Shadow of the Templar: Cuckoo's Egg, Extended Edition: Chapter Fifteen

On timeline: early to mid-1990s, ten to fifteen years before the events of the books
Spoilers for: not much, honestly
Warnings: NOT SAFE FOR WORK—caused, unsurprisingly, by something which is not the happiest shiniest lovingest most-consensual sex act ever

15.

      And then, somehow, it was the middle of November again. Christmas was, by Ethan's slow and thorough definition, just around the corner.

      The tailors came and went, measuring Bran and Ethan for new dinner jackets that they did not really need, and Jeremy for one that he definitely did. Last year's Christmas preparations, with the fussing and the dinner jackets and tying Jeremiah's tie for him and all: Bran remembered that like a big red 'x' marked on a calendar. Having it come around again felt like a milestone of sorts. All of a sudden it was very easy to remember that Jeremiah had been here for more than a year, but not quite two. It still felt like forever, but now forever had a number attached.

      The flip side of this coin didn't strike Bran until dinner that night. He was the last one down—Jeremy was propped up on the counter watching Claude flip things about in a skillet, and Ethan was already at the table musing over a glass of wine—and Bran stopped, bang in the middle of pulling out his chair, and told Claude, "God, you've been about for a bloody year now, haven't you?"

      Everything hitched, just a bit. Ethan's glance twitched up and Jeremy glanced back over his shoulder; Claude had been halfway between one counter and the other and he rocked to a stop, startled. "I didn't," Bran said weakly.

      Mean it like it came out, he'd meant to finish, but Claude overrode him with a laugh that was only a bit shrill and got back underway. "I suppose you're right at that!" he cried, raising his voice to be heard over the sizzling whatevers.

      Bran mumbled a vague noise of agreement and sat down, quickly. Ethan shot him a look, then twisted about in his chair to face the kitchen. "You're a saint for staying as long as you have, if you'd like my opinion on the matter."

      "I suppose it just sort of happened, didn't it?" Claude flicked a bit of something out of the skillet and tapped it onto the cutting board to cool. It was orange: a carrot?

      Jeremy (whose head had been swivelling back and forth) made a half-hearted attempt to steal the cooling carrot before allowing Claude to drive him off with the spatula. "How much longer do you think you'll stay, then?"

      Claude shrugged expansively. "Who can say? Past Christmas, at any rate. November's no time to be moving house."

      "Well, that's all right, then," Bran said, a bit weakly.

      Jeremy fell away from the counter and into his chair in what seemed to Bran to be the same arc of motion. "Where will you go, then? France? You're always talking about France. France this and France that and France does everything best as long as it's food or clothes."

      "I... don't really feel that that would be safe at this time," Claude said, his little smile squeezing up. "A terrible pity, but what can one do? Realistically?"

      Jeremy cut his eyes to the side, thinking about this. "Not go to France?" he finally suggested, his own little smile flickering on and back off.

      "Well. Yes."

      "In any event, there's no hurry," Ethan said. "I'm pleased to have Claude around as long as he'd like to stay. If only because it saves me having to cook for everyone."

      Bran raised his eyebrows. "Because you're a lazy arse."

      "I feel that I have earned that right," Ethan said serenely, and then Claude's bustle turned into the sort of bustle that meant dinner was imminent and the conversation dried up from there.

      It wasn't until the fish was eaten and Bran was chasing the last bits of carrot and onion around his plate that Ethan cleared his throat. "As much as I hate to say it," he said, making Bran's hackles rise, "it is half-gone November and we'll need to empty the pool soon."

      Jeremy and Bran both protested—Bran caught himself making an instinctive whine of dismay, like a toddler's, and he cut it off as quickly as he could. "Aw, but I was enjoying it," he said.

      "It doesn't have to be right now," said Ethan. "Another week or so. Time enough to say goodbye."

      "Can we have it back after Christmas?" Jeremy asked, glancing at Bran. "Only it's nice and all."

      Ethan smiled. "I suppose it must be, if you want to swim in the dead of winter. All right, after the new year we'll fill the pool again."

      That weekend found Bran on the rings, just faffing about, going through the motions. He'd got back to the point where he could hold an iron cross for nearly five seconds—all right, more like three—still, he could do it again, which went a fair way towards salving his embarrassment. He'd just dropped to the mats and wriggled his fingers free of the ring-grips when Ethan spoke up behind him. "Bran?"

      As worn out as Bran was, he still managed a fairly impressive teleport, skittering to a halt two mats over with his eyes wide as saucers. "Fuck's sake!"

      "I apologise," Ethan said, his voice abrupt, just throwing the apology out as a formality. "I'd just wanted to ask: have you got any plans for your next job?"

      "Ah..." Bran had no idea what to say, so he said it again. "Ah."

      "That's a no, then?"

      "Well." Bran ran a hand through his sweat-soaked hair, then wiped it dry on the leg of his shorts. "I hadn't... well, I'd thought about a thing or two, but..."

      "But?"

      Bran gave up, collapsing in a great damp flump on the weight-lifting bench beside him. "Was I supposed to be planning another already? Only the way you said it, you wanted me to pull one before I turned eighteen, but only as a test of my skills, like. I didn't know I was actually starting things for real."

