Ravi spread his prep materials across the broad table in front of him and let out a satisfied sigh. Leaving the capitol and jetting out into the Fennec region's sand-blasted heat left a thrill. Nothing could weigh down his airborne mood. There was a fuckload of work needed to assume command, but he'd arrived in the town called Raffaret two days ahead of schedule, with enough time to post up in the nearest inn and dig into the documentation Com Huseda's outfit sent. Lucky that this particular inn had a bar on the first floor. Shitty lighting, decent sunbrew, and no distractions. It was exactly what he needed to get ready for Opalina.

He powered up his slate and waited for the inevitable parade of adverts, arranged his inktouch pens into a neat row, and positioned the blank pad of notebook paper so that it lined up with the edge of the table. The paper was old-fashioned, but so was he. Paper notes helped him absorb the scope of a task. He was going to need all the help he could get to turn this particular assignment into something favorable. But it was still a command position. A chance to finally run his own crew.

Archcom Pridian had warned him that the first step was passing a damn inspection. His eyebrows climbed as he read the litany of reports detailing the disasters of Opalina's failed inspections. Three—almost four—years since they'd met even the lowest acceptable bar. No one was going to hand a commendation to a unit that couldn't pass basic inspection. At least the first hurdle was obvious.

Commendations were next, and that was going to be tricky until he had a better idea of who he was working with. Years with a respectable Enforcer unit meant he was accustomed to the discipline and traditions of the most physical of the three branches. The unit at Opalina was too low ranked to specialize in any branch. Hopefully they had some promise as Enforcers. He didn't know the first thing about trying to propel a unit into Engagement or Enlightenment.

A racket at the bar's entrance snagged his attention, and he looked up at the noisy group spilling inside. They were exactly the sort of crowd he didn't want overtaking the homey quiet. Feathers, fringe, oversized gems, stripes of glitter across their faces. Loud. Some of their clothes were more holes than fabric. Undoubtedly a bunch of wealthy recruits from the ziggurat on dispensation and out to party. There was some club in the area that kept popping up in all his adverts, and it seemed like the only place in the desert that would welcome that many sequined outfits.

The horde charged further back into the bar, led by a tall man in a slinky shirt and pants that had to be threat to his circulatory system. Although, they did highlight a pair of well-shaped thighs attached to a goddess-blessed ass. Ravi cleared his throat and looked blindly back at his slate. Commendations. He was supposed to be investigating commendations.

Ignoring the sounds of tables shifting in the opposite corner, he scribbled a few notes onto his paper and swiped over to the personnel files. A blank page greeted him. Fuck everything, they weren't even keeping records properly. There was a mountain of paperwork ahead to get the outpost caught up.

Obnoxious laughter echoed from the clubbers, but he just added another note to the growing task list marching down one side of his paper. He swiped again, and the outpost blueprints popped up.

Ravi frowned. It was oddly laid out, but after studying it a bit, he could count the bunks correctly. Fully staffed, it was a small crew of nine, subal included. Better to start with fewer people when trying to build from the ground up. Another blaring laugh assaulted his ears. He glared across the room in the hopes that one of them might be polite enough to tell the rest to pipe down.

His gaze met a pair of hazel eyes framed by impossibly long, black lashes. Dark hair swooped in loose waves to the shadow of a kissable collarbone. The man grinned right at him, and the expression dimpled his brown cheeks. Ravi's insides went liquid. He dragged his gaze back to his table, fighting a flush.

There was far too much work sitting in front of him to be caught staring at those eyes, or that smile, or that ass—shit. He frowned intently at his screen. Stupid coincidence, that was all. A trick of timing, that they'd looked at each other in the same moment. Unless the stranger had been watching him already.

He held out as long as he could, and then flicked a casual scan toward the opposite corner. Mistake, he was definitely still looking. Double shit. The coil in his stomach shouldn't feel so good.

The hazel-eyed man studied him with utterly shameless interest. Ravi's throat went dry. If he wanted any hope of making progress on his preparation for Opalina, he needed to focus. Fingers fumbling across the slate, he leashed his attention to the table and refused to look up again. Although some foolish part of him wanted to hold that curious gaze. He imagined it still assailing him from the opposite wall, slicing through the bar like a battlefield beam, cutting him down until all that was left was anxiety and curiosity and something he didn't want to think about.

The responsible thing was to get back to work. Probably in the empty quiet of his rented room. Moving far too slowly, he went to collect his papers and found himself grabbing his sunbrew instead. He gulped the bitter drink.

"Thirsty?" a teasing voice asked.

Foam choked him. He clapped his free hand across his mouth to keep from spraying half the bar. Goddess-be-praised, nothing started bubbling from his nose. He forced his hand aside and shifted unwillingly to face the man standing less than an arm's length from him.

"I'm alright, thanks," he rasped. He set the sunbrew down before the sloshing in the glass gave him away any further.

"Wish I could say the same. Can I use you as cover?"

