-cruise-in. Just paperwork and a missing wallet. The nagging sense that something was askew.

The young man had clocked out of work—the same shift he had held for almost a year. Same time. Same subway route home. The kind of groove you slide into without even noticing. He did not have his wallet. Keys gone. No note. No packed bag. He did not show up anywhere he was supposed to be afterward.

Who leaves their wallet?

Next morning, Xavier slid into the dim corner store where the kid punched the clock and spoke low to the manager. The manager did not remember much, except that he left on time. Good kid. No reason was suspected for him to run away. Typical afterthoughts everyone always had in this situation. Nothing out of the ordinary. That should have been the end of it. It usually is.

Xavier mentioned it to the sergeant anyway. He simply wanted to voice it, a quick toss of the words across the table, so someone would confirm or dismiss and the night could move on. The sergeant never lifted his eyes.

“Then he didn’t run away,” he said, as if that settled it. “He’ll come back when he runs out of money. Happens all the time.”

The conversation was already over.

He stopped when he realized none of it connected in a way he could explain without sounding like he was reaching. That should have been the end of it. It usually is. Another manila folder would disappear into the dim stack. Another eighteen-year-old swallowed by a system built to forget.

A few weeks passed. A call came—late, urgent—and he drove down to the river.

They found a body.

The river did what it always does—blurred the edges, softened the story before the body arrived. By the time they pulled it out, little remained that anyone would care to record. Xavier stood a little away from the others while they worked, close enough to hear and far enough away that no one expected anything from him. He had been down there before. You learn where to stand.

Someone mutters about the current. About how bodies travel. Another voice laughs, as if the joke could lighten the air.

The laugh should have closed the topic. That is what everyone else did. One file was updated from missing to deceased. The case was cleared in the way that matters to paperwork.

Only it didn’t.

Another body appeared four weeks later. Not connected. Not officially, at least. The same kind of nothing. He began to record each detail.

Plink.

The same dull, bluish square. The stillness. Like the last few minutes had not happened. Like the last few years did not either.

He reaches into the cup-holder, pulls out his lighter, and taps a new cigarette loose from the pack. He brings it to his lips. The flame flares briefly, outlines the rim of a coffee cup, and vanishes.

This lead did not come from a report. Private client. Late call. Vague in all the ways that matter.

“He goes in,” the voice said. “He does not come out. Not until morning.”

No name. Just an address. The money arrived first—a blunt, wired promise—before Xavier even accepted the job. He rolled the cigarette between his fingers and watched the smoke drift toward the cracked window.

It could be nothing. It would not be the first time a client paid him to chase a hunch that led nowhere.

But they all looked like that at the start.

He glances toward the passenger seat. The pages of the Moleskine are slightly warped from being handled too often. He does not reach for it. He does not need to. His gaze shifts back up.

The light has not moved.

Xavier draws a slow drag. Ash falls outside.

Plink.

Chapter Text

The glow from the CRT monitor throws a pale green wash across the desk and the wall beside it.

The screen hums. Usually Zayne stops hearing it twenty minutes into his shift. Tonight, he can feel it in his teeth. He adjusts the position of his pen, then nudges it again until it sits parallel to the edge of the logbook.

The apartment is quiet in the way only late-night apartments are quiet: refrigerator humming in the kitchen, pipes ticking somewhere in the wall, a car passing outside and then not again.

Line four blinks. He presses the button on the console. “This is Noah.”

His voice comes easily, lower than his natural speaking tone, smoother, warmer by design. It is a performance, but not a difficult one.

The man on the other end is in a hotel room in Chicago. Lonely, from the sound of him. Tired enough to want company, vain enough to want to feel like he is directing the shape of it.

Zayne lets him.

He gives him the expected pauses, the measured breathing, the careful responses that create the impression of attention without requiring any real presence behind it.

Twelve minutes later, the line clicks dead.

Zayne exhales and adjusts the foam pad on his headset. That makes five. Five voices already flattening into one another. Same wants. Same silences. Same attempts to make need sound particular. Confidential Connections sold itself on privacy more than anything else. Late-night conversation. No names required. Real voices, if you believed the ad copy. Men called for all kinds of reasons. Most of them pretended they were only calling for one.

There are rules here. A structure. You answer. You speak. Time passes. The line goes dead.

No one bleeds. No one looks at you for certainty you may not have. No one fails to improve anyway.

The thought arrives sharp and sterile. Fluorescent light. Stainless steel. A monitor losing rhythm by degrees small enough to look manageable until they aren’t.

Zayne closes his eyes. His fingers find the pen again and move it a fraction of an inch to the left. When he opens them, the apartment is still there. The green glow. The desk. The logbook. The weak reflection in the darkened window over his shoulder.

Structure returns.

He checks his watch.

2:14 a.m.

Skye hasn’t called.

Over the last three weeks, Skye has called consistently between 1:30 and 1:45 on Thursday nights. The calls usually run longer than the others. They wander. They do not move cleanly from greeting to transaction to exit.

Zayne has noticed. That does not mean he has been waiting.

The first time Skye called, it was a Tuesday, not a Thursday, back when Zayne still expected the shift to feel new.The man’s voice had been droll and even, almost lazy - polished but bored, like a late-night talk show host running on fumes. Skye did did not ramp up the way the others did, did not lurch from zero to obscene in under a minute.

“How’s your night over there?”

That had been it. The opening volley.

Zayne remembered because it was the only call that hour not wrapped in panting or static or the twitchy energy of someone trying hard to forget their own room. No slurred reassurance that the line was private. No awkward pause before testing the shape of what could be asked for here.

He could tell right away. Skye was not dialing in for release. His questions spooled out slow, unhurried, as if he wanted to see how long the line would hold.

“What do you do when you’re not here?”

“Do you get many regulars?”

He rests his forearm on the desk and looks at the blank green-dark screen between calls.

The apartment feels smaller at this hour. Desk tucked against the wall. Console beside the monitor. Logbook open. Water glass half-empty. The lamp in the corner switched off because the CRT gives off enough light on its own, and because too much light at this hour feels aggressive.

At 2:27, the console chimes. Line two blinks red.

His hand moves automatically. He means to answer on the second ring, as he always does, but his finger comes down a fraction late.

“This is Noah.”

There is almost no static on the line, just silence held a too long. It gives the strange impression of space on the other end. A room. A body in it. Someone leaning back rather than forward.

Then: “Hello, Noah.”

The voice is low, textured, and entirely unhurried. Something in Zayne’s chest tightens. Not enough to qualify as reaction. Enough to notice.

“You’re calling late tonight,” he says. The words leave him before he decides on them. Not part of the script.

“I was occupied,” Skye says. There is a trace of amusement there, more vibration than sound. “Kept you waiting?”

“I’m paid to be here until four.”

“That wasn’t the question.”

The silence stretches, as if the cable between them is a taut line neither will cut.

Zayne listens to the faint sound floor on Skye’s end - the hum and pop of an appliance, a distant voice from a television, maybe, or the slow shift of a chair. It makes it easier to imagine a room around the voice. Not a face, never a face, but the configuration of silence: where a lamp might be, what kind of mug dully hits the table, whether the kitchen is cold or just empty.

“Do you want me to say something sexy,” Skye teases, his voice low and smoky, “or are you just here to hear your own fantasies echoed back?”

The question hits sideways. Zayne is used to directing the narrative, painting fantasies for men eager to listen, men who want distance and deniability as much as they want anything else. This obvious refusal hangs in their space, waiting for him to rise to it.

He pushes back from the desk slightly.

“I don’t need to hear anything. You’re the one calling.”

“That’s not an answer.”

Zayne’s hand tightens around the edge of the desk. He had not realized he was doing that.

That is not how this works.

He does not know what this man looks like. He should not feel observed anyway. There is no face to match that voice, and still he feels exposed.

“Maybe I’m doing more than just listening,” Zayne fires back, straining to keep his tone calm, even. His voice betrays him, coming out softer, huskier than he intended.

“Are you?”The teasing edge drops out of Skye’s voice. What takes its place is quieter, heavier in a way that makes Zayne pay closer attention instead of less.

Zayne tries to shift the call back to safe ground.

“You want to tell me what you’re wearing, Skye?”

A brief laugh, all breath and no sound.

“I can. If you want to picture something, you should say so.”

Zayne pushes a hand through his hair. The headset pulls at his left ear, reminding him how long he has been sitting this way. He has done this for months - shifting flexibly between feigned interest and explicit direction, putting on texture as required.

“I’m picturing it,” Zayne says, and the lie comes easy. “Tell me anyway.”

He expects a laugh. Instead, there is a hush - a faint, almost intimate static, the suggestion of movement on the other end. The satisfaction of being obeyed, or the pleasure of being asked. Zayne cannot tell.

“Suit jacket,” Skye says, pitching it almost casual, but there is resonance under the words. “Nothing underneath. I was in a hurry.” A softer, nearly private exhale, as if acknowledging the artifice of the statement. “Slacks. No shoes.”

“That’s bold,” Zayne says, meaning the suit jacket, meaning the nothing underneath. He is not sure whether to prod at the image, to pick it apart and shape it, or to sit back and let his own mind do with it what it will. “Were you expecting someone, or do you just always look ridiculous?”

“Maybe,” Skye says. “Maybe just myself.” The smile is implied, not spoken. “Is that disappointing?”

He can hear something shift on Skye’s end - fabric, maybe, or the slow movement of someone leaning back further into a chair. Not restless. Comfortable. Like he has nowhere else to be and knows exactly what that does to the person still listening.

Zayne looks at the pen on the desk again, then past it, toward the dark window over his shoulder. His own reflection is too faint to hold shape. The pale wash of the monitor across one side of his face. “You always do this?” he asks.

“Do what?”

“Make it difficult to tell whether you’re joking.”

A soft sound comes through the line. Not quite a laugh.

“Only when I think someone’s paying attention.”

Zayne’s fingers tighten once against the edge of the desk, then loosen.

He should redirect the call. Pull it back into something simpler. The structure is still there if he wants it. He could return to the script in a sentence. Two, at most.

He doesn’t.

“What if I’m not?”

Skye is quiet for just long enough to make the answer feel chosen.

“Then you’re very good at pretending, Noah.”

The words land lower than they should. Zayne becomes aware, suddenly and unpleasantly, of the headset against his skin. The room around him. The fact that he is sitting alone in the dark, saying nothing.

“Tell me something I don’t know about you,” Skye says.

Zayne looks at the monitor.

“That would be most things.”

Skye hums softly.

“I only asked for one.”

Zayne’s thumb finds the lifted seam in the laminate at the edge of the desk and presses it flat. The monitor throws the same pale green over the logbook, the water glass, the coil of phone cord beside the console.

He could lie. Say something polished enough to sound personal without costing him anything.

Instead, after a beat, he says, “I count things.”

The line stays quiet in that waiting way Skye has.

“Time,” Zayne adds. “Patterns. How long people take to say what they actually want.”

A soft shift of fabric comes through the receiver. “And how long do I take?”

Zayne glances at the dark window over his desk, at the faint shape of himself in it.

“Longer than most,” he says. “You take your time deciding how you want to say things.”

Skye laughs, low and brief.

“That sounds better.”

Zayne straightens the pen without meaning to, lines it back up with the edge of the logbook. The apartment feels smaller all at once - the hum of the refrigerator from the kitchen, the headset against his skin, the stillness of everything around him.

“What else?” Skye asks, quieter now.

Zayne exhales through his nose.

“I make the same coffee every night,” he says. “I don’t like it, but I make it anyway.”

“You like things that stay where you put them.”

Zayne’s fingers still on the desk. He hates how accurate that lands.

There is something faint behind Skye’s voice now - music, maybe, or the blur of a room with people in it. “Downtown, there’s a place called Neon Saint. Do you know it?”

Not framed as an invitation. Not pushed toward him. Just placed carefully in the middle of the dark to see what shape it takes. Zayne processes the words in order: the club, downtown, a place that would not ask too many questions as long as the right kind of money changed hands.

He does not write any of it down. He lies.

“Sure,” he says.

“I’ll be there for a while on Sunday.”

The silence that follows is not empty. It presses faintly at the plastic of the headset, at the back of his jaw, at something lower and more physical he does not have language for quickly enough to dismiss.

He becomes aware of his own heart rate. That irritates him more than it should. He is alone in his apartment. The door is locked. The window is shut. Nothing has changed except a voice and a name dropped into the space between them.

“I’m working,” Zayne says.

“I know.”

“Before I go,” Skye says, quieter now, “what’s your real name?”

Zayne hesitates. The script gives him an answer immediately. He knows exactly what he is supposed to say. The line is as automatic as the greeting.

“Noah.”

“No.” Skye’s voice stays smooth, unpressing. “I mean the one your mother uses.”

The room goes very still around him. Zayne looks at the monitor, at the soft ugly green of it. His grip on the desk loosens, then tightens again.

“Maybe next time,” he says.

Not yes. Not no. Something in between.

A smile enters Skye’s voice again, slight enough to be heard only if someone is already listening for it.

“Goodnight, Noah.”The line clicks dead. Dial tone floods in, flat and vacant, too loud after the shape of Skye’s voice.

Zayne does not disconnect right away. He sits perfectly still at the desk, headset pressed to one ear, listening to the dead air.

The appartment feels different after certain calls. Not changed exactly. Just more visible. The glass on the desk. The loose thread at the cuff of his sleeve. The faint reflection of himself in the dark window, blurred by the screen glow. He reaches up at last and presses the button. Silence settles back into place.

He did not tell him his real name. He did not write down the club. He did not need to say anything at all about the life he had before this one.

And still, for one brief second after the line went dead, Zayne had the strange, unwanted impression that Skye already knew there had been another life before Noah.

Chapter Text

================================================
CONFIDENTIAL CONNECTIONS // OPERATOR CONSOLE
ALIAS: NOAH
DATE: 06/14/97
SHIFT STATUS: ACTIVE
================================================
[ SCHEDULE | LINE QUEUE | MESSAGES | VOICE MAIL | REPORTS ]
================================================
LINES AVAILABLE: 05
OPERATORS ACTIVE: 12
NEW MESSAGES: 01
PENDING VOICE MAIL: 00
================================================
SELECT OPTION >

The apartment returns to itself the moment the line goes dead. Refrigerator humming in the kitchen. Pipes ticking somewhere in the wall. A car passing outside blaring music that was ungodly for this hour.

Zayne removes the headset and sets it beside the monitor. The foam has left a faint pressure along the top of his ear. He can still feel the shape of it after his hand drops away. He closes the logbook. Straightens the pen against the edge of it, then moves both a fraction until they sit parallel to the corner of the desk.

The routine should reset him.

In the dark window beside the desk, his reflection is partial. One side of his face without enough detail.

Neon Saint. Sunday.

The name sits in the same place in his head since Skye said it. Information placed carefully enough to feel like more than test or invitation.

He gets up from the desk and moves through the apartment. Water glass to the sink. Chair nudged back into place. Logbook stacked square with the monitor base.

The apartment is small enough that every movement lands somewhere. Kitchen. Desk. Window. Bedroom door left half open. Nothing about it feels different.

Sunday comes and goes anyway and Zayne doesn't go.

The television flickers blue against the wall. Some sitcom laugh track rises and falls. His thumb traces the edge of page forty-seven, same page of Alias Grace he has been on for twenty minutes.

8:27 on the digital clock.

He shifts his weight on the couch. Turns back to page forty-six, rereads the last paragraph. The laugh track fades.

8:34 now.

His foot taps against the coffee table leg. He reaches for his water glass, finds it empty. Returns to page forty-seven. The words blur together. His gaze drifts to the window, to the distant glow of downtown.

8:46.

His fingers move mechanically, flipping to page forty-eight though he could not summarize a single sentence from the last two pages. By nine, the sign at Neon Saint will be fully lit, reflecting in puddles outside a door he is not approaching.

He goes to bed later than he meant to.

Sleep doesn’t arrive cleanly. It comes in pieces, interrupted by the same stupid awareness every time he turns over: that there is a club downtown full of noise and bodies and neon, and that Skye had occupies actual space inside it. Not voice. Not suggestion. A body somewhere under a particular light.

Zayne shuts his eyes harder, as if that helps.

Monday is worse for being ordinary.

The headset sits where he left it. The logbook opens to a fresh page. The same green light falls across the desk when he logs into the Confidential Connections operator console; Noah active in the system and Zayne alone in the apartment.

The interface loads line by line.

================================================
[ SCHEDULE | LINE QUEUE | MESSAGES | VOICE MAIL | REPORTS ]
================================================

It should be enough that he didn’t go. Enough that he kept the two things where they belong — whatever that call was, and the rest of his life, which has enough shape to it without letting strangers step into it.

Instead the problem is that nothing has actually closed.

There’s no follow-up. No confirmation. No proof that not going mattered or didn’t. Just an open space where something might have happened, which is somehow worse.

He answers six calls that night. Then five on Tuesday. Then four on Wednesday. The usual range of loneliness and timing and men who want to hear themselves reflected back in a more flattering voice without having to name what, exactly, they are asking for. He gives them what they’re paying for. His tone stays warm where it needs to. His pen moves in straight, neat lines across the logbook.

Nothing drags. Nothing catches.

Even so, Zayne notices himself listening differently when the console chimes. Not to every caller. Just to the first few seconds. The pause before the first word. The texture of breath. Whether the silence on the other end feels the same way Skye’s always does.

It never is.

By Thursday he is irritated enough by the shape of his own attention to resent it. Thursday night arrives and, with it, the hour he has stopped himself from naming.

The apartment is quieter after one. Someone down the hall shuts off a loud television. The pipes knock once and then settle.

When the console chimes at 1:32, his hand moves toward it before the second blink.

“This is Noah.”

The caller breathes too close to the receiver. Wrong voice. Wrong cadence. Zayne leans back slowly in his chair and lets the rest of the call happen around him. Eight minutes. Then nine. Then the line clicks dead and the room returns—monitor hum, refrigerator, his own breathing.

He checks the time because he always checks the time.

1:41.

The thought arrives a beat later and irritates him immediately. He writes down the duration. Marks the caller as unremarkable. Adjusts the pen against the spine of the logbook. Reaches for the water glass and finds it empty.

The next hour passes. Skye doesn’t call.

There is no reason that should matter. Clients disappear all the time. They call twice, three times, not at all. They move on. That is the structure. That is part of what makes the work manageable. No one carries anything over.

Still, when his shift ends, the apartment does not settle around him the way it usually does.

On Saturday, afternoon comes in gray through the blinds. Zayne taps the keyboard to wake the monitor and waits while the CRT flickers back to life.

The Confidential Connections console loads slowly: black background, white text, small blocky menus along the top.

A single new message sits beside Noah’s alias.

He looks at it without clicking, then does.

The message window opens in the center of the screen. Plain text. Timestamp. Internal routing. Nothing decorative, nothing meant to feel personal.

This one reads:

=========================
MSG ID: 00481
FROM: USER109
TO: NOAH
STAMP: 06/14/97 16:12
TYPE: EXTERNAL
=========================
I was there Sunday. 
You weren’t.
Tonight. 8:30.
Upstairs.
=========================
[ REPLY | DELETE | REPORT TO ADMIN ]

Zayne reads it once, then again.

The tone is wrong for the system — too dry to be earnest, too amused to be neutral, not quite accusation. Just enough of both to make him aware, all at once, of the fact that not going had apparently been noticed.

His shoulders draw in slightly before he notices and lets them drop. Contained, impersonal, and still somehow too direct.

He could report it. The button is right there. He looks at that too and does not press it.

The refrigerator kicks on in the kitchen. Someone closes a door down the hall. The apartment stays exactly what it is: desk against the wall, chair slightly off-center, headset resting beside the logbook, bedroom door half open where he left it this morning.

The message remains in the center of the screen.

Zayne closes the window, sits there for a moment, then opens it again. The words have not changed. Of course they haven’t. The same four lines, the same implication that Sunday had remained open on the other end even after Zayne decided to let it close.

No reply is required. He knows this. A reply would at least give the whole thing shape.

Yes. No. Don’t contact me through this system again. Don’t call me ever again.

Anything that would let him place the message inside a category and be done with it. Be done with this man whose voice had slid under his skin like a fever.

He leans back in the chair, then forward again. One hand comes up to adjust the position of the headset on the desk even though it isn’t touching anything. He straightens the logbook. Moves the mouse an inch. Takes his hand off it.

Then he stands and crosses to the kitchen, fills the kettle, and sets it on the burner, one hand braced against the counter while the water heats.

Everything in its place. Everything serving its function.

The kettle starts to whisper, and his eyes drift back toward the desk. The message is still open on the screen.

Zayne moves the kettle off the heat before it can build into a full whistle, makes tea he doesn’t particularly want, and carries the mug back to the desk, setting it down precisely, handle facing right.

The cursor blinks at the bottom of the window where a reply could go. He does not type anything. Instead he reads the message again, and this time the emphasis shifts without his permission.

I was there Sunday.

The line lands differently now, less amused...or maybe more. He can’t tell. It suggests a version of the evening that existed without him: Skye present in it long enough to register absence. Zayne leans back. There is no reason that detail should matter. He did not agree to anything. Zayne was not expected anywhere. The entire structure of the thing depends on that kind of distance.

Still, he doesn’t close the window.

A laugh would almost be easier. Instead the message has the same quality the calls do when Skye is pushing at something without appearing to. It leaves too much room for the response to happen privately, which means Zayne is stuck having one.

He should leave it there. Delete it. Report it. Close the window and move on.

Instead he stands again and crosses to the bedroom. The closet door slides open with a soft drag. His clothes hang in a neat row: shirts to the left, darker casual things in the middle, the few pieces he wears less often off to the right.

An old ID badge still hangs from the inside hook, clipped there and forgotten, the photo turned slightly toward the wall. He looks past it.

Then his hand settles on black. The fabric is cool against his fingertips. He hasn’t worn the shirt in months. It means less than nothing. He takes it off the hanger anyway, lays it across the bed, and smooths it once with the flat of his hand.

He is not going yet. Has not decided to go.

Looking is not deciding. Zayne remembers his father saying something similar when buying his first car. Taking out a shirt is not deciding either.

Back at the desk, the message remains open.

Tonight. Eight thirty. Upstairs.

He thinks, briefly, about the first call — about Skye’s voice flattening around certain words in that way that made them sound less like flirtation than observation, about how easily he had let the conversation move out of the usual, about the fact that none of it had felt like losing control until after it had already happened.

His jaw tightens.

Zayne goes into the bathroom and turns on the shower. The pipes answer in the wall. Steam begins to gather at the edges of the mirror, softening his reflection before it disappears entirely.

He undresses and pulls his glasses off his face with the same efficient movements he uses for everything else. Steps under the water, letting it run over the back of his neck, his shoulders, the center of his chest. Six minutes. No more than that.

When he comes back into the bedroom, the black shirt is still where he left it.

He dries off, buttons it from the bottom up, and feels the fabric settle against his skin. He combs his hair, stops, looks at himself once in the mirror and immediately away again as he runs his hands through it.

In the other room, the monitor still glows.

The message is still waiting on the screen, unanswered.

He stands at the desk, damp at the temples, sleeves unbuttoned, and reads the four lines one last time. This time he notices the absence of any instruction beyond what is strictly necessary. No suggestion that Skye particularly cares whether he comes or not.

Tonight. Eight thirty. Upstairs.

This time, when he reads it, it no longer feels hypothetical.

Zayne stays standing, bends at the waist, and types three words before his mind can catch up to his hands. The click of the enter key echoes.

> See you then.

================
REPLY TO: MSG 00481
TO: USER109
TIME: 06/14/97 18:07
STATUS: SENT
===============

Chapter Text

Neon Saint lives up to its name—bright pink and blue bleeding off the sidewalk, spilling into the street. Zayne pauses just short of the entrance, close enough that the color catches along the edge of his shoes, the hem of his windbreaker, like it's already decided he belongs here.

He doesn't. Not really.

A couple huddles against the brick by the doorway, cigarette smoke winding between them, laughter gone soft and private. Zayne shifts the note in his hand, thumb dragging over the jagged letters he wrote. The address from the phone book.

He exhales. It feels like trying to breathe through a straw.

The light above flickers once—pink bleeding harder into blue—and he steps forward anyway, shoulder catching the partially open door as someone slips past on their way out.

Inside, the air is thick—warm, carrying spilled beer and something sweet like cheap perfume. Neon bleeds inward across walls, across faces, turning everything liquid. Bodies shifting, leaning, adjusting. A current that doesn't stop long enough to notice itself.

Zayne stays still just inside the entrance and lets his eyes adjust.

Mapping first: the bar, the booths, the gaps between people, sight lines, exits. Anything that holds shape longer than a second. The bass settles deeper the longer he stands there, less sound than pressure. It sits in his ribs. In his teeth.

It becomes a search before he means for it to. His eyes keep skipping—over faces, over movement, over anything that doesn't resolve into something specific. A tall silhouette. A posture. The angle of someone standing like they're not part of this.

He finds nothing. Just strangers absorbed in their own small orbits. The realization comes a second later. He was expecting to see him immediately.

The thought is absurd. A faint heat rises in his chest anyway. He shoves his hands deeper into his pockets.

He has never seen the man. No face to set against the voice. No outline he would know if it passed him on the street. Just a presence translated through a phone line, carrying something Zayne has not managed to name without making it sound stupid.

The stairs are narrow enough that he has to stay aware of his footing, one hand brushing the wall. The ledge above the club is not quite a second floor—more like an afterthought carved over the main room, metal railing tracing the perimeter before dropping off into the churn below. Neon follows him up, softer here, pooling in uneven streaks across the rail.

Only two other figures occupy the space: a couple folded into the far corner, voices dissolving into the bass line humming through the floor.

Zayne rests his hands on the cool metal and looks down without having to be in any of it.

His gaze skims the ledge's length, then stops.

There's a figure leaning against the wall near the far end, half-turned toward the railing. Not watching the crowd. Zayne catches the relaxed set of shoulders first, the way one hand rests in a pocket, the faint glow of a cigarette held loosely between two fingers.

His heart gives a single hard thump against his ribs.

The figure moves. Just a shift of weight. A slight turn of the head. Light catches a jawline. The sweep of silver hair. He isn't looking at Zayne—not directly—but the awareness is there anyway, immediate and unwelcome as touch.

He's been noticed.

The stranger brings the cigarette to his lips, inhales, then lets the smoke drift out in a slow stream. Neon catches it briefly, staining it blue.

Zayne moves forward, five measured steps narrowing the gap. Close enough now to make out the weave of the man's coat, to catch tobacco cut with something darker underneath. Warm. Resinous. A scent that sits low in the back of the throat.

It doesn't matter that he's never seen him. Something locks into place anyway—recognition without reference.

Crimson eyes find Zayne's in the dim light. Then a slight, crooked almost-smile.

"You're Noah?"

Zayne gives a short nod. A breath escapes him, thinner than he wants it to be.

Skye watches it leave him. Then he brings the cigarette back to his mouth, the ember flaring briefly, and leans in just enough that his voice brushes against Zayne's ear. "Figured you'd get lost down there."

The voice does it again—what it always does on the phone, only worse now that it has a body to come from.

He doesn't seem to need an answer. The cigarette lifts again, but instead of taking a drag, he gestures toward the railing.

"Good view up here."

Zayne turns away from him and faces the club below. He laces his fingers together until the knuckles pull pale and leans forward. The dance floor is a mess of bodies moving in a pulse that doesn't quite match the music.

Next to him, Skye feels solid in a way the room doesn't. A faint, useless thought surfaces: he must look ridiculous standing here in his plain windbreaker, a placeholder next to someone who actually belongs.

Then he feels a light nudge against his elbow. Not a push. Just a deliberate tap of knuckles against his sleeve.

"Helloooo?"

It pulls Zayne back. He turns his head, and Skye is right there, like something patient only because it knows it can afford to be.

"Sorry," Zayne says automatically. It doesn't sound like an apology.

Skye tilts his head. "For what?"

"I wasn't—" He stops. Adjusts. "Paying attention."

Skye hasn't moved away. If anything, he's closer now—subtle, incremental, the kind of shift that only registers once it has already happened. Close enough that when he lifts the cigarette again, the smoke curls through the edge of Zayne's space before dissipating.

"You always do that?" Skye asks.

"I don't know," Zayne says. After the smallest pause he asks: "Can I have a cigarette?"

The question is meant to sound smooth. Seem normal. It doesn't. He's just given away that he barely touches cigarettes.

Skye just looks at him. Like he's deciding whether the answer matters more than the ask.

"You smoke?"

"Not really. Sometimes."

Skye hums. "Sometimes," he repeats, softer but not mocking. Without breaking eye contact, he brings the cigarette back to his own lips and takes a slow drag. The cherry flares, then dims as he exhales, turning his head just enough that the smoke drifts past Zayne instead of into him.

He shifts his hand forward. "Go on."

Zayne hesitates before he reaches. His fingers brush Skye's for less than a second—warmer than they should be—and the contact is enough to make something tighten low in his chest.

He brings the cigarette to his lips and inhales—too shallow, not quite right. The smoke hits wrong. He exhales quickly, turning his head, covering it with a controlled breath.

Skye watches the entire thing.

"Yeah," he says. "Right."

Zayne glances at him, irritation tightening his jaw. Or maybe not irritation. Maybe just the sudden, unwelcome fact of being seen.

"Is this where you usually meet them?" The question comes out sharper than he means it to.

"Meet who?"

"Men."

Skye's gaze flicks across the balcony. Then a laugh, so soft it nearly disappears into the bass below. "I don't usually meet them at all." He gestures vaguely toward the balcony edge. "This isn't a regular thing for me."

"So why me?" Zayne asks, and only hears the words properly once they've already left him. "Never mind."

Something hot and prickly crawls up his spine. What the hell is he doing here? Standing in a club he doesn't belong in, smoking a cigarette he doesn't want, talking to a man whose face he only has because of a phone line.

He takes another drag. Better this time.

"I shouldn't have come," he says quietly, mostly to himself.

"But you did," Skye replies. No judgment in it. Just fact.

Zayne takes in the details he's been avoiding—the clean cut of the jacket, the silver hair catching uneven light, the calm self-possession.

"I wanted to see," he admits.

"See what?"

"If you were real."

The words sound stupid the second they leave his mouth.

Skye smiles, slight. "And?"

There's teasing in it. But something else underneath that makes Zayne think the answer might actually matter.

Below them, the track changes. The bass shudders up through the railing. Skye glances toward the DJ booth with a faint crease between his brows, then tips his head toward a doorway at the far end of the balcony.

"Let's talk somewhere quieter. Unless you'd rather shout over whatever the hell that is."

Zayne crushes the cigarette against the railing. "Fine," he says, and follows.

The hallway beyond the balcony narrows immediately. Lower ceiling. Closer walls. The music dulls, becomes something felt more than heard. Small lights run along the baseboards, throwing everything upward into shadow.

Skye walks ahead of him, shoulders nearly brushing both walls. Zayne keeps his eyes on the back of his neck, on the place where silver hair brushes his collar before giving way to skin.

"The office is down here," Skye says over his shoulder. "We can—"

A door opens ahead.

A man in a dark shirt steps into the hallway, already late for something. He pauses just long enough to clock them, then angles his body to squeeze through.

Skye steps back.

And suddenly he is right in front of Zayne.

One hand braced against the wall beside Zayne's head. The other still in his pocket. The entire span of hallway gone at once.

Heat rushes up Zayne's neck so fast it almost hurts. His back hits the wall, cool through his shirt. Skye is close enough that the scent of him resolves properly—smoke, yes, but something darker underneath, cedar or amber, something that sits at the base of the throat and stays.

The man squeezes past with a muttered apology.

Zayne barely hears it.

All he can register is the weight of Skye's body in front of his without actual contact. The bracket of his arm. The fact that he has not stepped back even though the hallway is clear now.

"Sorry," Skye says.

He doesn't sound sorry.

"Tight space."

"It's fine." Zayne's voice comes out lower than he means it to.

Neither of them moves. Zayne's back is still pressed against the wall. He should step forward. Fill the space himself instead of letting Skye hold it. He doesn't.

Skye's gaze is different now—less amused, more focused. It drags once, briefly, to Zayne's mouth before lifting again.

"You still haven't told me your name."

"I don't see why it matters."

"Maybe I'm tired of calling you Noah when we both know that isn't your name." His knee brushes Zayne's. Even though the contact is brief, it still hits like a jolt, bright and immediate and far too low in Zayne's body. "And because I want to know who actually showed up tonight."

Zayne's mouth feels dry.

He should move. Duck under Skye's arm. Walk back out to the balcony, down the stairs, out the door.

"Does this usually work for you?" he asks instead.

"What?"

"The whole intimidation routine."

Something flickers across Skye's face—surprise that Zayne said it at all.

"Is that what you think this is?"

"What else would it be?"

Skye smiles. Smaller now. More real.

Zayne hates that he likes that better.

"Zayne," he says finally. "My name is Zayne Li."

Skye repeats it once. "Zayne." The name sounds different in his mouth. Better, which is unhelpful.

A pause. Then, quieter: "Sylus Qin."

He leaves it out in the open like something that escaped without his permission. His jaw tightens. His hand drops from the wall, but he doesn't step back. "Not that anyone should know that. Got it?"

Zayne nods once, unsure of what he's just been given.

"Do you own this place?"

Sylus's mouth quirks. "Something like that."

Zayne waits for more. It doesn't come.

"I should go," he says.

"You just got here."

"I know, but—"

He stops. He has no excuse that won't fall apart halfway out of his mouth.

"One drink," Sylus says, holding up a finger. "Since you came all this way."

Not really a request. First the cigarette, now this. Zayne nods anyway.

The unmarked door at the end of the hall does not open to an office. It opens onto a narrow service stairwell, concrete underfoot and a metal rail cold enough to shine in the low light. The music drops another layer as they climb, reduced to a dull pulse coming up through the walls.

Zayne looks once at the landing above them, then at Sylus's back. "You call this an office?"

Sylus glances over his shoulder. "Close enough."

At the top, he shoulders open the heavy roof door, and the night air cuts across Zayne's face hard enough to feel clean.

The rooftop is smaller than he expected. Not a lounge. Not anything polished. Just a strip of open space with a low ledge, a metal table gone sticky in rings from old condensation, two mismatched chairs, and a dented cooler shoved against the wall like it has lived there longer than the furniture. The city opens up beyond the ledge in broken light and wet glass. Neon bleeds upward from the sign below, turning the concrete pink, then blue.

Three men are already up here.

One at the ledge with a cigarette, one half-turned in a chair with a beer bottle hanging loose from his fingers, the third saying something too low to make out. None of them look surprised to see Sylus.

Sylus does not stop walking. He doesn't raise his voice.

"Out."

That's all.

The man in the chair is on his feet before the word has fully settled. The one at the ledge crushes his cigarette without argument. The third mutters something that might have been a joke a second ago, but whatever answer he gets from Sylus's face kills it. Within seconds they're moving for the stairwell door, quick without being frantic, like they've all learned not to make him ask twice.

One of them glances at Zayne on the way past. Just enough to register him.

