Bel, Erskin, and Jethro: Be celebrities.

"I'm quadranted to deviants," you mourn. "I will die from an exl— expold— a busted pump biscuit, that's what, due to an account of being too bloody scandalized. By your deviant ways. We won't even get to Bel before I, I, I kick over."

You squirm a bit until your can prop your head on his side. "Umfgh. Alright, I'm, I'm, yes. Feeling it. That's a fucking relief." You touch one of your new bandaids and shiver, but only very lightly. You sigh and nuzzle the thick, sturdy ridges of Jethro's landdweller ribs. "Hey. Hey, I, I say, d'you remember when you were a seadweller? Wasn't that fun?"

 

Your purr gets louder for a moment at that nuzzle, and you giggle when he does it again; you're not sure if the feeling is ticklish or good or what, but you like it. "So fun. Reckon we could do it again sometime? You can like... go dream visiting now?"

 

"Oh, mmm, yes," you say, still idly rubbing your cheek against his side. "Shouldn't be a prom— promblem. I found you once, I should— be— oh."

You've remembered how the interstitial garden is now. How blackened and deathly... "I, maybe, that is... it might be a problem, I, I, I don't... s'all burnt up, anymore. The maze. 's all bones'n thorns'n ash... I keep, looking for, I've been trying to— find— but she's— dead. An's, and it's all ruins." You sniff hard, rub your eyes. "Might take a, a, a little, a little bit of time. To get my, what, my bearings. Now. To figure it out again now. 'm sorry..."

 

"Oh darlin', you gotta quit bein' sorry for shit that ain't your fault, shoosh. Takes time to grow your own garden. I'll still be here." You run your fingers through his hair slowly and rhythmically until the sniffling lets up.

It's strange and confusing, how he's mourning someone who tried to kill you; you pity him so much that you can't not grieve for his grief, but at the same time you're viciously glad Cloris is dead. You don't know how to reconcile these. You don't guess anyone would, though, so you try not to let yourself get stuck brooding on it. Just love him and let him be sad. Just live life as it comes. Eat, sleep, breathe; hug, kiss, smile, cry. As long as you're both alive and together after it all shakes out, everything will be all right.

You hear a soft click from the door, and you twitch and tense at how stealthy it sounds -- but it's only Bel, damp-haired and a little blue at the tip of his nose. He's wearing his new coat and carrying a couple bags of takeout. Smells of cumin and pepper and melted cheese reach you a moment later. You have to swallow drool before you can speak: "Dang, don't sneak like that, you kinda freaked me out."

"Sorry, I forgot," he says. He's keeping his gaze averted. When he has to look at the two of you to set down one of the bags where you can reach it, his face flushes hilariously. He rolls his eyes at your smirk.

 

You rouse up out of the pile enough to register food and bel and affection, and snag a handful of long, damp hair before he moves away. You pull him down and give him a sleepy headbutt.

"Bel," you say, authoritatively. You don't have much else to add to that, so you kiss him.

 

"Hi, jerk," you murmur adoringly, and scruffle his hair as if it's possible to mess it up any further. He's still got a fistful of your hair. You give him one more kiss, but then you take hold of the lock of hair yourself and try to pry him off it. "Okay, now it's just getting awkward. Like this is just a really awkward position to stand in."

"You could sit down," Jethro offers.

"I'm not going to join your pale pile. Stop trying to shock me and eat your burritos." Damn it, Erskin has really strong hands. You start prying his fingers open one by one. "Yes, I love you too, asshole, knock it off."

Jethro laughs. "You're in a good mood."

"Had a nice workout, talked to everyone back home, and then went walking and found a comics shop. I'm going to take my food in the respiteblock and read the new Dark Season Soldier compilation as soon as Sea Wüster here lets go of my hair."

 

"Never," you declare. "You're gonna join us'n our lifestyle of, of, dev--debauchery, and shame."

You get an arm around his shoulders and pull until his knees hit the floor.

"'Sokay n'account of, I hate you a lot," you assure him, and nuzzle his delightfully chilly face. The hand he pried off his hair gets anchored around one of his beautiful horns, and squeezes.

 

That gets a gasp out of you. "Oh, you bastard," you breathe, half admiring and half appalled. He is blackmacking on you while he's on his actual moirail's actual lap. And from the indulgent grin on Jethro's face, said moirail doesn't even care. "You pie-eyed libertine. I used to have discipline before I met you." Furiously delighted, you kiss him properly, deep and hard and dirty, and though you remember not to bite, he never said anything about twisting a handful of his hair.

Jethro whistles. You flip him off without coming up for air.

 

You fight a valiant rearguard action against Bel's onslaught, but you're feeling far too soft and cozy to really give him a proper challenge. As he bears you down flat against the pillows you purr roughly into his mouth and knead at his shoulders, claws sinking deep into the stiff wool of his coat, and enjoy the way his skin heats up against yours. When you finally disengage he's blue across a lot more than his nose, and his eyes are dark and flatteringly wild. His hand is tangled in your hair like he's thinking about hauling you off by it.

