"What about this?" asks Gray, holding out a silky pair of pyjama bottoms.

"Perfect," says Zef. He can't remember where he's seen the pantsuit. Too many caps wearing too many shiny outfits.

He goes to the bathroom to change, feeling weirdly shy despite the skinny dipping earlier. He experiences, for the first time, the uncanny valley experience of seeing his own reflection while hammered. Hair mussed. Eyes glazed. Gormless grin.

As he removes his clothes, sand sprinkles the floor, caught in the folds from their time on the beach. His jacket in particular. As he folds it up, two lumps in the pockets keep him from making a perfect square, and he remembers with guilt as keen as any knife in the ribs what he stashed in there before leaving his apartment.

The EMP grenades. Just in case Gray had gone off again.

Instead, he'd given Zef the best night of his life.

It's a sobering moment.

In the bedroom, he finds Gray already tucked into the king-sized bed, looking like a Beatrix Potter mouse dwarfed in the duvet. He pats the spot next to him.

"Sleepover? Figure we'd have to pay taxi fare to meet in the middle."

Zef's heart hammers. Him. Gray. One bed. "You sure?"

Gray fluffs a pillow for him. Zef gets in slowly. His body feels heavy hitting the mattress, sinfully comfortable. Gray drew the curtains so it's dark despite the rising sun. Zef curls up all cosy and warm facing Gray. Bodies parallel like two parentheses.

"Thanks for coming out with me, darlin'."

"Should be me thanking you." Too dark to see much of Gray's face. Zef wants to reach out and touch to see if he's still smiling. It doesn't sound like he's smiling. "Never had so much fun in my life."

"That's good," Gray murmurs. "Get some sleep."

"Night, Gray."

They both turn over. Zef stares at the ceiling. The night's events reel through his head. He's tired but too buzzed to sleep. Time passes slow and syrupy.

Into the dark, Gray's voice says, "Can't sleep?"

"No. You?"

A dry laugh. "Naw. Not sure when I last had a good sleep. Certainly not no place this comfortable."

"Yeah. Was just thinking I've gotten used to practically sleeping on concrete."

Gray pauses. "That's not what was keeping me up."

"Oh?"

The darkness acts like the anonymity of a priest's confessional. Gray's voice, warm and deep, crackles with a bit of unspent laughter. "Just that...if this night had to happen with anyone, I'm glad it's you."

Zef, hesitant, frees an arm from the duvet and lays it on top between them. Reaching across the gulf of mattress. "Yeah?"

"Yeah."

"Not wishing it was, I dunno, Cal or something?"

Dark as it is, Zef can still see Gray's white grin flashing. "Were you really jealous of Cal?"

Zef answers self-consciously. "Only a little."

"Wanna know a secret?"

"Yeah."

"I was a little jealous, too. Seein' you starin' at 'em."

The sheets rustle. In the quiet dark, Zef feels the brush of Gray's fingers against his. Breaching that distance. Slowly, his pinky hooks with Zef's. Gentle and just a little bit shy. Zef gives Gray's pinky a squeeze with his own.

Maybe it's the liquor. They call it liquid courage, after all. But it brings out a bit of Zef's honesty. "Can't tell you all the ways you don't need to be jealous of anyone."

"No?"

"No."

"Not even Leo."

God. Zef hadn't even thought of Leo. "Definitely not Leo."

"Then why didn't you—" Gray's pinky unwinds and suddenly his whole hand is in Zef's, fingers laced. He shifts closer, bringing their joined hands up between them. From elbow to wrist, Zef's arm is pressed to Gray's chest. It's electric. Gray's touch is a conduit for every live wire within Zef's body. "Why didn't you—" Kiss me. He cuts himself short.

Zef can't breathe. His heart shivers in his chest. Ask me like this and I won't be able to lie.

Gray clears his throat and starts to pull away. Self-conscious. Guarding against further rejection. Putting distance between them. "Nothing. Nevermind. I'm just glad you trusted... Nevermind."

Zef wants to take Gray's hand back. "And you're trusting me."

"Trying," says Gray. His tone is forcefully light. "Good to know you're the jealous type. Any other sins you wanted to confess?"

So many.

It's not the right time. They've had a good night, a fun night. The last thing Zef wants to do is blindside Gray by dumping his guilty conscience in his lap out of nowhere.

No, not tonight.

Tonight, the only sin left to confess is lust.

"I should have kissed you when you gave me the chance."

There's a moment's pause that feels forever-long, but then Gray rolls across the mile of bed between them and pins Zef to the mattress. Scalding hands on Zef's shoulder and neck, Gray's weight pushing him down. Gray over him and around him. Kimono slid open, all that untouchable skin like silk against Zef's bare chest, and he's pretty sure their hearts are trying to reach one another through that barrier.

Gray's voice issues heady and deep against Zef's lips. "Last chance."