      Ethan opened his mouth and shut it. His brows drew down before smoothing over again, and his next breath, when it came, was... well, it wasn't exactly irritated, but it wasn't happy. "I do think you ought start for real, now that you have the beginnings of a proper war chest," Ethan said. "If you've no firm plans, might I make a suggestion?"

      "... aye?" Bran couldn't keep the suspicion out of his voice.

      "You've more than enough money to hire Charles to suss out a job for you—" the grim and long-fingered spectre of Charles Fortescue set Bran reeling back on his arse with a grimace "—no, hear me out," Ethan said patiently. "I know you've never cared for the man's company. Get past that. You'll work with worse in the years to come."

      "Aye, I know," said Bran. "He's just... so bloody creepy."

      "He's also professional, affordable, and very good at his job," Ethan said. "I know house-breaking isn't the most lucrative of jobs—well, generally—but it's a good place to start. You needn't splash out on preparations like you would at a museum, say. If you buy a target from Charles you'll almost certainly come out ahead."

      "Ah..."

      Ethan flicked his fingers in a dismissive gesture. "Think on it," he said. "If you haven't come up with anything better before Christmas, talk to him then." He paused, his mouth still open, then curled his lips into the oddest smile that Bran had ever seen on him. "Or don't," Ethan said, still smiling. "It's only a suggestion."

      "Ah," Bran said again. "Aye."

      "After all, you're a professional now," Ethan said. His smile normalised but was still not in the least reassuring. "So... you're on your own. Let me know if you need to borrow any tools." He nodded to Bran, then stepped back and left, as silently as he'd arrived.

      Bran stared after him, his mind completely blank and quivering in place. Next job? Next job? And what exactly did Ethan mean by 'on his own'—"Ah, God," he said under his breath. Now that it was started, it was never going to end, was it—the thought made him snarl and slap his own face, hard enough to sting. "Grow up," he advised his reflection in the mirrors. His reflection only stared back, damp, pink-cheeked, and baffled.

      With an effort Bran banished the childish thoughts and swung around on the bench. The muscles of his arms burned with built-up acid; his shoulders and chest were a single haze of ache. The rings made a terrible demand on his upper body. Not so much on the lower, though. Bran forced himself up and went over to the machines, settling in to do some leg presses while his shoulders unknotted themselves.

      He'd always liked working his legs, honestly. It was nice to lie down—the bench started off cool against his back—and he could lift loads of weight with the muscles of his thighs, all while staring up at the ceiling and thinking of nothing in particular. Bran spread his arms wide, stretching out the tensed muscles in his chest.

      Dimly, underneath the hiss and rattle of the leg weights, he heard the gym door open and swing shut again. Some part of him thought that'll be Jeremy, then, but somehow the thought slipped off the surface of his brain rather than sinking in. Jeremy slid into view overhead. Bran twitched in surprise, the rhythm of the weights faltering. "Sorry," Jeremy said cheerfully. Of course he didn't sound sorry in the slightest. He pattered past Bran to the other weight bench, the inclined one; lifting it off its pegs, he put it as high up as it would go.

      Tipping his head to the side let Bran almost see what was going on. Almost. The lower half of his vision was filled by the sweaty folds of his own t-shirt, rucked up under his arm. Jeremy fussed around with the bench for a bit longer, then ducked down, out of sight; his legs wheeled past Bran's line of sight and Jeremy threw himself up onto the bench, feet hooked into the padded ledge, head pointed towards the floor.

      The show was over. Bran went back to his leg presses. His thighs were starting to ache and his arms were recovering, so he'd stop soon. Twenty more reps. Fifteen. Ten—abruptly he realised that Jeremy wasn't doing anything. Bran lifted his head as best he could. "Fuck are you doing?"

      "Not much," Jeremy said, his voice cheerful but a bit thick. In point of fact, he wasn't doing anything at all, just lying there with his hands folded neatly on his chest, his face slightly pink underneath its natural olive tone. "I only wanted to see how bad being head-down would get."

      "What," Bran said, after a pause. He didn't make it a question. There wasn't any point.

      "Well, you know how Ethan's always saying that you should never go head-down on the cups."

      "Aye?"

      "And I thought, well, why not? Let's see how bad it really is."

      It was all so incredibly stupid that Bran could only roll his eyes and finish his reps. By the time he sat up, straddling the bench, his muscles were limp twitchy noodles and Jeremy's face was a lovely rosy shade. Bran eyed this vision askance. "You're not even head-down, you know. You're more—" Bran flapped his hands, looking for the proper word "—head-sideways-and-a-little-down."

      Jeremy put his arms up over his head, his fingers falling to brush against the floor. The new position arched his back and stuck his chest out like a strutting pigeon's. "Thought I'd try it this way first, that's all."

      "You're a nutter," Bran told him.

      "Most likely. Still, I'll try it, and then I'll know, won't I?" Jeremy shut his eyes.

      The question drove Bran around for most of the rest of the day. What next? What job next? For all that he'd cased the local shops for fun, he knew as well as anyone that it wasn't anything real that he'd just done. It wasn't even keeping his hand in. It was just a mental exercise. A bit of a warm-up. It was nothing. He hated himself for even bothering.

