Ruaan watched the door close behind Harolin.
He waited three full seconds.
Then — "Yes!"
He jumped, one fist in the air, alone in the middle of the training room like an idiot, and he didn't care even slightly.
He dropped onto the bench near the door and leaned back, staring at the ceiling with a grin he wasn't trying to control.
Okay.
He had a deal with Harolin. Cullen couldn't touch him as long as Harolin was involved. That was the important part.
The grin faded slightly.
That was the 'only' part Harolin had agreed to. Keeping Cullen away. Nothing about ranking up. Nothing about the Thursday games. Harolin would still sabotage him every chance he got, because that was just who Harolin was and what this whole thing was about.
So he had protection from Cullen.
And an enemy who would still try to destroy him every other way.
Ruaan rubbed his face.
'Fine,' he thought. 'I'll take it.'
The dinner bell rang through the facility.
He stood up, stretched both arms above his head until something in his back cracked satisfyingly, and headed for the cafeteria.
He sniffed his own shirt on the way and groaned quietly. "I need to shower."
.
The line at the cafeteria was already long.
He joined the back of it and looked around with the automatic habit he'd developed over the last few days — scanning, cataloguing, noting who was where and what the energy in the room was doing.
He spotted Seo immediately.
Grey uniform, near the middle of the line, nose buried in another BL comic. Different cover from the one in the infirmary. Ruaan looked away quickly and focused very hard on the back of the head in front of him.
"Ruaan!"
He closed his eyes briefly.
Seo was already moving toward him, comic in one hand, waving with the other like they were old friends at a market.
Ruaan arranged his face into a neutral expression. "Hey."
"You're here! To eat?" Seo fell into step beside him like he'd been invited. "What are you getting? I heard they have something that might be chicken today. Might be. Nobody is confirming it."
"Of course, I'm here to eat," Ruaan said. "Same as everyone."
"Obviously, but the 'options—'" Seo launched into a detailed breakdown of the cafeteria menu that Ruaan was approximately thirty per cent listening to.
He looked around the room instead and noticed it immediately.
Eyes. Lots of them. Moving between him and some other point in the room, low whispers follow.
He knew that look.
He had watched that same look follow Finn around the cafeteria on his first day.
His jaw tightened. "Why is everyone looking at me like that?"
Seo stopped mid-sentence, pushed his glasses up and looked around the room.
"Cullen has never visited any of his toys in their cell before," Seo said simply. "They always go to him. You're the first one he's ever gone to." He paused. "It's kind of a big deal."
"I'm not his toy."
"I know that. They don't." Seo shrugged and nodded across the room. "See?"
Ruaan followed his gaze.
Finn was sitting alone at the far end of a table. People around him were eating, talking, completely ignoring him. It was not deliberate, just the natural indifference of a room that had found something more interesting to look at.
That something was Ruaan.
Finn was staring at his food.
"What a drag," Ruaan muttered.
.
They took their trays and found a spot away from the worst of the staring.
Seo ate and read and talked simultaneously, which Ruaan was genuinely beginning to find impressive in a deeply irritating way. He was mid-sentence about something he'd read, fork in one hand, comic propped against his water cup, not dropping a single thread of any of the three activities.
Ruaan ate his possibly-chicken and watched him.
"Do you have more books?" he asked when Seo paused for breath.
"Get your own from the library."
Ruaan looked up. "Blackmere has a library?"
Seo stared at him over his glasses. "Where did you think I was getting them?"
"I didn't — I didn't know there was one."
Seo closed his comic with a small shake of his head, like Ruaan had said something profoundly disappointing. "Tomorrow morning, I'll take you."
Ruaan thought about tomorrow morning. About Cullen's cell and the condition he'd agreed to with Harolin that he was absolutely not thinking about in detail right now.
"Afternoon," he said.
Seo snapped his fingers. "Done."
Ruaan looked back at his food and lifted a spoonful and glanced up as he chewed and—
Finn was staring directly at him.
From across the cafeteria, over the heads of everyone between them, eyes fixed on Ruaan's face with an expression that wasn't embarrassment or sadness or any of the things Ruaan had been assuming.
Their eyes met.
Finn looked away immediately. Back to his food. Like nothing had happened.
Ruaan chewed slowly.
'What,' he thought, 'is that about?'
.
.
Later that day...
The prisoner shower block at midnight was not empty.
Ruaan stood in the doorway and assessed the situation. Three men. All are significantly larger than him. One of them was doing something with a bar of soap that Ruaan chose not to examine. The shower was running and the steam was thick.
Since nobody had noticed him yet, he stepped back and closed the door quietly.
He stood in the corridor and thought about his options. Either head back to the cell or...
He sniffed his shirt again.
'Absolutely not,' he decided. 'Not another night.'
The officer block was quiet.
He pushed the door open slowly and checked — one shower running at the far end, steam coming from that direction, and near the entrance, standing at the sinks with a small towel pressed to his jaw—
Harolin.
Freshly showered with a towel around his waist. Nothing else.
Ruaan stood in the doorway and his eyes went from Harolin's shoulders to his chest to his stomach to the towel and back up to his face and then did the whole thing again before he could stop them.
Harolin looked up from the mirror.
"Why are you here?"
"I'm lost," Ruaan said immediately.
Harolin stared at him.
"I got turned around in the corridor and I ended up here and since I'm already here I might as well just shower quickly and—"
"There's another officer on the block."
Ruaan heard it — another shower running, further down. He had forgotten about it over the sound of his own terrible excuse.
"So what do I do?" Ruaan said.
"That," Harolin said, turning back to the mirror, "is a you problem. Not mine."
The shower at the far end cut off.
A low hum started. Someone is happy about their shower apparently.
Ruaan looked at Harolin. Harolin looked at the mirror. The humming got louder, footsteps moving in their direction.
"Send him away," Ruaan said quietly.
"Send him—" Harolin turned. "He outranks me. Maybe. I can't— ugh!"
Harolin's hand closed around Ruaan's wrist.
He moved fast — pulling him into the nearest shower stall, reaching past him to turn it on, and then standing in the entrance with his back to Ruaan, arms on either side of the frame, blocking the view completely.
Cold water hit Ruaan's back through his uniform.
He pressed himself against the tile wall and did not make a sound.
Footsteps stopped just outside.
"General Lily!" The voice was cheerful. The tone of someone in a genuinely good mood. "Still here? I thought you were done—"
"Do you see that I'm not done?" Harolin said.
"Right, right, sorry—"
"Leave."
A laugh. Footsteps retreating. A door opening and closing.
Silence except for the shower.
Harolin exhaled through his nose and turned around.
Ruaan was standing under the running water, fully clothed, soaked, with both hands pressed over his mouth.
Harolin looked at him. "He's gone. You can—"
Ruaan lowered his hands but his shoulders were shaking.
He thought Ruaan was scared of being caught, that's why he was trembling in fear. Harolin opened his mouth to say something and then registered the expression on Ruaan's face.
It wasn't fear or tears.
He was trying not to laugh.
"Lily," Ruaan said. The word came out strangled.
Harolin's expression went very flat very fast. "Don't."
"That man just called you—"
"I'm warning you—"
"General Lily—"
"Ruaan."
"Okay." Ruaan pressed his lips together. Nodded seriously. "Okay. I won't say it." He met Harolin's eyes and held them for exactly two seconds.
"General," he said.
A pause.
"Lily."