"Uh—" The lighting was shit for working, but it was perfect for spilling across soft brown skin and divine lips. It glimmered like magic in the man's eyes. Ravi almost lifted his hands in defeat. Anyone this good-looking was a terrible idea. But the stranger was already hauling an empty stool over to the table, right at his elbow.

"What...uh...what am I covering you from?" Ravi heard himself ask.

The stranger rolled his eyes. "Don't tell me you didn't notice the dumbasses I walked in with." He pulled a pouting frown, which should've looked ridiculous. But this was one of those guys who could make anything look good. "You thought I was one of them?" The man jerked his chin toward the dumbasses in question.

Ravi lifted one shoulder in half an apologetic shrug. "Well, you do look—" He skimmed the flash of silver that lined the man's eyes and the way his shimmery shirt dipped open wide, like an invitation to touch. Whatever semi-coherent thing he'd meant to say vanished, replaced by a lot of things he had no intention of saying out loud.

The man flung both his arms out as if for Ravi's inspection. "Sleekly understated? Classy but approachable? Like I need to be rescued from feathered morons?"

"Classy but approachable. Took the words right out of my mouth," Ravi managed.

A heartbreaker's grin materialized, and the man leaned perilously far across the table, one hand curled beneath his chin. "So approach me."

Goddess. Who the fuck had this kind of confidence? "I... you're already here." Possibly the stupidest response anyone could supply for such a blatant come-on.

His guest was generous and laughed. "I'm malfing you out, aren't I? You can shoo me away if you like. Perhaps that's the wiser move."

"No," Ravi said, too quickly. "I'm just not used to so much"—he let his gaze wander over his companion again— "uh, classiness."

The man smiled and gave him a speedy salute. "Allow me to help you get accustomed then, Subal. What's your name?"

His new com ripple was somewhere in the bottom of his bag, instead of on his uniform. But he'd look like an idiot or a liar if he tried to correct the ranking now. He cleared his throat. "Raviro. But everybody calls me Ravi."

"I'm Lio. But everybody calls me, 'feathered moron.'"

He laughed, and Lio looked so pleased it made him want to laugh longer. Except he might already have crossed the line from good-humored to unstable. He fiddled with a pen, the rest still lined neatly on the table. "So... are you posted at the—"

Lio put his hand over Ravi's arm. The sudden warmth, the ease of it, the thumb curling against the tender skin inside his wrist, all of it stole the rest of his polite question. He stared at Lio and wondered if they both felt what this was doing to his damn pulse. His whole body was enthralled.

"Kick me if this is rude, but what if we skip all that? You know, the obligatory recitation of where we're stationed and our service history and the discussion of the terrible weather in this region. All that."

"Oh." A nonchalant tone was difficult when it felt like he was being mildly electrocuted by a simple touch. Fucking absurd, that he was afraid to even twitch in case it scared Lio's hand away. "Sure. Do we just stare at each other in silence instead?"

The dimples appeared again. "I'm not opposed to that option," Lio said. "But after a few hours of staring, I imagine we'd unsettle the locals." His eyes sparkled in the light. "They'd be forced to assume we're telepathic. Possibly alien beings doing a poor job of blending in, and then we'd need to flee. Go on the run. I didn't pack a toothbrush."

His head was spinning at the thought of climbing into the confined space of a hov with someone like Lio. "I've never been discovered as an alien in hiding quite so quickly."

"Maybe we're all aliens in hiding, but we're not sure of each other and no one wants to be the first to reveal their true self because we might be wrong, we might really, actually be the only one. The only alien, I mean. And the person we want to tell most desperately might be the wrong person."

"What...what the fuck is in your drink?"

Lio blinked, and for the first time his confidence seemed to flicker. He drew back, hands falling into his lap, and Ravi almost protested.

"The drink is nothing special. Just my brain, going off."

"Damn. And here I was, about to ask the bartender for some of whatever that was so I never have to talk about the weather again."

Thank the sister goddesses, Lio laughed and propped his chin back on a hand, leaning toward him again. "I'd caution you against it. You have no idea the amount of times you'll be told your imagination is on overdrive."

"Sounds like whoever told you that is pretty jealous."

"Possibly jealous and still right. I spend too much time thinking about impractical things."

"Like what?" He watched Lio's animated expression and grabbed his sunbrew to keep from reaching to take his hand back.

"Old stories. The Mastali, mostly. Discovering their lightships. Showing up all the Enlightenment units with my genius. Finding out whether the hot subal in the corner will make out with me."

Ravi managed to choke more elegantly on the drink this time. He gave it a little shove, and the glass skittered across the table. "I'm just gonna...not drink this while you're around."

"I'm a menace to sunbrew drinkers. So. About that hot subal...what're my chances?"

"Uh..." His cheeks radiated enough heat to power a hov. "Probably better than your chances of finding a lost lightship."

Lio grinned and slid far enough forward that his knees brushed Ravi's under the table. "I'll take that."

"But...the thing is...I don't really—" He teeth snagged on his lip, and Lio's gaze flickered to his mouth, which made him feel weirdly dizzy. "—do this."

