Fifteen minutes.
Harolin stood with his back against the tile wall, chest rising and falling, staring at the ceiling with the expression of a man who had run all available calculations and arrived at an answer he didn't like.
Twice.
He had cum twice and it was still—
He looked down.
If anything, it was worse.
Across from him, Ruaan straightened up slowly, dragging the back of his hand across his mouth, breathing hard. His hair was plastered to his face from the shower. His cheeks were red. His eyes, when they came up, went immediately to the situation that had not resolved itself and stayed there with wide, slightly offended disbelief.
"That's not fair," Ruaan said, hoarse.
Harolin said nothing.
He was trying not to look at Ruaan directly. This was proving difficult because every time he tried to look somewhere else, he found something worse — the tattoo along Ruaan's left side, dark ink against pale skin, the letters spelling R-U-A-A-N in a font that curved with the line of his ribs. His pink nipples were still peaking from the cold water. The line of his stomach. The whole of him standing there looking like that.
He pressed his lips together and looked at the wall.
The wall did not help.
"Let me try again," Ruaan said.
"Stay away from me."
"Harolin—"
"'Stay away from me.'" He kept his eyes on the wall. His jaw was tight enough to hurt. "There's no point trying again. Don't come in front of me."
A pause.
"...What about the game?" Ruaan asked.
Harolin looked at him then. Just briefly. Just long enough to let the smirk happen.
"The game? You'll find out tomorrow," he said.
He picked up his towel. His uniform. He walked out.
He was halfway down the corridor before he realised.
He'd left his soap.
He kept walking.
.
Ruaan stood under the cold water for another thirty seconds after Harolin left, just breathing.
Then his eyes dropped to the soap sitting on the tile shelf.
He stared at it.
He almost forgot what had just happened, grabbed it immediately, and used the entire bar. He was someone who had not bathed in two days and was not wasting this opportunity. When he was done he wrapped it carefully in his towel and carried it back to the cell like it was something valuable.
Because it was. Because he was grey uniform. Three showers a week. He wasn't leaving that soap anywhere.
.
The cell was dark when he pushed the door open. All three of his cellmates were shapes under thin blankets, breathing slowly.
They were all asleep.
Ruaan set the soap on his side shelf, unwrapped his towel, and started pulling on his clothes. He had one arm through his shirt when the feeling hit him.
Someone was looking at him.
He stopped and turned around slowly.
Three sleeping shapes. Nobody moving. The cell was still.
He looked at each of them.
'...Am I losing my mind?'
He put his shirt on, lay down on the mattress, and stared at the ceiling.
He thought about tomorrow.
He thought about Harolin's face when he said 'you'll find out tomorrow' and the quality of that damn smirk and what it meant for his chances in the game.
He thought about other things he was not going to think about.
'Ah fuck! My jaw hurts!'
He closed his eyes.
.
.
Thursday arrived loudly.
Ruaan woke to the sound of Bruised Jaw punching the air above his own bed — not at anyone, just punching, like a man warming up for something.
Split Lip was on his knees at the side of his mattress with his hands pressed together and his lips moving fast and quietly.
Bandaged Arm sat on the edge of his bed and looked at the floor and said nothing.
None of them had gone to breakfast.
Ruaan sat up. Looked around at the three of them. "Nobody's eating?"
"Not hungry," Bruised Jaw said, still punching.
"Can't," Split Lip said, not opening his eyes.
Bandaged Arm said nothing. Just kept looking at the floor.
Ruaan rubbed his palms together slowly. His stomach was doing something he was going to call 'anticipation' and nothing else. He thought briefly and involuntarily about the size of what had been in his mouth last night, shook his head hard, and refocused.
"What was the last game?" he asked. "The one before I got here."
Bandaged Arm looked up. "Blind numbers."
"What's that?"
"They gave everyone a number. Written on the back of your hand but you couldn't see it yourself. Everyone else could. You had to figure out your own number by trading information with other people — but everyone lied. The highest number at the end wins. The lowest ten lose."
Ruaan rubbed his chin. "That's... actually difficult."
"It was." Bandaged Arm went back to looking at the floor. "Cullen won."
"Cullen always wins," Bruised Jaw said, throwing a punch.
"Does he cheat?"
Silence. The kind that meant 'probably' and nobody wanted to be the one to say it.
Ruaan exhaled. He opened his mouth to say something else when the alarm went off.
It was loud. The kind of sound announced something important.
Split Lip's praying intensified dramatically.
Bandaged Arm stood up.
The door clicked and swung open automatically.
The three of them pulled together instinctively — a small, close unit, shoulders almost touching. Bruised Jaw looked at Split Lip. Split Lip looked at Bandaged Arm. Something passed between the three of them, quick and wordless.
"We don't lose," Bruised Jaw said.
"We don't lose," Split Lip agreed.
Bandaged Arm nodded.
Ruaan watched them from where he stood and felt that thing again that he still hadn't named. He stood up and followed them out.
.
The field was unrecognisable.
Same walls, same sky, same packed earth — but full now, completely full, every rank present, grey uniforms and dark blue and black, more people than Ruaan had seen in one place since arriving. The noise was low and buzzing, hundreds of voices running underneath each other.
Around the edge of the field, at equal intervals, stood twenty officers.
Each one held a wooden container, cube-shaped, sealed on all sides except for a single circular hole at the top. Just large enough to fit a hand.
Nothing else visible. No instructions yet. No indication of what was inside.
The murmuring moved through the crowd like a current.
'What is it this time? What did they prepare? What's in the box?'
Ruaan stood in the grey section and looked at the containers and felt his stomach do the thing he was still calling anticipation. Again.
'What's in the box?'
He swallowed.
'What bloody game have these people prepared?'