      Buying a cushy house job off Charles Fortescue was probably the easiest way to go, but... fuck's sake, the man made spiders go up Bran's spine. Knowing that it was his best option only made Bran even less enthused about doing it. Relatively easy, safe, and profitable—most of the foot-work done for him, a brilliant way to build up enough money to take on something bigger—and still! Just being pushed in that direction made Bran hang back and fight not to go. It was foolish. It was childish. Bran knew it and he still couldn't bloody well stop himself.

      If Bran could just think of something on his own, then he wouldn't need to depend on Fortescue. Pushing himself to think of something only made his brain freeze in panic, though; think of something, Bran commanded himself, and promptly found his mind blank and terrified. There's a chip out of the paint on that wall was the closest he had to a thought, at least until he stopped pushing himself.

      Finally, driven half out of his spinning mind, Bran grabbed his mac from the closet and let himself out onto the veranda roof. It was a night that Ethan would term 'brisk', a nasty, blustery sort of night. Even with the mac zipped up to his chin Bran felt the cold like a brace of knives all slashing through him. Clouds flew by far overhead, driven on by the wind, moving so fast that Bran could watch them go; it wasn't raining at the moment, but the constant wind blew that afternoon's rain off the shingles and straight into Bran's face. The wind smelt like refrigerated metal with the tang of tar underneath.

      It was just the slap to the face that Bran needed. His thoughts, good and bad, fled in confusion before the rout. Bran straightened up, took a deep breath, and vaulted up onto the dormer.

      He was alone. It was nice. His trousers got soaked through on the instant, but Bran had more pressing worries—straddling the peak of the dormer, Bran settled back to watch the clouds fly.

      Five minutes later, properly cooled off, he admitted to himself that he was most likely going to buy a house job from Charles Fortescue. The only real problem with the idea was the dread of dealing with the man himself, and Fortescue's part in the job would be over a few hours in. Surely Bran could talk to the man for an hour. Couldn't he? What kind of thief would he be if he couldn't? The cowardly kind, that was it.

      Somewhere underneath him, a second window slid open. Bran shut his eyes and sighed, preparing to endure company.

      "Bloody hell," Jeremy muttered, the sound nearly lost under the constant hiss of the trees rustling in the wind. It was a minute or so before Bran heard Jeremy scramble out onto the roof and vault up next to him.

      Bran opened his eyes just as Jeremy settled astride the dormer next to his. Jeremy's smile was amiable enough behind the high collar of his track jacket, even if he was wincing into the wind. His hair rumpled up into damp streamers. "Freeze your balls off yet?"

      "Working on it," Bran said. "You're so cold, whyn't you fuck off back inside?"

      "Probably will, soon enough." Whatever he said, though, Jeremy hunkered down into the warmest shape he could make and stayed. "You're not often up here these days."

      Bran snorted. "Catch me wanting to spend more time with you than I have to."

      "That's true," said Jeremy, apparently unphased. "So what's the special occasion, then?"

      "It..." Bran hated himself already. Turtling up, burying his chin in the collar of his mac, Bran made a vague irritated gesture that was supposed to shove everything aside. "It's a good place to think, isn't it. Could do worse, anyway."

      "Could do," Jeremy agreed. "What are you thinking about, then?"

      "My next job."

      Bran could feel Jeremy's gaze sharpening against his cheek. "I see," Jeremy said. "What'll you be doing?"

      "Buying a house job off Fortescue." Bran surprised himself by barking out a laugh. "Not much of a job, those!"

      Jeremy made a soft answering sound that was almost lost underneath the sough of the wind—it was probably one of those little laughs he'd been practising for months now. "No, that's what Ethan says," said Jeremy. "What is it—the take is commensurate with the effort?"

      "Aye. That's what he says, just precisely. But, the thing is..." Bran faltered, then plunged on. "The thing is, I need money. And practise. I need more practise. Two or three minor house jobs and I'll have both, and then I can move on to bigger things, aye?"

      "Very sensible of you."

      "Fuck off."

      "I was being serious, Bran."

      "Then fuck off double. Tch. Think I want to hear about sensible? I was bloody sensible, I wouldn't be sitting on the roof getting my arse wet."

      For all that Bran was staring stubbornly off into the middle distance, he could somehow sense the raised eyebrow. "Very clever of you, then," Jeremy said.

      "God, fuck off!" Bran very carefully did not check to see if he was being smiled at.

      No answer. Jeremy did not fuck off even the least little bit. Instead he settled down atop his dormer, huddled into his track jacket—Bran considered leaving, then decided that it would make him look as if he were running away, and fuck that, too. The wind rose and made the trees rustle, then died away. Jeremy finally broke the silence. "Wish I was the one pulling a house job."

      "Way you are now, you'd get nicked five minutes after you started." Bran rolled his eyes. "So by all means have a go."

      "Some day, I suppose." Jeremy settled into silence.