The door swings shut behind them with a heavy metal thud.

Zayne looks at the door, then back at Sylus.

"They were just up here."

Sylus crosses to the cooler and flips the lid open. Ice shifts inside. He comes back with a bottle of something, a sleeve of Styrofoam cups shoved over the neck.

"They were."

"That seemed—" Zayne stops, because he's not sure what word he wants.

Sylus looks over at him. "Rude? Efficient?"

Zayne doesn't answer. But the thing forming under his attention since the hallway sharpens. Those men didn't hesitate. They didn't look annoyed. They moved the way people move when the person telling them to has never once had to explain what happens if they don't. It just makes him more aware of the fact he's choosing to stay.

Sylus thumbs two cups free, sets the bottle against the table, twists the cap, pours. In the rooftop light—city glow, neon bleed—Zayne gets his clearest look at him yet. Tall. Composed. Silver hair catching at the edges. Face all angles and shadow.

"Here."

Their fingers brush when Zayne takes the cup. This time he doesn't pull back as quickly.

He takes a tiny sip. Whiskey—smoother than he expects. Warm on the tongue, warmer lower down. He barely drinks. And he's not entirely sure why he agreed to come up here.

On the phone, the uncertainty had room to stay distant. Here, with the bass reduced to pressure beneath his feet and the city spread open around them, it doesn't.

And there's nowhere to hang up from this without looking like an idiot, probably.

"Better than shouting over bad music," Sylus says.

Zayne turns the cup in his fingers. Looking at it is easier than looking at Sylus. Easier than noticing the line of his wrist where his sleeve has pulled back, or the shape of his mouth against the rim of the cup.

There's probably a better way to ask what he's trying to ask. Softer. Less likely to sound like an accusation. Zayne doesn't know what that version is, and guessing feels riskier than just saying it wrong. Getting it wrong means either missing something that's there or seeing something that isn't. He's done both.

"Were you asking me out?"

The words leave him before he can improve them.

Sylus lowers his cup. Just a pause before his expression settles. He huffs and shakes his head slightly.

"What do you think?"

"I think I'm asking because I don't know." It comes out sharper. "I'm not—"

"I thought I was being fairly obvious."

Obvious isn't the same as certain. "That doesn't help."

"Why not?"

Zayne's grip tightens on the cup.

"Because it's—" He stops. Starts again, worse. "It's kind of against the rules."

Something shifts in Sylus's expression. Not confusion. More like careful attention.

"What rules?"

Zayne doesn't answer, because the honest version is too long and the short version sounds paranoid. There was nothing in the rules of Confidential Connection that prohibited this exact scenario from happening.

But a general rule he himself thought he would at least follow: you don't follow strangers to rooftops, or ask other men if they're asking you out.

Don't let your guard down in a place where stakes are high enough to matter, or ask too many questions that simply don't have an answer—especially when the monitors never lie.

"I meant I wanted you here," Sylus says.

Just like that. Plain. No room for anything else. Like it was the simplest thing he'd said to anyone all evening.

"I wasn't being subtle on the phone. I wasn't trying to be." He takes another drink. "I wanted...to see if you'd come anyway."

"Oh," Zayne says.

The Styrofoam gives under his thumb—a point of focus. His body is cataloguing: the way Sylus stands like he's never had to make himself smaller, the specific weight of his attention.

Something in Sylus's expression eases. He looks away first, out over the ledge, and takes another drink.

"Alright," he says, quieter. "You can stop looking like that. I'm not going to throw you off the building."

The joke is dry enough that it almost works. Zayne's jaw unclenches by one degree.

Then, because apparently he can't leave an opening alone:

"How did you even know I was gay?"

Sylus looks at him. "I didn't."

Zayne looks up so fast it almost hurts. "What?"

"I didn't." Sylus takes a sip. "I guessed."

That lands harder than it should. Not because it's dramatic. Because it isn't.

Guessed. Meaning Sylus saw something, or heard something, or noticed the wrong silence in the wrong place and made a decision. Meaning the careful silence Zayne had built his life around had a crack in it someone else could see before he could. And the worst part is that Sylus was right. He was right, and Zayne still came upstairs. Still followed him up the stairwell, out onto a roof where nobody can see them. Still took the cup. Still stayed.

Something cold settles in his chest that has nothing to do with the temperature.

He takes another sip.

"And are you?" His voice comes out flatter than he intends. "Or is this some elaborate scheme to take us all down?"

A short breath leaves Sylus, closer to a laugh than anything else Zayne has heard from him tonight.

"That's your first question? Not how I guessed?"

"It seemed more relevant."

"I'm gay," Sylus says. No buildup. Just the words and the night air and the city behind him—with someone he met less than an hour ago. "Your scheme would be a lot of effort for one conversation, sweetie."

The quiet settles between them. Wind catches the edge of Zayne's windbreaker and lets go. Somewhere below, a car horn sounds and vanishes.

The Styrofoam is bending at the rim where his thumb keeps pressing. He should feel better. The question is answered. Sylus is gay. Sylus wanted him here. Sylus guessed and asked and Zayne came. The pieces are all on the table. There is no ambiguity left to hide in.

That's the problem.

Something in Sylus's posture has changed—a slight pull-back, the angle of his shoulders shifting.

"Zayne."

He says it differently now. Less heat. Less edge.

"You don't have to stay up here."

It takes Zayne a second to hear it properly. Not a dismissal. An out.

"The door's right there. You go back down, go home, and this was just a drink on a roof. Nothing happened."

His voice is even. Matter-of-fact.

Zayne looks at the door. He catalogues the exit the way he catalogued the club when he walked in—sight lines, distances, number of steps to the stairwell. He could be on the street in under a minute. Back in his apartment in twenty. This whole night folded down to an anecdote he never tells anyone.

The bass hums up through the roof beneath his shoes.

Sylus waits. He doesn't fill the silence. He doesn't lean in. He just stands there with his cup at his side and gives the moment room to go either way.

That's the thing that gets Zayne. Not the flirting. Not the closeness in the hallway. The fact that Sylus noticed he was off balance and stepped back.

"I didn't say I wanted to leave."

Quieter than he means, but steady.

Sylus doesn't move right away. Something recalibrates behind his eyes. The distance he just put between them doesn't disappear, but it changes.

"Okay," Sylus says.

He sets his cup on the table. Then he closes the distance.

Not fast. Not slow. Two steps that bring him inside the space Zayne has been holding around himself all night. Close enough that the scent resolves again—smoke, whiskey, low and warm.

He stops with barely a foot between them.

His hand comes up to the front of Zayne's shirt, finding it through the open windbreaker, fingers catching loosely in the fabric just below the collar.

"Tell me to stop," he says, "and I stop."

Zayne doesn't tell him to stop. Doesn't say anything, because his throat has locked and every part of his brain that generates language has gone quiet in a way that might be panic or the opposite of it.

Sylus reads the silence correctly. A decision made. Zayne can see it on his face. His other hand comes up to the side of Zayne's jaw, thumb settling just under his ear, and he kisses him.

The first thing Zayne registers is warmth. Not the whiskey kind. The press of Sylus's mouth against his, firm and certain, tasting like smoke and something sharper underneath. Controlled. Unhurried. The restraint itself a kind of heat.

Zayne goes still.

Not pulling back. Not leaning in. Just frozen—the cold air against the back of his neck making the warmth louder by contrast. The Styrofoam cup is still in one of his hands. He's going to crush it at this rate.

He processes the moment about two seconds after it starts, which is when his mouth finally moves against Sylus's. Not smoothly. Just a late, slightly clumsy response.

Sylus makes a low sound against his mouth—barely audible, more breath than voice—and the hand on Zayne's jaw shifts, tilting his head just enough to deepen the angle. The kiss opens. Not aggressively, but enough that Zayne feels the heat of Sylus's tongue, whiskey and smoke shared between them.

The hand at his shirtfront tightens. Not pulling. Holding. Like Sylus wants something closer than this and is choosing not to take it.

That's what undoes him. Not the kiss itself. The restraint. The fact that he can feel how much Sylus is holding back, and that the holding back is doing more to his nervous system than anything explicit would.

His free hand comes up—late, uncertain—and lands on Sylus's chest. Not pushing. Not pulling. Just the heat of him underneath, and breathing that is slightly faster than it was a minute ago.

Sylus pulls back first.

Not far. Just enough to break the kiss, his breath warm and uneven against Zayne's mouth. His hand stays on Zayne's jaw. His thumb moves once, a slow stroke under his ear.

Zayne opens his eyes. Sylus is right there, city light catching the edges of his silver hair and the faintly wrecked quality of his expression.

The Styrofoam cup in Zayne's other hand is crushed. Whiskey is leaking over his fingers.

He looks down at it. Then back up at Sylus.

"That was the only cup I had."

Sylus stares at him. Then something breaks in his composure—not much, just enough—and he laughs. Short, low, surprised. Real. "I have more cups."

"Good," Zayne says. His voice sounds strange to himself. Rougher. "Because that was my drink."

Sylus's thumb traces once more under his ear, slow, and then his hand drops. He steps back just enough to reach for the bottle.

The city hums around them. Neon bleeds up from below, turning the roof pink at the edges. Somewhere under their feet the bass settles into something slower, and the night doesn't feel like it's ending so much as rearranging itself around a decision that was probably a terrible idea and neither of them is taking back.

He'll have to figure it out later.

Chapter Text

The city slides back into itself when the club door latches behind them.

Neon Saint has gone quiet. First the music, then the last voices from the floor. By the time Sylus steps onto the sidewalk, the sign is still burns pink and blue above him, but the place underneath has emptied into staff noise and stale air.

Almost four in the morning. The hour where the city stops pretending it has a pulse and shows the machinery underneath. Sylus walks a fraction ahead of the twins, coat buttoned at his throat, the June air damp against his skin in the gap before dawn.

Luke’s voice chases him down the sidewalk, carving up the night with scraps of other people’s lives—some bartender’s bad tip, someone crying in the men’s room, the woman at coat check refusing to quit for the third time this month. He keeps it up until Kieran’s hand catches him on the chest and makes him come up short.

Mephisto had called before they left the club and given only the useful parts. Someone offshore had come in before morning, carrying something they were trying to move without permission. Wrong route. Wrong hour. Enough for Sylus to go himself.

A black Lincoln sits at the curb, windows fogged at the edges. Sylus waits for the twins to take the front seats before sliding into the back. As Kieran turns the key, the car’s recycled air seals out the humidity, replacing it with the tang of old upholstery. Luke is still riding his own velocity in the passenger seat, knee bouncing, hands busy with a pack of cigarettes. The passing neon catches in his red hair and makes it flare bright for a second. He offers one behind his head without looking. Sylus reaches out and takes it.

Kieran’s lighter appears from the driver’s seat, offered between two fingers like a precision instrument. His hair is the same red, darker where the shadows take it. When the flame catches his face, two old scars cross near the outside of one pale blue eye. The twins have a choreography for these rituals, something wired into them. The tip catches, flares, and heat fills Sylus’s mouth. He watches the city slide by, all the parts that mattered already dark, the rest waiting for shift change. Cars pulled up to curbs. Old neon.

He drags once, slow, shifting to roll the window down some. Exhales toward the glass.

Kieran reaches over to flick the radio on. Static snaps once, and then low synth slides in through the speakers and makes Luke immediately groan.

Do we have to wait ’til our worlds collide?

“They played this downstairs tonight,” he complains. “Three times.”

Kieran glances at him. “It’s a good song.”

“Maybe the first twenty times it’s been played.”

Sylus doesn’t comment. The city keeps moving past the window.

Zayne had stood under the rooftop light like he still hadn't decided whether he was allowed to occupy the space his own body took up. Windbreaker zipped halfway. Hands careful around the cup. Hazel eyes . The cheap Styrofoam had split in his hand under pressure. The dry little comment afterward, delivered like he had not just been kissed breathless on a rooftop.

The kiss wasn't the point—Zayne had actually shown up. The calls had only ever skirted the idea. A voice on a line, a pause held too long, a question left with too much room around it. Deniable, all of it. Easy to fold away once the line went dead. That was interesting. That was useful. That was all it was supposed to be. Then Zayne had walked into Neon Saint.

But now his brain was being stupid about it. Picturing the bathroom stalls downstairs, the ones where the bass came through like a second heartbeat. How it would've gone if he'd just—pulled Zayne in there instead of up to the roof. Gotten on his knees on that filthy tile himself and put his mouth on him. Whether his hands would find Sylus's hair or the wall.

Luke drums his fingers on the glove compartment. “He sounded annoyed. I didn’t think he got annoyed.”

Kieran keeps his eyes on the road. “I think that’s just how he sounds normally. You’re only finally sober enough to hear it.”

Luke clicks his tongue, then makes a small, dismissive gesture that snags on the rearview mirror. “I’m just saying.”

Sylus presses his palm to his thigh, cigarette balanced between two fingers, and scans the street numbers bleeding by. Industrial districts never slept; they just changed the angle of their predation. Delivery trucks idled under dark and half-open loading bays. It all repeats itself in little motifs: the same building, the same busted-out lamp.

The Lincoln pulls up on a side street four buildings down from the marina gates. No one wastes a lookout on this stretch.

Luke is out of the car before the others, flicking his cigarette into a puddle and rolling his neck like the night was built for him. Kieran catches the back of his jacket before he clears the curb and pulls him half a step into the shadow of the car.

Luke shoots him a look. “What?”

Kieran’s gaze stays on the marina gates. “Try not announcing yourself to the entire dock.”

Luke looks down the empty street, then back at him. “There’s no one here.”

“That you’ve noticed.”

Luke catches Sylus watching and lets an exaggerated eye-roll do the work. “I can stand still for ten seconds, you know,” he mutters, but he does. Barely.

They move from streetlight to shadow, the twins in perfect sync, Sylus half a pace behind. He likes distance. It gives a situation room to show its weak points. He crushes the cigarette out against a loading-bay sign and lets the dock narrow into focus.

Down at the dock, Mephisto waits in the lee of an abandoned winch, more silhouette than person. Hair twisted up in a knot that still looks theatrical even in the dark, long black coat falling in a clean line to his calves. He doesn’t move—as if stillness is a kind of threat. Or maybe just a habit.

His attention catches on Sylus first, then the twins, and he gives a nod that is both confirmation and permission to approach. Up close, his clothes are all shadow and texture, rings glinting once in the light. He looks like he’s just stepped out of some downtown basement club. That is probably true.

A reek of brine and rot undercuts the air. Mephisto steps out from the shelter of the winch, hands empty, posture bored but sharp at the edges, face pale in the halogen wash.

“You took your time,” he says, voice dry enough to cut.

Kieran’s reply is another fact. “You said it was stable.” Then, after a beat: “Where’s the visitor?”

“Three slips down. Camouflage isn’t their strong suit.” Mephisto’s pupils look like pinprick voids in the light, before he shifts his gaze toward the marina.

Sylus catches a flicker between the twins: some old message, some sibling shorthand.

They set off in silence. Water hisses against the pilings like a tape loop. Luke hums something tuneless under his breath. A yacht—or something close to one—sits at the edge of the dock, its glass hematite-dark and unwelcoming. Sylus feels the chill scrape up his nerves: the shift from idle rumor to actual, tangible problem.

“Whose?” he asks Mephisto.

“Not local,” Mephisto answers. “Unless you count offshore accounting as citizenship.”

Luke grins, teeth picked out by the pier’s dead light. “Should I knock, or just start with the fireworks?”

Mephisto catches him by the front of his jacket to halt him.

“No.”

Luke glances down, then up. “What?”

Mephisto doesn’t look at him. His head tips slightly toward the yacht, eyes fixated on the dark glass. “It heard us.”

Kieran frowns. “It? What are you talking about, the fucking boat?”

The cabin door opens and the man who steps out makes the doorway look too small. Broad shoulders under a black coat, one gloved hand brushing the frame as he ducks through it. He stops at the top of the gangplank. Too big for the clean lines of the yacht. Too big for the tailored coat stretched over him. His hands stay low and visible, gloved against the damp. Security, then—but not local, not marina. Something bought and brought in, or so Sylus thinks. The kind of man you hire to improvise. Not a greeter. A threshold.

“Big,” is all that Mephisto says next.

Luke lets out a quiet breath through his nose, halfway to a laugh, but it is Sylus who speaks this time.

“You can say that again.”

The twins widen without being told—Luke loose to the left, Kieran quieter on the right, changing the shape of them. Mephisto stays where he is, still and faintly pleased in his discovery, like the night has confirmed something for him.

Sylus stops just short of the gangplank. He keeps his eyes on the man’s hands. No visible weapon. Which means either confidence or discipline. The big man just looks at them with the flat patience of someone accustomed to being the first refusal.

“You’re docked in the wrong place,” Sylus says. The words leave him flat and settled. The yacht shifts once against the slip. Polished hull. Dark glass. Too much money spent making it look like it isn’t doing anything at all. At this hour, that usually means it is.

The man still says nothing. If he were only muscle, he would have spoken already, threatened back. If this were panic, the door would have stayed shut. He turns his head slightly in the direction of the doorway, listening to something spoken too quietly for the dock to catch. Then he steps aside. Not far. Not politely. Just enough.

Luke rolls one shoulder. “See? Fireworks would’ve been rude.”

The yacht’s interior is all gloss and hush. Mahogany and smoked glass. Chrome catching the light. Someone has spent a lot of money making the place look untouched. A bottle of mineral water sits quietly on the table. A magazine lies open. Everything arranged just so to suggest patience. Or innocence, depending on the way you looked at it.

The courier sits at the banquette, hands folded, trying very hard to look as if he has not been waiting. He’s younger than Sylus expects, clean-shaven. Hair too neat. A soft black suit that belongs somewhere colder and more careful than all of this. Good posture. A face that would look composed if not for the way his eyes keep settling. Not a local broker, not a real criminal either. The sort of man whose job is to impersonate trust. Interesting for them but unfortunate for him.

He looks up when Sylus enters—the motion almost rehearsed. He’s probably done it in his head three times already. Maybe ten.

Luke drifts off, not touching anything. Kieran takes the opposite side of the room and stops there, arms loose. Mephisto remains near the hatch, attention moving once over the cabin like something small and black-eyed deciding where to peck first. They don’t speak. Sylus stays standing.

“I was told to expect one person,” the man says. His English is flawless in the way only practiced people sound flawless. Something in it is filed down with no traceable home. His left hand shakes slightly. The right stays still against the back of the banquette.

“That was optimistic,” Sylus says.

The man’s expression doesn’t change much. The smallest flick of his eyes. He’d come prepared for a certain kind of conversation and has figured out that’s not going to happen.

Good.

The courier realizes too late that he is still seated and quickly corrects it, betraying his nerves.

“I’m told this could be handled discreetly,” he explains, which causes Sylus to look at him, then past him. Two leather satchels sit tucked into the corner of the banquette. Expensive enough to try not to look expensive. The kind of weight that travels best in silence.

Sylus dips his chin a fraction, like the answer has disappointed him. “Really?”

“Yes. We were given to understand that... arrangements had been made.”

“Arrangements,” Sylus says softly. “Another interesting word.”

The courier says nothing. Sylus steps farther into the room and lets the yacht do some of the work for him. The hush of vents. The small knock of water against the hull. Luke shifting his weight near the bar. Kieran not shifting his at all. Mephisto somehow managing to make silence feel less neutral than sound.

“People use words like that,” Sylus says, “when what they mean is permission they never actually had.”

The courier swallows. Small. There and gone. But Sylus sees it. Fear is easier to work with than confidence.

“We’re prepared to compensate for the inconvenience,” the courier says.

Sylus turns his head slightly. “Kieran.”

Kieran looks over.

“Did you know,” Sylus asks, almost conversationally, “that men can bring a pocket-sized fortune through here at this hour and then offer me compensation like they’re settling a hotel bill?”

Kieran’s face doesn’t move. “News to me.”

Sylus looks back at the courier. “Apparently it’s news to both of us.”

A little color leaves the courier’s face. Not enough to be dramatic. Just enough to prove he can still lose some. Sylus takes another step toward the banquette and taps two fingers on the top, flicking his chin toward the satchels. “Show me why I came all the way over here.”

The courier doesn’t move. Sylus looks up. The hesitation lasts only a second, but the fact of it is already useful.

“I would prefer,” the courier says, “that we first establish terms.”

There is a shift in the room then. Not visible at first. Just a quiet tightening. Luke stops fidgeting. Kieran’s attention sharpens. Even the air seems to flatten around the sentence and leave it sitting there by itself.

Sylus straightens.

“Terms,” he repeats.

The courier hears the mistake only after the word has fully left him. He presses on anyway, which is almost admirable. “We are not here to create conflict. We are here to complete a transfer. If there has been a misunderstanding in route or notification, I’m sure it can be corrected.”

Sylus glances toward Luke. “Did you hear that, Luke?”

Luke looks over, shifts once where he is leaning against the bar, arms folded. His smile curves as he nods. “Sure did, boss.”

Sylus inclines his head toward the courier. “He’s sure this can be corrected.”

Luke looks at the courier, then back to Sylus. “That’s a relief.”

Sylus returns his attention to the man in the suit.

“No,” he says. “Pull them out. Before I stop asking.”

The courier blinks.

Behind Sylus, nobody moves. That matters too. Not just that he’s speaking, but the others staying quiet enough to turn him into the only true shape in the room. The only one the courier is allowed to orient around.

At last the man reaches for the satchels. His left hand shakes more now. The right still does most of the work. Sylus lets him set both on the table and watches as he opens the first bag carefully, like he’s worried roughness might alter value. Or evidence. Or both. The first velvet wrap opens to a bracelet. Heavy stones. Old cut. Diamond and sapphire. The clasp is wrong for anonymous sale. Too worked. Too specific. A tiny hinge shaped like a flower. Something made. The second wrap holds unset stones in waxed paper. The third, a watch set with diamonds, the underside engraved.

Sylus doesn’t need to say anything. The problem is already there. None of it is random. Contraband can be moved, valued, stripped, passed. This isn’t generic. These kinds of goods once belonged to collections, inheritances, robberies with names attached.

“Second bag,” Sylus says.

He doesn’t have to repeat himself. The courier makes quick work opening the second satchel. More of the same. Stones. Old settings. Slim boxes. Paperwork hidden under a false bottom. Receipts. Insurance copies. Auction sheets, maybe. Photocopied. Enough paper to turn theft into inheritance if it gets passed around long enough.

This isn’t just a shipment. It’s an expensive mess with a forged route through Sylus’s structure. He reaches inside his coat for his glasses. The gesture is almost absent-minded, which makes the courier watch it harder. He unfolds them one-handed and settles them on his nose.

The watch lies where the man left it, face dark under the cabin light. Heavier than it should be. Real weight always feels different when it belongs to someone else. Sylus turns it once, watching the light catch along the bezel. Diamonds so tight they look wet. His thumb finds the clasp. Opens it. He angles the inside toward the light and reads the engraving there.

For Aveline, always.

Well. That makes it worse.

“We only need a line opened long enough to move them inland,” the courier says.

Sylus looks up at him over the frames of his glasses and watches as the man shifts backward slightly. He doesn’t look confused. It’s a choice Sylus watches him make.

“Who is we?” Sylus huffs a laugh, still holding up the watch. “You, me, and Aveline?”

“A consortium handling recovery.” The words are polished when they come out. Ready-made. Not his.

Sylus turns his head slightly toward the others, playing a game in his head of who he is going to call on.

“Mephisto? Does that sound real to you?”

Mephisto lifts his eyes, nearly cracks a smirk. “No, boss.”

The courier’s gaze cuts toward him and away just as quickly. He still hasn’t learned that looking elsewhere only makes the room smaller.

Sylus looks back at him. “Try again.”

The courier wets his lips.

“A private dispute.”

“Better,” Sylus says. “Still ugly.”

He glances down once at the satchels, the velvet, the false-bottom paperwork, then back up. There is always a point in rooms like this where the lie changes temperature. Stops being broad. Stops trying to stand on its own. Begins shrinking toward the truth by little, involuntary degrees. He can feel this one doing it already.

The courier can too.

“There is a complication with the arranged receiver,” the man says carefully. “I am told that if the route becomes difficult—”

He stops there. Sylus hears the shape of it before the man finishes building it. Some little internal click, cold and immediate.

“If the route becomes difficult,” he repeats, very softly, “what?”

The courier blinks. Purses his lips. That, more than anything, does it. Not the words. Not the shipment. Not the fact that a private yacht sits in the wrong water with too much money folded into too little luggage. The hesitation. Because hesitation means he knows exactly which part of the answer matters. The courier tries to hold it together to fails.

“I was told to use Viper’s name.”

For a second, no one moves. Not dramatically. No one startles. No one swears. No one lunges for anything. Worse than that. Luke’s face empties. Kieran goes quiet in a sharper way, which is somehow more violent than if he had touched a weapon. Mephisto tips his head. Just slightly. Attention brightening—even though his attention is more on the jewels on the table. Sylus just looks at the man, because Viper is not an upstream stranger. Not a name people throw around to buy fear in bad rooms.

Viper is theirs. Known. Close enough that the name should not be in this room unless Sylus put it there. Which leaves two options: the courier is lying, or something inside Sylus’s own structure has opened from the wrong side.

The courier, idiotically, mistakes the silence for permission and keeps going.

“I am told it secures temporary passage.”

Sylus laughs. It isn’t warm. It isn’t loud. It is, somehow, the ugliest sound in the room. Brief. Flat. As if something has just been confirmed to his satisfaction, and that satisfaction is not good news for anyone else.

The courier flinches.

“Temporary passage.” Sylus’s mouth twitches. Not a smile. Something leaner than that. Hungrier. “That’s lovely.” A pause. “Who told you to use his name?”

“I’m not given a real—”

Sylus lifts a hand. The courier stops. Not because the gesture is dramatic. Because it assumes obedience and gets it.

“No,” Sylus says. “Let’s not do that. You do not get to sail in here with stolen goods in your bag and one of my names in your mouth, then start pretending information is above you.” His voice stays calm. “You were trusted with the part that matters. So either you tell me who handed it to you, or I begin making decisions without the benefit of your honesty.”

The courier’s gaze flicks toward the hatch. Toward the big guard beyond it. Anywhere except Sylus. Another stupid mistake. He is still looking for some authority to step in.

“I’m not given a real name,” he says. “Only a number. Instructions. If the arranged receiver fails to answer, I reroute. If challenged, I invoke Viper.”

Sylus stares at him. Not because he doesn’t believe him. The lie is no longer in the same place. That is usually how these things happen. He looks once more at the cargo. At the watch, obscene with diamonds. Enough paper to sand down the ugliness of theft.

“This can still be a negotiation,” the courier says carefully. The sentence is built too slowly. He knows he is stepping somewhere unstable now. “If there is an internal misunderstanding, surely it serves everyone better not to escalate.”

Sylus considers him with a tilt of his head. That part, at least, is true. A breach matters more than the satchels do. If someone uses Viper’s name, Sylus needs the line traced.

So yes. Negotiation.

He nods once toward the cargo, which is no longer just that. It is evidence now. Leverage. A trail someone has been stupid enough to bring directly to him.

“Pack it. Inventory everything. Paperwork, all of it.”

The courier blinks. “I’m sorry?”

Luke is already there. Of course he is. He has that bright, anticipatory energy now. Standing by the satchels as if the room has been waiting for his hands all along. Kieran comes to the table, draws the hidden documents free with neat, impersonal fingers, and starts sorting them into stacks without looking at the courier once.

And finally, without taking his eyes off the courier, Sylus adds, “Mephisto stays with you.”

The courier stiffens. “You can’t simply—”

Sylus looks at him and the rest of the sentence dies where it deserves to. “That,” he says, “is another stupid question.”

The courier shuts his mouth. Feels all of it. Sylus can tell because he has gone too still again. Sylus turns and heads toward the hatch.

The big guard outside shifts as he emerges. The mist has thickened while they were inside. It clings to the yacht’s rails and makes the dock lights look farther away than they are. The sort of hour where noise travels badly and mistakes travel well.

The marina gate is back behind them, a dull shape past the long boards of the main dock. Beyond that, the warehouse squats in the dark with its loading bay closed and its security light burning over empty concrete. The Lincoln is somewhere past it, tucked off the side street where no one on the water would think to look.

Sylus pauses beside the guard and draws his cigarettes from his coat pocket. For a second his fingers catch on paper first. He frowns, tugs it free with the cigarettes, and finds himself holding the old Confidential Connections ad he tore out weeks ago. Cheap print on thinner paper than it deserves. The kind of thing that should be discarded the second it stops being useful. Instead it stays. Folded. Unfolded. Carried. His thumb shifts and finds the coaster behind it. Cardboard soft at the edge now. Some brand name tequila logo half worn away.

Zayne’s actual phone number in pen. For one stupid second the dock and the yacht and the humid dark all tilt around something smaller and infinitely more irritating.

Inside, Luke is probably holding a diamond bracelet up to the light. Kieran is probably already halfway through the paperwork. Mephisto is probably making the courier feel skinned alive without touching him once.

And Sylus, apparently, is standing out in the mist with a hotline ad in one hand and a cocktail coaster in the other like some kind of adolescent idiot.

The big guard looks at the cigarette pack.

Sylus glances up, almost amused despite himself, and offers one out. The man considers it, then takes it between two gloved fingers. After his lighter is placed back in his palm, Sylus puts the pack back in his coat pocket and reaches for his cell phone. It feels stupidly small in his hand. One of those miserable little bricks pretending to be the future.

By the time he reaches the foot of the gangplank, there are a few feet of wet wood and mist between him and the yacht. He brings the coaster up to the dock light and shifts the ad behind it with his thumb. Too recent to feel familiar and already familiar anyway.

Sylus keys it in without letting himself think too hard about the fact that he is calling it at all.

The line rings once.

Twice.

Three times.

Then four.

Long enough that Sylus begins to imagine the apartment around the sound. A phone on a wall somewhere. A dark kitchen. A man dragged out of sleep and made to cross the room for something he should not have given out in the first place.

On the fifth ring, the line clicks. There is a scrape of plastic. A faint clatter, like the receiver has knocked against tile or a wall. Then breath, close and unguarded.

“Mom?”

Sylus smiles before he can stop himself. It happens low and quick, something stupid and private opening in his chest at the fact that the call was answered.

“No,” Sylus says. “Should I be offended?”

Then Zayne, flatter now, irritation finding its way through the sleep: “Who is this?”

“That hurts.”

Sylus can almost hear him putting the pieces together. The silence changes shape around it.

Then Zayne says, “Sylus?”

Just his name. Not quite a question. Not quite anything else. Sylus glances back toward the yacht. The big man is still on the deck, his attention on the cabin door.

“Good evening.”

Zayne exhales, slow and tired, directly into the receiver. “Do you know what time it is?”

“Almost morning,” Sylus responds as he takes a few steps further toward the main dock, pulling a drag from the cigarette in his hand.

“That’s not an answer.”

“No,” Sylus responds while exhaling, smoke curling as he leans one hip against a piling and looks out over the bay. “It isn’t.”

The water is black from here. Not romantic. Not even pretty. Just black, with dock lights breaking apart the surface.

“Why are you calling me?” Zayne asks.

Sylus takes another drag and watches the smoke vanish into the damp air. “Wasn’t that implied?”

“You probably implied a lot of things,” is the dry response he gets, followed by the sound of a small shift. A cord against the wall or a shoulder brushing a cabinet. When Zayne speaks again, he sounds more awake. “Is this your idea of a normal phone call?”

The question pulls a smile out of Sylus as he taps ash over the water. “Not usually. Are you disappointed?”

“No.”

“You gave me the number,” Sylus points out.

“I didn’t think you’d use it less than eight hours later,” is the response he gets, the same dry, tired tone only shifting slightly into something less confused and more pondering.

Sylus looks down at the cigarette between his fingers, then out at the bay again. There are obvious answers he could give. The number had been sitting in his pocket like a dare. The real answer isn’t exactly safe. The whole thing had started as something useful. A business built on privacy. Men with money using false names. Operators trained to listen without being remembered. Records somewhere. Schedules. Billing. Repeat callers. Weak points dressed up as discretion.

A thing like that could be leaned on, bought, threatened, absorbed.

Behind him, the yacht sits glossy and dark. Somewhere across the city, Zayne is standing half-awake in a kitchen, breathing into a phone because Sylus called and wanted him to pick up.

He takes another drag and lowers the cigarette from his mouth.

“I wanted to know if you would answer,” he says at last.

It slips out. Too honest to take back. He should say something else. Ruin it. Turn it sideways. Make it sound like a joke, or a test, or one more piece of information gathered because information is what he came here for. Instead, he waits.

The gunshot cracks through the yacht behind him. A hard interior pop made ugly by the enclosed space it comes from.

Then the rest of it hits. Something heavy slamming into wood. Glass breaking somewhere deeper in the cabin. A shout cut off halfway through. The whole sound warps through the polished little echo chamber into something sharper and less human. Above him, on the deck, the big guard moves.

“What was—”

“Hold on,” Sylus says, already turning but not hanging up, already reaching inside his coat. His fingers find the grip of his gun by habit, the motion clean and immediate, phone still in his other hand now at his side, because some stupid part of him has not accepted that this is now two problems at once. The gangplank shifts under his first step.

The guard reaches the hatch first and jerks it open. What follows is quick and ugly.

The compressed sound of a struggle already in motion. Breath forced out of someone. Something metallic striking wood. Luke’s voice finally coming clear in a bright, vicious curse. Mephisto appears almost at once out of the doorway, one of the satchels hooked in one hand like it weighs nothing.

The guard reaches for him. Wrong choice.

Mephisto steps inside the reach instead of away from it. The satchel comes up hard into the man’s forearm, ruining the grip before it lands. His other hand catches the front of the guard’s coat; his foot hooks behind an ankle.

Small. Precise. Mean.

The guard is too big to move cleanly, so Mephisto lets his weight do the stupid part. A twist, a shove, the wet deck taking away the rest. The man clips the hatch frame, grabs for the rail, misses, and goes over sideways into the black. Mephisto does not even look down. He turns the other way and runs for the side rail. He plants one hand on it, swings a leg over, and drops from the deck onto the dock below. The landing is ugly for half a second. One knee bending too deep. Then he is upright again, coat flaring around his knees, already running.

Then Luke barrels out of the yacht. He takes the gangplank because there is no time to be clever about it, boots hitting wet wood hard enough to make it jump under him. “Second guy,” he snaps. “Second guy.” No explanation. No wasted breath. Just that, bright-eyed and furious, one sleeve shoved halfway up and blood at the knuckles that does not look like his.

Sylus is still near the foot of the gangplank, gun low in one hand, phone hanging uselessly in the other. For half a second, he sees the scene in pieces. The guard gone over the side. Mephisto already on the dock with one satchel. Another man coming after him from the yacht’s forward side, low and fast, not running for the gate yet. Running for the bag.

Luke hits the dock and turns after him so hard his shoulder nearly clips Sylus on the way past.

“Mephisto!” Luke barks, already moving.

Mephisto does not look back. The second man is between them now, cutting after him through the wet light, one hand tucked close to his coat like he might still have something useful there.

