WIP Amnesty 2019: Band of Brothers

[thrillingdetectivetales]

Here is the Band of Brothers version of the previous WIP amnesty post. These are all stories that I don't foresee myself returning to for one reason or another, but I want credit for writing this much of them, dammit! Anyway, enjoy or something.

Of Autumn-Shadowed Tresses Spun
This was supposed to be a short and sweet thing about exchanging locks of hair but here we are.

It appeared to Lewis Nixon that Sunday afternoons at the tail-end of Officer Candidate School had ceased operating by standard laws of space and time. Rendered benign by some mysterious power of happenstance in a way military afternoons rarely ever were, the last few of them had been almost uniformly sunny, with a timetable that boasted little for an enlisted man to do and nowhere especially pressing he ought to be between one mess call and the next. This leniency of scheduling was a luxury that had grown unfamiliar over weeks of rigidly formulated lessons, grueling PT, and mind-numbingly repetitive weapons training and Lew had taken to reacquainting himself by characteristic measure of indulgence.

This particular Sunday afternoon found him browsing wares at the postal exchange in the company of one Dick Winters, with two new packs of Chesterfields in hand and half an eye on the chocolate bar that Dick had spent a few wistful seconds fingering before moving along to frown handsomely at a modest selection of parchment in the corner.

Lew ambled over to the low table in his wake and considered the candy for half a beat before scooping one of the bars up alongside the rest of his spoils. He spent some time looking over various packs of gum and playing cards, was briefly entranced by a small array of shaving soaps in little decorative tins, and mourned the subpar liquor selection in passing as he sidled up to offer imperiously over Dick’s shoulder, “You’ll want something porous.”

“That’s a little backwards for letter writing, isn’t it?” Dick asked without bothering to look over. He seemed as placid as ever at a glance, but Lew knew by now how to read amusement in the slight pinch at the corners of his mouth.

“Depends on the sort of letter you’re trying to write, I suppose.”

“A legible one, ideally,” Dick drawled, exchanging a piece of cardstock for a thinner sheet of vellum. He rubbed it curiously between his finger and thumb, testing its texture. “If the paper’s porous the ink will run.”

“So write with a pencil,” Lew said, and chuckled when Dick wrinkled his nose disapprovingly. “Anyway, you’re thinking about it all wrong.”

“Am I?”

“You are,” Lew confirmed. “You know what your problem is, Dick?”

“I’m sure you’re about to tell me.”

“You’re too hung up on platonic correspondence,” Lew explained. “You’re so busy writing home to your ma and your sister and your favorite aunt and what have you that you never learned how to court a proper epistolary romance.”

“And porous paper is somehow integral to romance?”

“Sure it is. It’ll soak up your cologne, see? Give your letter a dab before you send it off and it’ll smell like you when your girl opens it, remind her what she’s missing. It’s a sure winner, only trick is that your paper’s got to be absorbent enough to hold the scent through all the rigors of the U.S. postal service.”

“That so?” Dick asked, darting a sly look past those long, tawny lashes.

“Trust me.” Lew clapped a hand to Dick’s shoulder and gave it a quick, soft squeeze to avoid doing anything more foolish, like leaning in and kissing him. “Give it a try next time you write that friend of yours in Washington, see if you don’t get a little lipstick back.”

“I didn’t take you for a cosmetics man,” Dick said benignly, and anybody who claimed that Dick Winters didn’t have a sense of humor had never been treated to that particular fine-honed dryness in his Pennsylvania lilt or the devious spark in the corner of his eye.

“I don’t mind a dame with a coat of paint,” Lew shrugged. He gave a cursory glance to the M.P.s—there was one manning the counter who appeared to be reviewing some sort of logbook with frankly unsettling intensity while the other was posted at the doorway with his back to them, staring blearily out into the muggy afternoon. They were both caught up enough in their respective tasks that Lew risked leaning in to murmur, “Now, fellas? I prefer au natural.”

Dick stiffened and pressed his mouth into a line, a wash of pink flooding sweetly under the spray of freckles across his nose.