      Bran's arse was wet all the way to his waist. He wasn't cold, not exactly, but all the same he could feel the skin of his balls gone all clammy and damp, his wet pants clinging to him in all the tender spots. He'd need a shower. He'd need two. And some dry trousers. He stayed astride the dormer mainly because he didn't want to look like he was running away, although he made a grudging effort to dress it up as training: he'd have to sit out in worse weather if he wanted to make a real go of this business. It was practise. So Bran sat. He got so caught up in enjoying his misery that it came as a surprise when Jeremy laughed under his breath. "After all, I got nicked sharpish the last time I tried to rob a house, didn't I?" Jeremy said.

      "What?"

      "Never mind—"

      "Oh."

      Jeremy smiled. "Hah. Yes. 'Oh'. I was so hopeless then—go on and say it, I know you want to."

      "Still are," Bran said, although it wasn't any fun. "God, you still walk like a herd of baby elephants."

      "I'm working on that."

      "Aye, well, much as you've been working on it, you'd think you'd be better at it by now."

      Jeremy didn't respond. In the windblown silence that followed, Bran hunched his shoulders, struck by a new and unwelcome thought: he hadn't actually paid much attention to Jeremy's progress in a few months, so his information might just be out of date. Bran didn't relish looking the fool—he caught the vaguest flash of paleness out of the corner of his eye and glanced in Jeremy's direction.

      Jeremy was looking at him. The corner of Jeremy's upturned collar had cut a dark triangle out of his cheek, breaking up the shape of his face. It took Bran only the smallest fraction of a second to re-recognise Jeremy in that shape—the wet hair straggling limply across Jeremy's forehead hadn't helped, either—but, still, it made Bran aware of two things: one, how very much Jeremy smiled these days, and two, that Jeremy was not smiling now. "Tell me this," Jeremy said, his face serene and empty, his eyes narrowed against the blowing rain. "Are you ever going to forgive me?"

      "For what?" Bran said, confused.

      "For..." Jeremy made a vague flicking gesture, his eyes never leaving Bran's. "For anything. For intruding, I suppose. For crashing in on your life and not fucking off again. You know. For everything."

      Bran stared at Jeremy in mute exasperation while his mind reeled panic-stricken in front of the question, too enormous to be thought about properly, let alone on the fly. In the end, he had no answer. He slumped back against the pitch of the roof, the shingles cold through the water-proofed back of his mac. "God," he said. "The fuck is this?"

      "Mm." Jeremy didn't move—and then he did, swinging his leg over to sit sidesaddle on the dormer. "I suppose that answers my question, doesn't it?"

      "Suppose so."

      "Well, then," said Jeremy. That meaningless little smile bounced back up on his face, and he slid off the dormer. Whatever was supposed to come after, didn't. Bran watched as Jeremy scooted down the roof, dropped to the veranda, and let himself back inside.

      So: a house job, then.

      Now that he'd come to terms with it, Bran spent a lot of time trying to remember everything Ethan had ever said about housebreaking. As jobs went, it was unlike anything else. Breaking into a house wasn't like doing a shop, or a warehouse, or a museum. For one thing he'd have to prepare for a different sort of security. Houses, even big ones, didn't often have round-the-clock on-site security guards or doors locked with keypads and card-swipes; they did, however, have people coming and going at odd hours and fancy alarm systems. And dogs.

      The dog problem was... well, a problem. Ethan always said that using the gas on dogs was a bad idea, which left Bran with avoidance, drugged meat, or the God-damned taser. Bran had never had a dog—he didn't even like dogs that much—but the idea of hitting one, with anything, even a taser, made him sick at his stomach. He worried at it like... well, like a dog worrying a bone. After a couple of days of drawing no conclusions, Bran heard the mumble of a certain sort of cronyish conversation coming from the kitchen and banged on in, fingers crossed. "How'd you deal with dogs, then?" he demanded to know.

      The laughter ceased. Ethan looked at Eddie, who looked back at him. They were both at the table with a pot of tea and a battered cardboard box that Eddie had brought in, full of what looked like old documents. After a moment Ethan heaved out a long-suffering sigh and gestured at Eddie, whose weathered face creased up into a smile. "Hello to you too," Eddie said, putting his handful of papers down on the table. "In the life, you mean?"

      "No, on the street—course in the life!" Bran snorted. "Only I don't like the idea of hurting them."

      Eddie shrugged. "Best get over it."

      "That's no bloody help—"

      "Never is, is it?" Eddie tilted his head at Ethan. "Never is. His Nibs never got over it and if I recall correctly he's got a pair of bite-marks to show for it."

      "It's true," Ethan said.

      Eddie chuckled. "Course, Ethan was always a bit too posh to go knocking over houses. None of that for our Ethan, it was all shops and shows and museums and the like. He'd done more houses, he'd have got over being squeamish about it, I promise you that."

      It was an old argument with little point and less likelihood of ever being resolved during Bran's lifetime. Bran cut it off by sighing loudly enough to hurt his throat. "So how did you deal with them, then?"

      "We-ell... I carried tranquilliser darts," Eddie said, slumping back in his chair. "And a small air-gun, for firing them. You never want to get caught with that, though. First thing to go if I even thought I was in trouble. Must have bought a hundred of them, over the years."