Sylus brings the phone back to his ear. “I’ll have to call you back.”

On the other end, Zayne’s voice comes sharp through the static, no longer sleepy at all. “What’s happening there?”

Sylus watches Luke gain half a step on the man ahead of him, huffing into the phone. “Nothing useful.”

Kieran comes out last. Not panicked. Just fast enough to tell the truth about the situation. He has the remaining paperwork tucked under one arm and his gun drawn low at his side. His eyes take in the dock, the water, Luke, Mephisto, the second man, Sylus.

Then the phone. He does not ask. He crosses the last few feet, plucks the cell phone out of Sylus’s hand.

“Kieran—"

Kieran does not slow down. He hurls the phone over the railing into the black. No hesitation. No flourish. Just a clean, practical motion.

A live line. A recent call. A number that does not belong anywhere near this. Somewhere below, a faint splash. Kieran is already moving before Sylus can decide whether to be annoyed.

“Use a payphone,” he says over his shoulder.

Sylus stops dead for half a step, staring at the place where his phone has just ceased to exist.

Then, despite everything—despite the gun in his hand and Luke somewhere ahead and Mephisto running with the satchel and Kieran cutting the far angle and the courier’s second man loose in the dark—he nearly laughs.

Of course. Of course that is what Kieran decides.

Sylus looks once at the black water where the phone is already gone, then starts forward. This time he’s running.

The dock stretches ahead in damp, broken light. Mephisto is a dark shape already pulling away with the satchel. The second man follows him hard, closing the distance by inches.

Luke’s voice carries once in the mist, sharp and delighted in that way it only gets when something has gone catastrophically wrong.

Chapter Text

On the third floor above Philo's Flower Shop, the windows are cracked to let in what passes for fresh city air in late-June humidity.

The scanner bleeds into the room with its old metallic squawk, slicing through the whorl of midnight television static.

Xavier rolls his shoulder to stretch the tension, but he is already tuned to the pace of the broadcast. Murmured dispatch codes. Then the flat voice of a woman at the mic.

He misses the first call. He catches the part after—the confirmation.

"Male. Twenties. Possible gunshot wound. Pulled from the pilings at Pier 26."

Xavier pivots hard from the window, a stray flicker of police blue from the street below bouncing off the walls, and sees Jeremiah in the kitchen, standing over a pile of seed catalogs beside the dead microwave.

Jeremiah half-watches him, half-watches the muted infomercial on the TV. Bad leg braced against the counter. Body language still mostly cop, even after the job stopped being his.

“Don’t do it,” Jeremiah says, voice the same even quiet that used to run over radio checks.

Xavier does not answer. He moves to the table, nudges aside a box of carnations, and picks up his keys.

The holster hangs off the back of the chair, leather collapsed in on itself. He pulls it on without looking at it.

In the reflection of the window, he catches himself looking old, but not in a way that suggests wisdom or comfort. Just the accumulation of nights like this. He picks up his jacket next and feels himself stalling for nothing.

The scanner pops again. Jeremiah does not move, but the magazine closes.

“It’s not your call,” he says.

Xavier pauses with one arm halfway into his jacket.

There it is. The old voice. Not quite an order, not anymore, but close enough to make at least the room remember what Jeremiah used to be.

“You’re not even on the force anymore,” Xavier reminds him before Jeremiah can start up again. “Technically, it’s not yours either.”

“Neither are you,” Jeremiah says with a shrug. “I got shot.”

“So did I.”

Which is not remotely true in any way, but that is not the point either.

Xavier does the zip-and-pat: wallet, pager, notebook, folding knife, gun. Not because he expects to use any of it. Expectation has never been the point. The knife is just in case he ever has to break a window or cut a seatbelt.

He feels Jeremiah’s eyes at his back, steady and unimpressed.

A pause. A shift. Then Jeremiah is near, standing at Xavier’s shoulder, just outside the window’s reflection. Close enough to be present and far enough to pretend he is not worried.

“I’ll try not to die in traffic,” Xavier says, not meaning to be funny but getting a snort from Jeremiah anyway.

“You won’t die in traffic,” Jeremiah says. “You’ll make it twelve feet from the scene and trip over your own ego.”

Xavier gives him a look.

“If it’s a floater, they’ll have bagged it already,” Jeremiah adds, unmoved. “Don’t breathe through your mouth. You know the rest.”

Xavier nods. He does not say he’ll be back, because not saying it is what makes it true.

Down the stairs, the old wood goes soft underfoot. The familiar chemical haze of cold flower buckets and whatever green stuff Jeremiah brews in the mop sink rises around him.

The blue trucks of late-night delivery idle on the curb, and beyond them, the city slackens its grip just enough to feel almost empty.

Pier 26 comes up in a wash of sodium light and the sharp smell of diesel.

Half-lit fishermen in greasy windbreakers hang off the pylons, calling bullshit to the night and squinting through the activity by the barricade tape. Blue stripes flash, pooling on concrete like the city is not even trying to make sense of its own disasters. The water knocks flat against the pilings. Somewhere beyond the tape, a Coast Guard launch idles, its running lights catching the scum line on the hull.

Xavier parks near the curb and walks up without moving fast. There is not much point once he sees the uniformed kid they have at the barricade.

Barely out of the academy, the kid stands at the sawhorse and blinks at Xavier’s approach. The kind of new that has not yet learned how to look tired.

No strain in his voice. Just the regulation line.

“Area’s closed.”

Xavier sticks his hands in his jacket and scans past the perimeter.

Two techs hunch over a clipboard near the waterline. A black transport bag lies open beside a tarp, the gurney waiting a few feet back, wheels locked, chrome catching the wash of cruiser lights.

“You’re closing off both sides now?”

“Sir, you want to step back five—” The kid hesitates, clocks the lack of civilian in Xavier’s posture, then decides against being flexible. “It’s a crime scene.”

“Everything is,” Xavier says. Not loud, but enough.

The uniformed kid bristles. “You retired or something?”

“Something,” Xavier says. “Who’s got primary?”

“...Detective Cain. Not on scene yet. No more questions.”

Xavier looks past him anyway, hunting for movement at the tape. The wind tangles the yellow plastic. Nothing interesting except where the techs stand and the gurney waits. Which way the camera flash points. He memorizes it like he is still getting paid to, even when the only thing waiting for him is the echo of his own habit.

A car screeches to a halt up the block, punctuated by a door slamming hard enough to echo off the pier’s concrete. Detective Monroe Cain steps out, dark jacket unwrinkled despite the hour, her tight-knotted brown hair immune to the salt-heavy air. She crosses to him with military precision, maintaining exactly five feet of distance—close enough for conversation, far enough to deny association. The notebook is already in her hand, spine cracked to a page she has not written on yet.

Her eyes narrow. “What part of quit keeps escaping you?”

Something shifts in him. Old and unused. A muscle memory of better times.

“Just thought I’d save you the trouble of calling me later.”

She does not answer, but the left corner of her mouth twitches upward for exactly half a second before her jaw resets.

“If I smell gin on your breath, I’m having Diaz over there drive you home in the back of his cruiser,” she says, nodding toward the rookie.

“Only if you’re buying dinner first, Mo.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“You used to like it.”

“You used to have a spare key,” she says. “Things change.”

That lands where she means it to. Quietly. Under the ribs.

Her eyes flick past his shoulder, scanning the shadows behind him. The wind catches a loose strand of her bangs, pulling it free from the knot, but she does not move to fix it.

“You beat me here by what—seven minutes?”

“Thought I’d...” He taps his fingers against his thigh twice. His gaze drops to his hand, just for a second. “Save you some paperwork.”

Monroe looks at the motion. “You still do that when you’re deciding how much to lie.”

His mouth goes flat.

Her shoulders square, jaw tightening. “We don’t share cases anymore, Xavier.”

Each syllable of his name clicks like typewriter keys.

They used to share other things. Now there is five feet of concrete between them and a body under a tarp.

“It clouds judgment,” she adds.

“Yours or mine?”

“Both.” She glances toward the water. Toward the Coast Guard and the techs and the waiting body.

Xavier catalogs the space between her eyebrows, the tension in her right hand.

“Last I checked, this pier belongs to the city.”

Monroe’s eyes narrow to slits. “The pier might belong to the city, but this crime scene belongs to me. If Delaney catches wind that you were anywhere near it, I’m going to personally drag you back to that flower shop by your ear.”

She lowers her voice, leaning in just enough that the rookie will not hear.

“Don’t touch anything. Don’t talk to anyone. And for God’s sake, don’t start playing detective with witnesses until techs finish processing everything.”

Xavier shifts his weight, feeling the old familiar dance of their arguments settling into his bones.

“You’re already here, aren’t you?” Monroe sighs, ducking under the yellow tape. She does not look back, but her shoulders stay rigid.

Xavier follows her. The unspoken permission settles between them like an old debt.

They move past the barrier together, not quite in step but close enough to notice the difference. Wet concrete amplifies their footfalls, his slightly heavier than hers.

Monroe turns her head toward him as they walk. “Not every drowned person is part of your pattern.”

“You don’t know that.”

He steps around the slick puddles gathering at the edge of the concrete. The air smells like brine and something metallic—blood, maybe, or just the residue of industry that never quite leaves the docks.

Monroe sets her eyes forward. “I don’t know it’s not, either. But I do know you see connections where they don’t always exist.”

“Pattern recognition isn’t a crime.”

“Neither is drowning, until proven otherwise.”

They approach the huddle of forensic techs, their plastic-covered equipment catching the strobe lights.

“How long was he in the water?” Xavier asks.

“Estimate is less than twenty-four hours,” Monroe says. “But the current here makes things tricky.”

Xavier nods, feeling the familiar weight of these scenes settle over him. The questions that will need asking. The photos that will need taking. The notification that will need delivering to some family still hoping for a different ending.

“Any ID?” he asks.

“Yes. Wallet was still on him. Daniel Mercer.”

Xavier’s step falters.

Wallet still on him.

That is not right. Usually, in this case, the body would be stripped clean.

“Dumping somebody with their wallet is a stupid move,” he says.

Monroe glances at him. “Maybe nobody told him that.”

“Or maybe whoever put him in the water didn’t have time to think about it.” Xavier keeps his eyes on the tarp as they approach. “The others were careful. This is rushed.”

“You don’t know if it’s connected to your others.”

Xavier turns to face her.

The strobe lights catch the edge of her jaw, the tight set of her mouth. She is already doing the math—he can see it behind her eyes, the way she weighs his obsession against the evidence in front of them.

“Show me the body,” he says.

She holds his gaze, then turns without another word.

The techs step back as she approaches the tarp. One of them lowers the camera.

The body lies half-covered, the black bag open beneath him, water still gathering in the folds. The man underneath is somewhere in his twenties. Leaner than the coat he is wearing. Dark fabric, not cheap, but not custom either. Off the rack. The kind of thing that looks fine in low light. His face has already started to soften, the water doing its work, but the jaw is narrow. Clean-shaven. The kind of face that can belong to anyone.

“Any signs of struggle?” Xavier asks before Monroe can open her mouth.

She snaps her head toward him with a look.

One of the techs glances between them, lowering her camera before answering.

“Bruising on the knuckles. Fresh. Defensive, offensive, hard to tell. ME has to get him open first. Gunshot wound in the leg, clean shot. Probably not what killed him.” She points with one gloved finger to the marks around his neck. “He was strangled.”

“So he fought back,” Monroe says.

“Or threw the first punch.” The tech shrugs. “Either way, he didn’t go in willing.”

Xavier studies the hands. A ring sits on the right index finger—cheap gold, slightly loose. The kind of thing a man wears when he wants to look like he belongs somewhere he does not.

The left pocket of the coat sits wrong, something inside.

“Left pocket,” Xavier says.

Monroe glances at him as she kneels by the body, but does not protest when a tech hands her a pair of gloves. She snaps them on and eases the pocket open.

Something nearly white and softened by water is still intact inside. She pulls it out with two fingers and carefully pulls at it until the text becomes visible. Cheap print. Waterlogged, but legible. An advertisement torn from something—magazine, free weekly, back page. It looks like it's been crumpled a dozen times into a ball.

Confidential Connections
Private. Discreet. Real Voices.
Late-night conversation. No names required.

A 1-900 number sits beneath it.

Monroe holds it up to the light, letting water drip from the edge. “What the hell is this?”

“Late-night companionship?” Xavier offers. “You know...Phone sex?”

Monroe blinks, her mouth twisting slightly, as if she cannot even imagine the thought behind the entire process.

She drops it into the evidence bag. “A phone sex ad in the pocket of a dead man at Pier 26.”

Xavier looks back at the body.

The coat that does not fit. The fake ring. Bruised knuckles. The ad Monroe is handing over to the tech. She is quiet as she pulls off her gloves, then jots something down in her notebook before standing.

The ad was crumpled. Not folded. The way paper gets when someone grabs it in a fist and does not let go. The creases are deep and uneven, like someone squeezed it hard, then shoved it into a pocket without smoothing it out. When a person tears something out of a magazine to keep it, they fold it into something that fits in a wallet or back pocket. They do not crumple it. Not unless they are planning to throw it away.

“He would have folded it,” Xavier says. "Planted on him by someone else, maybe."

“Xavier.” Monroe’s voice cuts through in warning. But she pulls the bag back from the tech anyway, bringing it closer to her face and tilting it under the light again.

Her eyes narrow. “Something’s written on it.”

Xavier takes one step closer and leans in, trying to make out the faint, bleeding marks left behind.

N. 1:30. Thurs.

The ink has started to bleed at the edges, but the words are still there. Small. Written near the corner. Not part of the ad.

Monroe squints at the bag, turning it once before raising an eyebrow. “What does crumpled have to do with whether it was planted on the guy?”

Xavier looks at her. “Do you crumple coupons you’re planning to use later and shove them in your pocket?”

That seems to annoy her more than if he had argued.

“No,” she hisses, stepping sideways and lowering the bag from his gaze. “And I don’t have to listen to you make it into something.”

He looks back at the body. “I’m not making it into anything. I’m saying it could be trash.”

The tech beside them shifts slightly, waiting for Monroe to either hand it over or keep examining it.

Monroe notices and passes it back.

“Tag it,” she says.

The tech seals the ad inside before Xavier can get another look. Plastic folds over paper. Tape across the top. Initials. Time. Item number. Gone and official as quickly as it takes Monroe to pull her gloves off. “You saw the guy. You saw the pocket. Are you done here?”

Xavier glances once more at the body.

Twenties. Wallet still on him. Ring loose on the wrong hand. Bruised knuckles. Coat sitting wrong on his shoulders. Not stripped clean. Not neat enough for the others. Not messy enough to ignore. At the same time, it was probably nothing.

“I’m done,” he says, already turning.

Monroe does not look like she believes him. “Good.”

He steps back from the body and glances out to the bay.

The tech moves in again, camera raised, and the scene closes around the body without him. People return to their jobs. Notes. Photos. Bags. Measurements. The work of making a dead man legible.

Xavier keeps his hands in his pockets.

Monroe walks him back toward the tape without ceremony. No invitation now. Just a detective escorting a private citizen out of the way before he becomes a problem. At the edge of the perimeter, she lifts the tape.

“Go home,” she says.

He ducks under. “You always this warm with consultants?”

“You’re not a consultant.”

“Witness? Concerned citizen?”

“Nope.”

That gets half a smile out of him, and none out of her.

Her gaze flicks to his coat pockets. “And don’t make me search you.”

“I didn’t take anything.”

“I know.” Her voice softens by a fraction, which somehow makes it worse. “I’m saying don’t make me regret knowing that.” She lets the tape drop between them. “Get out of here. I already have enough to explain to Delaney.”

The dock noise comes back differently on this side. Radios. Water. A gull somewhere too awake for the hour.

Xavier walks toward his car without looking back, because looking back would be stupid and Monroe would absolutely notice.

He makes it to the driver’s seat before he reaches for the notebook.

The door shuts with a damp, heavy sound, cutting the scene in half. He sits for one second with both hands on the wheel. Then he grabs the Moleskine from the passenger seat and flips to a blank stretch near the back. The pen is in his inside pocket. Same place as always.

Opening to the next blank page, he writes quickly.

He pauses.

Then adds:

Not proof. Just wrong. Below it, he writes what he remembers of the print.

His grip tightens on the pen. The last part comes slower.

He stares at it.

N could be anything. A name. An initial. A direction. Nothing.

One-thirty could be a call. Thursday could be a meeting. Or it could be exactly what it looked like: some dead man’s private trash in his own pocket. The ad is evidence now either way. Bagged. Sealed. Numbered. Gone behind Monroe’s case file and whatever mood Delaney wakes up in tomorrow.

If Xavier wants the number, the wording, the paper it came from, he needs his own copy.

Memory is useful until it starts helping itself.

He closes the notebook before he can make the clue more interesting than it is.

Outside, Monroe is still inside the tape, talking to one of the techs. She does not look over.

He starts the car. The engine catches rough, then settles. In the rearview mirror, the dock lights break across the wet glass in red and blue pieces. Xavier pulls away from the marina while pressing a cigarette between his lips. He lights it one-handed at the first stop sign, rolls the window down, and checks the time on the dashboard.

1:50 a.m.

Harvey had been the first body they pulled.

Luis the second.

A few blocks away, he pulls up outside a corner store desperate enough to stay open past midnight. The door slams hard behind him as he steps onto the sidewalk, slipping past a drunk on his way out. The man catches the door roughly on his shoulder, mutters something at the glass, and keeps walking.

Inside, the clerk is watching a small television behind the counter.

A news reporter stands in the street Xavier left minutes ago.

“—the newest body recovered from the water tonight has not yet been identified. Police have not confirmed whether this case is connected to the ongoing investigation into several missing young men—”

Ongoing his ass.

Xavier steps closer to the counter. Not close enough to look interested. The clerk glances at him once, then back at the TV.

“Crazy stuff.”

“Yeah,” Xavier says.

Three flyers are pinned to the corkboard beside the register. One is half-covered by a lottery notice. One has curled at the bottom from old tape. The newest sits near the edge, still clean enough that the photograph looks less like a missing person and more like someone who might walk in asking for cigarettes.

Xavier looks at them for too long.

Three still missing.

Eddie. Patrick. Graham.

Three names he has written down in his notebook already, circled back and forth until the ink started to dent the paper.

He reaches for the nearest pack of gum and drops it on the counter with two quarters.

The clerk says nothing.

Xavier turns toward the magazine rack.

Local listings. Apartment rentals. Personal ads. Cheap print on cheaper newsprint, the kind that leaves ink on your fingers if you hold it too long.

Behind him, the reporter keeps talking.

“—police are asking anyone with information to contact—”

Xavier pulls one paper loose from the middle of the stack. The pages are damp at the edges. Someone has already folded through the classifieds, leaving a crease through the adult section. He flips past massage ads, psychic lines, escort listings written in code so thin it barely counts as code.

Then he sees it.

Small box. Bold border. Cheap heart graphic in the corner.

CONFIDENTIAL CONNECTIONS.

Xavier holds the paper open with both hands, the damp edge sagging over his thumb.

The clerk says, “You buying that?”

Xavier looks up.

The television behind the counter has moved on to weather. Rain by morning. Humidity holding. No relief worth mentioning.

“Yeah,” Xavier says.

He folds the paper once, careful this time, and sets it on the counter beside the gum.

The clerk rings him up without looking away from the TV. The register drawer pops open with a thin metallic chime.

Xavier takes the change, the gum, the paper, and leaves before the door can finish swinging shut behind him.

Outside, the city has gone slick under the streetlights.

Not rain yet. Just the kind of wetness that comes up from the pavement after midnight, oil and heat and river air collecting in the cracks.

He gets back into the car and sits for a second.

The paper rests on the passenger seat.

Not evidence. Not his, anyway. 

Still, he reaches over and touches the folded edge once, like it might move if left alone.

The drive back feels shorter than it should. Streets open and close around him. Red lights blink over empty intersections. A cab idles too long outside a diner. Two men argue beside a payphone with no real conviction behind it.

By the time he reaches Philos, the delivery trucks are gone.

The flower shop sits dark below the apartment, front windows crowded with buckets and stems and the dull reflective ghosts of things meant to look alive in the morning.

The sign in the window is turned to CLOSED, though Jeremiah never trusts signs and still locks the door twice.

Xavier lets himself in through the side entrance. The stairwell smells like cold water, cut stems, and the mineral grit of old concrete. Somewhere downstairs, the refrigeration unit kicks on with a shudder.

He goes up to the second floor first. The landing used to belong to Kline Copy & Tax, back when Jeremiah’s aunt still handled the leases and the second floor was useful to people with regular hours, framed certificates, and a reason to keep toner in stock.

The building has been in Jeremiah’s family long enough that every wall seems to have an opinion. Flower shop downstairs. Apartment above. This narrow middle floor between them, inherited along with the plumbing problems, the old tenant paint, and the electric bill Jeremiah claims is technically everyone’s problem whenever Xavier leaves a light on.

The old lettering is still there on the frosted glass by the hall door, peeled away in places so it reads more like a warning than a business.

KLI E COPY & TA

Inside, the hall is narrow and poorly lit. A door on the left leads to a bathroom no one uses unless the one upstairs is occupied or something has gone wrong with the plumbing. Jeremiah has filled half of it with shop overflow. Stacks of plastic pots. Clay saucers. Wire baskets. A bucket of floral foam that makes the whole room smell faintly green and chemical when the air gets warm.

The office is on the right.

Xavier shoulders the door open.

The room is small but not cramped if no one expects dignity from it. A desk sits under the windows, facing the street. Two tall panes of glass look out over the awning below, the neon from the all-night laundromat across the way cutting weak blue stripes across the floor. File boxes line one wall. A metal cabinet sits beside them with one drawer that sticks unless kicked exactly right.

Jeremiah’s old couch slumps under the far window, brown and soft in a way that suggests surrender more than comfort. They had lugged it down from the third floor when Xavier moved in, and it has stayed there ever since, collecting loose change, old newspapers, and the occasional hour of sleep no one admits to taking.

Xavier drops the weekly on the desk and turns on the lamp. The bulb flickers once before catching, throwing a dull yellow circle over the blotter, the phone, the computer keyboard, the scattered mess of pens that all work until he needs one.

He takes off his jacket and throws it over the back of the couch.

The desk chair gives under him with a tired hydraulic sigh. He reaches for the ashtray on the desk, a heavy glass thing with two old burns along the rim, and rolls himself backward toward the window. The wheels complain over the floorboards.

The window sticks halfway up. He has to shove his palm against the frame twice before it gives, rising with a wooden groan.

Humid air presses in from outside. Wet pavement, exhaust, river rot under everything, the green breath of flowers cooling downstairs.

The city has gone quiet in pieces, not all at once. One car idles at the light with its brake lamps bleeding red across the slick street. A man crosses against the signal with his head down, collar turned up like that might make him harder to remember. The laundromat sign buzzes blue-white over the awning, blinking once every few seconds as if it keeps forgetting its own job.

Xavier sets the ashtray on the sill. Then he lights up. The first drag settles him more than it should. Smoke fills his mouth, his lungs, the narrow space between the desk and the window before the damp air pulls it loose.

He exhales outside. For a minute, he does nothing. Just sits half-turned in the chair with one foot braced against the floor, the cigarette between two fingers, the city moving badly below him.

The weekly sits on the desk where he left it.

The corner has slipped open, cheap pages curling from the humidity. The ad shows through at an angle, only half-visible under the lamp.

Cheap heart.

Bold border.

He rolls forward enough to drag the paper closer.

Same wording.

Same number.

Private. Discreet. Real voices.

He taps ash into the tray and studies the bottom of the box.

There is a web address in small print, tucked beneath the number like an afterthought.

Everyone has one now, or says they do. Lawyers. Bands. Mail-order knife catalogs. Guys who sell baseball cards out of their garage. A string of letters at the bottom of an ad, like it proves the thing on the other side is real enough to trust.

He takes another drag.

The ad had been easy to find. Too easy, maybe. Public enough to sit in a stack by the register. Private enough to promise no names. The kind of thing designed to be seen and forgotten in the same breath.

Xavier rolls back to the desk.

The computer sits beside the lamp, beige and ugly, with a monitor deep enough to kill a man if dropped from the stairs. It had come with the old copy-and-tax office, technically. Jeremiah kept it because throwing out things that still worked offended him.

Xavier presses the power button.

The tower clicks.

He waits, smoking beside the open window while the machine drags itself into consciousness.

The AOL icon sits on the desktop when the screen finally settles.

Xavier double-clicks it.

The sign-on window opens slowly, blue and white and too cheerful for the hour.

He checks the phone cord before trying anything. The modem line runs from the back of the tower to the same wall jack the shop uses during the day, which means if anyone calls Philos now, they’ll get a busy signal until he disconnects.

It's after two in the morning. Too early to disrupt anything except a rare emergency phone call.

He clicks Sign On.

For a few seconds, the room stays quiet except for the hard drive ticking to itself.

Then the modem starts. First a dial tone. Then the numbers pulse out. Then the machine begins its metallic shrieking, a jagged sequence of squeals and static, like something alive has gotten trapped in the phone line and is trying to argue its way loose.

The first attempt fails.

He stares at the screen that tells him to please try again, like that was his idea.

“Yeah,” he mutters. “Thanks.”

Smoke curls between him and the monitor as he clicks again.

The modem screams a second time. Longer now. Angrier. It whistles, clicks, stutters, and finally catches.

The welcome screen loads in pieces. A soft electronic voice announces through the speakers, “Welcome.”

The browser takes another minute to open.

Xavier smooths the weekly beside the keyboard and types the web address from the bottom of the ad. Carefully. Twice checked. One finger hovering over the return key a second longer than necessary.

For a while, nothing happens. Then the page begins to load. Black background first. A thin gray border after that.

Then a header appears in blocky white letters, one line at a time, as if the computer has to think about every word before committing to it.

Beneath it, a small graphic begins assembling itself from the top down.

Pink pixels. A telephone receiver. A heart behind it, or maybe a mouth. Hard to tell until the last stripe fills in.

Xavier takes another drag and watches the page finish.

The site is ugly in the way most of these things are ugly. Not careless, exactly. Just made by someone who thinks decoration means borders, blinking text, and too many little stars.

A bright line flashes near the center.

Then the number again.

Xavier writes that down too.

The rest of the page loads in sections.

A menu bar stretches across the top in square brackets.

The links sit there flat and bright, pretending to be choices.

He clicks RATES first.

The page changes slowly enough that he has time to ash his cigarette.

Another black screen. Another gray border. More white text.

Xavier stills.

Operators use aliases.

He looks back at his notebook.

He taps ash into the tray.

Then he clicks back and tries SCHEDULE.

The page takes longer this time. An image fails to load near the top, leaving a broken little icon in an empty box.

Under it, text appears in plain rows.

Xavier reads it twice.

The cigarette burns low between his fingers.

He should feel less interested now. The website is real. The ad is real. The service is real. People call numbers like this every night and leave stranger things in their pockets than a torn classified.

He clicks VOICES.

The page loads halfway, stalls, then gives him a column of names without faces.

Xavier sits forward.

The office hums around him. Computer fan. Streetlight buzz. The wet hiss of a car passing outside. From downstairs, the refrigeration unit kicks on again, hard enough to rattle the floor.

He looks at the weekly. Then the notebook. Then the screen.

N.

One-thirty.

Thursday.

Not proof. Barely a thought.

Still, Xavier writes the name down.

Chapter Text

The line does not go dead all at once.

For half a second there is only static, thin and wet-sounding, followed by the distant shape of movement Zayne cannot place. Not a voice. Not words. Something blunt enough to make his hand tighten around the receiver before he knows he has moved.

No click. No goodbye. Just the empty line, dial tone ringing in his ear.

He stays there a moment with the receiver pressed to the side of his face, shoulder still against the wall where he had been leaning. The apartment around him is dark and quiet, every sound suddenly too distinct. The low hum from the refrigerator. The faint tick in the pipes. His own breathing.

Zayne lowers the receiver slowly and sets it back into the cradle, his hand lingering.

That should be enough. The call ended. Calls end. Lines drop. People hang up. There are several ordinary explanations for a phone going dead at this hour.

Zayne looks at the phone for another moment, then he picks it up again and tries to return the call before he can decide not to, but waits one second before bringing the receiver fully against his ear.

Three sharp beeps answer at once.

“The number you’re trying to reach is unavailable.”

He waits. The recording does not repeat. No operator comes on the line. No connection resolves itself into the voice he recognizes.

Unavailable.

He hangs up with a little more force than needed. The beige plastic stays exactly what it is.

He turns away.

The bedroom is darker than the rest of the apartment. Streetlight cuts through the blinds in narrow pale lines. One pillow pushed toward the wall on the bed. The blanket folded back. Evidence of a person who had been asleep.

Zayne sits on the edge of the mattress. For a while, he only looks at the wall opposite him, hands resting loosely between his knees. His breathing has evened out. His pulse has not.

The facts are simple. Sylus called. Something happened. The line disconnected. The number unreachable. There are no facts after that.

A noise on the other line, something sharp and muffled - a gunshot? Maybe. Unfortunately. Though, Zayne knows that might only be his mind trying to give shape to something he had yet to understand. Trying to turn that half-second before the line went empty into sense.

”I wanted to see if you would answer.”

A silly excuse coming from a grown man, Zayne thinks. Especially one he had met the same night.

Maybe he shouldn't have bothered to give Sylus his phone number in the first place. Left himself a mystery, kept himself as Noah. Let the fantasy of Skye remain as it was: a voice on the other end, one of the few that made his breath catch and goosebumps rise across his skin.

A client calling after hours was inappropriate, sure. A man calling from somewhere loud and strange and dangerous was worse.

As Zayne moves to lie back down, he makes himself list the several ordinary explanations.

The phone could have lost service. The battery could have died. Sylus could have dropped it and it broke, or someone near him could have knocked into him. The sound could have been anything: a door slamming, something hard hitting metal, a car backfiring too close to the receiver.

A gunshot is not the most reasonable conclusion, though it is the one is body believes the most.

The following evening, Zayne logs in for a shift with the television low behind him. Local news has given way to a weather segment he is not watching, overnight humidity, coastal fog, possible storms. Early summer in a nutshell.

He checks his messages.

Nothing.

He does not let it raise his hackles. He does not let himself sit there replaying the call in his head until the static turns into something useful. Or until the sharp muffled sound becomes a gunshot or not a gunshot or some third, other explanation. He only logs in the way he always does, logbook open beside the console, pen lined neatly against the page.

Normal shift. Normal routine. Normal night.

He tells himself he is not waiting for someone specific to call Confidential Connections. He is not waiting for the phone near the kitchen to ring either, the one hanging on the wall with its beige receiver and coiled cord.

The worst part is that the call is not what his mind returns to first. It should be the static, the muffled sound, the abrupt absence where Sylus’s voice had been. Those are the useful pieces, the pieces that might become information if he turns them over long enough.

Instead, he keeps thinking about the kiss.

Not the whole night. Not even the club exactly, though pieces of it come back: neon smeared across the bar top, the low press of music through the floor. Mostly he remembers leaning against the bar before he left, pen in hand, writing his phone number on the back of a coaster under the steady weight of crimson eyes.

That had been the mistake. Not the kiss, not technically. The kiss could still be blamed on proximity, poor judgment, what happens when a man stands too close and looks at him like there is no hurry in the world. Not that he had experienced much of that, but being queer had at least kept college interesting.

Zayne remembers the slight drag of ink over cardboard, the coaster pinned beneath two of his fingers because the bar was faintly damp and he did not want his number to smear. His handwriting came out smaller than usual.

Sylus had watched the whole thing without comment, one elbow resting near him on the bar, close enough that Zayne could feel the shape of his attention more than his body heat. Amused, maybe. Pleased. When Zayne slid the coaster toward him, Sylus did not pick it up right away. He looked at the number first, then at Zayne.

That is the part Zayne resents most. Not that Zayne gave it to him. That Sylus had taken the ridiculous little thing like it mattered, slipping it away without teasing.

The goodbye outside had been awkward after that. Brief. Almost nothing. Zayne had nodded once because he could not decide what his face should do, and Sylus had smiled at him in that small, uneven way.

Now he logs his hours, checks his messages, answers the first call of the evening in Noah’s voice, and tells himself the phone by the kitchen is only a phone. The line is only a line. A number written on the back of a coaster is not a promise just because his mind tricks him to remember it that way.

Worry has a certain dignity to it. Zayne can work with worry. But he cannot work with the rest of it.

Because every time he forces himself away from the call — from the static, the muffled sound, the abrupt empty line — his mind drifts that kiss.

He remembers it at stupid times. Between calls. While logging minutes. While listening to some man breathe too close into the receiver and ask Noah what he would do if he were there.

Zayne lowers his voice because that is what works. Because softness keeps people on the line longer.

“I’d make you slow down first,” he says, eyes fixed on the logbook in front of him. “You sound like you’ve been thinking about this all night. I’d want to hear exactly how badly.”

The caller makes a sound into the receiver. Pleased. Embarrassed. Wanting more.

Zayne gives it to him because that is the job. A pause. A hum.

Then his mind supplies Sylus’s mouth. Not helpfully or gently. Just there, sudden as a hand at the back of his neck.

Zayne shifts in his chair and hates himself for it.

Talking is one thing. Talking is structure. Voice, timing, response, redirection. A man calls. A man wants something. Zayne gives him the shape of it without giving him anything real.

Getting excited is different. Getting excited makes him imprecise. It slows his answers, pulls heat into his face. Getting flustered has never helped him work. It has never kept anyone on the line long enough to justify the loss of control.

So he does not get flustered.

Usually.

Chapter Text

Daylight bleeds weakly through the industrial windows. The city below is already awake somewhere beneath the glass, traffic murmuring far enough away to feel unreal.

Sylus surfaces slowly. Not fully awake yet. Just conscious enough to feel the heat trapped beneath the blankets, the damp tension low in his stomach, the lingering ghost of a mouth that does not exist in the room with him.

Again.

His eyes stay shut for another second.

The dream is already dissolving in pieces, slipping loose before he can pin them down properly. Zayne’s hands. The sound of his breathing close to Sylus’s ear. Or the weight of him between Sylus’s thighs, looking up at him with that same focus, like this, too, deserved concentration.

A quiet exhale leaves him as one hand disappears beneath the blanket, dragging slowly over the hard plane of his stomach. His thumb catches briefly on the metal at one nipple on the way down, a dull spark that makes his jaw tighten before his palm slips lower. Half-hard already, flushed with sleep and memory.

“Christ,” he mutters softly.

His fingers close around himself with slow pressure, head falling back against the pillow. Warm beneath his grip. The curved bar beneath the tip catches against the pad of his thumb when he strokes upward, sharp enough to make his breath hitch slightly.

Sensitive there, and somehow always worse in the morning.

Precum slicks at the slit almost immediately, gathering warm around the metal and making each pass of his hand smoother than the last. The piercing shifts with each slow stroke, sharpening sensation at the tip before pulling a dull ache through his stomach.

His body keeps trying to finish conversations his brain refuses to have in daylight.