“Well, there’s no accounting for taste,” he said, making a point to catch Lew’s shoulder gently with his own as he selected a few sheets of plain cream letter paper and turned to make his way to the front of the shop. Lew laughed and followed suit.

Dick waved him ahead when they reached the register and Lew went without complaint, unwilling to spend thirty minutes of what was gearing up to be a lovely afternoon wrestling against Dick’s implacable sense of propriety. He laid out his purchase and considered for a second thumbing over his shoulder to take ownership of Dick’s paper, too, but he was treading a fine enough line already with just the chocolate.

“That all?” the M.P. asked, clearly disgruntled by the interruption to his—Lew gave the logbook a casual, upside-down glance—inventory, apparently.

“Ah, no,” Lew said, looking up and flashing the standard Nixon smirk. The M.P. appeared equally unimpressed by both his expression and his pronouncement of, “Matches.”

“How many?”

“Couple of books.”

The M.P. turned to dig through a shallow wooden box on a shelf behind the counter and Lew leaned on his elbow, twisting halfway around so he could raise his eyebrows significantly at Dick.

“Special occasion?” Dick asked, refusing to rise to the bait and lifting his chin in the direction of the candy bar instead. Lew glanced down at it and offered a shrug.

“How should I know?” he asked, looking back over at Dick and nodding to the chocolate bar. “That’s all yours, Corporal.”

Dick blinked and then frowned as understanding washed over him. “It better not be.”

“Well, it certainly isn’t mine. I don’t even like chocolate.”

“Nix.”

“Forty-one cents,” the M.P. barked.

Lew widened his eyes conspiratorially at Dick, who was scowling something fierce, and then straightened up and wheeled back around, fishing his money clip out of his breast pocket. He tugged a dollar free, ignoring the blistering weight of Dick’s gaze on the back of his neck and invoking selective deafness to Dick’s few muttered protestations. The M.P. changed the bill with practiced expediency and slid a handful of coins across the counter while Lew slipped one of the packs of cigarettes and the money clip back into his pocket.

“Thanks,” he nodded, tapping the butt of the other pack against the countertop a couple of times and breaking the sticker seal with a swipe of his thumb. The M.P. grunted in response. Lew gathered his change and the two flimsy books of cardboard matches into his cupped palm and stepped to the side so Dick could pass, gesturing to the chocolate bar as he went and instructing, “Don’t forget that.”

Dick huffed an irritated breath through his nose and very nearly rolled his eyes. His whole face was red in a way that promised retaliatory action sometime in the immediate future. Lew’s stomach twisted in anticipation—of a kiss or a blow or, knowing Dick, maybe both, one after the other and likely delivered with a far gentler hand than Lew deserved.

“I mean it,” Lew insisted, shaking out a cigarette and tucking it over his lip as he meandered toward the door. “I’m going to be very put out if you leave it behind. I paid nearly a quarter for it.”

Dick turned his back and cut a hand sharply through the air, about as near as Lew had ever seen him get to making a rude gesture. It was probably wrong of him, playing quite so blatantly to Dick’s already affronted pecuniary sensibilities, but Lew simply chuckled to himself, unapologetic in his open manipulation as he stepped out into the swampy afternoon.

The air out on the grounds was thick and sticky in the Georgian tradition with just enough of a breeze to keep the gnats from biting, which was blessing enough to celebrate so far as Lew was concerned. He tore one of the matches free of its book and dragged its head against the stripe of striking paper along the bottom a few times until it caught. He raised the feeble flame carefully to the eye of his cigarette and sucked in a long, grateful breath.

He shook the match out after a few measured puffs and ground it under the toe of his boot, stepping out from below the exchange’s tidy little awning to sigh a muzzy white cloud up into the air. There was a film on later—something full of vim and vigor that would likely rely on heart-pounding stunts and swooning appearances by a Vivien Leigh type to distract from the fact that it was several years out of date. He had hoped he might swindle Dick into watching it with him, sitting in the back in the dark where their hands could touch and nobody would see, but that would take extra finessing now.

“That was low,” Dick announced grimly as he emerged from the PX, cutting a neat line through Lew’s idle fantasies of shadowed entertainment halls and twining pinkies.