Zef seizes it. Seizes Gray. Both hands in his hair, surging up to meet him. In the dark, it's clumsy. His mouth against the corner of Gray's lips. Noses bumping. But then Gray tips Zef's chin to change the angle, and their lips slide sweetly together. Gray tastes like copper and tequila. He smells like the sea. His kisses are unbridled. Untamed. Open-mouthed, tongue tangling with Zef's, arching into his hands.

The heat pooling in Zef's stomach spreads lower. His toes curl. He forgets all the reasons this is a fucking awful idea. Goodbye hidden agendas. Goodbye treacherous schemes. Gray sucks on Zef's lower lip and growls and Zef is just a man. A weak, red-blooded, gay man who never had the privilege of making out with another man.

And this isn't just a man. This is Gray.

Gray, who stops kissing so he can say against Zef's jaw, "You wanted to leave your mark on the world? Start with me." Then, as if to give a demonstration, he bites Zef's shoulder and sucks. Tongues the bruise he no doubt left.

It feels too good. Zef didn't know it could feel this good just to kiss. Ever eloquent, he says, "Hngh-ngh-ah?"

Gray pauses to pull his kimono off one shoulder. Hand in Zef's hair, he guides Zef's mouth to the spot where a tattooed serpent curls over his shoulder onto his collar bone. Zef traces it with his lips first, then—gently at first—his teeth.

"I said, leave a mark," Gray repeats.

So Zef bites him. If the strangled groan that follows is any indication, Gray likes it. Zef kisses the spot in apology, soothes the darkening skin with his tongue, then sinks his teeth in again. Not drawing blood, but from the noises, Gray likes it rough. He buries his own face in Zef's neck to give him a matching mark. After a moment, Gray's fingers tighten in his hair and pull. The tug on Zef's scalp sends tingles shooting straight down his spine. He finds himself staring into Gray's dark eyes. His lips are shiny. He cranes his neck to look at the chrysanthemum on his shoulder Zef just sucked a mark into. The red ink is bruised with purple, only just visible in the dark.

Gray gives an approving smirk. "That-a-boy."

Zef didn't know he had a praise kink until that moment, but holy hell, he has a praise kink.

Gray tilts his head. "What?"

Zef must have frozen. He feels like he needs a hard restart. Licking his swollen lips, he says the first words that come to him. "You're so fucking gorgeous."

Gray's panting pauses. Like he forgot, for a second to breathe. His brows crunch together. "Don't get all romantic on me, now."

Zef doesn't know what to make of that. Gray grins, a little sardonic, then sinks over Zef to kiss him deeply. Was this not meant to be romantic? Zef thought it was all pretty romantic. Crossing off bucket list items and skinny dipping in the sea together and sharing a first kiss in stolen pyjamas, drunk on stolen tequila, on a night they stole just for themselves. Gray's hips bear down on Zef's, putting pressure between his legs where Zef feels unbearably hot, Gray's tongue equally hot and insistent in Zef's mouth.

Something about this kiss feels different.

Zef pulls away a second. "Are you—?"

Gray makes a noise of frustration and flips them so Zef is nestled into the cradle of Gray's hips.

"Fuck me," Gray says.

Coherent thought scatters to the wind, obliterated like so many dandelion seeds. It is such a good thing Zef doesn't have a dick, yet. The silk pyjamas are the only thing keeping this even half-polite.

"Mhuah?" Zef says into Gray's next, open-mouthed kiss. God, for a man who doesn't like being touched, he sure does know how.

"You heard me."

Struck stupid, Zef says, "Here? Now?"

Gray nips the hinge of Zef's jaw. "You'd prefer it on the piano?" He sucks one of the marks left on Zef's throat. "Kitchen island? Back on the beach? Sand's a bitch, but just tell me where and how you want me."

It is head and tails the hottest thing Zef's ever heard. He wants to eat Gray out front to back in every room of this goddamn house. He wants to know what Gray's tongue feels like in other places.

It's coming back to Zef, though.

Maybe he's sobering up a little but they're still drunk. It's a bit of a problem.

The lies, those are worse.

But there's something else setting off alarm bells in Zef's head. Something about the desperate, harried quality of Gray's breathing. The reckless way his fingers fist in Zef's hair. That look in his eyes when Zef called him 'gorgeous.'

It's not that he expected a man like Gray to go to bed gently.

But for a man afraid of being touched...

Gray's tongue and teeth knead Zef's throat, his hands sliding down Zef's ribs, thumbs hooking into the waistband of his briefs—

Zef doesn't mean to sound so alarmed when he says, "Gray, stop."

Gray stops. He pulls back a bit. In the silence, his panting sounds loud. Zef rises and falls with the rapid movement of Gray's chest.

"Not now," Zef manages. "We should— wait."

Gray's voice comes out a bit defensive. "You need poetry and rose petals? I can get those."

"No, it's— we're drunk, and—"

"We ain't that drunk."