His hand moves slowly at first, more thoughtful than desperate, thumb brushing deliberately over the piercing each time he reaches the head again just to feel the reaction it pulls from him. His breathing deepens gradually, mattress creaking faintly beneath the shift of his hips.

Zayne upstairs at the railing in that stupid windbreaker, trying so hard to look unaffected while failing.

And the dream—

Zayne between his thighs, mouth warm around him, one hand spread against Sylus’s stomach while he looked up through dark lashes like this was something to understand properly. Something worth getting right.

The image hits low and immediate.

Sylus groans softly into the pillow, hips lifting once into his own hand before he can stop it. His grip tightens, pace losing some of its lazy restraint. The piercing catches again when his thumb strokes over it, forcing another rough breath from him.

“Fuck—”

The sound leaves him quietly, half swallowed by the pillow.

He can almost feel it still. The wet heat of Zayne’s mouth in the dream, the slow drag of his tongue against the metal, careful at first before curiosity overcame restraint.

The thought alone nearly undoes him.

His hand moves faster. Not rushed. Just less controlled. His breathing turns uneven, low sounds slipping out between clenched teeth. The stimulation sharpens painfully at the tip before pulling warmth through the rest of him.

“Sweetheart,” he breathes finally, the word slipping out embarrassingly easy. His eyes finally open to the pale morning light above him. “You’re becoming a fucking problem.”

His stomach tightens first. Thighs tensing beneath the blankets. Then a sharp pulse tears through him hard enough to pull a curse from his throat as he comes into his own hand in hot spurts, hips jerking once against his grip before slowing. For several seconds afterward, he just lies there breathing, one forearm thrown across his eyes while heat cools slowly against his stomach beneath the sheets.

The loft settles around him again in pieces. The exposed brick. The steel beams overhead. Pale morning sliding across polished concrete and dark wood floors. The bed hidden partially behind frosted glass on a platform. The abandoned coffee cup near the couch.

And then his brain starts again.

The dock.

The mist hanging low over the marina. Jewelry glittering briefly in bad light. The gunshot cracking across black water.

Zayne’s voice still warm in his ear through the phone.

Viper’s name in the courier’s mouth.

That part irritates him most. Not the shooting. Not the body eventually washing up at Pier 26. Not even the possibility that someone may have seen too much. No. The irritating part is that Sylus had let one piece of the board move without seeing the hand behind it.

Sloppy.

The courier should never have made it off the dock. Not with the second satchel, not with Viper’s name still sitting in Sylus’s head like a lit match.

The recovered satchel currently sits across town inside an abandoned funeral home, locked in Hank’s ancient floor safe beneath a tarp-covered prep table while everyone waits for the city to calm down enough to separate the contents properly. Stones, watches, loose gold, paperwork. Everything destined to be divided and filtered into different safety deposit boxes across the city until no single location holds enough to matter.

Luke’s shot on the way out should have ended the problem at the dock. The bullet caught the second man in the leg—not fatal, not immediate—which only made the entire thing messier afterward. Enough pain to slow him down. Blood, but not enough. Not injured badly enough to become a corpse before someone else made that choice.

Then the body surfaced anyway.

Pulled from the pilings at Pier 26.

Sylus had seen the report on the morning news the other day while buttoning his shirt, the anchor speaking in that practiced neutral cadence local stations used for violence people were already expected to forget.

Male body recovered near Pier 26. Possible connection to criminal activity. Anyone with information encouraged to contact police. As if anyone with useful information would hear that and develop civic responsibility before breakfast.

The courier vanished after the exchange. So did the second satchel. That left too many versions of what could have happened after the shooting.

Maybe the wounded man bled out somewhere nearby. Maybe the courier panicked and decided an injured witness was too dangerous to leave behind. Maybe somebody else entirely had been watching the marina and cleaned up the loose end before disappearing back into the city.

None of those options pleased him—attention has a way of spreading outward.

Sylus exhales sharply through his nose and throws the blankets back.

In the shower, steam fills the dark tile and glass, curling around the metal fixtures while he stands beneath the spray. The water helps strip the evidence of the dream, but not the awareness.

Zayne remains lodged somewhere under his ribs anyway. The rooftop. The phone calls. That fucking windbreaker.

He drags a hand back through wet hair and shuts the water off.

By the time he steps back into the loft, the windows have brightened fully into morning. He pulls on a pair of jeans low on his hips, leaves them unbuttoned for a moment while toweling water from his hair, then crosses barefoot toward the kitchen still shirtless.

A cigarette settles between his lips while he reaches for the lighter near the island.

That’s when the heavy sliding loft door rattles open.

Mephisto’s voice carries immediately through the apartment, louder in the open space. “If you’re dead,” he calls dryly, “don’t say anything.”

Sylus flicks the lighter open without looking up. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

Mephisto doesn’t comment on Sylus’s state of dress. Mephisto has no right to criticize anyone while dressed like he wandered out of a vampire nightclub and took a wrong turn into organized crime. He slides the door shut with one hand without waiting to be invited. Then he places a paper cup of coffee into Sylus’s hand. A peace offering.

Sylus looks down at it. “Where is this from?” Where it's from doesn't matter in the way bumming a cigarette when you have one doesn't matter. But he asks it anyway for the sake of asking.

“Three blocks over.”

Sylus takes a cautious sip. Bitter. Too hot. Not terrible.

Mephisto drops into the low chair near the kitchen island, one ankle crossing over the other. “Viper is on his way.”

Sylus holds the coffee between both hands, letting the heat bite into his palms. “How are our friends at the department today?”

“Trying,” Mephisto says. “Slowing down already.” He sighs through his nose, like the clarification pains him personally. “The body is moving under the name Daniel Mercer. That’s the name on the news, anyway.”

Sylus says nothing.

“The problem,” Mephisto continues, “is that Daniel Mercer does not appear to be especially real.”

Sylus looks back at him while taking another sip from the cup, not saying anything yet. It wasn't exactly surprising.

“Bad address,” Mephisto explains. “Thin license. Social doesn’t line up cleanly. Good enough to get him into a bar, not good enough to survive records looking at it twice.”

“Official?”

“Not yet.”

“Then why are you telling me?”

“Because one of mine heard one of theirs complain about it over a cigarette.” Mephisto shrugs.

Sylus brings the coffee cup to his mouth again but does not drink.

Daniel Mercer. A name printed on plastic. A dead man with somebody else’s life in his pocket.

Mephisto watches him from the chair as he sets the cup down on the counter. “The night at the docks was messy, boss,” he explains. “Enough noise for dispatch to care. Not enough clean witness statements to build anything useful out of it. By the time this body surfaced, everyone who heard something had already decided they heard nothing.”

Sylus exhales smoke toward the ceiling. “Convenient.”

The other satchel is gone. The courier is gone. And the wounded man from the dock is now dead under a name that may not belong to him.

None of it balances.

Mephisto raises both hands slightly. “I thought you’d enjoy the consistency.”

“I don’t.”

The heavy sliding door opens again, slower this time. Less careless than Mephisto’s entrance. Followed by the soft click of it shutting behind someone. Viper steps into the loft like he is entering a room already halfway through a conversation about him. He has a motorcycle helmet tucked under one arm, scuffed near the rim. His leather jacket is open, the collar low enough to show the thin silver chain at his throat and the first dark curve of ink behind his ear. The tattoo starts there, half-hidden by the pull of his ponytail, and curls down the side of his neck like something alive. A snake.

His boots hit the floor with more weight than necessary. Leather. Smoke. The faint smell of cigarettes following him in from the hall.

Mephisto looks him over once. Viper’s gaze slides toward him before the other man has a chance to say anything. “Careful. I’ll start thinking you’re jealous.”

Mephisto smiles faintly. “Of what? Your boots? Never.”

Viper removes his sunglasses slowly. Not because the loft is bright. Because he likes being watched doing it like the prick he often is. His eyes move from Mephisto to Sylus, then briefly down to the cigarette, the bare chest, the wet hair, the jeans sitting low on Sylus’s hips.

Unlike Mephisto, Viper comments, “Am I interrupting something?”

“Yes,” Sylus says, taking another drag. “My patience.”

“Then I’ll mourn later. Can we keep this quick? It’s my sister’s birthday.”

Mephisto looks up from the chair. “You have a sister?”

“I have several things you don’t know about.” Viper’s gaze flicks toward him, pleasant and edged.

Sylus exhales smoke toward the ceiling. “Sit down.”

“I’d rather stand.”

“I wasn’t asking what you’d rather do.”

For a second, the loft goes still in the way rooms do when every person inside them knows exactly where the weapons are. Then Viper smirks, crosses to the island, and sets his helmet down. He still does not sit.

Sylus lets it pass for now.

Mephisto shifts and turns more toward the new arrival. “Daniel Mercer,” he says. “Or whoever decided that was a convincing name.”

Viper taps the heel of his palm against the helmet thoughtfully. “So I heard.”

“From whom?” Sylus asks.

“A man who owes me money and enjoys having all ten fingers.”

“Sounds reliable, then.” Sylus reaches for the coffee and takes another sip. Lets the bitterness settle on his tongue. The cup is still too hot. His hair is still damp enough that water tracks slowly down the back of his neck.

Viper is good at making stillness look like a casual thing. It’s one of the reasons Sylus keeps him close enough to be useful, but mostly far enough away to remember why.

“You’ve had time to look into this?” he asks.

Viper’s hand rests against the side of his helmet. “I started before you asked. Someone used my name at your pier. I took that personally.”

Possessive. Territorial. More insulted by the misuse of his name than by the dead man attached to it. Loyal.

Good, Sylus thinks.

Viper notices the silence and continues by stating the obvious. “Someone wanted to move goods without making it look like goods. My name got them past a couple of people who didn’t know better. If it failed, it’s my mess. So don’t look at me like that, Qin.”

Sylus presses the cigarette into the ashtray slowly, grinding it down until the last of the paper buckles and the ember dies.

“I look at everyone like this. It would be much easier if you did your job and provided useful information rather than analyze how I look, hm?”

Viper’s mouth twitches, but he lets it go. “The phrase temporary passage isn’t mine. Someone has been moving small favors through places they shouldn’t.”

Sylus looks toward the window. “Then find out who it is. Stop wasting my time.”

“I’m already doing that.”

“Do it better.”

Then Viper picks up his helmet. “My sister is waiting on a swan cake,” he says to the room, as if anyone cares. As he turns, he looks at Mephisto. “Keep me updated.”

Once the door rolls shut behind Viper, the loft feels larger. Sylus runs a hand down his face and lets out a breath that ends in a low whistle, tapping his thumb against his jaw. “Where’s Sebastian?”

“Good question,” Mephisto says. "The usual place, or asleep." 

Sylus nods mostly to himself and crosses to the desk near the windows. He pulls the chair out but does not sit yet. Instead, he leans over it and thumbs through the Rolodex, cards ticking softly. Names of men who knew better than to call, numbers, businesses that are businesses and those that are not. He finds the shop number and decides to try that first. Sebastian, or Atlas to most people, usually works out of a narrow, dark computer parts shop that smells like dust and warm plastic.

Sylus lifts the receiver on the desk phone, dials, waits for one and a half rings, and hangs up. A few seconds pass before the phone rings. He lets it ring once before pressing the SPEAKER button.

“Sebastian.”

“You’re calling early, jefe.”

“I need the evidence from Pier 26.”

A pause. Then Atlas says, “What do you think I am? Jeff Goldblum uploading a virus to the mothership?”

Sylus blinks, frowning. “Should that mean something to me?”

“Never mind. Point is, no. I can’t make police evidence appear by clicking something.” Keys clack faintly on the other end regardless. “Evidence is physical. Bags. Rooms. People.”

“Then get me a list.”

“See, now that’s a different sentence.”

Sylus holds back a sigh and places both palms flat against the desk. “Use your brain. Find it and tell me what’s out of the ordinary.”

“Thanks for asking nicely. Let me see if they logged anything.” A huff. More keys. Something metallic clunks to the floor in the background, followed by Atlas cursing in Spanish under his breath. “Wallet. ID, Daniel Mercer. Forty-two dollars. Gas receipt. Cheap lighter. One condom. Optimistically sized.” When he doesn’t get the reaction or laugh he is clearly hoping for, he continues. “Right. Moving on. Ruger P89. Serial filed down. Magazine seated. Thirteen rounds remaining.”

Sylus’s attention sharpens. “Anything else?”

“Keys. No car match yet. Water damage on most of the paper.” Atlas pauses. “And an adult services advertisement.”

Shit.

Sylus reaches for the receiver so quickly the cord snaps taut. “For what? Was there writing on it?”

“Huh?”

“The ad, stupid,” Sylus hisses. “What was it for?”

Keys again, the sound slower this time. “Uh, Confidential Connections. Phone sex line? Three handwritten notes are logged.”

Sylus already knows. But his hand still lifts, sharp and wordless, toward the sectional where his jacket from that night hangs over the back.

Mephisto sees this and is up, crossing the room to retrieve it.

Sylus goes through the pockets. Left first. Nothing. The right has a matchbook, a folded scrap of paper he does not recognize quickly enough, dropped onto the desk without care.

Atlas speaks again.

“N. Thurs. One-thirty.”

Sylus looks down at the desk.

The coaster sits near the blotter where he had left it, cheap cardboard softened. Still there. But the ad is not.

The possibilities arrive all at once, clean and ugly.

That motherfucker, whoever he was, seemed to be smarter than he let on.

The Confidential Connections ad. Cheap newsprint. Folded once, then again, put into his coat pocket because, at the time, it had been a lead. A number. A thread to pull. Not conversations at two in the morning or kisses on rooftops.

“Where was it found?” he asks.

“Pants pocket. Crumpled.”

“Planted.”

“Maybe,” Atlas says. “Does that have to do with anything, though?”

Sylus points toward the door. Mephisto understands, obedient as always without clear direction. He leaves without a word or further instruction, the door rolling shut behind him.

Only then does Sylus sit, not answering the question directly. “Look up a name for me.”

“I cannot type a name into a magic box and make information fall out.”

“Zayne Li. Lives somewhere in the city.”

Atlas exhales but does not argue. Then keys. More keys. Sylus begins to wonder how many people have that last name before Atlas narrows it down.

“The doctor?”

Sylus stills. “What?”

It is not that the words land wrong, or that they are impossible. Just unexpected in the way that makes him tilt his head and wonder how point A got to point B.

“Dr. Zayne Li,” Atlas sounds like he is reading from somewhere. “Hospital directory. Looks like OB/GYN house staff, then cross-listed with pediatrics. Neonatal intensive care. Postnatal consults. Directory may be old.” He pauses and keys in something else. “Graduated with honors and research attached to his name. Pediatric infectious disease. NICU. HIV-exposed infants.” Another pause. “Christ. Perinatal HIV transmission risk in something something. Neonatal—nope, I’m not trying to pronounce the rest of that.”

It fits almost too well, and that is the part Sylus dislikes most about it. But how a doctor who sounds accomplished on paper ends up working as a phone sex operator is beyond him.

“What’s the deal with this guy?” Atlas asks. “You think he’s involved?”

Sylus looks at the coaster again. Separate from the ad currently sitting somewhere in police evidence with his own handwriting on it. It was something easy enough for him to lose. Drop in the chaos. Forget while the night reorganized itself around gunfire and water and stolen inventory. But all it would take is one officer bored enough to look twice. One clerk willing to confirm. One phone call to the company. One person deciding a handwritten note meant something.

The danger is not the ad by itself. It is the shape it creates if someone bothers connecting the pieces. Noah confirming who called after one-thirty on Thursdays over the past several weeks.

“Hopefully,” Sylus says, mostly to himself, “they’re not smart enough to care.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Shut up.” Sylus’s eyes remain on the coaster. “Get me the full evidence intake list. And every name attached to the investigation.”

“That might take—”

“As soon as possible. And don’t pull Li again unless I tell you.”

Sylus does not wait for a response before hanging up. He does not need to. Atlas knows better than to snoop where he has been told not to. If only the same could be said about the others he kept close. 

Sylus reaches for his cigarettes and finds they are not in his pocket. He pulls out the lighter instead, tosses it onto the desk, and leans both elbows against the edge of it. His thumbs press into the inner corners of his eyes, hard enough to make color bloom briefly behind his lids.

It's too early for this.

He takes a deep breath and looks up. Fingers steepled now, thumbs tapping together once. Twice.

Then he reaches for the receiver again, pulls the coaster in front of him, and dials.

Chapter Text

Now that he stands in front of the building where Sylus lives, he isn't sure if there is any way to make sense of this particular line.

Zayne stands on the sidewalk with his hands in his pockets and tries to remember, again, how this becomes his day.

The call came that morning when he is getting ready to leave for the grocery store. Keys, wallet, door locked, then checked again. Polo tucked properly into washed jeans. Sunglasses slipped on, then removed, then put back on because the sun outside has already turned the pavement white-hot and hostile.

He has been trying, in a not entirely successful way, to stop worrying about Sylus. To accept the last several days for what they are: strange timing, poor judgment, an overactive imagination. Lack of interest.

Sylus did not sound like a man who had disappeared for several days. That is the first problem. His voice came through low and even, familiar in a way Zayne has not given it permission to become. No apology. No explanation. No obvious sign of injury, panic, or guilt.

"Miss me?"

"Are you all right?" The question was too fast. "I called the club—"

"Oh," and Zayne could hear the smile before it reached the rest of the sentence. "You were looking for me?"

There are several appropriate answers. No is the cleanest. Not exactly is probably the most accurate. I thought you might be dead has the advantage of being true, but unfortunately sounded insane when spoken aloud to someone who clearly is not.

"I was trying to determine whether something had happened to you." he said.

"That sounds like looking."

"It sounds like concern."

"Mm." A pause. Not empty. Never empty with him. "That too."

Zayne gripped the receiver a little tighter, aware of the grocery list sitting on the counter beside him. Bananas. Coffee. Bread.

"What do you want, Sylus?"

A faint shift on the other end. Fabric, maybe. The scrape of a lighter. The quiet inhale before smoke. "Come over and I'll tell you."

Zayne stares at the wall.

"No."

A laugh. Not surprised. Not offended. More like that is the first expected answer in a longer process. "No?"

"No." Repetition seems important. "You disappear for several days, answer none of the obvious questions, call me while I’m leaving for the grocery store, and now you want me to come to your apartment?"

"Loft."

Zayne looked toward the ceiling. "I’m hanging up."

"Zayne."

That stops him. If anything, Sylus said his name more quietly than the rest, like he has set something down between them and is waiting to see if Zayne will pick it up. And Zayne hates that it works.

"What?"

A pause.

"I need to talk to you."

That is different. Not much. Barely enough to count. But it changes the shape of the call anyway, pulling the irritation into something less stable.

"About what?"

"Not on the phone."

So Zayne ends up standing in front of a brick building off 16th Avenue in the Garden District, trying to decide whether this counts as curiosity or stupidity, or both.

He presses the buzzer, and for a second, nothing happens. Just the faint sound of traffic rolling past at the end of the block, his own reflection in the small metal plate around the buttons.

Then the speaker crackles. There's no voice, just static. The mechanical click of the lock from inside.

Zayne stares at the door, the permission given. He reaches out before it can lock again and pulls it open, stepping into a narrow front hall that smells faintly of floor polish and trapped warmth.

The shade inside is immediate enough that he pushes the sunglasses up into his hair. The frames catch there awkwardly, tugging at a few pieces that have already started to come loose.

Twelve steps to the first landing. Another eleven after that. Sylus is somewhere above him, waiting. Maybe injured. Possibly about to give him an answer that will make everything make sense, or not.

He continues to climb anyway.

Before he can knock on the door—which is less a door than a metal sliding slab bolted into brick—it moves.

A low metallic scrape, then it shifts open.

Sylus leans one arm against the frame, glasses held between his thumb and forefinger, his other hand resting at his hip where the dark Henley has ridden up just enough to expose an inch of skin above the waistband of his jeans. One knee is torn open, denim frayed white around the rip.

Zayne looks at him. Not dead, then. Good. Maybe not good.

Sylus does not look like a man recovering from anything. He looks awake enough. Barefoot. Intact. Hair slightly mussed and suggesting he may have slept badly before this.

"You came."

"You asked."

Zayne waits for more, because that's how conversations are supposed to work. Someone says something useless, then says something else—usually the part that matters.

Sylus only looks at him. His mouth curves slightly.

Zayne's fingers tighten once at his side. "Are you injured?"

"No."

"In trouble?"

"Depends."

"On what?"

"Whether you come inside."

Zayne stares at him. Then at the exposed track above the door. Then back at Sylus, who has still not moved out of his way.

The clean thing would be to leave. Go back down three flights of stairs, get in his car, and continue to pretend that the grocery list has been the entire point of his day.

Instead, he steps forward. Sylus shifts enough to let him pass, but not too much. Enough that Zayne still has to move near him and catch the faint smell of smoke and soap.

The loft is too big in the way a space opens all at once. Wood floors, high beams, brick. The kind of place that looks like a warehouse was taught to be expensive. Open kitchen, dark counters, metal edges. Low couches. A bed set apart on a raised platform near the back, half hidden by frosted glass and dark wooden frames.

Music plays low from somewhere near the shelves, soft enough that Zayne almost misses it beneath the size of the room. He knows he has heard it recently, probably on the radio, but he cannot place the name. A voice almost swallowed by bass.

There is another low scrape of metal on track as Sylus slides the door shut behind him, making Zayne feel more aware he is in the room. He does not know what to do with his hands. He never knows, really.

"Do you want something to drink?"

Zayne looks at him too quickly to see the man move toward the kitchen, setting his glasses on the island. Not armed. Not injured. Not a man who is about to confess to anything, either.

"No," Zayne says.

Sylus pauses near the refrigerator. "No? Water, coffee. Something stronger, if you're feeling reckless."

Somehow Zayne thinks standing in the loft is already reckless. He hates that Sylus has given his hands a reason to stop moving, even if that reason is only standing there being difficult.

"No, thank you."

Sylus shakes his head slightly and reaches for the cigarettes on the counter, pulling one loose. He brings it to his mouth while holding the pack toward Zayne, almost expectantly.

Zayne shakes his head.

Sylus shrugs. Barely even a fraction of movement through one shoulder before he tosses the pack back down and picks up the lighter beside it.

"Sit, then."

"No."

The lighter opens with a clean snap. Sylus pauses with the cigarette between his lips, looking at him over the small flame like Zayne is the strange one here. Like this visit is normal. Like Zayne has not climbed all the way up here and found the man barefoot, alive, and dressed like he has never experienced consequence.

"Zayne, are you usually this stubborn?"

"Only when I have no idea what is going on."

"All I did was invite you to sit."

"That doesn't explain anything."

"No," Sylus says, touching the flame to the end of the cigarette. "It gives you somewhere to be while I explain it, though."

That is the problem. Not the words themselves. The way he says them. Calm, practical, almost reasonable. As if he is offering structure rather than taking it. As if sitting down is not giving in, but allowing the conversation to begin.

Zayne recognizes it half a second too late.

Sylus does not push people. Not exactly.

He places a hand at the small of the situation and guides.

The cigarette catches. Sylus closes the Zippo with another soft click and exhales to the side, away from him.

"You can stand there if you want," he adds. "But you look uncomfortable."

Zayne hates that this is true.

He also hates that saying so would make it worse.

For a moment, neither of them moves. Then Zayne sits because he wants to. Not because Sylus tells him to.

The couch is low enough that sitting feels like committing to something. He places his hands on his knees, then immediately hates that, so he folds them loosely between his legs instead. That also feels wrong.

Zayne's gaze catches briefly on the statue on the coffee table, but he speaks before Sylus can say anything about it. "You disappeared."

Sylus’s gaze stays on him. "I was unavailable."

"That is a different word for the same thing."

"It’s a more accurate word."

Zayne lets out a breath through his nose. He looks away first, because the alternative is continuing to stare at him and noticing things he has no business noticing. The bare foot tucked against the chair. The loose angle of his wrist. The way the cigarette burns down slowly because Sylus keeps forgetting to smoke it.

"You said you needed to talk to me."

"I do."

"Then talk."

Sylus is quiet for a moment. Not hesitating. Zayne does not think Sylus hesitates very much if he can help it. He edits instead.

That is almost worse.

"There was an incident at the marina," Sylus says finally.

Zayne’s attention sharpens despite himself as he remembers the noise of the TV the other day. "I saw something about that."

"On the news?"

"Yes."

"And?"

"And a man was pulled from the water," Zayne says. "Which...I assume you already know."

Sylus watches him, not the pleasant kind of watching. Not threatening, exactly. Worse than that. "What else?" he asks.

Zayne’s fingers still against his knee. "What do you mean?"

"What else did they say?"

"That he was young. That it was being investigated. That there was no identification released yet." Zayne pauses. "Why?"

Sylus leans forward and taps ash into the tray. The sound is small, dry, almost delicate.

"You called the club."

Zayne blinks once.

That is not where he expects this to go.

"Yes," he says carefully.

"Did you give your real name?"

"No."

"Did you speak to Reis?"

"I spoke to someone who answered the phone."

"Male or female?"

Zayne’s eyes narrow. "Why does that matter?" The irritation comes back quickly, which is useful. Easier than whatever has begun to move under his ribs when Sylus says marina. He sits straighter. "If this is about me calling the club, I didn’t say anything useful. I asked if Skye was there. They said no and they hung up."

Sylus’s expression changes by almost nothing. But Zayne sees something underneath and immediately wishes he had not.

"What?"

Sylus takes another drag from the cigarette, then sets it into the ashtray on the table in front of him. "You asked for Skye."

"That is the name you gave me."

"Yes."

"So?"

"So there are very few places where that name and you exist in the same sentence."

The loft seems to go quieter around them. The hum from the kitchen. Traffic beyond the windows. The old building settling in its own bones.

He understands the sentence. That is not the same as understanding the situation.

"Explain it," he says.

Sylus sits back, but the ease has changed. The placement. The calculation. The way Sylus keeps his voice quiet because quiet makes people lean closer. "There was something found with the body."

Zayne waits. Sylus does not continue quickly enough.

"What kind of something?"

"A piece of paper."

"That's not specific."

"It had a number on it."

Zayne’s first thought is not Confidential Connections. It should be, maybe, but it is not. His mind goes first to the club. To matchbooks. Business cards. Cocktail napkins. The coaster in this apartment with ink pressed into the surface hard enough that the grooves are still visible when a thumb drags across them.

"What number?" he asks.

The answer is already in the room before Sylus says it. Zayne feels that before he understands why. A change in pressure. A tightening at the base of his throat.

"Not mine," Sylus says.

Zayne’s mouth goes a little dry. He looks down at his own hands, which have gone still without permission. "Mine?" he asks.

"No."

The relief is immediate. Then gone.

Sylus’s eyes stay on his. "Your work."

The words do not arrange themselves cleanly. His work could mean several things. Confidential Connections. The hospital he no longer works at. Something else, somehow.

"My work," Zayne repeats.

Sylus watches him over the thin curl of smoke still drifting up from the ashtray. "There was an advertisement found with him."

In the moment, his mind goes to newspapers. Club flyers. Matchbooks. Cheap printed things left on counters and under windshield wipers. The sort of paper that collects in a city until no one notices it anymore.

Zayne sits with that for a second longer than he wants to. The room stays too open around him.

"I don’t understand why that matters," Zayne says.

"No," Sylus says. "You wouldn’t."

"Then explain it."

Sylus leans forward, elbows resting loosely on his knees now—amused, somehow. Attention narrowing.

"If someone contacts you about the man from the marina, you do not know him."

"I don’t know him."

"Good."

"And I don’t know why anyone would contact me."

"They may not." Sylus looks at him. Zayne hates that look. Not because it is threatening. Because it is patient in a way that makes him feel like he has already missed one step.

"There's writing on the advertisement," Sylus says. "An initial. A time. Something small enough to look meaningless unless someone wants it to mean something."

Sylus holds his gaze.

Zayne understands then that Sylus is not only telling him what happened. He is telling him what not to say later. His fingers curl once against his knee.

"Did you write something on it?"

Sylus’s mouth is now a flat line. Not enough to count as guilt. Enough for Zayne to notice.

"If anyone asks," Sylus says, "you have no idea who wrote it."

"That was not an answer."

"It's the answer you need."

"No," Zayne says. "It is the answer you want me to repeat."

For the first time since Zayne steps into the loft, Sylus looks tired. Whatever has been happening without Zayne has been happening for longer than a few days.

"I want you to tell the truth," Sylus says. "Carefully."

Zayne stares at him.

"Carefully," he repeats.

"Yes."

"That sounds like lying with better posture."

A faint smile touches Sylus’s mouth, gone almost as quickly. "It can be," he says. "But in this case, it means you do not volunteer connections. You do not guess. You do not try to be helpful. If someone asks whether you recognize the man, you don’t. If someone asks whether you know who wrote something on that ad, you don’t."

Zayne’s stomach turns slowly. "And if they ask about you?"

Sylus is quiet.

So that is the part he is supposed to understand without being told.

The line under the line.

Sylus reaches for the cigarette again, then seems to think better of it. His hand lowers back to the arm of the chair.

"If they ask about Skye," he says, "you met someone at a club."

Zayne lets out a short breath. "That is what happened."

"Yes."

"And if they ask for more?"

"Then you give them less."

Zayne looks at him for a long moment. The advice is practical. Controlled. Almost clean. Enough that it makes him stand.

Not calmly. Not gracefully either. The couch is low enough that it takes half a second longer than it should, and by the time he is upright, his irritation has already turned into something sharper.

"I’m leaving."

Sylus looks up at him from the chair.

"No."

Zayne stares at him. It is not even the word. It is how easily he says it. Quiet. Certain. Like Zayne has misunderstood the room.

"No?"

Sylus leans forward and puts the cigarette out in the ashtray with one slow twist. "No," he says again.

Zayne’s jaw tightens. "You are such an asshole."

Sylus’s mouth twitches.

That does it.

Zayne turns for the door.

He makes it three steps. Maybe four. He does not count this time, which is how he knows he is angry. Sylus behind him, still not explaining enough, still deciding how much of the truth Zayne is allowed to touch.

His hand reaches the steel handle. A hand catches his wrist. Not painful. Not gentle either.

Zayne turns sharply, already pulling back, but Sylus moves with him. One step, then the door is against Zayne’s back, cold metal pressing through the thin cotton of his shirt. Sylus’s other hand hits the slab beside his head with a dull sound that travels through the track above them.

For one second, neither of them breathes right. Sylus is close enough that Zayne can see the small, tired line at the corner of his mouth.

"Don’t walk out of here angry," he says.

Zayne’s laugh comes out thin. "That’s your threat?"

"No." Sylus’s voice drops. "The threat is that if you leave and say the wrong thing to the wrong person because you're angry, I may not be able to fix it."

Zayne pulls against his grip. "Let go."

Sylus does immediately. His hand drops like it has burned him. His eyes flicker down to Zayne’s wrist, then back up. "Sorry," he says under his breath. The apology is quiet and rough. Almost involuntary.

Zayne looks at him, and the anger slips. "You don’t get to do that," he says.

Sylus does not move away. "Do what?"

"Act like you’re sorry after."

Sylus’s eyes stay on his face. "I am."

"You’re sorry your threat didn’t work."

Sylus’s jaw shifts once, subtle enough that anyone else might have missed it.

He should move. The door is behind him. Sylus is in front of him, but he is no longer holding him there. There is space, technically. Enough to leave if Zayne wants to make leaving the point.

Instead, he stays. His hand comes up before the thought finishes forming. Fingers at the back of Sylus’s neck, sliding into the hair there, gripping hard enough that Sylus’s breath catches.

Good.

Zayne pulls him in and kisses him. It is not clean. It is anger first, mouth second, teeth catching too hard. Sylus makes a low sound against him, short and surprised, and Zayne feels it in the stupid, useless place where fear has been a second ago.

His hand comes back to the door beside Zayne’s head, bracing there. The other finds Zayne’s waist, fingers spreading over the cotton shirt like he means to hold him still.

Zayne kisses him harder for that. For the way Sylus’s body presses like he is trying not to take too much.

It makes Zayne furious. It makes him pull again.

Sylus breaks the kiss just enough to breathe, his mouth still brushing Zayne’s.

"Zayne."

"No."

"You don’t know what you’re doing."

Zayne tightens his grip at the back of his neck.

"I know you’re still talking."

Sylus goes still.

Then he laughs once, very softly, right against Zayne’s mouth.

Zayne kisses him again. This time Sylus meets him faster, rougher, like whatever restraint he has left has thinned. His hand slides from Zayne’s waist to the door, then back again, thumb dragging once over the hem of his polo where it has pulled loose from his jeans.

Zayne’s breath catches before he can stop it. He hates him enough, in that moment, to bite his lower lip.

Sylus’s hand clenches at his waist. "Greedy thing," he murmurs. It comes from somewhere low, almost a growl. Long fingers tug once at the cotton of his shirt, then slip beneath it, brushing skin.

"I’m not."

Sylus’s mouth moves to his jaw, then lower.

The hand at his waist moves again, sliding back over his hip, over denim, fingers spreading across the curve of him. Then they curl over his back pocket, firm enough to pull him forward by half an inch.

Not much.

Enough that Zayne’s body follows before his mind can object.

Sylus exhales against his neck, quiet and pleased.

Zayne’s eyes close. Only for a second.

Then his hand tightens at the back of Sylus’s neck, fingers sliding into his hair, gripping hard enough to pull his mouth away from Zayne’s throat. He drags him back up and kisses him before Sylus can say anything smug enough to ruin it.

The kiss turns worse immediately. Mouth open, breath caught wrong, Sylus’s tongue sliding against his in a way that makes Zayne’s grip tighten. There is no room to think around it. The faint scrape of teeth, and Sylus pressing closer.

Then Sylus’s hand moves. His fingers drag over Zayne’s hip, then down, knuckles brushing the front of his jeans before his palm settles against the hardness there, pushing slightly. Slow. Firm enough that Zayne’s breath stutters into Sylus’s mouth before he can stop it.

Sylus pulls back just enough to look at him. His eyes are darker now. Less amused than before. "This isn’t greedy?"

"It’s anatomy."

For one second, Sylus just looks at him.

Then something shifts.

Not much. A small pause. A blink, slow enough to mean something. His mouth parts slightly, and Zayne has the sudden, satisfying sense that he has managed to catch him off balance for once.

"Ah," Sylus says.

His hand leaves the front of Zayne’s jeans, which is both a relief and a problem. He reaches up instead, takes the sunglasses from where they sit crooked on Zayne’s head, and folds them with unnecessary care before hooking them into the loose collar of his own Henley.

Then the same hand slides back into Zayne’s hair.

Not gentle.

Not rough either.

Just enough pressure to make Zayne’s chin lift before he decides whether he wants it to. Sylus’s fingers thread through the dark pieces the sunglasses have already failed to keep back, tugging until Zayne’s throat is exposed.

The air hits the damp place where Sylus’s mouth has been.

Zayne swallows.

Sylus notices that too.

"Forgive me," he says, voice low, mouth close enough that the words brush skin, "for forgetting, doctor."

