One hour and fifteen minutes.

Ruaan stood on the field and looked at Harolin’s watch on his wrist and did the math. That’s how much he had left before Yoon would tell everyone.

He sat with it for a moment and turned it over properly.

Did he actually care if people found out about him and Harolin? He thought about it honestly. After all, it was just one time in a storeroom. Maybe more times after that. Was that something worth protecting?

Then he thought about the implication.

Not the information itself. The implication of everyone knowing. Because if Yoon found out and used it, then the next person who found out would use it the same way. And the person after that. And suddenly Ruaan would have a queue of people using the same leverage and wanting the same thing and his life in Blackmere would become an entirely different kind of miserable.

He checked the watch again.

One hour thirteen minutes.

He looked across the field for Harolin.

Harolin was on the other side helping someone with their form, correcting their stance with the same focused attention he brought to everything. He had clearly seen Ruaan’s face earlier and gotten the message but he couldn’t just walk over without making it obvious.

Ruaan looked around the field.

He needed a reason.

His eyes moved to the weight rack at the edge of the field. The big ones. The kind that the larger men used and even some of them struggled with.

He thought about it for three seconds.

It was a terrible idea but he walked over.

He picked up a handful of dirt from beside the rack and rubbed it between his palms the way he had seen people do. Then he grabbed the bar. It was significantly heavier than the 20kg he had been working with. He could feel the difference immediately in his wrists and shoulders.

He got it to ankle height.

That was as far as it went.

He stood there with the bar at ankle height and his arms shaking and his face doing something he couldn’t control and some of the men nearby had stopped their own training to watch him with expressions ranging from concerned to entertained.

Someone laughed.

Someone else said something he didn’t catch.

Ruaan’s arms were going numb. He couldn’t go up. He couldn’t put it back down without it crashing. He was stuck in the specific hell of a bad decision that had already been made and could not be unmade.

He groaned.

Then, with significant personal cost, he said, "Help."

It came out quieter than intended.

He tried again. "Help me!"

Two pairs of footsteps hit the ground at the same time from different directions.

Harolin arrived from the left.

Oren George arrived from the right.

Oren took the bar out of his hands with the effortless efficiency of a man built for exactly this kind of task and set it back on the rack without any visible strain.

Harolin was already next to Ruaan, hand on his arm.

"Are you okay?"

Ruaan turned toward him and dropped his voice so low it was barely audible. "I just got threatened by my cellmate. I need your help."

Harolin’s expression shifted.

"Who would dare—"

"Shh." Ruaan stepped back immediately and turned toward Oren with a smile and said, "Thank you so much."

Oren looked at him with the flat, direct expression that appeared to be his only expression. "Why would you pick something that heavy when the game is tomorrow. Are you trying to injure yourself before it even starts?"

"I’m fine," Ruaan said.

"Your hands are fine," Oren said. "What about your shoulder?"

"My shoulder is completely—"

He rolled it to demonstrate.

There was a pop.

A sound that was audible to Ruaan, to Oren, and apparently to the four people standing closest to them because everyone went slightly quiet at the same time.

Ruaan froze.

Oren’s frown deepened and he stepped forward and said

"I’ll help you" and reached up and put his hand on Ruaan’s shoulder, fingers pressing carefully along the joint, and Ruaan felt Harolin’s hand close around his other arm and pull.

Ruaan moved sideways.

Oren looked up. "What are you doing. I’m trying to help..."

"You’re an officer, not a physician," Harolin said. His voice was completely even. "I’ll take him to the infirmary. Keep training on schedule."

Oren opened his mouth.

Harolin had already turned and was walking, Ruaan’s arm still in his hand.

Oren stood on the field and watched them go with the expression of a man deciding whether this was worth the argument.

He decided it wasn’t.

Ruaan looked back as they walked and found Yoon on the field, watching him leave with Harolin. Yoon’s expression was tight and unreadable.

Ruaan let a slow grin appear on his face.

He looked forward and let Harolin pull him off the field.

.

.

They walked for five minutes.

Past the cell blocks, past the laundry room, past two corridors that Ruaan had never been down before.

"Where are we going," Ruaan asked.

"A place with no cameras," Harolin said.

Ruaan remembered the storeroom.

His lower body remembered the storeroom too, immediately and specifically, and he told that part of himself firmly to stop it. He didn’t know why he remembered it but he couldn’t forget it either. He was glad Harolin’s dick didn’t rip or bleed. Maybe because it wasn’t as massive as they claimed but at least, he was satisfied with it. His cheeks flushed red until he stopped thinking about it.

The door that Harolin opened looked like a maintenance room. Storage units, shelving, and the smell of old equipment. Harolin closed it behind them and turned around and looked at Ruaan.

"Who threatened you?"

"My cellmate."

"Let me guess," Harolin was quiet for half a second. "Yoon."

Ruaan blinked. "How do you know?"

"I caught him outside the bathroom." Harolin leaned back against the shelf and crossed his arms. "When you were in there with Seo. He was..." he paused "...handling himself. Outside the door while calling your name."

Ruaan pressed his lips together.

He already knew that something was going on between Ruaan and someone. He had been there. He just hadn’t remembered that Harolin had also been there and had seen Yoon and had filed it away without mentioning it.

"He said if I don’t include him in whatever I have going with you, he’ll tell everyone I’ve been spreading my legs for an officer," Ruaan said. "By the end of training."

Harolin rubbed his chin slowly.

"Have you been spreading your legs though?" he said. "We’ve done it once and that time, I was the one who spread them."

Ruaan stared at him. "Does that matter right now?"

"I’m just being accurate."

"Harolin."

"What do you want me to do about him?"

"Make sure he ends up in the bottom ten tomorrow," Ruaan said. "You’re already planning to sabotage someone. So add him."

Harolin tilted his head. "I’m sabotaging one person. That person is you." He pointed. "Why would I add him?"

Ruaan looked at him.

He let two seconds pass.

Then he said, very casually, "If you don’t want to do it, that’s fine. You don’t have to. I’ll just tell Yoon he can have what he wants. He can come to my men and I’ll let him..." he tilted his head "...suck my nipples. Put his hands wherever he wants. Slide his cock into my..."

"Fine."

The word came out sharp and immediate.

Harolin uncrossed his arms.

"Fine," he said again, quieter, like he was trying to take back the volume of the first one. "I’ll sabotage him. Both of you."

Ruaan smiled.

"But," Harolin said, and the way he said it made the smile pause, "if he’s still a problem after the game. If the bottom ten doesn’t solve it and he keeps pushing." He looked at Ruaan directly. "We do things my way."

"What’s your way?"

"You don’t need to know yet."

"That’s a very concerning answer."

"It should be," Harolin said simply.

Ruaan looked at him. He tried to read what was behind that expression and got the same wall he always got, flat and pale-eyed and giving nothing away.

He didn’t know what Harolin’s way was.

He had a general sense of what Harolin’s way probably involved given the last week and the quiet interventions that were never admitted to.

Whatever it was, it sounded significantly less pleasant for Yoon than a bad Thursday game.

Which, honestly, Yoon deserved.

Ruaan looked at the watch on his wrist and checked the time.

Forty minutes until training ended.

Yoon was expecting an answer.

Ruaan was going to go back to that field and give him one.

He turned toward the door.

"Ru."

He stopped.

Harolin’s voice had dropped. It was not soft exactly, just lower than usual with a different quality.

"Be careful on the field tomorrow," Harolin said. "Even with me watching."

Ruaan stood at the door with his hand on the handle.

He didn’t turn around.

"I know," he said.

He walked out.