It's true. Neither of them are so far gone they don't know what they're doing.

Gray says, "Have you never..."

Zef hasn't ever had sex, but that's not what stopped him. It was...

It was like this.

He'd been in and on two vehicles with Gray. The Vitali, and the bike. In the Vitali, Gray had been nitroglycerin in a pinata. Having a party but two seconds to detonation time. On the bike he'd been... alive. Just alive.

And right now, this feels more like the Vitali.

But he'll take the offered excuse. "No. I've never."

"Oh." Gray makes a noise that somehow sounds self-deprecating. "Right. Say no more. Get up off me?"

"I'm sorry."

"Don't you dare go apologising, darlin'," he says as he scoots out from under Zef and retreats to his side of the bed. "Not about to besmirch your virtue. Or make your first time a bad memory."

He plays it all off lightly, but beneath it all he sounds...

Hurt isn't quite right.

Zef impulsively reaches for his hand. He finds it. Gray nearly tugs it away, but Zef holds on. Laces their fingers. "In the morning? We can talk in the morning."

Zef's eyes have adjusted to the dark enough to see Gray's sad smile. "Get some sleep, Zef."

Zef settles into the sheets, but he can't sleep. It should be easy peasy to pass out. Snoozy on tequila and the lingering taste of Gray on his lips.

Instead, he lies awake listening to his heart career around the cage of his ribs like a bird trapped in a conservatory. He thinks and thinks and thinks, and the more he thinks, the faster his heart goes.

He really should have told Gray everything. Up front, up on that roof. Feels bad, having fun and fooling around and saying I trust you when Gray doesn't know all the ways he shouldn't trust Zef back.

He can't put his finger on it, but something else doesn't feel right. It has his heart hammering, but he's either too buzzed or too blissed out and conflicted from the kiss to figure it out.

The eyes of the portraits on the wall watch him.

He lies there for hours. An illuminated digital holo-clock on the wall tells him it's six am. Seven. Eight.

Next to him, Gray shifts. "Zef? You asleep?"

Zef pretends he is. He's too tired and confused for conversation.

A sigh. "Wish I could sleep. Feels like forever since I have." It's quiet enough to hear Gray swallow. "Bein' on the run all the time, it can be hard to close your eyes."

A long pause follows. Zef thinks that might be all. Just Gray talking to himself. Then—

"Seein' as you're asleep, maybe...maybe I can say all this when you ain't looking at me with those Bambi eyes o' yours." The mattress sinks as Gray shifts closer. Zef holds still as possible. He breathes deep, tries to look like the picture of perfect slumber. "Look," Gray says. "Zef, against my better judgement, I— like you." He makes a frustrated noise. "I shouldn't, but fuck it."

The pause that follows takes so long, Zef fears he won't finish, or that he's realised Zef isn't really sleeping. A conflicted tangle of feelings freezes him to the spot. A giddy, shrill voice in his head echoes he likes me, he likes me, undercut by an anxious one that picks at the rest of what Gray said.

What did he mean, 'I shouldn't?'

Finally, Gray says, "I wish I could wait 'round for you to trust me, but— Fuck, I'm running out of time, darlin'. Don't rightly know if I should trust you at all, or if all this is just—" He takes a shuddering breath. He's close enough Zef feels it ruffle the hair on the nape of his neck. "I gotta do this. Damn sure you'll hate me for it, but I gotta. Can't keep lookin' over my shoulder." There's a long pause. A moment in which Zef feels the ghost of a touch on his back. The next words are nearly too muffled to hear, like Gray turned his face into the pillow. "Guess there ain't no happily ever after for us. Too bad. Felt real. I wish it was real."

Terror grips Zef by the throat. Chokes any possible response he might have summoned. It suddenly feels mortally important that he stay still while the mattress shifts under him. While footsteps pad around the bed. Something akin to a tickle in his brain makes him twitch, and he forces his breath into an even pattern, but his heart is going WHOMP WHOMP WHOMP like the blades of a helicopter. Gray walks out of the room. His footsteps fade away, then the clink of bottles comes from downstairs. The tear of fabric.

What is happening? What is he doing? What did he mean 'I gotta do this?' 'Damn sure you'll hate me for it.' What did he have to do?

Gray's footsteps return. He walks past the bed. Zef risks peeking over the hills of the duvet to see Gray walk into the closet.

In his hand is clutched a half-empty bottle of tequila with a torn dish towel stuffed into the neck.

He picks his jeans up off the floor and fishes his lighter out of them. Then he walks to the bathroom and faces the shower, looking at the secret room and the data fort beyond. Bathed in blue light in an oversized kimono, eyes darkly sleepless and haunted.

The woman in the portrait seems to glare at Zef in accusation. Are you sober enough now? Are you getting it?

He's getting it, and he can't breathe.

Gray lights the wick on the molotov, winds up like a quarterback, and hurls it at the data fort.