The word hits somewhere behind Zayne’s ribs.

Doctor.

His lungs expand and then stop there, held too full for a second, tight enough to sting. It should not matter. It is a word. A title he does not use anymore. A shape from a life he has worked very hard not to touch with this one.

Then Sylus’s teeth graze his throat.

Not hard enough to mean anything.

Just enough to make Zayne’s breath leave him wrong.

"H-how did you know?"

The question comes out rougher than he wants it to. Too close to a stutter. Too close to giving Sylus the satisfaction of knowing the word has landed exactly where he means it to.

Sylus’s mouth pauses against his skin.

Only for a second.

Then he kisses the place he just bit, like that fixes anything. "You’re not exactly subtle."

Zayne’s fingers tighten in his hair. "That is not an answer."

"No," Sylus murmurs, lips dragging along his throat, "but it is true."

Zayne pulls at the back of his neck, forcing him up enough to look at him. Sylus lets him, though his hand stays in Zayne’s hair, thumb brushing once near his temple like he has any right to be gentle after saying something like that.

"I never told you that," Zayne says.

"You told me plenty."

"I didn’t."

"Not directly."

The anger should be easier to hold onto. It is there. Still sharp. Still justified. But Sylus is close enough that Zayne can feel each breath against his mouth, and the sunglasses are hooked into the collar of his Henley like some stupid piece of evidence.

His evidence. His sunglasses. His bad decision sitting against Sylus’s chest.

"You looked into me."

Sylus’s expression does not change enough. That is answer enough.

Zayne’s grip tightens. "You asshole."

"Yes," Sylus says softly, "you’ve already called me that, sweetie."

"Don’t call me that."

Zayne reaches for the hand still in his hair. He expects resistance, or at least pressure, but Sylus lets go almost as soon as Zayne’s fingers close around his wrist.

He ducks under Sylus’s arm and steps away from the door, back into the room he has not been entirely sure he is allowed to leave. One hand braces at his own hip because it has to go somewhere. The other drags down his face, over his mouth, like that will do anything about the heat still sitting under his skin.

"How?"

Sylus does not look especially pleased by the lack of contact, or by Zayne's question.

Good.

Maybe.

He steps back too, not toward Zayne, but toward the square pillar near the counter. He leans against it with one shoulder, loose and barefoot and irritatingly comfortable.

Zayne looks at his face.

Deliberately.

"A little birdie told me," Sylus says.

Zayne stares at him. "Do you plan to answer me properly, or stand there like that?"

Sylus glances down as if he has only just realized what his shirt is doing.

"Like what?"

Zayne’s jaw tightens. "Don’t."

"Maybe we should start over," Sylus offers, the corner of his mouth lifting slightly as if he has just offered an ultimate solution.

Zayne merely looks at him. Then at the sunglasses still hooked into the collar of his Henley. "How did you know?"

Sylus follows his gaze, then looks back at him. He does not give them back; he is quiet long enough that Zayne knows the first answer he gets will not be the whole truth. "I looked. In order to keep this from becoming something bigger."

Zayne’s jaw tightens. "Bigger than a dead man in the marina?"

Sylus’s expression changes by almost nothing, regardless of how honest the answer seems. "Yes."

The loft feels very still around them. Too much space. Too much brick and glass and light. The kind of room that makes silence look intentional.

Zayne lets out a short breath. "What the hell does that mean?"

"It means there are parts of my life that do not respond well to police interest."

Zayne lets out a short breath. A huff of laughter, almost. "That is the most suspicious sentence you could have chosen."

"I know. I’m trying not to lie to you."

"Are you?"

The amusement is not gone from Sylus, only thinned into something sharper. "A man turned up dead with something connected to your work in his pocket," Sylus says. "There's enough on it for someone to decide it means something, even if they have to invent the rest."

Zayne’s stomach pulls tight.

Sylus continues, quieter. "If that connects to me, it becomes my problem. If it connects to you, it becomes yours. If it connects us together in front of the wrong person, it becomes something neither of us controls."

The word control sits there between them. Zayne hates that the statement makes his mouth go dry.

"What wrong person? The police?"

"Not only."

Zayne stares at him, at the easy lean against the pillar, the bare feet, the exposed strip of skin. The lack of defense is almost worse than an argument. Sylus just stands there looking like the kind of man who has never once been inconvenienced by another person’s moral outrage.

"You’re an asshole," Zayne says again.

Sylus’s mouth curves. "You’ve said."

"I’m going to keep saying it. And you're an idiot for telling me all of that."

Sylus tips his head slightly, eyes staying on him. "You're right. And the rest of Onychinus will probably think so too."

For half a second, the name does not land as a word to Zayne. It lands as sound. Something half-remembered from newspapers left folded on hospital breakroom tables, attending physicians who lowered their voices when residents came too close, from rumors about donors and nightclubs and men who did not get charged with things everyone knew they had done. Because in some way it supported the economy of the city.

The door. The expensive loft. The missing days. The advertisement. The careful instructions about what not to say. All of it shifts a quarter-inch closer to something ugly and organized.

That detail of his missing sunglasses feels suddenly absurd but gives him something to say. "You took my sunglasses."

Sylus glances down. "That’s what you’re focusing on?"

"I’m choosing a manageable detail."

Zayne sees it. The little tightening near his mouth. The amusement thinning out. Something behind it moving closer to the surface before Sylus pushes it back down.

"And I'm being more honest than is good for either of us," Sylus says.

Zayne hates that he believes him. Not enough to be sensible.

He takes one step back.

Sylus watches him for a second too long. "You’re scared."

"Of you?" Zayne says.

When he tries to make the man in front of him frightening, it does not quite hold. Sylus can be dangerous. That is obvious now, maybe it always was. But the fear is not his mouth, or his hands, or the way he stands there too comfortable in a room that suddenly feels less like an apartment and more like proof.

"Breathe," Sylus says.

"I am breathing."

"No." Sylus’s voice stays low. "You’re holding it."

Zayne becomes aware of his lungs then, tight and full, his chest locked around air he has not let go of. He exhales too sharply.

His hand moves to his face again, thumb pressing briefly at the corner of his mouth before he drops it. He can still feel Sylus there. Smoke and heat and teeth that were not hard enough to be anything except deliberate.

"You should have led with that the other night," he says.

Sylus tilts his head. "I don’t find it works well as an introduction."

Zayne can’t help the laugh that comes out then. Sharp. Like he has been told it is the appropriate place to laugh because everyone in Ellen's audience is doing the same.

"I was concerned," he says. The words leave his mouth before he can make them sound any different.

He does not have to justify his worry to Sylus.

He does not have to explain that one narrow strip of attention has been enough to make him spiral in ways he does not understand and would roll his own eyes at if anyone else admitted to it.

He is still concerned. Only now it feels less clean. Anger, mostly.

Sylus looks at him for a long moment.

"I know," he says quietly.

Zayne looks away first. Toward the coffee table, the statue, the dead cigarette in the ashtray. Anything that is not Sylus’s mouth.

"You could have called."

"I couldn’t."

That is probably the truth. But not enough.

Zayne presses his tongue against the back of his teeth and tries to decide what shape the anger is supposed to take now. It was simpler when he thought Sylus was just careless. Easier when this was a man playing games because he enjoyed watching people chase the rules.

Now there is Onychinus. Now there is a dead man. Now there is an advertisement from Confidential Connections sitting somewhere it should not be.

"I don’t know what you expect me to do with any of this," Zayne says.

"Nothing yet."

"Yet."

The word sits badly between them. Sylus does not soften it. He does not dress it up into something better. For some reason, Zayne almost appreciates that.

"I won’t touch you like that again," Sylus says.

Zayne looks up. For a second, he does not know which part Sylus means. The grabbing. The door. The threat. The hand in his hair. His mouth at Zayne’s throat.

All of it, maybe.

"Before you ask," Sylus adds.

The words move through Zayne more slowly than they should. A boundary placed clearly. It makes heat crawl up the back of his neck.

His sunglasses are still in Sylus’s collar. Proof that Zayne has already allowed too much of himself to end up on this man.

"Give those back."

Sylus glances down. Then he removes them carefully, folding the arms in with one hand. He does not come closer. He only holds them out, letting the distance remain.

The first few steps feel controlled.

The last one does not.

By then, Zayne is close enough to smell smoke on him again. Close enough to see the place on his lower lip where Zayne has bitten him.

Zayne reaches for the sunglasses.

His fingers close around Sylus’s wrist instead.

For one second, neither of them moves.

Then Zayne kisses him.

Hotter.

Sylus lets him set the angle. Lets him press in. Lets the kiss turn open and unsteady before his hands finally lift. Even then, they stop just short of Zayne’s waist.

Waiting.

Zayne makes a frustrated sound into his mouth and pulls Sylus’s hand to himself.

The sunglasses hit the floor with a small, useless thud.

Zayne pushes forward, and Sylus gives ground until his back meets the pillar, one shoulder first. His hand catches the back of Zayne’s shirt, fingers bunching cotton between his shoulder blades, and pulls once. Sharp enough to bring him close. Close enough that when their bodies line up, Zayne feels him hard against him.

The kiss breaks wrong for half a second.

Then Zayne moves. Barely a roll. More frustration than rhythm. Friction catches between them, dull and rough and still enough to make his breath leave him.

Sylus’s mouth is wet when he smiles against him.

"Still anatomy?"

"Shut up."

"Mm."

To his credit, Sylus almost does. Then Zayne does it again, harder this time, and Sylus’s breath catches against his mouth.

That sound does something to him. Zayne’s hand braces against the pillar beside Sylus’s head. Not because he means to trap him there, but because his knees have become briefly unreliable.

Sylus’s hand slides under his polo, thumb pressing into the tender crease just inside his hipbone.

Zayne’s body jerks before he can stop it.

Sylus notices. "Careful," he murmurs. "You’ll hurt my feelings if you keep lying to me."

Zayne’s answer comes before he has time to make it less revealing. "Then I'll just have to make you honest."

Zayne feels heat crawl up his neck immediately, because that is not what he means to say.

Sylus goes still against him. Not cold. Not distant. Still like he has just been handed something sharp.

Then he hums, low in his throat. Fingers thread into dark hair and tighten just enough to make Zayne bite his own lower lip to hold back whatever sound tries to follow.

"You sound sexier in person, Noah."

Not through a receiver. Not wrapped in static and distance and a version of himself he can hang up when the call gets too close. Here, the name sits warm against his mouth.

Zayne’s hands move because they have to. Beneath the raised edge of Sylus’s shirt first, fingers spreading over bare skin, then higher. The shirt is already shoved half up his body, and Sylus has done absolutely nothing to fix it.

His thumb catches on metal and stops. For one stupid second, his mind does not move forward. Warm skin around cool metal. The fact of it sitting there like something he should have known and absolutely did not.

He pushes the shirt higher, just enough to see.

The dark cotton drags up Sylus’s chest, and there it is: metal catching dull light, small and deliberate, threaded through flushed skin.

Sylus watches him notice.

Zayne brushes it with his thumb again, more intentionally this time.

Sylus’s fingers dig into his waist.

That reaction is immediate.

Useful.

Zayne does it again, firmer, not quite a pinch, just enough to make the metal shift against skin.

Sylus exhales sharply through his nose, jaw tightening.

"Oh," Zayne says. He does not mean to say it.

Sylus’s mouth curves anyway, but not steadily. "Found something?"

Zayne looks at him, then at the metal beneath his thumb. He should say something clinical. Something that makes this less embarrassing than the fact that he is standing in Sylus’s loft with one hand under his shirt.

Zayne gets no warning before Sylus pulls him in again. Heat caught badly between them.

Zayne’s mouth finds his throat because he cannot keep kissing him and breathing at the same time.

He bites. Not hard enough to mark at first. Then harder when Sylus says his name.

"Don’t."

Sylus laughs once, breathless and almost ruined. "Don’t what?"

"Say my name like that."

Sylus turns his face enough that his mouth brushes Zayne’s ear.

"Then move like you mean it, Noah."

Zayne’s breath catches as he freezes.

Because he does. He wants to enough that it becomes suddenly clear how bad of an idea this is. The thought is blunt enough to embarrass him.

"Make me honest," Sylus murmurs against his mouth.

That should help. That should do something to him, and it almost does before he stops, pulling himself away. Not because he does not want to. Because he does.

He pulls back.

"No." The word comes out too fast.

Sylus stills but says nothing, only pulls his hands away, and would probably step back if the pillar weren't behind him. "Okay. Sorry."

"It's okay. I just—"

"You want dinner and drinks first." Sylus says it lightly enough to pass for a joke, but not quite lightly enough to be one. "I get it."

It is not the truth. Zayne knows it is not the truth. Sylus probably does too. Still, Zayne does not particularly feel like explaining that his body has started to feel like TV static.

So he lets it sit there. For now.

Chapter Text

Xavier sits in a faded T-shirt and boxers, feet propped near the keyboard, chair angled toward the computer monitor. The Confidential Connections website is on the screen again.

Rain drizzles against the open office window. Humidity slips in through the crack despite the fan rattling on the desk, serving no purpose except to push warm air around. A cigarette burns mostly untouched in the ashtray.

Tell me what you’re thinking.

I wouldn’t know where to start, he thinks, taking a sip of coffee Jeremiah must have made like shit on purpose.

“Jesus,” he mutters.

He reaches for the cigarette instead, taking a drag before leaving his hand resting near the ashtray.

Same number. Same little promise dressed up as privacy, as if privacy has ever been anything other than a nicer word for someone getting away with something.

A sharp little tone cuts through the modem.

Then AOL drops him.

“Great.”

He crushes the cigarette out and pulls his feet from the desk. The site hadn’t given him much to go on, so he isn’t sure why he’s annoyed.

Over something that belongs to the police.

To Monroe, of all people.

The night at the crime scene wasn’t even her being nice. It was another attempt to get him out of her hair.

He could hate her. He has plenty of reason to. Monroe Cain could stand there with that flat, official face of hers, arms crossed, mouth pulled tight, and make it sound like procedure when what she really meant was don’t make me look at this too closely.

Monroe was also very good at stopping short of what she wanted to say.

Cruelty would have been easier when they ended things. Something he could carry without having to turn it over in his hand like he could have changed the shape of things if the truth—

Whatever.

He reaches for the phone on the desk, picking it up only to hear the conversation between Jeremiah and Mrs. Miller from two blocks over.

“That’s great, but lilies won’t survive in your niece’s trunk for four hours, Mrs. Miller.”

“Let me finish my story, young man.”

“I need the phone,” Xavier cuts in, then hangs up.

After another minute of listening to the rain tick against the windowsill, he picks up the phone again and is finally greeted with a dial tone.

Back online, he ignores the junk mail and opens a new message.

The cursor blinks at him.

Then he begins to type slowly.

HIGH MOON. 1PM. DON’T TELL MONROE. — X

He doesn’t wait around for an email back.

He leaves his office, finds a pair of jeans that isn’t wrinkled badly enough to matter, and goes before Jeremiah can even ask.

The diner is close enough to the docks that the air smells faintly of river water and diesel fuel. The windows salt over in winter, the morning crowd always smells like rain, and “bar with pancakes that plays The Four Seasons three times a day” sounds worse on paper.

But it has better coffee than home.

And if Nero never shows, at least Xavier has that in his favor, considering he put on a pair of pants and drove down here.

He isn’t particularly brave, the kid in records. But he is used to Xavier, even now, and sometimes that is better than bravery.

Bravery gets Jeremiah shot and nearly killed over a robbery.

Gets Delaney under a police boat.

Gets Monroe laid up for six weeks because she loves to chase the big guys.

Gets Xavier told, very calmly, that obsessions are not probable cause.

Nero, at least, knows when to stay behind a desk.

Xavier sits in the corner booth that always happens to be free, one knee angled against the underside of the table.

The jukebox is doing its best to ruin his afternoon as the horn section kicks in again. Xavier stares out at the wet street and taps his thumb against the edge of the hard-water-stained mug.

An old fisherman sits hunched over a newspaper at the counter, cap pulled low. The headline near the bottom of the page catches Xavier’s attention before the man can fold it.

BODY RECOVERED NEAR PIER 26 STILL UNIDENTIFIED

“Hey, you done with that page?”

The question earns him the kind of look reserved for anyone asking stupid questions before noon.

Only it’s after noon.

So that might just be his face, Xavier assumes.

“I’m readin’ it.”

“I can see that. I just need the article on the bottom.” Xavier lifts his coffee and takes a sip, mostly to buy himself a second of patience.

The fisherman looks down at the paper, then back at Xavier. As if it’s a great personal sacrifice, he pulls the page loose and holds it out between two fingers.

“Don’t get jelly on it.”

Xavier scoots nearly out of the booth to lean over and take it.

“I wouldn’t dream of it.”

He smooths the page against the table. The byline underneath the article is familiar enough to annoy him before he even starts reading.

Otto Wilson has always written like he was leaning too close over someone else’s shoulder. A reporter who asks bad questions and then somehow manages to make them sound stupider in print.

Police declined to comment. Investigation ongoing. No known next of kin. A source close to the department confirmed the victim may have been carrying false identification.

Xavier reads the last line twice.

The rest of the article is the usual hogwash, but the reporter isn’t completely useless. He may be the only other person in the city just as disgruntled with the department as Xavier is and not afraid to tell everybody.

He clenches his jaw slightly and folds the page neatly at its crease, setting it aside before lifting his coffee cup again.

As he takes a sip, the bell on the door tings.

Nero slips into the diner, looking out of place with his messenger bag and hair that refuses to stay combed back out of his eyes. He pauses just inside the door until Xavier raises two fingers.

For a second, it looks like he considers leaving.

It is only when the impatient waitress behind the counter points toward the booth that he finally moves, crossing the diner carefully and sliding into the seat like his bag contains something breakable.

“You’re late.” Xavier sets down his cup.

Nero looks at the clock above the counter.

“No, I’m not,” he says. “I’m five minutes early.”

He glances at his watch.

“That clock is off.”

His gaze drops to the paper on the table.

“You read Otto this morning?” Xavier asks.

“Only glanced at it,” Nero says too quickly, waving away the waitress with one hand.

She fills the empty cup on the table anyway.

“Is he right?”

Nero sits back and shakes his head.

“You know I can’t tell you that this early. And I can’t bring you anything.”

He opens the messenger bag and pulls out a file, sliding it across the table toward Xavier before looking out the window like someone followed him.

Nobody did.

Rain continues to skim down the glass in thin, crooked lines as the diner moves around them.

Xavier looks down and hums, wondering why the kid bothered with the whole mystery game when others in the department got away with a lot worse.

Maybe that is what he is really afraid of.

“I mean it, Shen,” Nero says under his breath. “You know it’s wrong to ask. I’m not even supposed to be here. They think I went to Denny’s.”

“God forbid. Do you want me to close my eyes?”

Xavier moves his cup aside and pulls the file closer. Thin this early, maybe too thin to mean anything.

“Cain’s notes in here?”

“Not many.”

Figures.

Monroe loved to keep her notebook close to her heart, along with that specific brand of BIC pen she loved enough to lock in her desk drawer.

“Intake sheet?”

“It’s right there, dude.”

Nero lifts one shoulder when Xavier looks up, defensive before he is even spoken to again.

“What? It is.”

“You’re always so helpful,” Xavier mutters as he flips the file open and slides the sheet in question free. “Better run back to Delaney before they notice you’re gone.”

Nero stares at him.

“You made me come over here for this? I could have stopped by on my way home.”

“And you could have ignored the email.”

“How’s Jeremiah?”

“Stiff. See you later.”

He’s got what he needs now, or at least some of it. Xavier isn’t going to entertain Nero any longer than he needs to if the kid is going to sit there looking as constipated as he does.

Nero glances at the file still open under Xavier’s hand as he adjusts his glasses and moves to stand.

“Bye.”

Xavier waits until he is halfway down the block before looking back at the file.

The intake sheet gives him nothing else.

Name listed as Daniel Mercer. Pending confirmation on who Daniel Mercer actually was, along with this victim.

Yeah, alright.

He knows that already.

He turns the next page.

It’s a photocopy of a photograph, grainy and too dark, the kind taken under bad fluorescent light. An evidence bag sits on a metal table. Inside it, water-warped, is a torn strip of newsprint.

The classified advertisement from the dock. Just a bit drier than it had been the first time he saw it.

But that isn’t what stops him.

It’s the fact that the photocopy has been circled in black marker. Behind it, a page torn out of a phone book. An entry circled with the same marker.

EMILIO’S COMPUTER REPAIR

Xavier smiles despite himself. That fucking bastard kid is begging to be fired.

Letterman’s show is just enough of a distraction from the fact that he isn’t reading.

Alias Grace is interesting enough. More than interesting, probably. Zayne had started the book a month ago and is nearly done with it, but tonight he sits with his thumb stuck between two pages a little over halfway through, listening to the television the way people listen to the radio in the car on the way home from work.

Background noise. Sound over static. Laughter from the audience. Someone asking questions. Every so often, he catches a sentence and realizes he has no idea what the conversation is actually about.

It isn’t even midnight yet. Too early to go to bed, though he isn’t sure what good that would do. He knows for a fact he would stare at the ceiling long before sleep decided to make an effort.

Not that sleep has ever come easily in the first place.

Medical school had shattered what was left of a healthy sleep schedule and turned his bad habits into the exact ones he had been advised against as a medical professional. At least the sleepless nights had paid off for a while.

Until they didn’t.

But that is what happens when a person makes choices and then has opinions about them afterward.

His mother had always told him there was a right thing to do. Sometimes it was unpleasant. But it existed.

Which, in reality, was terrible advice to give her own son, who thought the right thing was always simple.

Call the police. Tell them what he knows. Move on with his life. Be praised, maybe, for turning in a leader of the city’s most dangerous and influential criminal operation. Get on with things. Find someone to want who isn’t a man he met through a sex line.

Simple. Only he wasn't going to do that.

Zayne closes the book around his thumb and lowers it to his lap.

The television flickers blue-white across the room. Letterman says something to the audience that earns a burst of laughter. Zayne barely hears it.

He takes his glasses off and rubs a thumb into the place between his eye and the bridge of his nose.

Nothing changes.

The room remains exactly what it is: couch, end table, television, the faint smell of old coffee in the kitchen, the window dark except for the vague reflection of the room and his own face.

He sets the book on the end table and gets up, taking the empty glass with him.

In the kitchen, the refrigerator hums quietly to itself. He fills a glass from the sink and drinks the first one down too quickly. The water sits cold and heavy in his stomach. He fills the glass again, then stands there with it in his hand, not drinking.

For some reason, he finds himself wondering what Sylus is doing. Not where. Not who he is with. Whether he is working. Sleeping. Sitting in that loft with the lights low and a cigarette burning somewhere nearby. Whether he has forgotten about the kissing already.

Since his visit the other day, he has been trying not to think about it.

Rightfully so, considering what he had been asked to hide. Considering who Sylus is. Considering the shape of the room, the men inside it, the way information moved around him like people had been trained not to let it touch the floor.

Zayne wonders how many others sit with something like this.

Not the same facts, maybe. Not the same man. But the same sharp, private knowledge lodged somewhere under the ribs, impossible to explain without making yourself sound either complicit or insane.

God forbid he tell someone.

I met someone.

That would be bad enough.

I met someone and it’s—

Well.

That is the problem.

It isn’t safe. Not clean or easy to define. This new, precarious thing has made its escape before he thought to say no to it. Before he thought to say anything useful at all.

He had gone to Sylus’s loft and left with more questions than he came with. Gone home and, stupidly, spent the last few days without looking over his shoulder to see whether he was being watched.

As if that proves anything.

As if Sylus would be obvious about it.

At least, more obvious than he has been.

Zayne takes a sip of water and holds it in his mouth for a moment before swallowing.

He looks out at the dark street from the window above the sink. The television brightens everything behind him in uneven flashes, turning the kitchen cabinets pale for a second, then dark again. Two cars roll through the intersection before disappearing around the corner.

Farther down the block, a dog barks once before falling silent.

Another question occurs to him.

He chuckles once, quiet and humorless.

How depraved is he, exactly, that the threat of danger turns him on?

That the thought of being followed does not send him straight to the phone. That the idea of Sylus knowing where he is, where he lives, what he does with his hands when he is trying not to think, makes something low in his body answer before his better judgment can get there.

He should be disgusted with himself.

Instead, he thinks about Sylus’s mouth. The pressure of it against his own. The way his voice had lowered when he was close enough for Zayne to feel it instead of only hear it.

He thinks about what would have happened if he had stayed.

If he had not pulled himself out of that loft in the Garden District before it found a more permanent shape. If he had let Sylus keep touching him, keep looking at him like he already knew the answer to every question Zayne was trying not to ask.

A thought vivid enough to make his pulse tremble.

A hand at his waist. The warmth of another body standing too close. If he had remained there another minute, he would have stopped pretending he intended to leave.

The glass is cold against his palm. In the living room, the audience laughs again as Zayne closes his eyes.

Then the phone rings.

He glances at the clock on the oven.

Still not midnight yet.

He lets it ring, lets the sound cut through the apartment, too loud against the low murmur of the TV. On the fourth ring, the answering machine clicks. His own recorded voice tells whoever is calling to leave a message before the loud beep.

A tiny huff comes over the line before Sylus says, “Come downstairs.”

Zayne turns his head toward the machine and the silence that follows. For one second, he thinks Sylus might hang up.

But then he says, “Come downstairs. I know you’re there.”

Zayne’s grip tightens around the glass. He moves, hand hovering over the phone on the wall with every intention of picking it up and hanging up to cut off the call and the recording.

But he just stands there.

There is sound in the background. Distant traffic. That same dog again. Tires over pavement. Something low on the radio.

“It’s late,” Sylus says, answering the objection Zayne has not made out loud. “I know.” He exhales, soft enough that Zayne almost misses it. “I’m outside. Five minutes.”

The line clicks dead.

Five minutes what? Five minutes to get downstairs before Sylus leaves? Or five minutes before he comes upstairs himself?

He should erase the message, close the blinds, go to bed.

Instead, Zayne sets the glass down on the table and takes his windbreaker from the chair. It is too warm for it, technically, but it is a habit nonetheless.

It is on by the time he makes his way downstairs and outside.

The night is damp. Not raining, but close enough that the air feels handled. Parked cars scatter both sides of the block.

Zayne takes one breath, filling his lungs with air before turning to look left. When he does not see anyone, he looks in the other direction.

That is when he sees him near the corner, past a delivery van pulled too far up on the curb. Sylus is leaning against a black car halfway down the block, back against the driver’s side door. His head is tipped up as if the sky has offered him something worth considering. Keys spin lazily around one finger.

Oh well, Zayne thinks as he turns in that direction.

The streetlight catches along Sylus’s bare forearm. Black ink shifts with the slow movement of muscle beneath skin. Not bright. Not decorative. The careful linework of a dragon, coil and teeth disappearing beneath the short sleeve of his T-shirt.

Zayne stares at it for half a second too long.

The keys stop spinning when he is heard, Sylus’s mouth curving slightly. He does not look over at Zayne yet.

“You made good time.”

“You gave me five minutes with no other explanation,” Zayne reminds him.

“And you came out anyway.”

“I’m really not in the mood to play back and forth with you.” Zayne shoves his hands into the pockets of his windbreaker. “What is it that you want?”

He is aware of the dryness in his voice.

Sylus is too. He finally glances over, one eyebrow lifting before he pushes off the car and takes a step toward Zayne. He looks him up and down like he is trying to read him, or taking his time to figure out what to say. Zayne highly doubts it is the latter.

He looks toward the street to avoid the crimson stare.

“I wanted air,” Sylus says.

Zayne turns his head slightly in his direction. “You came to my apartment because you wanted air.”

“I came to your apartment because I wanted company.” Sylus says it evenly, without ornament. Like he has decided against dressing it up and is annoyed by the fact rather than the honesty that might be behind it.

The lack of animosity is more annoying than anything else.

“Yes, alright. Maybe it was selfish.”

There is a distant sound from the avenue. An ambulance wailing somewhere, but nowhere close. A car laying on the horn for half a second too long. Sylus looks in that direction. “I’m not here to drag you anywhere.”

“But you still came here.”

“Yes.” Sylus exhales and looks back at him. “And now I’m asking you to come out with me. You can say no.”

It should not make a difference. But it does, which irritates him slightly. Zayne looks past him at the car. Black and polished, parked like it belongs to someone richer. Someone important. Not a man in a T-shirt and jeans with a hole in one knee.

Jeans that are too tight on him.

“Where?” Zayne asks.

“Across the river.”

“Your place?”

Sylus angles his head. “No. Better. Or worse.”

Zayne wants to ask what he means, but before he can, Sylus turns fully and opens the passenger door. He rests one arm along the top of it, the curve of his mouth settling back into shadow along with the ink on his arm.

He taps his thumb once against the door frame. “I’m not going to give you five minutes to decide this time.”

Zayne rolls his eyes, which earns him a laugh. Something brighter than expected. Enough to make the corner of his mouth twitch, but only once.

“I don’t understand why I’m even entertaining this,” he says, mostly to himself, as he gets into the car.

He doesn’t expect a comment in return. Doesn’t even think Sylus hears it.

He’s wrong.

When Sylus gets into the driver’s seat and shuts the door, he turns fully to look at him.

“You could just admit you’re interested.”

The words are a tease as he slips the key into the ignition and starts the car, glancing in the rear-view mirror and then back toward the dashboard. A song drifts from the speakers, familiar only because Zayne has heard it a dozen times in grocery stores, waiting rooms, and hospital cafeterias. Something about a long day and a headlight. He couldn’t have named the artist if someone paid him.

“Instead of whatever private argument you’re having with yourself,” Sylus adds.

“What?” Zayne glances toward him, then away as he pulls the seatbelt across his chest. It clicks into place as the car eases out onto the empty road.

“That,” Sylus says.

“What?”

“Acting like I should already know the answer because you walked out here.”

Zayne’s mouth presses thin. “You’re the one relying on implication.”

Sylus reaches for the cigarettes in the cupholder and slips one between his lips. His mouth curves faintly. “Am I? Is that a problem?”

“For me, yes.”

The cigarette shifts slightly as Sylus lights it and tosses the lighter on the dashboard. “Oh?”

“Guessing is an inefficient way to have a conversation.”

Sylus glances in the rearview mirror before looking over.

“That sounds exhausting.”

“It is.”

Zayne looks forward, watching the road open in front of them.

They have names for it now. Cleaner ones. Words doctors put in journals and case notes. Words parents could carry out of offices.

He has read enough to recognize himself in pieces. The difficulty with implication. The need for structure. The way other people seem to move through invisible social currents and then act surprised when he does not arrive at the same shore.

None of that is something he intends to explain in Sylus’s car.

The city begins to thin as they head east. Streetlights flash across the windshield in steady intervals. Ahead, the overpass rises out of the dark.

“And I didn’t say I wasn’t interested,” he adds.

A quiet laugh leaves Sylus.

“No,” he says. “You didn’t.”

There is a beat of silence filled by the sound of the blinker as he eases the car to a stop at the light at the end of the street.

“Sorry if I offended you.”

The words sound sincere, not that Zayne has any idea what to do with that. He looks over.

Sylus is watching the light now, cigarette held low near the open window, smoke pulling thin into the dark. His profile is mostly shadow, but there is nothing smug in it. No visible joke waiting behind his mouth as he taps ash outside the window.

That makes it harder, somehow.

“I’m not offended,” Zayne tells him. “I would say if I was.”

Chapter Text

The car door shuts behind him in the nearly empty lot behind a closed seafood restaurant. The smell of fry oil and shrimp mixes with the air of the bay. More salt than anything.

Zayne had paid attention, especially before they crossed the bridge, but had not suspected the boardwalk as their destination, especially considering mostly everything was closed or was closing. Sounds of laughter and muffled music spill as they walk up onto the main stretch, slipping past a younger couple sucking each other’s faces in the shadows provided by the busted light on this end.

It looks different without people filling it. Smaller, somehow. Uglier. Metal grates over souvenir shops that sold cheap sunglasses and shell necklaces. Wooden tables in front of restaurants with umbrellas folded down.

Sylus is a bit ahead of him on the walkway to start, stopping to nearly press his nose to the glass of a closed arcade. Inside, a row of machines blinks. Cartoon race cars frozen on a start screen. Street Fighter II. Pac-Man.

He glances over as he waits for Zayne to catch up.

“You run the place or something?” he asks.

“No.” Sylus almost sounds offended. And if that wasn’t enough, he matches Zayne’s steps and gives a playful shove with his shoulder. Not really hard enough to do anything, even though Zayne does sway slightly. “Am I not allowed to take you out?”

Zayne blinks and looks over. “You ask a lot of questions.”

“It comes with the territory.”

“You also sound like a guy from a movie,” Zayne says. Usually rich guys in movies liked to show off their wealth. Part of Zayne had expected that, considering their first meeting at Neon Saint.

“Guess I’ll just have to come up with better lines,” Sylus says. "That one usually works."

Zayne keeps his hands in his pockets as he looks over. Sylus is smirking again, that stupid little disarming tilt of his mouth.

“Does it?” he counters. “Because I’m starting to think you don’t ask many people out if this is where you thought to take me.”

He looks out beyond the railing when the smirk vanishes; moonlight reflecting off dark water. A red light from a fishing boat out somewhere beyond.

Sylus stops walking, which makes Zayne stop too. Then he looks past him at the bay, inhaling deeply, as if the scent of salty water is a drug. Zayne can’t help but watch his chest expand, remembering exactly what is hidden beneath that shirt. The reactions when touched there, how the metal felt beneath his thumb. When he's caught staring, he's quick to look away, stepping up to the wooden railing that actually would do little if he wanted to just jump over it into the water—something that feels worth considering as he feels his cheeks flush.

He only shifts his eyes as Sylus comes up beside him, crossing his arms and leaning his back against the railing instead. "You could also just ask questions, too. More interesting ones."

"I'm not interesting," Zayne deadpans. He's not lying.

That almost gets him a laugh. A huff from Sylus. "Do you want a medal?"

The question almost makes Zayne chuckle. His statement may have been mostly self-deprecating sarcasm, but sometimes he does honestly feel like there has to be some kind of compensation for being the way he is. Maybe he isn't as boring as he thought anymore, with the line of work he is in now. It has led him to the situation he is currently in. At this point, there is nothing else to do but take advantage of it, work with it somehow, even though the logical part of his brain is still trying to make sense of it.

He turns to look at Sylus, resting one arm on the railing.

The boardwalk behind him is empty, save for sounds further down from the shops. Some shitty band is performing way too loudly from one of the bars. Farther down, two other individuals are leaning over the railing, smoking, maybe.

"Are you responsible for the guy they found at the docks?" Zayne asks. He has to ask. He hadn't asked as plainly the other day. Out of all the questions currently looming over them, that is one of the biggest ones.

"No." The answer is simple, but said in a way that makes Zayne automatically believe him from the way Sylus looks at him alone. “Why, you hear from anybody else?”