"I take it you're more of a 'seventeen dates before you begin to contemplate a peck on the cheek' type?"

He splayed his hands on the table and looked down. "More of the 'lose the guy and then spend three years wondering how I fucked it up while pretending we're friends and everything is fine', type."

"Ah." Lio cocked his head. "By the looks of things, I'd say he's the one who lost out. And he doesn't sound like that great of a friend either."

"He's not." The answer came with startling speed and clarity. He'd defended Gadsen to everyone else. Pridian, his mother, even the crew members who noticed that he ran everything while Gadsen reaped the gains. But they weren't good friends. They hadn't been friends since the day Gadsen rolled out of bed and suggested they stop fucking around, as if it had been nothing but a little fun with an expiration date the whole time. Maybe the dead friendship was why it still hurt so much.

He looked up, searching Lio's face for some sign of apprehension or retreat. "Sorry. That probably wasn't what you wanted to hear."

"Who cares what anybody else wants to hear? Say what you want."

It was the opposite of the way he'd trained himself to think. He was an overlooked subal whose accomplishments were invisible. Although, that wasn't exactly true anymore. He had his first real command, he was in a completely new place, and his old self probably would have run from Lio in panic. Things were different, not slowly, not gradually, but completely and all at once. "That's bold," he said.

Lio shrugged. "It's not always comfortable. But at least this way if somebody likes me, I know they like the real me. Not some projection of me."

"You mean you know they like your deep-cover human guise, alien spy. Me, I'm not fooled." He managed to keep a serious face, until Lio cracked up. The smile he'd tried to hide broke free.

"Is my human guise likeable?" Lio asked.

"Very," he admitted.

"You're pretty lickable yourself."

Ravi picked up an invisible glass and mimed choking on his brew. When he set down his nonexistent prop, he shook his head. "You did not just say that."

Lio widened his eyes and fluttered his fingers over his mouth. "It was a slip of the tongue!"

"Stop," he groaned.

"But I'm so clever!" He ducked and tilted closer, his voice dropping. "Quick, ask me where else my tongue can—"

"You are fucking ridiculous." His skin felt supercharged. Embarrassed, or turned on, or maybe a bit of both.

Lio's smile was triumphant. "Bet you're thinking about it, though."

If he had staved the images off before, he couldn't now.

He was rescued from having to conjure a rational reply by a prim throat-clearing behind Lio's shoulder. A young woman, fringe streaming from the sleeves and hips of her skin-tight dress, smiled coolly at Ravi and then fixed her gaze on Lio. "Sorry to interrupt, but Starmesa awaits. We're heading out."

Starmesa. The place from the adverts. Of course Lio was headed to some swanky club in the middle of the desert. He wasn't going to sit in a quiet bar and make jokes about tongues and aliens all night. Ravi smiled gamely when his soon-to-be-gone table guest glanced at him.

"The thing is..." Lio began, sweeping his gaze across Ravi and the table and then swinging back to the woman, "I haven't finished my drink."

His friend's rhinestone ridged eyebrows drew together, and she stepped close enough to sling an arm against Lio's shoulder. Must be nice, to be able to touch him so casually.

"So finish it, and—"

"I'll meet you there."

Ravi's heart tripped in his chest. He shuffled with his papers and the other shit spread all across the table, taking a long time to stuff it away in his bag. The distraction was far too thin, because he could still hear Lio and the woman arguing in low voices, and that meant Lio might stay, at least for a little, and that meant—he wasn't sure what that meant. Another staggering, eager heartbeat. His pulse spiraled through him, teasing him with where this could go, if he let it happen. He couldn't even remember the last time he'd stumbled from a bar to a bedroom with someone. Never with a complete stranger.

The rest of Lio's posse rose from their tables like a swarm and siphoned toward the doors, louder than ever. A blond man split off from the group and moved toward them, but Lio muttered something to the woman. She swiveled around to intercept the newcomer before he got close. "He's going to meet us in a little while," she said, steering the blond around before he could protest.

They were leaving, and someone dimmed the lights another notch in the bar, and Lio was still at his table, leaning back on a stool. Ravi realized he'd packed away all his excuses in his bag. If he stayed now, without the pretense of any work, it was obvious why.

Something nudged his ankle gently beneath the table. "This rescue mission is a complete success," Lio said. His voice softened. "No need to look so worried."

He took a breath, hoping it would clear his swirling head. Lio was surprising, and fucking stunning, and he made all kinds of vaguely frightening things stir in Ravi's guts. But it might be a mistake. He leaned across the table and locked eyes with him. "I'm not promising this goes anywhere, Lio."

"Fair. I'll still take my chances." He smiled easily and nodded at Ravi's drink. "Can I get you another? I need to make sure you have something to spew across the table so everyone in the bar knows I'm funny."

Ravi laughed, shook his head, and couldn't wipe the grin away. Trouble, trouble, and he liked it too much already. "Yeah," he said. "Let's do that."