      Bran hadn't thought of darts. He whistled under his breath. "Couldn't you have used a blowgun or something like?"

      "Ye-es..." Eddie's eyes shifted away, then shifted back. "Could have. It's harder to arrange and harder to do in the heat of the moment, like. You've got a dog charging at you, it's easiest to point and fire. Louder, a bit, but easier."

      "Darts," Bran said, mostly to himself.

      Ethan stirred. "I'm not fond of the idea," he said, darting a glance at Eddie. "But if that's what you decide to do—"

      "So you're going to hit a house, then?" Eddie said cheerfully. "That's a pip. Got one all picked out?"

      "Not in particular. I'll be buying one from Charles Fortescue—"

      "Aaw, pssh!" Eddie said, laughing. "Man does everything but hold your bag while you're cutting the window-glass. You won't need to worry about dogs on a Fortescue job."

      Bran hesitated. His mind went in five or six terrible bloody directions at once, which hurt like a stone bitch. Charles Fortescue's awful face loomed in his memory, with the dead grey spree-killer eyes—"Er. What does he do, then?"

      "Whatever it takes," said Eddie, his grin going lopsided. "Whateeeeever it takes." He gave it three seconds before he gave in and exploded with laughter. "The look on your face, lad! My God, it's priceless—"

      "Charles takes his work very seriously," Ethan said, speaking over Eddie's laughter. "If there's a dog, he'll know all about it. And you can always specifically request a house without dogs."

      Eddie subsided, still quivering a bit. "I only worked with him twice, three times—I'm of an older generation, as they say—but the man's so exact you could set your watch by him. And bloody thorough, too right, you'll go mad just trying to cope with the amount of information he'll pile on you."

      "An excellent quality in an advance scout, I think you'll agree," Ethan said dryly.

      "You always were an old woman," Eddie told Ethan, and they traded dry long-suffering smiles.

      The kitchen door swung open. Jeremy poked his head in. He'd been to town, apparently; his hair had been cut short and lay all sleek and gleaming back against his skull, like a cat's fur. "Hallo, Eddie," Jeremy said. "I didn't know you were about."

      "They never do," Eddie said, then whooped off laughing. Bran barely restrained himself from rolling his eyes.

      Jeremy came on into the kitchen, intent on the fruit bowl that sat on the counter. "Did I miss anything?"

      "Only talking about Bran's upcoming house job," said Eddie. "And what about you? When do you start work? Can't laze about mooching off Ethan forever!"

      Ethan shot Eddie a narrow-eyed glance, but Jeremy seemed to take it in stride, filching an apple from the bowl. "As soon as Ethan lets me," he said. "Possibly even sooner. I am keen to get started. Again."

      Eddie clapped his hands. "Glad to hear it. Glad to hear it. Any ideas on what you want from your first job, then?"

      Jeremy hesitated. He flipped the apple into the air and caught it again with a soft, hollow thunk. "A few," he said cautiously. "It's all a bit nebulous, though. I haven't run them by anyone."

      "Well! Here we all are—let's hear 'em."

      Jeremy shot a glance in Bran's direction, and the corner of his mouth twitched, once. Bran was nauseously inclined to read all sorts of things in that look. Whatever Jeremy was looking for, he either did or did not find it; he settled back against the counter and brought the apple to his face, tapping it idly against his lower lip as he thought. Or, perhaps, 'thought'. "You must understand that I don't know how workable it is," Jeremy began.

      Eddie made an impatient go-on gesture.

      Jeremy nibbled absently at one of the apple's shoulders, teeth barely even breaking the skin. "Only... I was reading in one of Claude's magazines about a company that installs hidden safes in things. Like... into the legs of beds, or between kitchen counters, that sort of thing."

      "Oh, those!" The lurking laughter caught Eddie again and he went with it. "I know those, all right! They're the sort of thing that ordinary people think will fool a burglar—takes five minutes at the outside to find one."

      The apple fell again. "Assuming you knew to look," Jeremy said, his voice almost dreamy. "I mean, if you didn't go in knowing that there was one about, how do you know you found them all? Might have been half a hundred you never even sensed."

      "Eeh," said Eddie, the laughter tapering off. "I'll allow that it's possible. Not bloody likely, but possible." His face had gone a bit sulky, though, and it gave Bran a mean little burst of pleasure to see.

      "So I thought—" Jeremy brought the apple back up and bit into it "—there must be a company somewhere nearby that builds those. And they must keep records for their files. So... if I could do a creep on their office and sneak a look at those files, then maybe I'd know where all those built-in safes were hidden. And then I suppose I'd have my next few jobs all neatly laid out for me."

      After a moment of thought, Eddie said, "Huh."

      "It's... workable," Ethan said cautiously.

      Jeremy made an indistinct sound around his mouthful of apple. "As I said, it's only an idea."

      "Not a bad one, though." Ethan sat back in his chair. "At any rate, it'll be at least a year before you're ready—plenty of time to hammer out all the little details."

      "So you can go and read some more of Claude's magazines while you wait," said Bran. He wasn't sure what he meant by it, honestly, but it felt good to say it in that thin little voice. Pointed.