Zayne shakes his head, no, wishing he hadn’t brought it up. Sylus thankfully doesn’t seem to want to discuss it much further. He glances at his watch and hums. “Come on,” he says, motioning toward the end of the boardwalk with a flick of his chin. He waits for Zayne to push off the railing before he does the same.

They pass one of the bars still pretending not to be closed, neon beer signs burning in the windows. The door is open, a cover band’s rough-edged attempt at Springsteen spilling out. Two men stand just outside it, one with a cigarette pinched between his fingers, the other laughing at something that dies halfway out of him when he sees Sylus.

Not dramatically. Not even enough that someone else would notice.

But Zayne notices.

The cigarette lowers by an inch. The man nearest the door shifts back. Sylus does not look at either of them. He only keeps walking, easy and unbothered, as if space rearranging itself around him is not worth acknowledging.

It is not romantic, not exactly. It is a reminder that being seen with Sylus means being noticed by the wrong people.

Zayne thinks he should find a better question. Suddenly reminded why he hasn’t gotten involved with anybody before. There are plenty of reasons. Because men are not simple. Because the cute ones are straight. Because wanting them has never been the part that confused him. There are rules for this too, even if no one writes them down. You do not assume interest from another man unless you are willing to accept what comes with being mistaken. There is also never having time. Being more comfortable when sex is a script people paid for. Zayne is very good at wanting things quietly. Things folded into routine. Things that don't involve getting into cars with dangerous men at midnight.

“What did you want to be when you were younger?” he asks.

He can see the mild surprise on Sylus's face. Maybe no one ever asked him. It is a simple enough question that people ask others all the time.

“Rich,” he answers.

Zayne hums. “I’m serious.”

“So am I. And what about you?”

“I wanted to be a doctor.”

Sylus snorts, turning around, walking backwards with—hopefully—careful steps. The loose boards thump beneath whatever metal and leather his boots are made of. “That’s cheating, sweetie. You actually did it.”

“So ambition counts as cheating now?” The only thing he was cheated out of was thousands of dollars. Most of which he still owes.

"I didn't say *that*."

Sylus turns forward again as they approach a stall with the grate halfway closed. A paper sign taped to the counter reads CASH ONLY in thick black marker. An older man with thinning hair glances up from his sweeping to give Sylus a look.

“You’re late,” he says, in a tone that has enough affection in the heat of it to suggest he’s said it before.

Sylus merely shrugs as he steps up to the counter, wallet slipping out of the back of his jeans. Zayne watches the exchange, the “how are yous”—the names of all the fried sweets on the sign. Fried Twinkies, fried Oreos, zeppoles, funnel cake, banana splits. It would be enough to make his teeth hurt by just reading it all if he didn’t love sugar so much.

Sylus laughs at something the man behind the counter says. A bag is passed over. The grate is closed.

“He was waiting for you.” Zayne’s observation ends up out in the open.

Sylus only shrugs, as if used to these things. He has already reached into the bag and popped a piece of fried dough covered in powdered sugar into his mouth. He holds the bag out to Zayne, who shakes his head.

“If I eat that, I’ll never sleep.”

Sylus gives him an incredulous look and continues to hold the bag out to him as he chews.

Zayne takes a step forward and peers into the bag. Since no does not seem to be taken for an answer, he reaches in—the smell of oil and sugar floods his senses. He breaks it in half and doesn’t miss the smirk Sylus gives him when he pops it in his mouth.

Zayne can’t help but smile back, mostly because it looks like Sylus is eager for a reaction. And for some strange reason, Zayne does not want to see that smile fade.

“Why a doctor?”

The question almost catches him off guard. And the answer seems simple, of course. His parents were both doctors. But something in the air makes him want to give another answer. Be a little more truthful.

“People need someone who can advocate for them.” This time it’s him who turns to continue walking. A bench sits in front of a pizza place with half its sign burned out, so the window only says PIZ A in red light. Inside, chairs are turned upside down on the tables.

“Women. Children. Babies. It’s not always easy when a bunch of guys in white coats are telling you what’s wrong based on what’s normal,” he says, running his hands along his thighs as he watches Sylus drop down next to him on the other end.

He could go on, but he stops himself. Some people just don't like hearing how admirable someone is.

“And the AIDS research?”

Zayne blinks. “What about it?”

Sylus glances over. “Why that? And don’t tell me it’s because it’s still a big deal."

It is. It isn't just a diagnosis, or a headline either, or something people still lower their voices around in waiting rooms.

“Well. It is a big deal. There are users who are mothers,” he explains. “The babies get it too.”

There have been entire binders on it. Protocols, studies, percentages. The kind of information that makes people feel better because it can be organized. Zayne had believed that once. Not because he was naive, but because medicine depended on the idea that doing the right thing in the right order could change what happened next. Sometimes it did.

Certainly things the man sitting next to him couldn't possibly be interested in.

“And why don’t you work for the hospital anymore?”

*Because nobody listens,* is Zayne’s first thought. But he can’t find the right words to say it out loud. Giving up the thing you dedicated your life to is never easy.

“I don’t want to talk about it," is what he settles on. Muttered quietly as he stares across the planks out to the water again. There is silence between them, save for the crinkle of the paper bag and the lap of water against the pilings.

“Then we don’t talk about it.”

“And what about you?” Zayne doesn’t look at him yet, worried if the face Sylus has on will make him regret asking his question.

“What about me?”

“Why are you the way that you are?” It is the only way Zayne can think to sum it up.

When their eyes meet again, Sylus looks at him as if he is debating asking for a more specific question. The tip of his tongue slides over his bottom lip. Zayne wonders if it tastes like powdered sugar.

“The guy before me was stupid enough not to pay attention to what was going on.” He dips his hand into the bag yet again. “You don’t make mistakes in this business.”

Again, Zayne is reminded of who he is sitting with. Zayne watches the line of his throat as he swallows. It should look stranger than it does. There is nothing visually dangerous about him in this moment, which is the part he is having a hard time with. Just a man eating fried dough on a closed boardwalk. Not even pretending this is out of the ordinary.

“Is that why you won’t leave me alone?” Zayne asks.

Sylus nearly chokes, coughing slightly. “Huh?”

“It would make the most sense.” Zayne’s fingers worry the seam of his pants near his knee, aware that they've already been through this. “Since I’m involved now. I could say the wrong thing. That would be bad, wouldn't it?”

Sylus huffs. "No shit." One long arm comes over the back of the bench as he frowns, tilting his head. "If that was why I brought you here, you would know."

Zayne looks at him. He’s not sure he wants to know how deep this man’s scare tactics go beyond the intimidation game he had already played.

“I already told you,” Sylus adds, his tone playful and matter-of-fact as he reaches into the bag yet again. "You're here because I wanted company."

They sit like that for a few minutes, Zayne taking time to think and indulge in something sweet and absolutely horrible. But here, on a mostly dark boardwalk, sitting next to probably one of the most dangerous men in the city, there’s something particularly calm about the sound of waves and gulls and shitty muffled music from bars.

He has to ask, because suddenly he can’t get the idea of convenience out of his head. If he had never bothered to go to Neon Saint that night out of his curiosity about Skye, he sure as hell wouldn’t be sitting here. Zayne watches Sylus swallow when he looks over again. “Are you interested in me or are you interested because I’m gay?”

He doesn't choke this time, but his brows furrow.

“I like you,” Sylus says. Blunt. On purpose. He meets Zayne’s eyes. He also has powdered sugar at the corner of his mouth now.

Zayne reaches without thinking and swipes his thumb across it. Sylus grabs his wrist, swallowing oddly fast.

Zayne is transfixed when Sylus slips the thumb into his mouth—tongue licking the pad of it before pulling back. Zayne feels heat on the back of his neck, the same hot, now annoying feeling from the other day now low in his stomach.

“It’s late,” Sylus says. “We should go.”

Zayne can only nod. He can still feel the heat from Sylus’s mouth, shoving his hands in his jacket before Sylus gives him more to think about when he is alone.

By the time they make it to the car, the walk has done little for the newly ignited nerve. Zayne exhales through his nose deeply, rolling his eyes when Sylus places his hand on the door handle of the passenger door. But he doesn't open it. A beat passes and he turns toward Zayne.

There is no smirk this time. No line prepared. He only steps close, close enough that Zayne catches the warmth of him before anything else, and dips his head.

It's not the kind of kiss Zayne can explain away as provocation. It's much softer than that. Just a brush of heat against his mouth, carrying the lingering taste of powdered sugar.

Sylus pulls back, ready to open the door. But Zayne reaches out to grab his wrist. It is not a hard grip. It would not hold him if Sylus actually wanted to move.

“What?” Sylus asks.

Zayne does not answer right away. The answer should be simple too. He does not want Sylus to open the door. He does not want to get in the car and sit politely beside him with the taste of sugar still in his mouth and heat under his skin like something with nowhere to go.

He does not want to go back to his apartment. He does not want to say that either.

Sylus’s gaze moves to his face. “Zayne.”

That does something it should not. His name in Sylus’s mouth, lower now, without the teasing shape around it. A prompt.

Zayne’s fingers tighten before he can stop them. “You keep doing that.”

Sylus’s mouth shifts slightly. “Doing what?”

“Starting something.” The words come out too flat and close to accusation.

Sylus turns fully toward him, letting his hand stay caught. "All I did was kiss you."

“Yes.”

“And?”

Zayne stares at him. Of course Sylus would make him say it. Just standing there, waiting, expression calm except for the faint attention in his eyes that Zayne hates he can now recognize. “I don’t know what you expect me to do with that,” he says.

Something in Sylus’s face softens. Not pity. Zayne would have stepped back if it were pity. “Nothing,” he says. “You don’t have to do anything with it.”

“That isn’t better.”

“No?”

“No.” Zayne lets go of his wrist, mostly because he realizes he is still holding it. His hand drops to his side, flexing once. “It just means you get to decide when it happens.”

Sylus is quiet for a second. Behind them, somewhere along the boardwalk, metal rattles as another gate comes down. The sound carries across the mostly empty lot, sharp and final.

Then Sylus leans back against the car door, slow enough that Zayne has time to move if he wants to. He does not.

“That bother you?” Sylus asks.

“Yes.”

The answer comes out before Zayne can make it more complicated.

Sylus’s eyes stay on him. “Alright.” Accepting it. Adjusting. Giving him the space to do something about his own answer.

Zayne looks away first, out toward the darker edge of the parking lot. A puddle catches a smear of pink from a sign behind them. He can hear the bay past the buildings. Not see it from here anymore, but hear it. His whole body suddenly feels too awake for this hour.

“You’re very irritating,” he says.

Sylus laughs under his breath. “I’ve heard that before.”

“I’m sure you have.” Zayne looks back at him, and that is the mistake.

Sylus is still leaning there, one shoulder against the car, hair touched silver-white by the lot light. He is watching Zayne like he is trying not to push and doing a decent job of it. That is the part Zayne cannot stand. If Sylus pushed, Zayne could push back. If Sylus pressed, Zayne could refuse. If Sylus made this into a game, Zayne could name the rules and decide whether he wanted to play.

Instead Sylus waits and Zayne steps closer.

“Are you going to ask?” Sylus says.

Zayne’s jaw tightens. “Ask what?”

“For what you want.”

“I don’t know what I want.”

“Bullshit.” The word lands softly. Almost fond.

Zayne exhales through his nose. He should be offended. Maybe he is. It gets lost under the hotter, more immediate frustration of being known by this man more than he wants to.

Sylus tilts his head, gaze dropping once to Zayne’s mouth before lifting again. “You know enough, don't you?”

"Shut up."

"Make me."

He catches Sylus by the front of his shirt and pulls him, mouth meeting his too hard, teeth catching for half a second. The sound Sylus makes is small and surprised, something Zayne feels more than hears—the satisfaction almost embarrassing.

Then Sylus’s hand comes up to the side of his neck, fingers sliding into his hair, and the kiss changes. Not softer. Deeper.

His body meets Sylus’s against the car. The contact is not much. Chest to chest. One of Zayne’s knees brushing between Sylus’s. The hard line of the door behind him. Still, Sylus reacts like it is more, his fingers tightening once at the back of Zayne’s head.

Zayne feels that too. Every response is information. Every breath. Every shift. Every place where Sylus’s control does not hold perfectly.

Sylus breaks the kiss just enough to breathe. “Zayne.”

“No.”

Zayne realizes what he said a second after saying it. He opens his eyes. Sylus is close enough that his face is difficult to focus on properly, regardless of his glasses that are starting to fog up.

“No?” Sylus repeats.

“I mean don’t talk.”

Sylus only looks at him. Then he laughs. Not loud. Not mocking. Just this low, rough thing that breaks against Zayne’s mouth because Zayne kisses him again before he can finish. He stays where Zayne has put him. Against the car. Hand at Zayne’s neck. Breathing a little less evenly than before.

Zayne’s fingers tighten in his shirt. He pulls back this time, not far. His mouth feels swollen. His breathing is worse than it should be.

“Better?” Sylus asks. The amusement has not disappeared, but it is underneath something else now.

Zayne wants to say no, because no is easier. Instead he says, “Not really.”

Sylus’s thumb moves once against the side of his neck. The touch is almost absentminded. Zayne knows it is not. “What would be better?”

That question should not make his stomach drop or all the thoughts jumble in his head.

Zayne looks toward the passenger door. Then at the back seat window, dark enough to show only a warped reflection of the two of them standing too close.

Sylus follows his gaze.

Chapter Text

Sylus Qin can empty a rooftop with one word.

Sylus Qin can make grown men stop talking just by walking past them.

Sylus Qin is currently hunched in the back seat of a car, fighting with one boot in a way that gives the impression he's done this before.

It comes loose and drops with a dull thud. The second follows faster, and when Sylus looks up, his hair has fallen slightly forward and his breathing is already uneven.

There is no elegant way to cross the back seat of a car, but Sylus does not seem interested in that. One hand catches the back of the seat, and Zayne’s back hits the door. Not hard. Enough to make his breath catch before Sylus’s mouth claims his again; kisses him like he has finished waiting, mouth hot. His hand yanks at the zipper of the windbreaker. Metal catches once, then gives with a harsh rasp; a palm presses flat over his chest. The pressure pins him more effectively.

Zayne’s hands go to Sylus automatically, one in his shirt, the other at his waist, and he feels the hard pull of muscle beneath the fabric as Sylus moves against him. A sleeve catches at his elbow, and for a second they have to stop kissing long enough for Zayne to twist his arms free.

Sylus's hands are less coordinated now. They move over Zayne’s ribs, up under his shirt, then down again as if he cannot decide which part of him he wants first. His mouth drags from Zayne’s lips to his jaw, then to his throat, and the sound he makes there is not amusement. It's want, rough and low.

Zayne catches his wrist when Sylus’s hand slides lower and finds his belt. Not to stop him. Not exactly. His fingers close around warm skin and bone, and the pulse under his thumb is faster than he expects. Eighty-five, maybe ninety.

Sylus stops. His mouth is still close to Zayne’s throat, breath hot there, but his hand goes still.

“Wait,” Zayne says. The word comes out rougher than he means it to, and for one ugly second he realizes Sylus might hear it as rejection.

Sylus lifts his head.

Zayne swallows. His thoughts are too loud and too slow at the same time. “I need you to slow down.”

Sylus’s gaze flicks over his face. “Okay.”

The answer is simple enough to make something in Zayne’s chest tighten. “I don’t mean stop,” he says, because apparently every word needs to be dragged out of him. “I mean I don’t know what you want me to do.”

That finally shifts Sylus’s expression. Not into teasing. Almost fond until his mouth curves. More dangerous. “You don’t know?”

Zayne tightens his grip on his wrist. “Don’t. You know what I mean.”

The smile does not disappear, but it changes shape. It goes lower somehow, rougher at the edges. “I want your hands on me,” Sylus says. That is worse than the touching in some ways. The plainness of it. Sylus watches the words land. Then his voice drops. “I want to get on your lap,” he says. “And I want you to stop looking like you think I’ll break if you fuck me.”

Zayne’s breath catches. He hates that Sylus has found the exact point of it. Not fear, exactly. Not only nerves. The unbearable problem of wanting someone.

“You’re not very patient,” Zayne points out.

“No.”

“Or subtle.”

“No.”

Then, because his brain is cruel and practical and apparently determined to survive this, he says, “You're negative?”

Sylus stills. Not confused. That matters. There is only one thing Zayne can mean. His expression does not change, but something in it sharpens. “Yes."

When Zayne releases his hand, it stays exactly where it was, near his belt. He reaches first this time, not for Sylus’s hand but for the front of his shirt. He pulls him down. The kiss lands harder than before because now Zayne knows what the next steps are. Enough to make them possible.

Sylus catches the arm of Zayne’s glasses and pulls back just enough to take them off. Then his hand returns to his belt. His fingers catch twice. He swears once under his breath, and Zayne feels the word against his mouth before Sylus gets the button open. Cool air touches the strip of skin above his waistband, making his stomach tighten before he can stop it.

Then his hand slips inside. The first touch is through fabric, fingers finding the shape of him with careful pressure that makes Zayne’s breath stutter. His hips shift before he can stop them.

Something about that makes Zayne want to disappear.

Something about it makes him harder.

Sylus hooks his fingers into the waistband, and Zayne’s whole body locks again. The parking lot still exists. The boardwalk still exists. The shuttered seafood place, the dumpster, the bad streetlights. All of it remains outside the car.

Inside, Sylus pulls the fabric down around his hips to get his hand around his cock, and Zayne feels the contact everywhere: the base of Sylus’s palm, the pressure of his fingers. Then his thumb shifts, dragging lightly over the wetness gathered at the head.

Zayne’s hips jerk again, sharper this time. Unable to hold back the sound he makes, something low that he does not recognize.

Sylus inhales. Quiet, but Zayne hears it. Feels it in the way his hand firms around him. “Oh,” he murmurs. "Did you just purr for me?"

Zayne’s eyes snap open. “No.”

Sylus’s gaze lifts, and that faint, terrible curve is back at his mouth. “Hm?”

“No.”

It could not convince anyone.

Sylus’s thumb moves again, slow over the slick head of him, and Zayne bites down on the inside of his cheek hard enough to sting. Sylus watches his face the entire time.

“Okay,” he says softly. “Whatever you say, kitten.”

The word goes through him like a lit match.

Zayne’s hand flies up into Sylus’s shirt, twisting hard in the fabric. Not pushing him away. That is the damning part. He yanks him closer, sharp enough that Sylus has to catch himself with one hand against the seat near Zayne’s head.

The next stroke is firmer, and Zayne’s thighs tense. There is too much of him exposed in this cramped, fogged-up back seat.

Zayne hates him a little. "Don't call me that."

Sylus kisses him, swallowing the next sound. His hand keeps moving, slow enough to be cruel. Zayne can feel himself leaking against Sylus’s palm, making every pass of his hand sound more obscene.

The outside lights blur until the world beyond the glass becomes color without detail: pink, yellow, black body of water beyond all of it.

Zayne’s body feels too visible.

Sylus’s face is close, but his eyes keep dropping to Zayne’s mouth, his throat.

Zayne’s breath shudders. His hand clamps around the back of Sylus’s neck, fingers digging into warm skin beneath loose silver hair. Sylus makes a sound then. Small. Almost involuntary. It happens when Zayne’s other hand slides under his shirt and drags blunt nails over his side, catching skin just hard enough to sting.

The knowledge steadies Zayne in a strange, vicious way. His breathing gives him away. So does the tension in his stomach under Zayne’s palm, the way his mouth parts.

That is something Zayne can understand. Cause and effect. His hand slides higher under Sylus’s shirt, palm flattening over the muscle beneath.

Zayne also understands why this is dangerous. Not because Sylus is stronger. Not because Sylus is bad. Because Sylus can make giving in feel like taking something.

Zayne slides his hand down from Sylus’s ribs to his waist. Lower. Watches his face.

For once, Sylus does not have an answer ready.

The corner of Zayne’s mouth barely moves.

Sylus notices anyway. His voice comes out rough. “Careful, doctor.”

Zayne’s fingers close over him through the fabric. Sylus’s breath catches hard.

Zayne’s own voice sounds strange when he answers. “Stop telling me to be careful.”

Sylus looks at him for one suspended second, and then his smile returns, strained at the edges now. “Then stop being gentle.”

He sits up too fast and nearly hits his head on the roof. One hand catches against the seat back, head dipping at the last second, a sharp breath leaving him that might be a laugh if there were more room for dignity. His hands go to his own belt, quick and impatient. The buckle comes undone. Metal clicks, leather drags, and then Sylus is working his trousers open like the delay has become personally offensive.

Zayne watches him.

He cannot seem to stop.

Sylus shoves the fabric down below his waist, graceless in the cramped space, hips lifting awkwardly off the seat to make room to kick them off. He twists, swears under his breath when his knee hits the door, and kicks one leg free.

Zayne sees the hard length of him first. Then the glint of metal at the head. A bar that catches the dirty white light coming through the rear window.

Of course Sylus would have a piercing there too, something intimate and impossible not to look at. Zayne’s mind empties for half a second, then fills too quickly. Anatomy. Placement. Sensation.

Sylus does not wait for him to process any of it. "Sit up."

It takes Zayne a second to make his body obey. The seat creaks beneath him as he sits upright, back settling against the leather, feet planted as well as they can be in the narrow space once he moves over.

Sylus climbs into Zayne’s lap before either of them has solved the logistics.

Not smoothly. Not after careful staging. One knee presses into the seat beside Zayne’s hip. The other wedges badly near the door. Then his weight settles over Zayne, bare and hot where their bodies touch, one hand braced against the roof because the space is too low.

Zayne catches him by the waist on instinct.

Warm skin. Hard muscle. The bare, vulnerable weight of him there.

Sylus’s cock brushes against Zayne’s stomach, hot and heavy. “There,” he says, breath already uneven. “That’s better.”

Zayne’s throat works around nothing.

Sylus shifts in his lap, and the movement drags a sound out of Zayne before he can stop it. Too low. Too honest. Sylus smiles like he has been handed something sharp. Then he reaches back, groping blindly for the wallet on the rear deck.

He pulls out a condom and drops it on Zayne’s chest. The foil slides down and lands against his stomach.

Zayne looks at it.

Then at Sylus.

Sylus’s smile turns worse. “Put it on.”

Well, obviously.

He tears it open badly, the foil catching before it gives. Rolls the condom down with more care than anything else they have done in the last ten minutes.

Sylus watches the entire time. The attention is clinical in one direction and obscene in the other. Zayne feels exposed all over again.

Then Sylus spits into his own palm and Zayne’s brain blanks again. The sound is small. Wet. Intimate in a way that feels filthier than anything else. Sylus’s eyes stay on him while he does it, like he knows exactly what part of Zayne he has just broken.

He reaches between them.

Not enough.

Zayne knows immediately that it is not enough. No clean, sensible preparation. Just Sylus in his lap, shirt shoved up around his ribs, hair fallen into his face, making an impatient, ugly attempt to make his body ready because apparently the decision has already happened.

Zayne catches his hip. “That isn’t enough.”

Sylus looks down at him, breath uneven. For a second, the smirk almost comes back. He shifts lower, just enough that Zayne feels the first dangerous press of him. Both of them stop breathing for a second. His voice drops, rough and steady in a way his body is not. “Just hold still and let me take what I asked for.”

Zayne’s fingers dig into his hips.

It gives him a job. A boundary. Something precise enough to hold onto. He does not move because Sylus told him not to. If he starts before Sylus has made room for him he does not trust himself to stop at one thrust.

Sylus lines them up.

The head of Zayne’s cock presses against him.

Zayne can feel the heat of him. The tremor in Sylus’s thighs under his hands. The fragile line between almost and actually.

Sylus’s hand tightens on his shoulder.

For once, his voice is not smug.

“Zayne.”

Only his name.

It nearly finishes him before they even start.

Slowly.

Too slowly.

Not slowly enough.

Zayne feels the first push of him giving way, tight and hot and not easy, the spit and condom making it possible but not smooth. Sylus’s jaw clenches. His eyes close. His breath breaks into something thin and rough as he takes the first inch.

Zayne stops breathing.

Sylus’s hand slips to the back of the seat, gripping hard enough that the leather creaks. His mouth opens, but no sound comes out at first. He just lowers himself another fraction, stubborn and shaking, until Zayne’s hands tighten around him hard enough to bruise.

The smirk is gone.

Zayne wants it gone.

He wants to see him like this, stripped of every careful tease. Wants the truth of him in the cramped back seat, taking Zayne because he wanted it enough to make the bad idea work.

Sylus lowers himself another inch. This time the sound escapes him. Low. Broken. Not controlled.

Zayne’s vision nearly whites out. He moves without meaning to, hips lifting a fraction.

“Fuck,” Sylus hisses against his mouth.

Zayne feels the word more than hears it.

Then Sylus takes the rest of him. Lowers himself the final inch with his jaw tight, one hand braced against the seat behind Zayne’s shoulder, breath breaking in short, rough pulls as his body works to take him.

The sensation is too immediate, too hot, too tight, too much. His hands lock on Sylus’s hips, fingers pressing in hard enough to feel bone beneath skin, and he tries to count one breath. Then another.

Sylus dips his forehead near Zayne’s, silver hair falling forward, mouth open as he drags in a breath. For one second he looks almost overcome by what he has done to himself. Then his eyes lift, dark and wet-bright. “You’re just going to sit there?”

“You told me to hold still.”

Sylus gives a breathless laugh, and it breaks halfway when his body clenches around him. “Good,” he says. “You can listen.” He shifts his hips, barely enough to count as movement, and the shallow drag of it punches the air out of both of them. His hand slips against the fogged window, leaving a smear through the condensation. “Fuck me like you know I can take it.”

Zayne’s eyes snap to his. The line is too blunt. Too filthy. Too much like permission.

Sylus's smile turns meaner. “There,” he says. “That got through.”

Zayne moves before he decides to. One short thrust up. Controlled badly.

The sound Sylus makes is low and broken. Zayne freezes for a half second, eyes cutting toward the smeared lights outside, the stupid possibility of someone walking past the shuttered seafood place at the wrong moment.

Sylus catches his jaw and turns his face back. “Don’t look out there,” he says, breath rough against Zayne’s mouth. “Look at me.” He is flushed high across the cheekbones. His mouth is open, wet and already ruined, and the expression on his face isn't smug anymore. Then he moves again. A slow, shallow roll down that takes Zayne deeper and pulls a sound out of both of them. Sylus is louder. Too loud. It breaks in the middle and turns into something almost like a laugh, like he's satisfied.

Zayne’s hands tighten on his hips. “Shut up.”

For one second, he thinks he might actually do it. Then Sylus smiles. “Make me.”

Zayne’s grip digs into him. “Sylus.”

“That’s not making me quiet.” Sylus shifts again, “That’s just my name.”

Zayne should have an answer. He has had answers for men on the phone with less than half this much material. He has said worse things into a headset with a logbook open beside his elbow.

But this is not the phone.

Sylus is in his lap. Around him. Hot and tight and riding him in short thrusts that make Zayne’s whole body fight. He can feel the roughness of it, the way Sylus gives and grips every time he moves. Nothing about it is neat. Nothing about it is safe enough to think through.

Sylus lowers himself again and draws in a sharp breath. “Fuck,” he says, not soft enough. “You feel that?”

Zayne’s jaw clenches.

Then Sylus finds the angle again and makes a sound so raw Zayne’s thoughts shear off at the edges.

“You feel so good,” he breathes, and it is not sweet. It is a taunt, filthy and deliberate, spoken right against Zayne’s mouth. “That’s why you’re scared, isn’t it? You feel what you’re doing to me?”

Zayne’s body reacts before his pride can stop it. His hips jerk up. The sounds that come out of Sylus are exactly the problem. Too honest. Too loud. Too much evidence.

Zayne grabs the back of his neck and pulls him into a kiss to shut him up.

Sylus kisses back like he knows exactly why and intends to make that worse. His hips keep moving. His breath keeps breaking into Zayne’s mouth. Every time Zayne thrusts, Sylus gives him another sound, another little wrecked curse, another rough, pleased noise Zayne has to swallow before it fills the car.

It makes him dizzy. And it also makes him mean.

“Do you ever stop talking?”

Sylus’s smile is felt more than seen. “You liked it on the phone.”

“That was different.”

“No,” Sylus says, rolling down on him with enough force to make Zayne’s fingers seize against his hips. “It wasn’t.” He leans close, mouth beside Zayne’s ear, voice shaking and smug and already half-broken. “That’s what you do, isn’t it? Talk men through it. Tell them what they want to hear. Make them come apart for you in the dark.”

Zayne’s breathing changes.

Sylus laughs softly, but it breaks when Zayne moves inside him. “There it is.”

Zayne’s restraint thins so fast it feels almost physical. Like something loosening under his ribs. The panic does not vanish. The parking lot still exists. The fogged windows still exist.

But Sylus is talking. Sylus is giving him something to answer.

His hand slides up under Sylus’s shirt, nails dragging over sweat-warm skin until Sylus’s rhythm stutters. The dragon on his arm pulls tight when he braces himself, and Zayne watches his face as he does it again, harder. Cause and effect. Pressure and answer. “You wanted this,” he says.

Sylus’s eyes sharpen. “Obviously.”

“No.” Zayne’s voice comes lower, rougher, close enough to the phone-line voice to find the path but too real to sound polished. “You wanted me to see how badly you wanted it.”

He knows what men sound like when a line goes quiet except for breath. He knows how to put a want into words and make it feel like permission. He has spent months pretending that voice is only performance.

Sylus breathes against him, “Careful.”

Zayne laughs once. Low. Not kind. “No.”

Sylus’s mouth parts.

Zayne’s hand tightens on his hip, holding him down as he thrusts up again. Sylus takes it with a rough, broken sound and does not even try to hide it this time. “You told me not to be gentle.”

“I did.”

“Then stop warning me.”

That lands too. Zayne feels it in the shiver that moves through Sylus’s body, in the way his thighs tighten where they bracket Zayne’s lap. His face tries to hold the smirk and fails at the edges.

“Better,” Sylus says, voice ragged. “Fuck, that’s better. See? You can listen.”

“Shut up.”

“No.”

Sylus rides him harder on the word, grinding down with a sound that turns Zayne’s grip bruising. “You feel good when you stop thinking. You know that? When you just shut that pretty head off and fuck me.”

Zayne’s next thrust is hard enough to knock Sylus’s breath out of him.

The victory of that is sharp.

His breath catches when Zayne’s hand wraps around him, slick and hot in his grip. The bar at the head drags under Zayne’s thumb, hard metal against soft heat, and Sylus’s composure fractures instantly. His head drops forward, mouth open against Zayne’s cheek, and the next sound is nothing like the man from the boardwalk.

Both of them make a sound too loud for the car. Zayne catches Sylus’s mouth with his own, swallowing the next one.

It gets ugly after that. Ugly because the careful edge is gone and the rhythm is no longer something either of them can pretend to own. Sylus is using Zayne’s body for leverage and then losing the thread whenever Zayne’s thumb catches the piercing just right.

Sylus breaks first in small ways. A hitch in his breath. A curse swallowed against Zayne’s mouth. His forehead pressed hard to Zayne’s temple. The tightening of his body each time Zayne drives up into him.

Then Zayne says, “Look at you.”

Sylus’s eyes open.

That is the mistake.

Or the point.

Zayne is not sure there is a difference anymore.

The voice comes easier now, dragged raw by the fact that Sylus is close enough to feel every word. “Riding me in the back seat of your car after telling me I was too careful.”

Sylus’s rhythm falters. He huffs. "It's not my car."

Zayne feels the words go through him.

“You couldn’t even wait for somewhere private.”

Sylus makes a sound that is almost a warning.

“You like hearing it?” Zayne asks. “You like being told exactly how desperate you are?”

Sylus’s breath breaks against his mouth.

There.

Zayne feels it land and follows it before the courage disappears.

“You climbed on me like you wanted to be ruined.”

Sylus’s body goes tight around him.

The reaction is immediate.

Too honest.

Zayne’s whole body answers.

“Jesus,” Sylus breathes.

“No.” Zayne’s hand tightens on him. “You don’t get to say things like that and then act surprised.”

Sylus laughs, rough and wrecked. “I’m not surprised.”

“You are.” His hand comes up to Sylus’s jaw, fingers firm, making him look at him. Not rough enough to hurt. Enough to stop that smug mouth for half a second.

“You wanted filthy?” Zayne says. “You wanted me inside you so badly. You wanted me watching. You wanted me thinking about how tight you’d be, how much you’d take, how hard you’d make it to pull out.”

Sylus goes completely still. Only his body gives him away. That tight, involuntary clench. The sudden, helpless sound that catches somewhere low in his chest.

“There,” Zayne says. “That shut you up.”

Sylus stares at him. Then he laughs once, breathless and almost angry. “Fuck you.”

“You asked me to.”

Sylus kisses him hard enough to hurt. He takes each thrust like he chose it. Zayne holds him down and lets himself meet it, lets himself drive up into the tight heat of him while Sylus keeps talking against his mouth because apparently shutting up is the only thing he truly refuses to do.

“Again,” Sylus says, breath breaking.

Zayne thrusts up.

“Again.”

Zayne does it harder.

“Fuck, yes—there. Right there.”

“Quiet,” Zayne warns.

“No.”

Another thrust knocks the rest of Sylus’s answer apart. His mouth opens against Zayne’s. His fingers knot in Zayne’s hair. The noises keep coming now, rough and low and too frequent, and Zayne alternates between swallowing them with his mouth and letting them scrape through the car because each one does something terrible to his nerves.

“You’re close,” Zayne says.

Sylus’s jaw clenches.

“No.”

Zayne’s mouth brushes his ear.

“You sure?”

Sylus shudders.

Zayne understands why Sylus likes that. The denial. The body giving itself away anyway. He understands it and hates him a little for teaching it so well.

“You are,” Zayne says. “I can feel it.”

The sound that follows is too loud for the parking lot, too honest for the dark, and Zayne catches it with his mouth because some last practical part of him remembers where they are. Sylus kisses him open, desperate now, no rhythm left.

Zayne strokes him through it.

Once.

Twice.

The third time, Sylus breaks. His body locks around Zayne, tight enough to tear the breath out of him. Heat spills over Zayne’s hand and stomach, slick and sudden between them, forehead dropping against Zayne’s shoulder as he shakes through it.

Zayne holds him.

Keeping him there while Sylus comes apart in the cramped dark, while his body clenches and pulses around him, while the last of his composure burns out against Zayne’s neck in uneven breaths.

Zayne's whole body is pulled taut, pleasure hovering sharp and unbearable at the edge. Sylus is still around him, still trembling, still too hot and too tight and too much. Zayne’s hand slips from Sylus’s cock to his thigh, fingers dragging through the mess between them. There is no clean rhythm left. Only Sylus’s body taking him, the slick heat of him, the sound of Sylus’s breath catching each time Zayne drives up into him.

Zayne’s composure fractures by degrees. Then he comes hard enough to lose the shape of the car. His hips lift once, then again, helpless and rough, buried deep. Sound tears out of him before he can stop it, low and broken against Sylus’s shoulder.

Sylus catches the back of his neck and holds him there.

Zayne opens his eyes.