"Enjoy your comics," you grin, rolling over to look at him upside down, entirely and smugly aware that Jethro's got his hands all over your vulnerable stretched-out stomach.

 

You narrow your eyes. "The only reason I'm not going to pour your pillbug ceviche down your pants is because I might want to sit on that couch later." You lick his forehead wetly and scoot back before he can retaliate, grab your food bag and stalk off to the respiteblock. Jethro's laughter follows you, and you're grinning from ear to ear.

 

"You can sit on what's down my pants later too!" you yell after him, then curl up around Jethro in a fit of giggles.

"He used to have displine before he met me," you tell your moirail proudly. You nudge Jethro's hip. "Hey, you heard that, right? 'm a bad influence."

 

"You're a total delinquent, darlin'. Maybe you oughtta embrace that bad boy aesthetic." Holy crap, he is so cute when he's proud of himself.

 

"Mmmnfg," you mumble, and yawn hugely. "I've that leather jacket now...'s a good idea. I'll, um..." You knead his side as you settle more firmly into the pile and close your eyes. The headache pills were a wonderful idea, everything feels just fine. "I'll try tomorrow. Embrace you t'night. Ha."

 

"I am right alongside that plan," you chuckle. "Literally," you add through a yawn.

Napping sounds like a wonderful idea. He's solid and heavy and he smells like contentment. You can have the food when you wake up. It'll reheat. Well, except for the ceviche, that's raw, so no problem. You've never actually tried to make it, but you tried it once and it was pretty great. You should totally make it sometime. Especially if Erskin likes it.

Safe in your moirail's arms and purring like a small engine, you drift on thoughts of cilantro and onions until thoughts turn into dreams.

 

Erskin didn't quite make you frustrated enough to want to jerk off, though he's on your mind enough to distract you from your comic, if not your meal. The story's hitting you a bit closer to home than you anticipated, too. Not that any Dark Season Soldier story is all beer and skittles, obviously, because brainwashed amnesiac cyborgs don't get to have nice things. But this one's got an assassin from the same source who broke his programming all halfassed and went crazy, and it doesn't take many pages of that before you start wanting to call Galley again and make sure that nothing bad's happened to him in the hour and a half since you talked to him last.

Wallowing in that kind of anxiety is frankly a terrible idea right now. Pancho had words for you on the topics of prolonged stress and how even trolls who didn't lose a leg or get exsanguinated need to recuperate after going moon-eyed revengecrazy and sleeping in a flyer's leaned-back driver's seat without sopor for two weeks. You firmly close the book and eat the rest of the meal looking out the window at the snow-dusted landscape, the lights of the hivecluster all around in a way you're absolutely not used to yet. It's really pretty. You imagine your lusus would have a ton of fun in a place like this. So many thermals to ride, so many high places to perch!

After eating, you kick your boots off, roll yourself up in your new coat, and take a nap on the lounging platform by the window. To keep your anxious thoughts from coming back, you focus on visualizing your lusus soaring among the hivestems.

And so, when you dream, you're the one playing in the updrafts. From above, the hivecluster might as well be canyonlands; the doings of trolls down on the streets are no concern of yours. Up among the rooftops, there are pigeons to chase and falcons to race, and the sheer joy of flying.

 

You wander through the remains of the gardens for a long aimless while, unsure of the point, anymore, of even searching. Your Lady is dead, isn't she? It's ridiculous to hope that she's somehow come to hide here, this place isn't even technically a proper here. She'd still be dead even if you managed to find her ghost, or make one up out of gruesome desperation.

You kick a few dusty bones and pebbles, and watch ash fall like snow onto the dead grass. The thorn hedges are so much more difficult to navigate than the boxwoods, for all that you can step right from one corridor to the next in some of the burnt-brittle patches. You kick a smoldering stick, sigh, and start wandering to see if you can find Jethro.

Left, right, right, around in a curve, over a crumbling ash-black bridge spanning a dried little stream, left. Dead end. You backtrack a bit and make your way along more thoughtfully, trying to feel out where to go in advance, your fins pricked forward. After a few corridors there's a gathering sense of familiarity, and you bull your way through a weak patch of bramble to an adjacent area that feels— almost right—

Well, now you're falling. Open, freezing air sheets past you, a thousand spinning points of light above and below you, disorienting. You spread your arms, splay your fingers, and kick as if bracing against a pull underwater but of course that doesn't work in air. Just a panicky hindbrain reflex. You need— right, it's air, you need wings. It's not so hard to twist as you fall, peeling out of your heavy, doomed trollskin, and throw out wide clever wings with longer feathers than fingers. No fins, but the whiskers around your beak should— yes, you can manage this just fine, and the broad fan of your tail makes a splendid rudder.