      Jeremy paused. He glanced at Bran, his eyes hooded with amusement, his little smile tucked away behind the half-eaten apple and thus only for Bran. Bran braced for anything. What he got was nothing: after a moment Jeremy snickered and looked away, dismissing Bran out of hand.

      The day wore on into evening, becoming one of those nights that managed to be wet without a single visible cause. The wind was up, lifting drops of water from the wet roof to splatter them across Bran's windows, even though it hadn't rained all day and certainly wasn't raining now. Or was it? Honestly, Bran couldn't be arsed to go and find out.

      He'd been... itchy all day. Nothing sat right. Everything looked wrong. He couldn't stay still. He was tired but not sleepy in the least. Bran had Violator going as he wandered around his room, looking at all the bits of paper from his last job, making a vague stab at shepherding them into a single pile that he could take outside tomorrow and burn, but mostly just picking things up and putting them down again, sometimes in a slightly different place. Maybe the music was the problem, he thought, but he couldn't think of anything that would better suit his mood, so he left Depeche Mode where they were.

      Bran was bent over fumbling the tube of blueprints out from behind his bookshelf when the knock came. The door opened hard on the heels of the sound, proclaiming the knocker to be Ethan; "Bran?" Ethan said, proving it.

      "Uh, aye," said Bran, jerking back and coming upright, tube in hand. "I was just... getting everything together. If..." He hesitated a moment before his flailing mind came, for once, to his rescue. "If I'm going to have a new job, like, I need to tidy up the bits of the old, right."

      Ethan, hanging half-in and half-out of Bran's room with one hand tight on the doorknob, nodded. "Probably wise," he said. "I'm glad to see you making an effort to cover your tracks." He did not say finally but Bran still fancied that he heard it, tossed in there somewhere, unvoiced but enormous.

      "Took me long enough, I know," said Bran. He put the tube on his desk. "So you wanted something, then?"

      Ethan rocked back on his heels, leaning back out of the room like he was anxious to go. "I intend to drain the pool tomorrow morning," he said. "I've let it go this long because I know you enjoy it, but I can't let it go any longer—"

      "Aye, s'pose," Bran said, looking down at his hands, cracking the knuckle at the base of his left thumb.

      "—so if you want to get in one last swim, you'd best do it before then," said Ethan. His smile came and went.

      "Aye," Bran said again. "I'll, what, take it under advisement?"

      Ethan's smile flashed again, a bit more honest this time. "You do that," he said, and he bowed himself out. The door eased shut behind him with barely a click.

      "Fuck," Bran said under his breath, looking away at nothing. He hadn't bothered with the pool in almost a week, but still, the knowledge that he was about to lose it for a month... "Fuck," Bran said again. He was working up a good sulk, really getting into it, letting Depeche Mode escort him there. He reached for the tube; the tips of his fingers smacked against its side and knocked it over. Bran grabbed for it and missed. The tube hit the carpet with a pale hollow booming sound, sounding like nothing so much as a half-empty cardboard tube hitting the floor. Nothing else like it. Bran said "Fuck!" again and abandoned the tube under his desk.

      His swimming trunks were in the drawer with his underthings, still clean from last week's laundry. Bran didn't really see them as he pulled them out and threw them onto his bed; his gaze was turned inward, roasting in the burning sense of being slighted, cheated, short-changed—again. He stripped off his t-shirt and track pants and abandoned them where they fell; his pants went into the hamper. Outside the not-rain picked up and splattered against the window again. Whether or not it was actually cold, it sounded cold, and the naked Bran burst out into gooseflesh all over. He hurried into his trunks before digging out an old t-shirt and dragging it on as well.

      It was after nine and the house was long since closed up for the night. Claude was doubtless out in the guest cottage, doing whatever it was that a Claude did when he wasn't being a fat French martinet in the kitchen; Ethan was off in his rooms enjoying some Ethan-ish solitude; a soft thumping sound from Jeremy's rooms proved where he was, as Bran padded by, cold and grumpy. The darkness was nice. Not nice enough to soften Bran's mood, but still... nice.

      He slapped open the door to the gymnasium and groaned. The mats were still all laid out. Fuck's sake, was nothing going to go Bran's way today? It was almost enough to make Bran give up on his last swim; what stopped him, stupidly enough, was the passing thought that he'd already taken his dirty pants off and put them in the hamper. He couldn't take that back, at least not without being disgusting. Bran groped his way down to the far end of the gym and smacked at the pool controls, jabbing on the heater and the lights. Lines of cool blue light burst up around the edges of the room. Leaving the pool to (fail to) heat, Bran stomped back upstairs.

      Jeremy opened his door, one eyebrow already raised. He'd stripped down to a white singlet and a pair of red track-suit trousers rolled to the knee. Just looking at him made Bran feel cold. Jeremy hadn't seemed to notice. "Yes?"

      "Ethan's closing up the pool tomorrow," said Bran. It might have come out as half a whine. Bran ignored it.

      "Yes, he said as much."

      "So... come and help me move the mats. I want to have one last swim before it's gone."

