Ruaan stared at the back of Yoon’s head for three full seconds.

Then he lay back on his bed, crossed one leg over the other, and looked at the ceiling.

He wasn’t even that annoyed.

He knew how to get information when he needed it. Seo knew everything that happened in Blackmere before it happened. If there was something worth knowing about Thursday’s game, Seo would have it by morning.

He closed his eyes and the door opened again.

He snapped them back open.

Luca walked in pulling his shirt over his head before he’d even fully stepped inside. He sat on his bed and dropped the shirt on the floor and said nothing for a moment.

Yoon and Petre stopped their quiet conversation and looked at him.

"What’s with that look? Did something bad happen?"

"A new officer is coming," Luca said.

Petre frowned. "What kind?"

"I don’t know. But the rumour is he’s dangerous." Luca lay back. "He’s a wild type."

They all looked at each other across the cell. The particular look of people sharing an unspoken thought about whether dangerous meant exciting or dangerous meant they should all be worried.

Ruaan lay on his bed and said nothing.

His hand found the key around his neck. Small and solid and still warm from being against his skin all day.

’Yoon’s up to something,’ he thought. ’I don’t know what yet but I’m not sleeping here tonight.’

.

.

Dinner was loud in the cafeteria.

The cafeteria was running on a different kind of energy... Thursday was two days away and the whole facility felt it. Conversations were faster, louder, people leaning across tables with the focused urgency of men comparing notes before something big.

Seo was already filling his plate when Ruaan sat down.

"What’s everyone talking about?" Ruaan asked.

"Two things." Seo didn’t look up from his food. "Thursday’s game and the new officer." He paused. "I heard he’s killed twenty-five people."

Ruaan looked at him. "The officer?"

"That’s the rumour."

"What about the game?"

Seo set his spoon down and turned to face him properly with the expression of someone delivering serious news. "Some people are saying it’s going to be the hardest game in Blackmere history."

Ruaan tilted his head. "How hard? Are they killing anyone?"

"I hope not." Seo pushed his glasses up. "But apparently you need a partner. And a bullet. And a gun."

"A real gun?"

"People are saying it’s fake. But..." he shrugged "...who knows."

"That doesn’t make any sense," Ruaan said.

"It makes zero sense," Seo agreed. "Nobody fully understands it. We’ll find out on Thursday like everyone else." He picked his spoon back up. "Everyone always finds out on Thursday."

Ruaan exhaled deeply and looked at his tray. "I really don’t want to be bottom ten again."

"You won’t be." Seo said it simply. No drama. "We’ll be partners. We’ll do fine."

Ruaan looked at him.

Seo was eating again, already flipping to a new page of the comic he had somehow balanced against his cup, completely unbothered by everything he’d just said.

Ruaan smiled. He didn’t mean to. It just happened.

"Thanks," he said.

Seo waved his hand without looking up.

.

.

The cell was alive that night.

Everyone was in a different mood... some of them louder than usual, laughing about something, others talking quietly across beds. Someone two cells down was doing a full impression of an actor from some movie and getting corrected every three seconds. Someone else was taking bets on Thursday.

Ruaan lay on his bed and waited.

He could not take his shirt off. Not with Yoon directly across from him, awake and aware and apparently willing to do whatever he had done yesterday with any of Ruaan’s available clothing. He lay on top of the covers fully dressed and stared at the ceiling and waited for the room to go quiet.

Tomorrow was Wednesday. Training day. Everyone would be in the gym and on the field and busy enough that he could move around more freely.

Tonight he just needed everyone unconscious already.

The talking slowed and the laughing faded.

Breathing evened out, one by one.

Ruaan counted to sixty after the last voice went quiet. Then he sat up, checked the room... Yoon lay face down on his pillow, Petre curled toward the wall, Luca motionless as always and he stood up carefully.

He arranged his bed and smoothed the blanket down so it looked occupied from a distance. He wasn’t sure why he bothered since nobody had ever checked on him in the night, but it felt like the kind of detail that mattered.

He walked to the door.

"Are you leaving?"

He froze and turned around slowly.

Petre was sitting up on his bed, watching him with a mildly curious expression. He wasn’t suspicious of anything. He was just awake.

Ruaan’s heart was doing something unnecessary. "I’m not going far," he said. "Don’t worry about me. I’ll be back soon."

Petre looked at him for a moment. Then lay back down without another word.

Ruaan walked out.

He exhaled for what felt like the first time in ten minutes once he was in the corridor.

’Petre,’ he thought with relief. ’At least it was Petre.’

.

.

Harolin’s room was cold.

The good kind of cold... the kind that came from a space that had actual ventilation instead of thirty bodies generating heat in a small box. Ruaan stepped inside and locked the door behind him and just stood there for a second, breathing it in.

He took his shirt off and put it on the desk.

He pulled back the duvet on the bed and felt the sheets under his hands and his whole body made a quiet, grateful sound somewhere inside his chest. An actual mattress. An actual pillow. A duvet that was thick enough to do its job.

He got in and pulled it up to his chin.

He made another small involuntary noise at how cold and soft and clean it was.

He shivered happily, breathed into his own palm, and closed his eyes.

He was asleep in approximately four minutes.

.

.

The door opened.

Ruaan didn’t hear it open since he was asleep.

A bag dropped on the floor with a heavy thud. He didn’t hear that either.

A voice said "Where the fuck are the lights" and then "Why is it so hot in here" and then there were sounds of clothing being removed and then the bed moved as something large and warm dropped onto it and groaned like a man who had been travelling for a long time and had finally stopped.

Ruaan slept through all of it.

.

He didn’t know what woke him.

Not a sound exactly. More like a shift in the air... the specific feeling that had a different amount of people in it than when he fell asleep.

He wiped his eyes and blinked.

The room was dark but not completely... some light coming under the door from the corridor outside, enough to see shapes.

He saw Harolin first.

He was wearing his full uniform, standing two feet from the bed. He was completely still.

Then he saw who Harolin was holding by the throat.

A man.

A large and built man, who was wearing nothing but tight boxers and looking at Harolin with the expression of someone who had concluded that they had made a serious mistake and were currently assessing their options.

Harolin’s hand was around his throat.

The man’s hand was wrapped in Harolin’s collar.

Neither of them was moving.

Ruaan blinked again. He looked at the bed around him and looked at the warm indent in the mattress beside him where someone had clearly been lying.

He looked back at the man in the boxers.

’Oh,’ he thought.

He sat up.

"Harolin what—"

"You were so deeply asleep," Harolin said, not looking at him, eyes fixed on the man, "that you didn’t notice someone naked get into the bed next to you."

Ruaan looked at the man and the boxers and the general situation of what was really happening.

He opened his mouth.

He wanted to say something calm and reasonable. He wanted to say ’oh that explains the warmth’ or ’I was very tired’ or literally anything that would make this less embarrassing. But he couldn’t believe that he was with a man. A man other than Harolin. He placed both hands on his chest, trying to see if the man hugged him while sleeping or if he had hugged the man while sleeping but he couldn’t tell since, just as Harolin said, he was so deep in sleep.

What came out was a sound.

Harolin’s hand shot out and closed over his mouth.

"Save the scream for tomorrow," Harolin said flatly.

He turned back to the man and let go of his throat.

He straightened his collar with his free hand and looked at the man in the boxers again with a glare.

"Who," Harolin said quietly, "are you?"