You execute a thrilling corkscrew down a bit further, throw your wings up again, and flap hard for altitude before you catch a lift on some warm billow of exhaust. Air currents are so much more slippery than ocean— a huge shadow falls over you, blocking out the moonlight and you barely contain a panicky caw— you dodge under the ledge of some hivestem before the cruising eagle can see you.

Panting, you peer up and out at the sky, watch the giant bird start to spiral lazily upwards. Your eyes narrow. You know that eagle.

You stick close to the building as you launch upwards, and flapping madly for altitude and using the bright light and inky shadows the hivestems cast as best you can to disguise your silhouette and enticingly fluttery movements. When you clear the roof you find you've beaten the eagle up to this height, and you can skim swiftly along, one more shadow invisible against the night sky, and drop down to gently— gently— land on the bastard's broad and fluffy back.

Then you peck him on the back of the head.

 

WHAT THE FUCK.

You flip over in startlement, more a reflex than a plan, and hear a sudden flutter of smaller wings than yours, and a laughing caw. The interloper dodges your flailing talons, and you can only do this upside-down thing for a couple seconds unless you want to crash, so the time you take to right yourself allows him to pick his vector. You glare at him as you claw for height, and it occurs to you: you know this little jerk. You know his pesterments and his sawtooth corvid giggles.

You know there is pretty much nothing in the world you want more than to show him who rules this sky. Time for some fancy flying.

 

You shriek with laughter and dodge the swipe of a beak half as long as your body. He banks a good deal more sharply than you'd expected and whips back around, sending you tumbling ass over pinfeathers from the backdraft of his wings— and when you steady out he nearly gets you with an enormous, sickle-clawed foot. You squawk and dive several floors at once, then slingshot around the spire of a communications tower and get completely bowled over a second time, knocking one of your wings painfully. Then he's sailed off and around again, angling for another dive. Bigger, faster— you've done this dance before, you think.

You wait until he's coasting towards you, waiting to see which way you'll break before he dives in earnest. So you flap straight at his face and SCREAM, a noise as big as the whole world, and batter his face with a blinding hailstorm of pecking and flapping, one foot clamped to his upper beak. However he shakes his head he can't do it sharply enough to throw you without capsizing, and reaching with his talons telegraphs all through his front before he even gets a claw up.

After a solid minute of bearing up under your assault, doing a remarkable job of not plowing into any walls, he finally ducks his head like you wanted him to, stooping to protect his eyes. You hop over his broad back with a neat skip of pinions, sink your claws into his ass and your beak into his tailfeathers, and yank.

He screams like a very dainty teakettle, and you dive away as fast as you can manage, dropping like a stone with a feather longer than you are clamped in your beak.

 

Right, he's really going to get it now. He thinks he can get away from you like that? Diving is your specialty. You wing hard after him, shoving the air back by brute force, gaining fast. Every sense straining. He knows you're coming. He knows you're faster. He's heading for a rooftop, probably going to jink at the last moment, try to force you to land. You can't get airborne anywhere near as fast as he can after a landing, he'll be able to dance rings around you.

But if you can anticipate his move...

The tiniest flick of a wingtip gives him away. You bank when he does, and the length of your legs and talons is the deciding factor. He lets out an indignant caw and drops your feather as you pin him to the rooftop.

There's a split second of confusion as your eagle-mind wants to know why the hell your talons are on either side of his annoying crow neck instead of stabbing through it, why you're holding him down without hurting him. Then you remember you're not an eagle and he's not a crow, you're a troll and he's your best beloathed, and you may have technically won the fly-off but he made you look like an idiot. He got a trophy, and it's very possible that pinned under your body is exactly where he wants to be, that he considers your talons just prickling through the feathers of his neck (your fist around his horn, your fingers laced with his and pinning his hand above his head) more prize than punishment.

You lower your head, let him see your hooked, shearing beak come that close to his eye, tug at one of his headfeathers as if you're going to pluck it out -- but preen it instead, gloatingly gentle. (Somehow, simultaneously, this is sucking his earfin, and you're sort of losing track of being an eagle the more you have ideas about parts that birds don't have.)

 

You puff all your feathers up at his threat, defiant--arch into his hold-- but when he strokes you so deadly-gentle your treatening ripsaw croak comes out as a long, breathless courting rattle. Fuck me, oh, god-- you've wrapped one set of claws against the enormous column of his wrist and prickling at him doesn't at all disguise the way you lean into his attentions. Fan your tail, preen the shaggy feathers of his throat, kiss him fiercely with a hand sunk into his hair.

He's huge and heavy, magnificent, death on wings and you can bloody him any time you like, you can claim a prize. You arch up and roll him over, shedding wings for the sort of shape that can pin him down and grind him against the floor, slow and gloating and mean. You rattle for him again, a low clickety croon, and adore the way he shivers to hear it.