      "Ah." Jeremy glanced back over his shoulder at the cheerful cave of his room—even now he didn't own very much, but it all managed to reek of him anyway. "All right, then," he said, and he slipped past Bran and out into the hallway. Bran thumped back a step to avoid getting too close, then hurried for the stairs. He could hear Jeremy behind him, but only just.

      Bran had just barely blown into the gym when the lights popped on, blinding him. Before he could stop himself he made a grinding sound in his throat and threw up an arm to shield his eyes from the glare. "Sorry," Jeremy said, snickering. "I can turn them back off if you'd like."

      "Guh." Bran blinked to clear his eyes. The monstrous old room evolved slowly out of the blinding whiteness, blue mats, enormous mirrors, and all. "Just... come on," Bran said, heading for the near end of the room. He peeled up the first of the mats. Jeremy hefted the other end and they crab-walked the mat down to the weight-machine end of the gym.

      They'd been picking up and laying out the mats all summer and they had it down to a science. Three minutes later and they were done: a wall of mats five feet tall and nearly twenty feet long separated the exercise equipment from the vast wooden expanse of the floor that hid the pool. If Bran had been cold before, he wasn't now. He slumped back against the wall of mats and let his head fall back, plucking at the hem of his t-shirt. "Go and roll the floor back, would you?" he told the ceiling.

      Silence. The floor failed to rumble open. Picking his head back up almost took more energy than it was worth, but Bran managed to roll his head upright and focus on Jeremy. "... what?"

      Jeremy didn't answer, just slouched there comfortably with his hips canted forward and his thumbs stuck in the waistband of his trousers. The little smile on his face didn't waver. He watched Bran.

      "What?" Bran said again, irritated.

      Jeremy's smile parted in the centre, his lips forming a slight 'o'. The hairs on the nape of Bran's neck rose. Jeremy was still slouching, but it didn't look comfortable any more—it looked frozen, like he'd tensed up in that odd position. Jeremy said, "I suppose I'm waiting for you to say 'please'."

      It was so stupid that Bran could only gape at him for a few seconds. Jeremy rocked up onto the balls of his bare feet, waited a moment, then added, "I'd thought about waiting for you to say 'thank you'—after all, I came down and did you a favour when you asked—but, on second thought, I expect that hell would freeze over before you said as much." A laugh jittered out of him. Not much of one.

      "Oh, go and fuck yourself," Bran eventually managed to say.

      "I've a better idea—" and Jeremy slammed straight into Bran, pinning him to the wall of mats behind him.

      Bran made a shrieky little sound and thumped the heel of his hand into Jeremy's ribs, hard enough to make Jeremy bark out his breath. For two precious seconds, Bran honestly thought that they were fighting. He was fighting, anyway. Jeremy was all over Bran, hands slapping at him in all sorts of places, trying to get in a good hit (Bran thought) in revenge for not being thanked (what a God-damned stupid thing to get angry about) and then Jeremy lunged up and sucked onto Bran's mouth and Bran's brain exploded.

      He'd remember everything about the next five seconds—with brutal, nightmarish clarity—for the rest of his life.

      Bran was frozen, unable to react or even think, every last pathetic bit of his self devoted to staring at this thing that was only technically a kiss. He couldn't make any sense of it at all. Making sense of it would have required him to realise, in the everyday part of his mind, that it was Jeremy and Jeremy was kissing him—or doing something that was like kissing, only more like an assault—and Bran couldn't collect his thoughts anywhere near that closely. His mouth remained shut and unresponsive. During the bad times ahead he'd cling to that, that he'd not just opened his mouth and let Jeremy in, that Jeremy had been left mouthing over a tight-lipped grimace... and the grimace was why it was only five seconds of his life that had been seared into his mind.

      Because, five seconds later, the sort-of-a-kiss half-dissolved as Jeremy started laughing right up against Bran's lips, a weird revving nerved-up laugh that smelt of toothpaste. "Well, all right," Jeremy said. He still had the frozen Bran wrestled back against the mats—Jeremy's nails scraped up against the inside of Bran's thigh as he put his hand up the leg of Bran's swim trunks. His fingers brushed against the underside of Bran's balls, caught neatly up in the mesh underpinnings of the suit.

      The little jostle went right through Bran and threw him straight through the plate-glass window of reality. "You Christing fuck," he gasped, driving the heel of his hand into Jeremy's ribs again. Jeremy coughed against Bran's mouth, washing him with the scent of peppermint. "You fuck," Bran said again, and now it was a cracked little screamy sound no louder than a whisper, and he hit Jeremy twice more.

      Jeremy didn't move back an inch, only coughed and absorbed the shots. He got his entire forearm up the leg of Bran's trunks, yanking them up in front and down in back—"Yes I do," Jeremy hissed, his eyes narrowed and mad. His hand closed on Bran's cock straight through the mesh—that, also, Bran would remember for the rest of his life, the first time that anyone besides himself had touched him there, and how Jeremy had found him already hard, and how he'd gone harder on the instant.

      In the dark days to come Bran would also remember how much he'd wanted that, then—but only when he wanted to scourge himself for it.