The rear window is completely opaque with fog except for the streaks Sylus left with his hand. One clear drag down the glass. Then another.

His throat works.

Sylus shifts slightly, and both of them tense at once.

“Don’t,” Zayne says, voice hoarse.

Sylus laughs against his neck. It is small, almost ruined.

“I wasn’t doing anything.”

“You were thinking about it.”

Sylus lifts his head. There is still a flush high on his cheeks. His mouth curves like he wants to be smug and is too tired to manage the full shape of it.

Chapter Text

Emilio's Computer Repair smells like solder and old plastic.

Sylus is sitting on the desk. One knee tucked up under his chin, the other hanging loose, boot heel knocking against the drawer. Atlas's rolodex is digging into his hip. He doesn't move it.

"—and the seats, Sylus. Do you know what leather does when you—"

"I don't want to hear it."

Luke stops. Not because he's finished. Because he knows the difference between being heard and being told to stop. He drops into the chair near the top of the stairs, arms folded, boot heel kicking the floor once before he catches himself and goes still.

Sylus doesn't look at him. His eyes stay on the television, or near it. Argentina's number ten is on the screen — some kid with a face too young for the legs on him.

The car. Luke's car. Which Sylus had taken across the river to a closed boardwalk and then fucked someone in the back seat of like a teenager who couldn't wait long enough. He doesn't regret it. He should. It was sloppy. The parking lot wasn't as empty as it should have been, and Sylus hadn't checked because Sylus had been too busy—

The number ten scores.

"Shit," Atlas pulls the screwdriver out of his teeth and points it at the screen like a weapon. "Mira eso—no, wait—" He squints at the replay, then turns in the direction of the stairway, yelling. "Did you see what he did?"

From somewhere beneath them, muffled through the floor, Emilio's voice rises for the first time in twenty minutes.

"I have eyes, Sebastian."

Atlas doesn't stop grinning. He doesn't look up from the worktable, where something half-disassembled sits cooling under the soldering iron. His attention splits between the guts of the machine and the match highlights, which he watches with the kind of investment most people reserve for religion. At some point he says: "Some PI came in last week. Looking for help with something."

Luke shifts in his chair. "You take it?"

"Told him I'd think about it. Call him back."

The match cuts to another replay. Argentina's number ten again.

They are all waiting. Kieran and Mephisto should have been here by now. Mephisto had gone to the morgue. How he got in was not a question Sylus had asked and was not a question Mephisto had offered to answer. It was possible he knew someone on the night shift. It was possible he picked a lock. It was possible he walked through the front door looking like exactly what he looked like and nobody stopped him because nobody ever stopped Mephisto. Kieran had gone with him because Mephisto alone in a morgue was a liability.

The body at Pier 26. Daniel Mercer, or whoever he had been before someone decided he wasn't anymore. The news was always careful in the way that meant they didn't know anything yet. Mephisto would know something. Mephisto always came back with something, even if it was the wrong something.

On the television the match cuts to a commentator who talks too much. Atlas swears at him.

Sylus presses his knee tighter against his chin and lets his mind go where it shouldn't.

The boardwalk. Powdered sugar. Zayne's mouth.

He exhales through his nose.

Zayne is not useful. Zayne is a former doctor who works nights on a phone sex line and folds his life into neat compartments, and Sylus has made that worse by existing near him. The ad on the body is in police evidence. The name Noah is sitting behind a paywall at a phone company that Sylus was considering acquiring for exactly the kind of leverage that has now become a problem.

And Sylus had still fucked him in the back of Luke's car.

He doesn't regret it. He should. It was sloppy. It was the kind of decision that people make when they are not thinking clearly, and Sylus thinks clearly. That is the entire point of him. He thinks clearly when other people panic. He does not lose control of himself or situations, and he had done both in a parking lot behind a closed seafood restaurant.

Maybe he thought too highly of himself.

He closes his eyes for half a second before Atlas shouts at the screen again.

"Penalty, you fucking moron! I swear—"

He's cut off when the bell on top of the door to the shop chimes from downstairs. From below, Emilio's voice. Flat and uninterested with his mumbled greeting.

Kieran comes up first. His hair is damp. He doesn't explain why. Mephisto comes up behind him, coat on, rings catching the fluorescent light. He looks the same as he always looks, which is to say he looks like he just came from somewhere he wasn't supposed to be. He is wearing a ring Sylus has never seen before.

Emilio says something else from below that Sylus doesn't catch. Doesn't matter. Emilio talks to everyone the same way. It's the voice of a man who has lived in this neighborhood, and this country long enough to stop being impressed by the people who move through it.

Emilio's is one of maybe two dozen shops that should have closed years ago. The laundromat next door. The bodega on the corner. The auto repair place three doors down that doesn't advertise. The barbershop. The woman who sells flowers out of a cooler she stole from a restaurant. All of it kept liquid by money that doesn't come from banks.

Sylus doesn't own these places. He doesn't need to. He needs them open. He needs the people who run them paying rent, buying supplies they can almost justify, hiring kids who almost don't need the work but take it anyway; the alternative being watching their mothers count change. Onychinus is not a gang the way the papers like to draw gangs. It doesn't sit at the top of a pyramid. It sits underneath the city holding the floor up. Cash moves through Emilio's register that Emilio never touches. Repair orders come through that aren't repairs. A delivery truck idles outside the bodega at three in the morning and nobody calls the police because nobody on this block calls the police, the last time they did it took them forty minutes to show up and they left with a kid in the back seat who was out by morning.

When they take a cut, the shop stays open. When someone else takes a cut, the shop closes and the block gets one more dark window. That's not charity. Sylus knows what it is. It's infrastructure. It's the reason Emilio looks up when Mephisto walks in and goes back to whatever he was doing without asking why.

Emilio was already working with the guy before Sylus—the one who was stupid enough not to pay attention. He had kept Emilio on because he needed a computer guy who didn't ask questions. Emilio had been good at that then. He is good at it now. The difference is that Sylus doesn't need him for the same reasons, and Atlas was younger and knew what he was talking about.

Most people on this block don't know Sylus's name. They know the shape of him — the cars, the clubs, the men who move when he tells them to — but not the name. Not the face. The ones who do know don't use it out loud. La sombra. And this isn't the only neighborhood that benefits. That's the difference between feared and hated. Feared means people step out of the way when you enter the room. Hated means they move toward the exit. Nobody was dumb enough to do that around him. Only select few, and that never ended well.

Mephisto drops onto the windowsill without asking. He reaches for the pack of cigarettes Sylus had down and takes one as if nobody is looking.

"And?" Sylus asks.

Mephisto lights the cigarette. The lighter clicks twice before it catches. Then he reaches into his coat and pulls out a stack of Polaroids. He fans them face-down on the desk beside Sylus's knee. The film is that kind that makes everything look like it was photographed underwater. "Report wasn't done," he says. "File was locked. Couldn't get into the office."

"So you took pictures?"

"I took pictures."

Sylus picks up the first one. The body is on a metal table under bad light. The photo is too close and slightly blurred at the edges, but the center is sharp enough. Daniel Mercer—or whoever—lies on his back, eyes closed, skin gone the wrong color. The water damage is obvious.

He picks up another. The leg. The gunshot wound from the dock.

Another photo is the wrists. Marks. Dark, set deep. Someone bound his hands. That is not a cleanup. That is a holding.

The courier. The courier who lost half his inventory to Sylus and vanished into the dark. That's motive. That's time. That's anger.

Mephisto is turning something over between his fingers, catching the light. A ring. Gold. Thin. The kind of thing that sits loose on a dead person's hand.

"Where did you get that?"

Mephisto glances down at his own hand like he forgot it was there. "Table."

"Which table."

"Other table." Mephisto shrugs. The shrug says obviously and don't worry about it at the same time. "It's the morgue."

Sylus is still looking at the ring. Gold. Thin. Old setting. The kind of thing that sits in a jewelry box on a dresser for thirty years before someone decides to wear it. Not valuable enough to fence. Not cheap enough to be costume. Personal. The kind of thing that belongs to someone.

Something clicks.

The jewelry from the yacht. The bracelet with the flower clasp, the unset stones, the watch engraved For Aveline, always. Personal property. Traceable. And the paperwork. The paperwork Kieran pulled from the second satchel before everything went sideways. Receipts. Insurance copies. Auction sheets. Provenance. The paper trail that says where those goods came from and who was expecting them.

Sylus looks up from the ring.

"Has anyone looked at the paperwork from the yacht?"

Kieran is still standing near the stairs. He doesn't move, but his weight shifts slightly. "No."

"Why."

"Because you didn't tell me to."

Sylus stares at him. Kieran stares back. The silence is not hostile. It is functional. Kieran inventoried it. Kieran stored it. Nobody told Kieran to read it, so Kieran didn't read it. That is how Kieran works. That is why Sylus keeps him close. "That wasn't my question," he says.

"It's in the box on Halsted," Kieran says.

"Go get it."

Kieran say ask how long he'll be or whether someone should come with him. He takes his hands out of his pockets and goes down the stairs. The bell on the shop door chimes once. Then nothing.

Sylus looks at the Polaroids again. He doesn't need to look at them to know what they say. But he looks anyway. The leg wound. The belt marks. The wrists. "Who's working the case," he asks.

Atlas doesn't look up. "Cain."

Mephisto takes a drag, holds it, then exhales toward the ceiling. "Shen's old partner."

Atlas pauses, looking up. "Wait."

He reaches into the mess on the table. He shifts through a pile of receipts, a manual for something, until he finds what he's looking for. A small notepad. He flips through two pages and pulls pulls out a business card. White. Cheap print. "Shen," he reads from it. "Xavier Shen." He holds it up. "Private Investigations."

Sylus pushes himself off the desk and snatches the card. He looks at it, then at Mephisto.

"He almost arrested me once," Mephisto says.

"He wanted phone logs," Atlas says. "For a client. Cheating husband. He said she had a feeling the guy was using a phone sex thing.."

"From where?" Sylus asks, though Atlas really doesn't need to answer. Sylus looks at the card. Then he looks at the Polaroids. A PI who used to be a cop, who almost caught Mephisto once. He looks at Atlas. "He's not looking into a cheater."

"I wasn't going to call him back," Atlas says.

"You are. And you'll tell him you can't help him. Then direct him to Elysium—tell him you know a guy there."

Atlas exchanges a glance with Luke. "You want me to tell him to go to Elysium," Atlas says, slowly.

"I want you to point him there and let him think he found it himself." Sylus puts the card in his pocket. "Let him feel smart. Give him something boring enough to follow."

Atlas nods.

Mephisto is watching from the windowsill. His cigarette has burned down to the filter. His eyes are on Sylus, and there is something in them that isn't quite concern but sits in the same neighborhood.

Sylus doesn't say anything. He gathers the Polaroids back into a stack.

On the television, the match is over. Argentina wins. The commentator is talking about the number ten like he's already someone. Atlas turns the volume down but doesn't turn it off.

Sylus sits back on the desk.

Chapter Text

Zayne gathers the photographs into a stack. He aligns the edges against the tabletop with two precise taps—the kind of gesture that belongs to a man who once spent hours closing incisions—then holds them out without looking directly at him.

Sylus takes them.

The apartment has gone quiet again. Refrigerator humming. Traffic dragging along the wet street below. Somewhere beyond the beige walls, plumbing knocks once and stops.

Zayne reaches for the lamp.

Sylus catches his wrist before he can turn it off.

The reaction is immediate. Not fear. Irritation sharpened by the fact that Sylus has touched him without warning, the tendons in Zayne's forearm pulling taut beneath his fingers.

"Let go."

Sylus does. "You expected me to call."

Zayne's hand drops, but the lamp stays on. The hard yellow light catches the damp ends of his hair, the open collar of his shirt, the flush he hasn't quite managed to suppress at the hinge of his jaw. Nothing in his face changes. That's almost impressive. "No."

"You tried to shut the door before I told you why I was here," Sylus says.

"You arrived uninvited. I was busy."

"Getting dressed?"

"Yes."

"For something that isn't a date?"

Zayne's eyes narrow. The crease between his eyebrows deepens—the same one that had appeared over the photographs, except this time it isn't professional. "You seem very interested in where I'm going."

Sylus smiles before he can stop himself. It surprises him. Not the reaction, but the speed of it. This is a man who is angry at him for the right reasons and trying very hard not to show that the anger is shaped like something else.

Zayne notices. "Don't."

"I didn't say anything."

"You don't have to."

Sylus slips the photographs inside his jacket. They rest against his chest beside the business card he took from Atlas's notepad. "You said people generally call after dates," he says.

"I said I was under that impression."

"The boardwalk was a date?"

"No."

"The sex?"

Zayne's jaw flexes once beneath the skin. "I'm angry because you like to show up when you need something."

The words land closer than Zayne probably intended. Sylus does not let the impact show. He has needed things from a lot of people. He has shown up for most of them. The difference is that he is still here, and he did not have to be. "I should thank you."

"You can thank me by leaving."

"That isn't much of a thank-you."

"I don't want your money."

Sylus pushes away from the table and stops in front of him. Close enough to see the faint unevenness in Zayne's breathing. Close enough to smell the soap on his skin, the same clean scent that had been on the boardwalk, in the back seat, against his mouth. "I wasn't offering money."

Understanding reaches his face slowly. First suspicion. Then heat rising beneath the severe expression he is trying to hold in place — a flush that starts at his collar and moves upward, darkening the line of his throat. It's beautiful. Familiar in a way that makes Sylus want to be considerably less kind than he intended.

"I have to leave," Zayne says.

Sylus glances toward the clock over the kitchen entrance. The minute hand has moved twice since he arrived. "How long?"

"Soon.."

"Twenty minutes?" Sylus asks,

Zayne says nothing.

Sylus steps closer instead of waiting for an answer. His hand lifts, not to Zayne’s waist this time, but to his face—fingers brushing along his jaw, thumb settling just beneath his chin. He tilts Zayne’s head slightly, studying him. The other man goes still beneath the touch, breath catching.

“Fifteen?” Sylus asks, voice quieter now.

“You need to go.”

Sylus leans in, close enough that his breath ghosts against Zayne’s ear. “Still not an answer,” he murmurs.

Zayne’s hand comes up, catching Sylus’s wrist, though not with enough force to pull him away. “You seem very concerned with my schedule.”

“I’m deciding how much time I have.”

“For what?”

Sylus’s thumb traces once along Zayne’s jaw before he dips closer again, lips nearly brushing his ear. “To thank you properly.”

Zayne exhales through his nose. He does it slowly, probably because he has learned that breathing before speaking prevents homicide. He wonders how many times Zayne has done it in his life. How many times it has worked.

"Someone is waiting for me at the airport."

"Then we shouldn't waste time."

"There is no we involved in this."

A strange position for someone who had just spent several minutes arguing about how long a man was supposed to wait before calling after sex.

Sylus lets his hand fall from Zayne’s jaw. His fingers trail briefly along the open edge of his collar before dropping lower. Zayne's hand comes down around his wrist, but he doesn't redirect it. The grip is firm. Not defensive int he slightest. The kind of hold that says I am deciding whether to let go rather than I am trying to stop you. Sylus can feel the pressure of each finger, the slight adjustment of Zayne's thumb against the inside of his wrist.

"You are incredibly irritating," Zayne says.

"I wish you would come up with new lines."

Zayne's grip tightens. His knuckles press against the tendons of Sylus's wrist. There it is again. Anger, embarrassment, want—all of it crossing his face too quickly for him to file away. He is trying. The effort is visible, just like the other night in the car. Sylus feels the answering pull low in his own body, sharp enough to make the decision for him.

He lowers himself to his knees. The carpet is thin. His kneecaps press against whatever hard surface sits beneath it. He does not adjust.

For once, there is no delayed reaction from Zayne. No careful processing. No breath drawn through the nose before speaking. He looks down at Sylus with immediate, naked disbelief. "What are you doing?"

Sylus rests one hand against Zayne's thigh. The muscle is tense beneath the denim. He can feel the warmth of Zayne's skin through the fabric. "Thanking you."

"This is not an appropriate way to—"

"I know."

His fingers find Zayne's belt buckle, but stops when Zayne catches his hand, looking up. The hard yellow light catches the angle of Zayne's face/ The damp ends of his hair, the way his shirt hangs open to expose the center of his chest. He could stop this. They both know it. One pull, one word, one step backward, and Sylus would go. He has done enough things he should not have done this week to know where the line is.

He waits long enough to make the choice visible. Yet, Zayne's hand remains over his, and very slowly loosens his fingers. "You have ten minutes," he says. The words come out measured. Clinical. The voice of a man who has learned to manage crises and himself.

Sylus doesn't wait. He pushes Zayne's shirt up, baring the flat plane of his stomach. His thumb brushes across warm skin—softer than he expected, though he is not sure what he expected—as he leans in and presses his mouth just beneath Zayne's navel. The muscle jumps under his lips. A sharp, involuntary contraction that Zayne cannot hide. Sylus squeezes his thigh and kisses his way down the thin trail of dark hair, mouth moving slowly; he feels the tension in Zayne's abdomen shift with each inch until his lips reach the edge of his waistband.

"Breathing is a good idea," he murmurs against his stomach. One finger slips beneath the leather of Zayne's belt. Sylus frees the buckle, undoes the button, then draws the zipper down. The sound is loud in the quiet apartment.

"Sorry."

Sylus pauses and looks up. Zayne is staring at the opposite wall, jaw tight, both hands hanging uselessly at his sides.

"Did you just apologize?"

"I was holding my breath."

"I noticed." Sylus catches the waistbands of Zayne's jeans and underwear together and pulls them down just far enough to expose him. Already half-hard. The sight sends a low current of satisfaction through him. Zayne has been trying so hard to appear inconvenienced by all of this. As though his body had not decided differently before Sylus even touched the zipper. As though the irritation had been separate instead of the same thing wearing a different face.

Sylus wraps one hand loosely around him. Zayne inhales sharply. This time he remembers to let the breath out.

"Better," Sylus says.

He strokes once, slow enough to feel Zayne harden further in his hand. The weight of him shifts, thickens. Sylus watches the way Zayne's stomach tightens, the way his hands curl at his sides, the way he is still trying very hard not to react. Then he leans in and presses a kiss to the head.

Zayne's hips shift toward him. Barely anything. A fraction of movement that Zayne stops almost as soon as it begins. The discipline is impressive. The failure of it is better.

Sylus lifts his gaze. "You can move."

"I know."

"You're very still."

"I'm trying not to hit you in the face."

The practical answer startles a laugh out of Sylus. It comes out low and rougher than he expects, vibrating against Zayne's skin.

Zayne looks down at him, deeply unimpressed. "You find that funny?"

"I find you funny."

Before Zayne can respond, Sylus parts his lips and takes the head into his mouth, causing Zayne to nearly go rigid above him.

Sylus holds him there, tongue moving slowly beneath the crown. Salt gathers against it. He draws back only far enough to circle the tip before sinking down again, taking another inch. The weight of Zayne settles against his tongue, heavy and warm.

A strained breath leaves Zayne. His hand comes down to Sylus's shoulder. Fingers dig in once before finding their grip.

Sylus settles into an unhurried rhythm, one hand working what his mouth does not take. He gives Zayne time to feel each pass of his tongue, each slow withdrawal, each return of wet heat. The hand on his shoulder tightens.

Zayne's head has tipped back. His eyes are closed, his mouth parted around breaths he can no longer pretend are controlled. The line of his throat is exposed. The severe expression has come apart at the seams.

Much better.

Sylus takes him deeper. Zayne makes a low, interrupted sound. A word that never forms. His hips push forward before he catches himself, pressing closer to the back of Sylus's tongue.

Sylus steadies him with a hand against his thigh and keeps going. No teasing this time. No conversation. Just the steady movement of his mouth and hand until the muscles beneath Zayne's shirt begin to tense. Each breath comes sooner than the last. His fingers leave Sylus's shoulder and slide into his hair. Tentative at first. Careful enough to be irritating. The touch of a man who is used to handling things precisely and does not know how to handle this.

Sylus hums around him. The vibration pulls a rougher sound from Zayne and makes his grip close properly. Fingers tightening against Sylus's scalp, palm pressing flat against the back of his head. Then he tests the hold with a small pull, guiding him forward by less than an inch. Sylus allows it, loosening his jaw.

The next push is firmer. Not rough. Not yet. But intentional. The difference between a man who is uncertain and a man who has decided to stop being exactly that.

Heat unfurls low in Sylus's stomach. He presses his own thighs together, suddenly much more aware of the position he has chosen—kneeling at Zayne's feet, mouth full, Zayne's hand buried in his hair. The arrangement should make him feel diminished, but it doesn't. He has spent years making people move when he enters a room. He has spent longer than that building the kind of stillness in himself that other people mistake for calm. He does not kneel. He does not give ground. He does not let other people set the pace. And yet, here he was.

Sylus draws back slowly, letting his tongue trail along the underside until the head slips from his lips. He keeps stroking him while he catches his breath, his jaw aching faintly, saliva wetting his knuckles.

Zayne looks down immediately. His cheekbones are flushed. His damp hair has started to curl faintly at the temples, the same way it had at the boardwalk. The open shirt frames the rapid movement of his chest. "Why did you stop?"

Sylus's thumb passes over the slick head. "I wanted to look at you."

Zayne's grip remains in his hair. "You've looked."

"That didn't sound like a request."

"It wasn't."

Sylus smiles and lowers his mouth again. Zayne's hand tightens as Sylus takes him down, swallowing around him as far as is comfortable. His eyes water faintly from the pressure. He ignores it and repeats the movement, finding a pace that makes Zayne's fingers curl against his scalp. The clock ticks somewhere behind them, but Zayne's breathing grows louder beneath it. His hips begin to move with Sylus's mouth. Small, shallow thrusts. Each one pressed short, each one corrected. Zayne is still trying to be careful.

The thought sends a sharp spike of something through Sylus's chest that he does not have a name for. So he just tightens his hold on Zayne's thigh and encourages him forward. The next thrust presses deeper. Sylus's throat works around the intrusion, and Zayne swears above him.

"Fuck."

Sylus feels the word more than he hears it. It travels through Zayne's body and into his own. Zayne's other hand joins the first, cupping the back of Sylus's head without forcing him. Holding him steady. Keeping him exactly where he wants him while Sylus works his tongue beneath the length filling his mouth.

The certainty of it makes Sylus's pulse jump. He had expected hesitation. Awkwardness. Zayne thinking through every movement. Instead, Zayne learns quickly. Observes. Adjusts. Uses what Sylus gives him. He hollows his cheeks on the next withdrawal and lets his hand twist around the base. Zayne's abdomen tightens sharply, hips faltering. Sylus recognizes the change and slows, drawing the moment out. Zayne's grip becomes firmer, his breathing turning uneven as Sylus holds him at the edge and not letting him cross it.

Then Sylus pulls away. Cold air replaces the heat of his mouth, leaving Zayne staring down at him in disbelief. Sylus keeps his hand moving, barely. His thumb traces beneath the head, providing enough contact and nothing more.

"You said you were in a hurry," he says.

Zayne blinks once, as though language has become difficult. "I am."

"Someone is waiting at the airport."

"Yes."

Sylus slows his hand further, which makes Zayne's fingers tighten in his hair. "Don't."

The word is immediate. Not embarrassed. Not softened into a question. Sylus looks up at him. His jeans sit open around his hips. His cock is flushed and wet in Sylus's hand, his composure reduced to the grip in Sylus's hair and the command hanging between them.

Sylus likes him this way. Possibly too much. "Don't what?"

Zayne's expression darkens. "You know exactly what."

"I'd rather hear you say it."

"You're wasting my time."

"You were the one who gave me ten minutes."

"And you have spent half of them talking."

Sylus glances pointedly at the clock. "You've been keeping track?"

"I always keep track." Zayne gives his hair a sharp pull.

The sting travels over Sylus's scalp and lands low in his body, heat pooling behind his navel. His hand stills on Zayne's cock. For a second, they only look at one another—Sylus on his knees, Zayne above him, the yellow light catching them both. Then Zayne draws Sylus's head back slightly, exposing the front of his throat. The movement is controlled. Deliberate. Nothing hesitant left in it. His fingers press against the back of Sylus's neck, thumb settling into the hollow beneath his skull.

"Finish what you started," Zayne says.

Sylus's smile comes slowly. "Yes, doctor."

Zayne's eyes narrow, but Sylus lowers his mouth before he can answer and takes Zayne deep in one smooth movement. The hands in his hair lock into place. He lets Zayne set the rhythm now, following the guidance of his hands and the movement of his hips. Each thrust remains measured, but Zayne's control has narrowed to this single point.

Sylus gives it willingly. His jaw aches. His eyes sting. Saliva gathers at the corners of his mouth and slips over his knuckles where his hand remains wrapped around the base. His own arousal sits heavy and untouched, a low heat that he ignores because this is not about that. This is about the way Zayne is coming apart. This is about the sound Zayne makes when Sylus presses his tongue flat against the underside of his cock. This is about the fact that Sylus is on his knees in a beige apartment and does not want to be anywhere else right now.

Zayne’s thigh tightens beneath Sylus’s hand. His breathing breaks apart, the careful rhythm of his hips begins to slip. One thrust carries him deeper than the others. He immediately tries to draw back, but Sylus’s hand closes around his thigh, holding him steady. He looks up and swallows around him.

The reaction tears through Zayne. His fingers tighten painfully in Sylus’s hair as his hips jerk forward once, then again.

Sylus keeps his mouth around him as Zayne comes—his hand moving slowly over the rest of him until Zayne’s grip loosens and his hips twitch from the overstimulation. Only then does Sylus let him slip from his mouth. He sits back on his heels and wipes the corner of his mouth with his thumb.

Zayne remains standing in front of him, one hand still resting in Sylus's hair. His breathing is audible. His shirt hangs open, disordered. The line of his mouth has gone slack.

The apartment settles around them again. Refrigerator humming. Pipes ticking behind the wall. The clock continuing its indifferent march toward wherever Zayne is supposed to be.

Zayne finally lets go, his hands dropping to his sides.

Sylus looks up at him. "You're welcome."

Zayne's breathing is still uneven, but the flush is fading, his jaw tightening again. The composure is being reassembled, like a structure that has been knocked down and is learning to stand again. He reaches down and pulls his clothing back into place. The zipper catches once. He swears under his breath and tries again. The buckle clicks. The button fastens. The belt loops through.

Sylus stands. He is close enough now to fix the shirt button Zayne has wrong. He reaches for it, but Zayne catches his wrist.

"I can do it." Zayne looks down at the misaligned buttons. A fresh flush climbs into his face. More embarrassed. "Get out."

Sylus slips his wrist free. He does not step back immediately. "Call me after your date."

"It isn't a date."

"Then you should have no trouble calling."

Zayne moves—opens the apartment door and holds it. Sylus stops beside him, close enough that Zayne's shoulder brushes his chest.

"You're still angry," Sylus says.

"Yes."

"But less."

Zayne looks at him. The crease between his eyebrows has returned, but it sits differently now. Less severe. More tired. "Leave before I correct that."

Sylus steps into the hallway. The door closes behind him with considerably more force than necessary. He stands there for a moment, tasting Zayne on the back of his tongue, his knees still aching from the carpet.

He decides that counts as an answer.

Chapter Text

This fucking summer needed to end.

With July rolling in, that particular day was so brutal Xavier had considered hiding out in the fridge Jeremiah kept flowers in—because God forbid the man pay for air conditioning in his own apartment.

He lay awake in the guestroom he had been occupying for months, stretched out across the heavy quilt with his arms and legs spread like it was going to do anything useful. At least he wasn’t stuck to himself yet.

The sounds of the block come through the open window. A car honking. Another playing music too loud one street over as the engine revs. A vagrant shouting at something down by the bodega. A dog and cat going at it in some alley like they both have a point to prove.

Emilio’s was a bust of a lead, and Nero was full of shit for pointing him in that direction. The kid at the repair shop finally called him earlier.

“Sorry, boss,” he had said, though he hadn’t sounded that sorry. “Two hundred and I’ll do it. Or you could go see this other guy I know. Works uptown.” Then he had gone on to name one of the fancy clubs uptown his friend frequented every weekend. One Xavier might have been familiar with—if he had two hundred dollars to spend.

With a sigh, he rolls over and turns the lamp on. He lay there for a moment on his side, head tucked into the crook of his elbow, before reaching for the Moleskine on the nightstand.

Two hundred dollars.

What a load of horseshit.

He lifts himself onto one elbow and opens the notebook to the page with the folded advertisement photograph tucked inside. His thumb taps the edge of the paper once, twice. Then he swings his legs over the side of the bed and stands, taking the notebook with him into the hall.

The kitchen is mostly dark except for the oven light. Xavier sets the notebook on the table and moves to stand in front of the sink. Across the street, the laundromat sign glows bright blue.

WASH. DRY. FOLD.

How would the phone line prove anything? What was there to find?

The writing on the cheap paper could be exactly what it looked like. Some pervert made himself a note so he remembered a certain operator. Some lonely idiot who wanted to call again and didn’t trust himself to remember.

But if it had been planted, like Xavier suspects, then it wasn’t just evidence. It was direction. A distraction from a killer who may or may not be connected to the missing young men. The thing was, so far there was no motive. At least not one he could see easily. Perhaps Monroe and the rest of the police department had other ideas from Pier 26, but there was no way he would ever be able to get that information easily from them.

Television makes serial killers neat. Easy to follow if you watch long enough. They leave signatures, collect trophies, write letters to the cops, give the whole thing a shape a person can point to and say: There. That is what this is.

Real life is not that generous.

The closest the city ever got, at least while Xavier still wore a badge, was the Crescent Park strangler, and even that had been less elegant than the papers made it sound. Three women in nine months, all found within walking distance of the same bus route, all with cheap gold chains missing from their necks. It had looked like a mystery until it didn’t. A boyfriend knew a boyfriend. A pawn shop receipt had a name on it. The man cried before they even got him into interrogation. That was usually how it went. Ugly and stupid until the lights come on. 

Real life gives you files that almost line up. A body in the river that can be explained away if no one looks too hard. Men gone missing with no one benefiting enough to make sense of it. No revenge angle. No jealous husband. No obvious connection except that they were easy for the city to misplace once it had decided not to care.

Xavier stares at the laundromat sign until the words blur.

He turns from the window and crosses into the living room, where the phone sits on the end table beside the couch. He drops the Moleskine onto the cushion and flips open the phone book, bending over it in the weak light from the kitchen until the numbers come into focus. He lets his finger rest there for a second.

 It is a stupid thing to do at this hour. He knows that before he dials. No one useful is going to answer the phone at two in the morning. At best, he gets a bored duty clerk. At worst, he gets someone who remembers his name later for all the wrong reasons. He dials anyway. The rotary clicks back after each number. Xavier watches it return, the receiver pressed against his ear. The line rings once, twice, three times, and then connects with a small shift of static.

“Federal Bureau of Investigation.” The voice is male, older, and flat with the kind of fatigue that has gone past irritation.

Xavier glances down at the Moleskine. “Evening. I’ve got a request, or a question, depending on how generous you’re feeling.”

There is a pause on the line. Paper moves somewhere. “Name?”

Xavier looks toward the hall. Then back to the notebook.

“Jeremiah Qiu,” he says. “Linkon City PD. Badge number two-seven-four-nine.”

Another pause. “What kind of request?”

“I’m trying to determine whether a pattern we’re seeing is local.”

“That’s going to need more than one sentence.”

“Yeah,” Xavier says, “I figured. For the last three years, I—the department has had a run of disappearances. Young men, mostly. Late teens to twenties. Different neighborhoods, different jobs, different backgrounds. Some turn up dead. Some haven’t turned up at all. On paper, they don’t connect.”

“Are these active investigations?”

“Some.”

“Some?”

“Some are active. Some closed. Cleared.”

The man on the other end does not react to that. Xavier has to respect him a little for it.

“What makes you believe they’re connected?”

That is where the whole thing almost falls apart. Xavier can see the pattern when he is alone with it. But saying it out loud makes it smaller. It makes him sound like every asshole with a theory who has watched too much Law & Order.

“They’re wrong,” he says.

“Wrong how?”

Xavier’s mouth tightens. “You work for the FBI. Can’t you figure it out from what I just told you?”

The silence that follows is unamused. Then the man says, “Nope.”

Xavier closes his eyes. “I’m sorry,” he says, though he doesn’t mean it. “That was cute in my head.”

“I’m sure it was.”

He exhales and rubs at the back of his neck. “People disappear for a reason, yeah?. There’s usually something. Money. Drugs. Sex. Domestic. Revenge. Somebody panics, somebody profits, somebody talks. These don’t give me that. You know?”

“You’re saying there’s no motive.”

“I’m saying I—we can’t find one.”

“That isn’t the same thing.”

“No,” Xavier agrees. 

The man’s voice changes slightly. Not warmer, exactly. More attentive, like the night has suddenly gotten more interesting to him. “And you believe this may be the work of a serial offender?”

There it is. Said by somebody else, it sounds worse. “I’m trying to rule that out.”

“You have reasons to believe this crosses state lines?”

“I don’t know. That’s why I’m calling.”

“If you’re with Linkon City PD, this should come through your department liaison.”

“Yeah,” Xavier says. “That's me.”

The line goes quiet. He waits for the man to ask the obvious question. For the lie to work. Why is a case coordinator is calling an after-hours federal line in the middle of the night? 

The man does not ask. Maybe he is too tired. Maybe he has heard worse lies. Maybe he knows exactly what this is.

“Mr. Qiu,” he says, and Xavier hates the name in someone else’s mouth. “If your department has documentation, it can be submitted to the field office for review. Timelines, reports, photographs, names, last known locations, autopsy information, anything relevant.”

“Review,” Xavier repeats.

“Yes.”

“And then what?”

“If someone believes it warrants follow-up, someone will contact the department.”

Shit. Fuck. Too late to back out.

Xavier laughs once under his breath and looks down at the phone cord twisted around his fingers. “That’s a hell of a system.”

“It is the system available to you at two-seventeen in the morning.”

“What’s the name?” Xavier asks. “The person I’m sending it to.”

The man is silent long enough that Xavier thinks he might hang up. Instead, there is another rustle of paper.

“Address it to the Violent Crimes Squad, attention Special Agent Jenna Jiang.”

“Jiang,” Xavier says, reaching for the pen tucked into the notebook.

“Include department contact information. Fax number."

He writes down a note to ask Jeremiah how to use the fax machine downstairs in the flower shop. “Sure thing. Thanks.”

The silence opens wider this time as he hangs up. He thinks of Jeremiah asleep down the hall, or not asleep, depending on how much the old floorboards have betrayed him. He thinks of what Jeremiah will do if the FBI calls the police department asking for a senior case coordinator who requested a violent crimes comparison under his name.

Probably homicide. Possibly justified.

Nothing in the apartment moves except the fan pushing hot air through the dark. The refrigerator hums. Another car passes outside. Somewhere down the block, the same cat starts howling again.

Xavier stands beside the couch with the phone book open and the notebook beside him. He has not gotten an answer. Maybe that is the answer.

