Ruaan heard them before he reached the door.
Split Lip's worried voice, carrying through the cell bars like he wasn't even trying to be quiet.
"Is he okay though? He was just — he was out. I found him on the floor and he wasn't moving—"
"He's in the infirmary." Bruised Jaw. Flat. "They'll fix him."
"But what happened? Nobody's telling me what actually—"
"Mind your business." Bandaged Arm. Sharper than the other two. "2525 is not your problem."
"He's our cellmate—"
"He's a rich boy." Bandaged Arm's voice dropped. "Look at him. The way he talks, the way he carries himself. He probably comes from serious money. He'll be out of here in a few months when Daddy pays someone off. Meanwhile, I'm here for life." A pause. "So no. He's not my problem."
Silence.
Then Split Lip said quietly, "It still wasn't right. Exposing him like that."
"I did what the officer told me to do."
"Which officer?"
"Crowe."
Ruaan stood outside the door.
He already knew. He had known since, honestly. There was only one officer in Blackmere who had a personal interest in making sure Ruaan specifically ended up at the bottom of everything.
He smiled.
Not a happy smile. A quiet, settled smile.
'Harolin Fucking Crowe,' he thought. 'You absolute menace.'
He straightened up and walked in like he'd heard nothing.
All three of them stopped talking immediately. The silence was so sudden it was basically loud.
Split Lip moved first. He crossed the cell in three steps and stopped in front of Ruaan and looked at his wrapped hands and his bruised face and said, "Are you okay?"
Ruaan nodded.
"I found you on the floor. You weren't—" Split Lip stopped and started again. "You weren't waking up."
Ruaan looked at him and saw the nervous energy coming off him.
He lowered his head.
"Thank you," he said.
Split Lip blinked. Of course, he clearly hadn't expected that.
Bandaged Arm and Bruised Jaw went very still across the cell.
The silence stretched. Ruaan could feel all three of them recalibrating — this wasn't what they'd expected from the rich boy with the proud chin. He let them recalibrate. Let them sit with it.
"We're— we're cellmates," Split Lip said finally, scratching the back of his head like the word embarrassed him. "We're family. Kind of. Sort of."
Ruaan smiled. Just slightly. "Sure."
He walked to his bed and sat down.
He could hear them whispering behind him immediately.
'Did you see that? He actually bowed his head. I thought he'd never do that. Do you think he really comes from money?' He kept his back to them and let the smile stay where they couldn't see it.
'I know exactly how to get you people,' he thought. 'Every single one of you.'
.
.
He waited until the cell went quiet.
Forty minutes was long enough for the whispering to die down.
Then Ruaan sat up.
He needed to find Harolin.
He didn't want to wait till midnight and meet him at the shower block — he only had two shower days left this week and he was not spending both of them on conversations. He needed to find him now, while the facility was quiet and Cullen was wherever Cullen went after being told no by an officer.
He slipped out.
.
It took four people to get the answer and one of them looked at him like he was insane for asking, which was fair.
The officers' training ground.
He found it at the end of a corridor he hadn't been down before — a heavy door, slightly open, one line of light coming through the gap. He pushed it open and stepped inside.
The room was large, round with a high ceiling swallowed by darkness because most of the lights were off — just one, directly in the centre, a single bulb throwing a circle of yellow light onto the floor.
And in that circle, Harolin stood there, shirtless.
He has long training pants on, bare feet and his hands wrapped. He was working the punching bag while his shoulders moved and every hit landed clean. The light caught the lines of his perfect physique from above and Ruaan stood in the doorway with his brain, despite everything, took a full involuntary inventory of Harolin.
'Don't,' he told himself firmly. 'Absolutely do not.'
He walked in.
"Uh." His voice came out smaller than intended. He cleared his throat. "Hi. Officer Crowe."
Harolin stopped.
He turned his head slowly, looked at Ruaan standing in his training room at whatever hour this was, with his wrapped hands, bruised face, and grey uniform.
"How did you find this place," Harolin said.
"I asked around."
"Who told you—"
"A few people." Ruaan stepped further in. "I came to say thank you."
Harolin looked at him flatly. "For what?"
"For today. Cullen was about to—" Ruaan stopped and started again. "You saved my life."
"Saved your life? A dick in your hole isn't going to kill you, Ru."
Ruaan's eye twitched. "It might not kill anyone else," he said. "It might kill me." He held Harolin's gaze. "So. Thank you."
Harolin stared at him for one long moment.
"I didn't do it for you," he said. He turned back to the punching bag. "Leave. You're interrupting my training."
Ruaan didn't leave.
He looked around, found the water bottle sitting on the bench near the wall, picked it up, and walked toward Harolin. He stopped a few feet away and held it out.
Harolin looked at the bottle and looked at Ruaan before looking back at the bottle.
He took it and drank from it because he was clearly thirsty.
"Five minutes," Ruaan said. "I want to talk to you."
"I don't want to talk to you."
"You're drinking my water."
"It's not yours. Don't claim everything because you're a rich—"
"Five minutes, Harolin."
The name came out of his lips and he added the title or corrected it. Harolin didn't correct it either.
He lowered the bottle.
"Are you going to take your shirt off again?" he asked flatly
Ruaan's face went warm immediately. He pointed at himself. "I have injuries. I'm not—" He stopped and pulled himself together. "No. I'm not doing that."
Harolin said nothing. Which was apparently an agreement.
Ruaan stepped closer.
He had practised this in his head on the way over.
Then Harolin looked down at him from that height, close enough that Ruaan could see the light catching the pale grey of his eyes, and every organised sentence he'd prepared shuffled itself into a different order entirely.
"I want to make a deal," Ruaan said.
"No."
"You haven't heard—"
"I don't need to."
"Harolin—"
"No, Ru. Do not say a word."
Ruaan looked at his face. At the jaw. At the controlled, infuriating, unreasonably attractive expression that gave nothing away and asked for nothing back.
He didn't know when the words left his mouth.
"Let's be," he said, "enemies with benefits."
The punching bag swayed slightly in the quiet room as Harolin looked at him and Ruaan looked back.
Neither of them said anything.