      He was still driving those short, sharp blows into Jeremy's ribs. He couldn't stop. Neither one of them was paying much attention, though. Bran's swim trunks were tangled awkwardly around Jeremy's forearm, threatening to come off his arse entirely in back, and it was making Jeremy laugh that panicky laugh and struggle against the fabric—Jeremy extricated his arm, yanked open the drawstring, and stuck his hand down the front instead, grabbing Bran's cock without anything in the way any more. The mesh had been scratchy, and in a way Bran missed that little bit of pain, but he wasn't going to say as much.

      "Come on, down," Jeremy said, his other hand appearing from out of nowhere to grab Bran's shoulder and pull. Bran automatically resisted (when had he ever done what Jeremy wanted?) but he didn't want to be standing, either—his legs gave out and Bran slid ungracefully down the stack of mats, his half-bared arse thumping from one mat's edge to the next with enough force to jar his teeth together. Just as he hit the floor Jeremy fell half on top of him and somehow they wound up sprawled out by the weight bench, the wall of mats rising between them and the door.

      Jeremy's hand on him was... wrong, in every possible way. Half those ways Bran didn't currently have the ability to think about, but the other half... Jeremy was alternately too rough and too gentle, working at the wrong angle, always at the wrong speed, the material of Bran's trunks getting in the way. It harried Bran around in frantic little circles—his heart was thundering in his ears but he wasn't going to come like this, not any time soon, and he couldn't take another second of it. It wasn't working. The ceiling creaked above them, Ethan walking about in his room. It sent a thrill across Bran's nerves, a horrible exciting what-if-he-catches-us shudder that made him jerk his hips up and groan. Jeremy sniggered and craned up to try and kiss Bran again. Pressing his lips together Bran turned his face away, which prevented the unwanted kiss but confronted Bran with the mirrors on the back wall.

      Bran's eyes widened. For a space, even the hurried hand-job faded into the background. It was a frantic and scrambling thing that was happening here, ugly under the unforgiving lights. Jeremy, rejected, had only buried his face in the crook of Bran's neck. His body was splayed out over Bran's like he meant to keep Bran pinned to the mat, one knee planted between Bran's thighs, one arm shoved down the front of Bran's trunks. Bran himself was an unlovely pale splat against the blue of the mats, arms and legs akimbo, dirty-blond hair in disarray, face rapidly reddening. Even as he watched he bucked awkwardly up into the raw pull of Jeremy's hand. The motion made him all angles, bared hipbones jutting up at the ceiling, knees poking out in every direction, rubbed-pink elbows braced against the floor. Nasty and graceless, but he was part of it—God, he couldn't stop staring at it.

      Jeremy flexed his wrist. The waistband of Bran's trunks slipped down and Bran's cock seemed to appear out of nowhere, already caged in Jeremy's fingers. Bran had to look away from the mirror. He shut his eyes. That helped. It reduced what was happening to just a disembodied genderless hand touching him, and Bran could get on with the business of working his cock in and out of those fingers until Jeremy—until the hand—picked up on the fast, staggering rhythm that Bran wanted.

      It didn't take long after that. How could it? In the years to come they'd do this, and worse, again and again, and for all that Bran never liked letting Jeremy get him off—needed it, craved it, obsessed over it, yes, yes, and yes, but he never liked it—he always responded to the slightest suggestion with a single-minded, embarrassing speed that made a mockery of his resolve. This time... Bran grunted out a pained, urgent sound every time Jeremy's hand swept up to squeeze at the head of his cock. He sounded so stupid, but he couldn't stop doing it. He thought he was hyper-aware of everything around him—including the sound of Ethan's footsteps overhead, which a particularly cold-blooded bit of his mind was still tracking—but there in the heart of the moment, when everything was inevitable and it wasn't Bran's fault any more, Jeremy's uneven breathing against the side of Bran's throat and the weird hot thing jammed uncomfortably against Bran's hip suddenly made sense. Eyes widening with the realisation of it, Bran made a strangled sound and came all over his t-shirt in short, shattering bursts.

      He came hard—not particularly pleasantly, but hard, definitely that—and it was over fast, leaving Bran's mind stunned into silence. It was more of a relief to have it over with than anything else. Jeremy let Bran's cock drop (with an unpleasant wet splat) and grabbed his own, shoving down the top of his track trousers to get at it. Bran just lay there, passive and drained, listening to Jeremy groan under his breath as he finished himself off. Bran was more aware of the chafed spots on his cock—God, but it stung—and of the wet splotch cooling on his t-shirt. Jeremy came into the palm of his own hand with a throaty "Nnm" sound. It didn't quite register. Not just then, anyway.

      Dazed, Bran dabbed at the wet patch on his t-shirt, then held his glistening fingers up to the light to examine them. Beside him Jeremy was already laughing under his breath, putting himself back in order, and without really thinking about it (or about anything at all) Bran curled his other arm around Jeremy's waist. It brought Jeremy up against his side, lazy and purring, and Bran patted Jeremy's hip, and it was... it was all right. Maybe. At the very least, he couldn't currently remember why it wasn't all right.

      Bran could sense so many awful things gathering on the horizon like storm-clouds, but for now... "God," he said, letting his hand drop back onto his belly. He stared up at the lights overhead, struck blind by the glare. "God."