He picks up the Moleskine and brings the picture of the advertisement closer to his face, mouth twisting as he reaches out for the phone again.

“This is stupid,” he says quietly.

No one answers, which is probably for the best.

He dials before he can talk himself out of it. The rotary clicks back after each number, louder this time because he is listening for it. The line catches, rings once, then gives way to a bright recorded voice that sounds too awake for the hour.

“Welcome to Confidential Connections. Callers must be eighteen years of age or older. Charges are one dollar and ninety-nine cents per minute and will appear on your telephone bill. If you do not wish to be charged, please hang up now.”

Xavier looks at the receiver. 

The recording continues, cheerful and merciless.

“To speak with the next available operator, press one. To request a specific operator, press two. To hear tonight’s featured voices, press three.”

He presses two; follows the rest of the prompts to get the person he is looking for.

Xavier sits and leans back against the couch, the cord looped once around his finger. A stretch of canned instrumental music comes through, thin and tinny, something with a saxophone. Then there's a click.

“Good evening.”

Xavier almost wants to laugh. It was easy to tell why this guy was in the advertisement just by his voice alone. Smooth and low, without sounding rehearsed. 

It settles somewhere low in his abdomen before he can decide whether he likes it. No forced enthusiasm, or exaggerated warmth. It makes Xavier consider hanging up.

That feeling is absurdly familiar. He's thirteen again, sitting cross-legged on a friend's bedroom floor while somebody's parents' phone sits in his hand, the cord stretched under the closed door. Too much Mountain Dew. One horror movie too many. They're all wired. Somebody dials a number from the back of a phone book because it seems funny until somebody answers.

He clears his throat, “Hi.”

So this was Noah.

“First time?”

Xavier tries to focus on the question asked of him. Shakes his head and reminds himself to focus. He had called because the advertisement had led him here. A phone number that had no business turning up in a murder investigation.

“Calling?" he says. “Yeah. First time.”

“And what brings you here tonight?”

The question is gentle. Open-ended. The kind of thing that could mean anything or absolutely nothing. Xavier has asked enough questions in enough rooms to recognize the technique. Give someone space and they'll fill it with whatever they're actually thinking about.

He doesn't fill it.

“Just curious, I guess.”

“That’s fine.”

There is no judgment in Noah's voice. No impatience. He's heard it before and found it acceptable. 

Xavier shifts against the couch. “Busy night?”

“It varies.”

Xavier waits for more. Nothing comes. Noah doesn't elaborate. Doesn't offer. 

“Do people usually ask for someone specific?” Xavier asks. “Or do they just take whoever's available?”

A pause. Not long. Just a beat.

“Some callers know who they want.”

Xavier files that away. A note written beside a number on cheap pink paper. Someone who wanted to call again, or someone who wanted to make sure someone else did. 

His free hand rests on his thigh. He hasn't noticed until now. “You work regular hours, or—” 

“I'm here tonight.”

That's all Noah gives him. A door that looks open until you try to walk through it. Some Stephen King bullshit. 

Xavier rubs his thumb along the seam of his shorts. The apartment is too hot. The receiver is warm against his ear. He can feel sweat at the base of his skull, in the crease of his elbow, in places that have nothing to do with the voice on the phone.

“Do people call without knowing what they want?” he asks. “Or is that just me?”

The question comes out wrong. Too honest. He hears it after it's already gone.

Noah doesn't answer right away. When he does, his voice has shifted. Not softer. Closer.

“Sometimes people call because they don't know what they want. That's not the same as not wanting anything.”

Xavier's hand presses flat against his thigh. He doesn't move it. “Yeah,” he says. “I guess that makes sense.”

“You sound tense.”

It isn't a question. It's an observation. Quiet and direct. The kind of thing that makes Xavier's jaw tighten.

“I'm fine.”

“I didn't ask if you were fine.”

He opens his mouth. Closes it. He can hear Noah breathing. The kind of breathing that belongs to someone who has learned to make his own calm contagious.

“Are you nervous?” Noah asks.

Xavier's hand moves higher on his thigh. He notices and stops, yet he doesn't move it away. “Nah.”

The man on the other end doesn't push. Like the clock isn't running. Like Jeremiah isn't paying a dollar ninety-nine a minute while Xavier sits on his couch and lies to a stranger.

“Do you want me to keep talking?” He asks.

The question is the kind of thing an operator probably asks a hundred times a night. But something about the way he says it—the low, unhurried cadence, the slight pause before talking—makes Xavier's throat go dry.

He should say something. Anything. A joke. A question about the business, about how many operators work here, about whether anyone's ever called asking about a missing person, about whether the name Noah means anything to anyone besides the people who dial this number at two in the morning. 

Instead he sits there, the back of his neck warmer than the rest of his body. 

“I should go,” he says.

Noah doesn't try to stop him. Doesn't ask why or offer a reason to stay. Somehow that's worse than if he'd pushed. “Goodni—” 

Xavier hangs up. 

The receiver clicks into the cradle. The cord hangs loose, twisted from where he'd wound it around his finger. He stares at the phone like it had just done something to him. Give him another chance to sound normal, maybe. 

He learned almost nothing. But Xavier has asked enough questions in enough rooms to know what it looks like when someone doesn't rattle. Noah hadn't hesitated. Hadn't stumbled. Hadn't given more than he meant to. The redirection had been seamless.

Xavier picks up the Moleskine from the cushion beside him. The pen is still tucked into the spine. He opens it to the page with the advertisement. NOAH is written in his handwriting from when he found the name on the website.

Beneath it, he pauses as he tries to think of how to write exactly what he had gathered aside from Noah holding steady and not rattling easily. 

He closes the notebook and sets it on the table beside the phone. Lets out a slow exhale, relaxing against the back of the couch, wishing he could sink into it, the cushions are old and soft in the wrong places. He reaches for his cigarettes and remembers they aren’t there. 

“Fuck.” The word comes out quiet. Xavier scrubs a hand over his face, then lets it fall. 

His palm lands against his thigh again. Same place as before. Higher maybe. This time he notices, leaving it half a second longer before dragging it away. 

The room is too hot. The whole apartment is sweating. His shirt sticks between his shoulder blades. None of that had to do with Noah, he thinks as he tips his head back against the couch and shuts his eyes. 

No face or body. No real name. Just a voice smooth enough to make every ordinary question sound like it had touch beneath it. The breathing on the other end, steady enough to make Xavier aware of his own, among other things. 

Are you nervous? 

“No,” he mutters to the empty living room. 

In his head, there’s no response. Xavier can imagine the silence now, the kind that waits until a man fills it himself. 

His hand rests on his lower abdomen now, fingers twitching. His mind supplies the rest, the careful pressure over the place his own hand keeps finding. Moving lower. Making him hold still for it. No rush. That’s the worst part. 

Pretend control because nothing has happened yet. 

His fingers move lower, just a little.  

Wait. 

He opens his eyes again. Shakes his head, mumbles “fuck me,” to himself.

The phone sits beside him still, mute and smug. 

Xavier laughs once before he leans forward, elbows on his knees, pressing both hands over his face again. Just until the darkness behind his eyes is only darkness again. 

Chapter Text

Out in the living room, the television plays muted Fourth of July coverage from a city that looks too happy to be real. Celebrations continue throughout the weekend. A newscaster with a smile. No murders, thankfully.

He is not going because he wants to see Sylus.

That's what Zayne tells himself as he stands in front of the bathroom mirror, buttoning his shirt with more attention than the task requires.

He is going because the situation requires clarity. Because Sylus involved him in something dangerous from the moment he entered his space.

He is going because ending something in person is more precise.

And because Caleb is apparently not blind. Picking him up at the airport had only proven Zayne wasn't as unreadable as he made himself out to be. Or maybe Caleb has known him long enough to pick up on subtle clues when he himself wasn't subtle. He had simply leaned back in the passenger seat, one arm loose over the door, and asked, "So, who is he?"

It was said as if it was a diagnostic category. Something written in a chart. An order for testing.

Zayne hadn't answered him. Not with the truth, anyway. He had deflected.

Back in the living room he turns the television off before turning towards the phone. Thinks about calling again. He has already listened to the answering machine enough times to hate it personally.

This is Skye. Leave a message.

And then the pause and the beep. Then nothing. It's started to sound less like a man and more like a parrot trained to deny him access. Mocking him.

Zayne can organize every part of this situation into categories. Possible. Unknown. Unsafe. He can draw lines between them. He can take the facts and remove the feeling (most of the time) easily in order to look at a problem.

Not the sex, though the sex is a problem. Not the mouth, though the mouth is also a problem. Not even the dead guy, which should be the largest problem that proves Zayne's internal hierarchy is currently compromised.

By the time he finds parking downtown, he is already irritated.

Outside, the rain has softened into a steady drizzle. The kind that looks harmless until you've been walking in it for twenty minutes.

And by the time he reaches Neon Saint, it's worse—having walked three blocks because the nearest spot was not close at all. His socks are damp. Every parked car shines along the hood and roof.

The line outside the club wraps from the front doors, along the brick, around the corner onto the next stretch of sidewalk beneath a canopy of umbrellas. The sign burns pink over the entrance, smeared by rain. Water runs from the edge of the awning in a steady bright line.

Zayne stops beneath the shallow shelter of a closed storefront and looks at the line. Barely moving. He exhales. "Well," he says under his breath. "Shit."

He should leave. But the thought of the answering machine one more time makes something behind his eyelid twitch.

Zayne wipes the rain from his glasses on the shirt under his windbreaker and puts them back on. Then he sees the alley.

Not fully. Just the cut between Neon Saint and the building he currently stands in front of. Shadowed but not dark. A narrow awning extends over a side door, keeping the rain off two men smoking, leaning against brick.

One is narrow and black-clad under a coat too heavy for July. The other is taller, broad through the shoulders, with dark-red brown hair catching a strange color from the sign. Amber-eyed in the neon spill.

Zayne looks from them to the line. Then back.

The sensible thing would be to just join the line and wait.

The sensible thing would also be to leave.

Zayne steps into the alley. Both men look at him. Not startled. He stops just outside the awning they are under. Rain rolls off onto his hair, his shoulders, the back of his neck. "You work here?"

The black-clad one studies him. All beady-eyed, like a bird watching from a windowsill. "Why?"

"Because you're standing beside a staff door."

The taller man lowers his cigarette and leans slightly away from the wall to look at the door, as if just realizing it had STAFF ONLY on the front in white letters, wet in the light from the dulling bulb over it.

The black-clad one speaks again. "Could just be standing." He gives a tiny smile that's almost as creepy as the demeanor.

"You aren't." Zayne says.

The smile stays, which makes Zayne even more impatient. He was already annoyed before he left the apartment.

"I need to know if Skye is here."

That changes something. The taller man glances towards the door again. Then he looks Zayne over, slow and impersonal.

"Are you the doctor?" The shorter one asks.

Something surfaces before he can stop it. A hallway that smelled like antiseptic and burnt coffee. A chart with someone else's initials added after his, overriding the plan he'd written at four in the morning. She's stable enough. Foster placement can wait a week. She needs continuity, not another handoff. Nobody had asked what he thought twice.

"No." It's not exactly inaccurate. But it is the truth, in a way.

The man's smile shifts. "Fast answer."

"It was an easy question."

The taller man shakes his head as he exhales smoke, nudging the other on the shoulder as if he finds this all funny. On the outside, Zayne figures it probably does look like that.

"I need to speak with him."

"Do you have an appointment?" The black-clad one crushes his cigarette beneath his boot, pushing away from the wall.

"No."

"A death wish?" The taller one is still amused, which makes Zayne's jaw tighten. He doesn't answer and the man finally laughs.

"Come on," the other says, already moving toward the door. He opens it and holds it open. Music pours into the alley.

"Who are you?" Zayne asks.

"Mephisto."

"That's not a real name."

"And you're not a real doctor," the man says flatly, waiting for Zayne to step through the threshold.

Inside, the corridor is narrow and dim. The door closes behind them, cutting off the rain. The bass from the heart of the building grows thicker. Moves through the walls instead of the air, dull and constant.

The idea is absurd. Zayne follows a man who calls himself Mephisto through the back of a club to find another man who calls himself Skye and break up with him—is that what this was? All because his calls were getting ignored. 

Technically it was more than that, but it was the first thing that came to mind.

The music thins slightly once they reach the top of a narrow stairwell. The walls here are dark red, almost brown where smoke has stained the corners. Mephisto slows. That's when he hears the voice through the closed door. Sylus.

"—then you should have had an answer before you walked in here, Viper."

The words are sharp enough to be heard through the wall and over the muffled music from the club. But somehow it isn't shouting. He is speaking like his tone and choice of words have become a weapon.

Another male voice answers just as defensively. "I told you I would look into it."

"No," Sylus says. "You told me you were handling it. Those are different things."

"I can't just pull a name out my ass based on suspicion."

"It would be the smart thing to do."

Viper's voice comes back lower. "Watch your mouth. You know that wasn't me."

Inside the office, Sylus laughs once. Dry. Like the whole thing is amusing—or stupid. Viper says something too low for Zayne to catch. But it's clear Sylus does by the way his voice rises.

"Then you better explain to me how a man with no clearance ended up trying to pawn jewelry from a yacht and killing a guy."

Zayne feels his stomach tighten. His hand curls once at his side. He glances towards Mephisto. The man has one ear angled towards the door, head tilted as if he's focused. A laugh from another room further down the hallway. Loud and drunk and female. Having a much better time getting lost in a spot she wasn't supposed to be in than he was. His fingers dig into the skin of his palm as he remembers the photographs.

Maybe he should ask what they are doing. Maybe he should just leave. Go back out in the rain and back to his car and go home. Forget about it. Call the police. He had already thought about it before, so maybe this was a sign to just do it.

No. He stands there and continues to listen. In a way they almost sound like children fighting over who won a game. A very expensive game. One with bodies.

"You don't want an explanation," Viper says. "You just want someone to be punished to prove a point. I know how this works. You didn't see it coming and now you look stupid because you went down there and dropped that stupid advertisement they found on the guy."

Then it's silent except for the club still moving beneath them. Music through the floor. Rain ticking faintly against some window Zayne cannot see. Mephisto smirks.

Inside, Sylus says, "Stop talking."

Two words. Soft enough that Zayne almost wishes he had raised his voice instead, because then he might have a better idea of what would happen next.

"What?" Viper says. "That's not what this is? Somebody put your little phone ad in a dead man's pocket and suddenly everyone has to bleed because Mr. Skye fucked up and got embarrassed?"

Something hits the door hard enough to make Zayne flinch.

Not a gunshot. A sharp crack against wood, then a clatter as whatever it is drops to the floor inside the office and skids.

Mephisto exhales once through his nose. Then he chuckles quietly. Inside, there is no sound for a second.

Then Sylus says, very clearly, and loud enough to echo without yelling, "Fuck off."

Mephisto is already moving, stepping back and clearing the doorway like he's done this before and knows exactly how much room it needs.

The door swings open. Viper comes through first, already past talking, reaching out to grab a fistful of Mephisto's sleeve and haul him toward the stairwell before the man can get a word in. Neither of them looks at Zayne. Neither of them seems to register he's there at all.

Which leaves the doorway open. Sylus standing in it, one hand braced against the frame, chest rising too fast for someone pretending to be composed.

His eyes land on Zayne.

"What—"

He stops there. Whatever was still burning off from the fight with Viper drains out of his face at once, replaced by something far more careful. He presses two fingers to the bridge of his nose, exhales slow. He goes back into the office and doesn't hold the door.

Zayne doesn't follow him in at first. He stands there because it wasn't clear if he was invited in or not. After a moment he follows him anyway, pushing the door open with his palm before it can close on him.

The stapler lies against the baseboard. It's a few feet wide of anything it could have hit. Papers have slid halfway off the desk with it. The music from downstairs comes up thin, off by a beat from what Zayne can still feel in his own chest.

Sylus rights the chair Viper must have kicked back. Doesn't sit in it. Just squares it to the desk and lingers there with his hands on the top of it.

"Go home," he says.

"No."

Zayne stays by the door. His hand finds his sleeve, drags the cuff down over his knuckles. He looks back at the stapler instead of Sylus, and leans over to pick it up. When he finally steps further into the room, it's to gather the loose papers from the floor, stacking them against his knee before standing and setting them on the desk. The stapler goes on top of them.

"You threw a stapler at him." Not a question.

"I should have thrown the letter opener." Sylus reaches for the pack of cigarettes on the desk, and then turns to sit on the edge of it.

It's hard to read his expression. He is staring at the floor like he is focused on something else besides Zayne. Or maybe just ignoring him.

Zayne watches him not-look at him for a second. "That's not funny."

"It wasn't supposed to be." He pulls the cigarette loose but doesn't light it, just turns it between two fingers, and Zayne recognizes the motion now. Hands needing a job, same as his own a minute ago with the papers.

"Why him?" Zayne asks, even though he already had a guess based on what he had heard from the hallway. He's not really sure why he asks—he isn't here to be a therapist. Or maybe Sylus doesn't need one if he's going to throw office supplies to let off steam.

"He said something I didn't like."

"Do you throw things at everyone who says something you don't like?"

Sylus's jaw works once. "Do you want to find out?"

"Do you threaten everyone with the same question?"

Sylus's mouth curves, but it's not warm. "Why are you here?"

Zayne tries his best to keep a straight face. Keeping composed is usually easy for him, but he finds he has to work at it now. His jaw tightens. "This isn't working. I don't want to be involved—"

"You're already involved," Sylus says, before he can finish.

"No, I mean—you have to stop this." His hand finds his sleeve, cuff dragged down over his knuckles. "I won't tell anyone anything. We can forget we even met and move on."

"Move on." Sylus turns the cigarette over again, doesn't look at him. "You say that like it's a phone call. Hang up, dial someone else."

"That's not what I meant."

"You'd have to forget every good decision you made this summer too. Might be a wash." He finally looks up. "Try again."

Zayne opens his mouth. Nothing arrives to fill it.

His hand finds his sleeve. Cuff dragged down hard enough to bunch at the wrist. His other hand curls at his side, nails finding his palm, four points he can locate exactly when nothing else will hold still long enough to be located.

He looks at the stapler on the desk instead of at Sylus. It doesn't ask him anything.

"You were never going to let me walk away in the first place, were you?" he asks. "You’d never let me leave. Because your guy is right. You'll be embarrassed."

Sylus goes still. Not before finally looking over at Zayne, crimson eyes narrowed. It's more of a glance before he sets the cigarette back in the pack. "That's what you think I am."

Not a question. Zayne doesn't answer. He doesn't know how. But that's because he does not know if Sylus is right.

"Get out," Sylus says. Cold. Quiet.

Zayne's throat works. "That easy?"

"You think I'd lock the door on you, and you're asking if it's easy?" Something raw cuts under the edge of his voice now that makes Zayne's skin prickle—not in the good way. "Get out, Zayne. Door's right there. Nobody's stopping you. I don’t know who gave you that idea."

Zayne blinks, and luckily Sylus gives him time to process the words before he understands what they mean. "Don't turn this around on me. You gave me that idea because you keep showing up."

He doesn't wait for a reply. He leans over the desk, and his hand closes around the letter opener sitting near the edge of it. Takes it the way he took the stapler off the floor. Sylus doesn't move to stop him.

Out the door in the smoke-stained, narrow hallway, he doesn't look over his shoulder to see if he's being followed.

Chapter Text

The floor-to-ceiling windows of Elysium show what the city looks like from fifteen floors above West Liberty Street, settled on top of one of the most expensive hotels in the area. All lights against the black backdrop of evening. Below, downtown traffic is still moving, even at this hour.

Xavier sits at the curved bar along the back wall, the sides a deep burgundy and midnight blue. Under low ceilings, bathed in amber and purple light, it's obvious he doesn't belong here—regardless of how much smoke fills the room. The ice cube in the rocks glass in front of him takes up most of the glass.

"Macallan eighteen or Lagavulin sixteen," the bartender had told him. Xavier picked the first one. The cost didn't matter, because fate had apparently decided to go fuck this, again. He wasn't even going to pretend he was broke anymore.

He was in the wrong place, that was his first thought. But no—he was in fact underdressed, and sitting here because of a tip from some kid who fixed computers. As if this all didn’t seem hopeless enough.

That, and Monroe is here. She'd walked in sometime after he did. She's on the other side of the lounge, visible past a nearly empty dance floor.

Smooth jazz really got people going. Xavier almost chuckles to himself.

Her hair is down tonight, long enough to reach her hips. Working. Her blazer is thrown over the barstool she's leaning against. The taller, silver-haired man next to her is showing her something on a clipboard. She nods along, asks questions Xavier can't hear. Probably related to her current investigation. She's allowed to do this—ask people for things, with a much better chance of getting an answer than he ever does.

Xavier wonders who the guy is, though. Handsome enough. Probably charming. Funny. Monroe likes men who can make her laugh.

No. Don't get like that.

He shoves the thought out. It's not the place for it. It was never the place for it. They were done. Over with. He tells himself that every time he sees her since—

Pulling out a cigarette, he watches Monroe turn around over the flame of his lighter, putting her jacket back on. He takes the first drag and nearly throws himself off his seat, turning his head toward the wall.

It’s a dumb move and he knows it. Who wears jeans to some rich person club?

“Got a cigarette?”

Xavier doesn’t look over at her as he pats the front of his jacket. “Sorry, all out.”

“Liar.”

His hand stops.

Fighting the urge to sigh, he looks over at Monroe leaning against the bar. Close enough that he could reach her without trying. She doesn’t look surprised to see him. She looks like she’s been ready to deal with him from across the room.

But she also looks different in this light. Shoulders relaxed for once in her life of always keeping her back straight. Softer, almost.

“Mo.”

“Don't call me that.” She’s not looking at him so much as reading him—jacket, drink, the cigarette he put in the ashtray that's now burning down. It wasn’t that much different than the way she looked at him the other night at the pier, or the body of Daniel Mercer, for that matter.

“Who’s that?” Xavier tips his glass across the room, at the man she was talking with who is talking to one of the cocktail waiters. “Boyfriend know you’re bumming smokes off other guys?”

“Nobody you need.”

It comes out fast. She must hear it too, because her jaw sets like she’s annoyed at herself for it.

“So you’re just following me?”

“I was here first,” Monroe says.

“Doubt it.”

She doesn’t answer him. Glances once back toward the man she left standing at the hightop, then back at Xavier. “Why are you here?”

He hears the badge in her question despite not actually seeing it on her.

“Same reason as you, probably.”

“Cut the crap.” Her hand comes down on the top of the bar. Hard enough that Xavier can feel the slight vibration through the wood, but soft enough that it can’t be heard by the bartender or the other patrons sitting on barstools.

The index finger of the same hand points at him—right in the face. She might as well have pulled her gun out. It would have been funnier.

“How did you know to come here? I could have you arrested for interfering.”

“Top secret.”

Monroe leans in closer. The scent of her perfume—something spicy and floral—cuts through the haze of cigarette smoke. Her eyes narrow into slits.

"Top secret is for people with clearances, Xavier, not for washed-up bastards playing detective in five-hundred-dollar-a-night hotels."

“Did a bird shit on your head this morning?” The ice in his glass has shrunk down some. He tips it in a circle so it clinks against the sides.

Monroe used to hate that he could do that, keep the anger going by getting under her skin. She still hates it, judging by the way her jaw sets before she decides what to say next.

“No,” she says. “I just have to look at you.”

“Ouch.”

“You started it.”

A waiter squeezes past behind her carrying a tray of empty glasses, and Monroe shifts closer to the bar to let him through. If anything, she’s closer than the conversation calls for now. Close enough that Xavier can feel it radiating off of her.

He’s about to open his mouth again and tell her about the tip he had gotten—about the weird kid at the computer shop right in the middle of a neighborhood that didn’t look like it needed that kind of business.

She doesn't give him the chance.

“Forget it. I don’t need a whole performance tonight.”

The way Xavier goes still isn’t dramatic, only lasting for a second before his fingers wrap around the glass again, just for something to hold onto. But she was right. He’s been doing the deflecting since before she even knew him.

Behind them, the song changes. The piano drops out beneath a low saxophone, and somebody near the windows laughs too loudly at something Xavier misses.

“Right.” He picks up the glass and sets it back down without drinking from it, sliding off the barstool again and patting his coat down. “You made your point.” He doesn’t look at her, focuses on double-checking for his wallet. It shouldn’t take as long as it’s taking.

“Heard it the first time, too.”

“Xavier.” Monroe catches his sleeve as he steps past her. Just his sleeve, like she’s careful about how much of him she’s allowing herself to touch. “Wait. Just—hold on a second.”

He stops. Doesn’t turn all the way back around. Listens to her exhale.

“I’m sorry. That came out wrong,” she says.

“Did it?”

Monroe’s hand falls away. She looks toward the window. The headlights from traffic drifting between buildings like rivers.

“It’s fine,” Xavier says.

It’s not, but he is so used to pretending that it doesn’t matter anymore.

Only it did matter—sort of. But there were parts of it he couldn’t blame her for. That was the problem.

Monroe nods. “It’s not your jurisdiction.”

“Noticed that when they took my badge,” Xavier says.

He’s still not looking directly at her. His eyes land on the opposite wall near the lounge entrance, at a door that has no identifying marks. A guy slips out, keeping to the wall. He gives the room a lazy once-over before patting his pocket.

Monroe sighs. “I’m not trying to put you off from your work. But you and I both know you can’t just—”

“Hold on.” Xavier holds up a hand. “Look.”

She does, squinting in the low light until she spots him. Maybe she picks up on it too, or maybe she’s just sick of Xavier. Either way, she walks through the small crowd of people up to the man who is now leaning against the wall.

But as soon as she gets her badge out, he bolts.

Stupid. The scared ones always run.

“Hey—” Monroe yells after him and takes off, her hair flying out from behind her. Heads turn in her direction as she follows the guy out of the entrance.

Xavier immediately has questions. The first being who the fuck this son of a bitch is. The second is how the fuck he expects to escape the police, but Xavier always wonders that about people who run.

By the time he blinks next, he’s already followed Monroe and forgotten the third question.

Monroe loved to chase the big guys, and Xavier could never quite figure out the reasoning, even after working with her for however many years until recently. She’s down the hall from the lounge, banging at the elevator door that closes on her. Her finger jams at the button, the arrow overhead flashing downward.

Her eyes flick to Xavier. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

He’s not sure who the statement is directed at.

She doesn’t wait, kicking off the kitten heels she was wearing—the look on her face full of regret for not wearing flatter shoes.

Xavier follows her into the stairwell, invested now.

“Cut him off!” he calls after her.

“No shit!” she shouts back up at him, her voice echoing off the concrete.

Xavier doesn’t understand how she thinks she’s going to beat the elevator.

Four floors down, she bursts out of the fire door into the hallway. She nearly takes a woman with a room-service tray down with her.

"Jesus—"

“Sorry.” Monroe catches the edge of the tray before the glasses go over, keeps moving, and looks toward the elevators.

Xavier reaches the landing behind her and braces a hand against the doorframe. Four floors is enough to remind him that he has spent more time sitting in cars than running lately.

The hall is quieter than the lounge upstairs. Closed doors. A housekeeping cart abandoned near the ice machine. Somewhere behind one of the rooms, a television audience laughs at something Xavier cannot hear.

The elevator indicator above the nearest set of doors changes from nine to eight.

Seven.

"Come on," she mutters.

"You plan on doing this all the way down?"

She points at the number without looking at him.

Six.

Then it stops.

The elevator doors open with a soft chime. The man from upstairs steps into the hallway.

He sees Monroe and his whole face changes.

It is not guilt exactly. Xavier has seen guilt. Guilt can make people cooperative. Sometimes it makes them cry. Sometimes it makes them talk too much.

The man turns and runs.

Monroe is already after him. “Police! Stop!”

Xavier swears under his breath and follows.

The man cuts around the housekeeping cart hard enough to send a stack of folded towels sliding to the floor. Monroe clears it. Xavier does not. His shin clips the metal corner and pain shoots up his leg.

The hall ends at a service door with a narrow wired-glass window. The man hits the push bar with both hands and disappears through it. Monroe reaches it two seconds later.

"Don't—"

A dull impact follows.

When Xavier pushes through the door, Monroe is against the wall.

Not down. Not even close. But one hand is already up at her mouth, and the man is backing away from her with his right arm still half-raised.

The sight takes Xavier somewhere else before he has time to think about it. He catches the man's wrist before the fucker can slip away again.

Turn the arm. Step in. Take the balance before the other person realizes that is what you are doing.

The man jerks backward, swears, and Xavier almost loses him because the floor here is linoleum and his dress shoes have no interest in cooperating.

Monroe recovers first. She grabs the man's jacket at the shoulder and drives him forward into the cinderblock wall.

"Hands where I can see them."

"Get the fuck off me."

"Hands. On the wall."

He tries to pull away again. Xavier pins the man's forearm between his shoulder blades.

"You heard her."

The man twists enough to look back at him. "Who the fuck are you?"

Xavier considers it.

“Tired."

"Xavier." Monroe says his name without looking at him.

He shuts up.

The service corridor smells like bleach. A red EXIT sign glows at the far end.

The man looks at it too.

Monroe must feel him shift. "Don't."

He does anyway.

It lasts maybe two seconds. A bad attempt at throwing his weight backward, one shoe sliding out, his shoulder clipping Xavier's chest. Xavier catches him around the middle and Monroe hooks a leg behind his ankle.

All three of them go sideways into the wall.

"Motherfucker," Monroe says.

That gets Xavier's attention. She almost never swears when she is working.

The man's cheek hits the wall.

"Are you done?" Monroe asks.

"I didn't do anything."

"That wasn't my question."

He stops struggling. For the moment.

Xavier lets go carefully as Monroe reaches for her cuffs. His hands feel strange once they are empty. He flexes them once and steps back.

There used to be a point where this part meant something different. The little shift in everyone around you once the person was contained. The body comes down from adrenaline. He used to know exactly what came next.

This is not how private investigation is supposed to work. Then again, Xavier has never found much use for the phrase supposed to.

Monroe turns the man around. There is a red mark beginning across her left cheek. Xavier looks at it. She notices.

"It’s fine."

"I didn't say anything."

"Your face did."

Monroe guides the man toward the wall again and starts a quick search. Jacket pockets first, pulling out his wallet. Sides. Waist. Still breathing hard from chasing after him.

"Name."

"You got my wallet."

"You left your name in your wallet?”

"Dennis."

"Dennis what?"

He says nothing.

At the same time, Xavier sees something small near the baseboard. Clear plastic.

He crouches before he thinks better of it.

"Xavier."

Too late.

He picks it up by the corner.

Monroe's expression changes immediately.

"I swear to God."

"It was on the floor."

The packet is smaller than his palm. Inside are two little zip bags dusted white at the seams and four pressed tablets, pale blue, each stamped with something that might be a star.

Dennis turns his head.

"That ain't mine."

Xavier looks at him. “Didn't ask."

"You planted that shit."

"I just watched it fall out of your coat."

"No, you didn't."

"Dennis," Monroe says.

"What?"

"Stop talking."

Xavier almost smiles.

Almost.

Monroe takes the packet from him using the handkerchief she pulls from her pocket. She looks back at Dennis and reaches for the radio clipped under her jacket.

"Cain to dispatch. I need a unit at Elysium Hotel. One in custody. Possible narcotics, assault on an officer. Send somebody up through the service elevator."

A burst of static answers her. While she gives the location again, Xavier steps away from the wall and looks back toward the door they came through.

The corridor is empty.

Nobody has followed them down.

That bothers him more than it probably should.

Hotels are machines. Somebody is always pushing a cart somewhere. A man runs through an expensive lounge with a detective after him, and somehow the building has gone quiet around it.

Could be luck. Most things are, until they happen twice.

Behind him, Monroe says, "Dennis Harper."

Xavier turns to see she has the wallet open.

"There we go. Thirty-four. Local address." She looks at Dennis. "Was that difficult?"

"You people always this friendly?"

"Only after we get hit."

Xavier looks away before she catches his expression. He hears her start the search again.

Then stop.

"Don't move."

Her hand disappears beneath the back of his jacket. When it comes out, she is holding a compact black pistol by the grip.

Monroe ejects the magazine, checks the chamber.

"Loaded," she says.

Dennis shrugs as much as the cuffs allow. "Got a permit."

"We'll check."

"It's legal."

"Great. Then you can tell the desk officer all about it."

"Wasn't reaching for it."

"Also great."

The service elevator arrives three minutes later.

Two uniformed officers step out. One of them Xavier recognizes vaguely, though the name takes a second.

Rojas.

The other one is younger and looks at Xavier with the uncertain expression of someone who knows his face but cannot remember from where.

“Don't encourage him," Monroe says. 

The younger officer nods like that explains absolutely nothing.

Rojas takes Dennis by the arm. "What've we got?"

Monroe gives it to him cleanly. Flight. Assault. Suspected narcotics. Firearm recovered during search. Identification as Dennis Harper.

She does not embellish any of it. Does not mention that he nearly knocked over a room-service tray, or that she ran four floors barefoot because her shoes are currently somewhere near the fifteenth-floor stairwell.

Xavier looks down at her feet.

Her stockings are ruined.

Rojas starts walking Dennis toward the elevator. The younger officer takes custody of the gun and magazine while Monroe hands the drug packet over separately.

The whole ritual returns so cleanly that for a second he can almost feel the weight of his old badge against his chest.

It passes.

The elevator opens and Delaney steps through. Hes not running. Sergeant Delaney has never believed in arriving anywhere faster than necessary. He walks toward them in shirtsleeves with his tie loosened and one hand holding the hotel access card somebody must have given him downstairs.

His eyes land on Xavier first.

He stops.

"Get out of here."

Xavier blinks. "Hello to you too."

"Why are you here?"

"I was having a drink."

Delaney looks at the service corridor, then at Dennis being loaded into an elevator. "You were having a drink."

"It got away from me."

Delaney gives him the same look Monroe did earlier. It used to mean he was about to be written up. Now it means nothing official at all.

When the elevator opens onto the lobby, the hotel has already started pretending nothing happened.

People still move through the marble entrance with luggage and shopping bags. Someone at the front desk is speaking into a phone. A couple sitting near the windows watches the officers bring Dennis through and then immediately looks somewhere else.

The man Monroe was talking to is already here, leaning against the front counter. His eyes move over the display in front of him.

Dennis sees him.

That gets Xavier’s attention.

Until now, Dennis has been restless. Shifting his weight. Looking toward the doors. Now he goes still.

The man from upstairs doesn’t react. He looks at Dennis the same way he looks at everyone else in the room.

Xavier makes it halfway across the lobby before he hears his name.

“Xavier.”

He stops.

Monroe and Delaney keep walking. Neither of them turns.

Xavier looks back over his shoulder.

The man from upstairs has moved away from the front counter and is standing near the elevators. He looks different outside the purple light of the lounge. The same warm light catches the red in his eyes when they settle on Xavier.

Something shifts at the corner of the man’s mouth. Not quite a smile. More like Xavier has done exactly what he expected him to do. Then he tips his head toward the empty stretch of lobby beside him.

“Got a minute?”