“You don’t say?” he replied with a grin. “I could have sworn it was chocolate.”

Dick shot him a dark, unimpressed look, tucked his little folio of paper carefully under his elbow, and tugged his garrison cap jerkily into place. Lew didn’t see the chocolate bar anywhere on his person but even at his most monstrously frustrated Dick was too well-mannered not to have stowed it grudgingly in a pocket.

“Leave the asthmatics to Milton Berle,” Dick said, heading off at speed in the general direction of their shared quarters. Lew shrugged, pulling his own cap on at a far jauntier angle, and took another drag off his cigarette, falling into step at Dick’s side.

“I don’t see what you’re all bent out of shape about,” he observed after a moment strolling awkwardly apace, having decided upon minor deliberation to throw both caution and self-preservation gleefully to the wind in the interest of sussing out what, precisely, Dick had gotten stuck in his craw. “You’d think nobody ever gave you a present before.”

“For a holiday, or a birthday, sure,” Dick glowered.

“Maybe I just wanted to do something nice for you. How about that?”

“You don’t think it comes across as a little strange, buying a buddy chocolate for no good reason?”

Lew shrugged. “Nixons don’t really go in for that sort of utilitarian restraint.”

“Clearly,” Dick snapped, and pushed a few steps forward, long legs eating up the gravel path.

Lew sighed, throwing his arms out to his sides and peering up at the sky like some divine power therein might be willing to offer insights into Dick Winters’ rotating bevy of impossible moods. The motion jostled the cherry out of Lew’s cigarette and it took him a few unsuccessful drags to realize, he was so busy fording the slipstream of Dick’s forward momentum and stewing in the runoff from his unexpected fit of pique.

“A single chocolate bar is hardly going to seduce you into a life of sloth and indulgence, Dick,” Lew griped, rooting around in his pocket for the newly-acquired matchbook. “I would have bought you ten of them by now, if I thought that’d work. Anyway, if you don’t want it cart it over to Cow Company or something. Give it to one of the poor bastards who couldn’t pass muster. Or, hell, send it home to your sister. Burn it, bury it, do whatever you want with the damn thing.”

“I’m not going to burn it,” Dick scoffed, and turned to frown at Lew where he had halted a short way back to struggle through relighting his cigarette. “What happened to your lighter?”

“Needs a refill,” Lew grumbled around his half-smoked butt, and then swore under his breath when the match folded under his indelicate pressure. He tossed it into the grass and went for another, blinking in surprise when Dick’s hands were suddenly there, coaxing the matchbook away.

“You’d save yourself some trouble if you just went ahead and filled it.” Dick pulled a match free and struck it alight in one swift, perfect swipe. “Somebody around here ought to have lighter fluid. I’ll bet you could beg a few ounces without much effort.”

Lew ducked his head to the trembling flame, sucking a breath before admitting, “I’m pretty sure I have some in my trunk from the last time.”

“Nix,” Dick said, with a flat but familiar look.

“It wouldn’t have helped me now, anyhow,” Lew insisted, straightening back up and risking a nudge against the toe of Dick’s boot with his own. “I left my lighter back in barracks when I realized it was dry, but I’ll be damned if I know where it’s gotten to.”

“Nix,” Dick said again, the exasperated edge of his tone softened somewhat by the obvious affection bleeding through underneath.

He straightened into something like parade rest, tucking his hands behind his back while Lew hummed around his cigarette in acknowledgment of his own shortcomings and exhaled a plume of smoke. Out here in the hazy summer sunshine Dick looked about the same as he always did—same strong, slightly pointed jaw, same offensively blue eyes, same long, elegant frame. His burnished russet hair shone copper bright against the clear day and there was, as ever, a certain knowing tilt about the set of his mouth. His gaze wandered for a second to a squad of soldiers making a ruckus on a distant field. They were engaged in some haphazard bat-and-ball game that seemed to be a sloppy conglomeration of baseball and field hockey and Dick smiled to see them at it.

“So,” Lew ventured after a moment spent surveying the spectacle, “what d’you say? Am I forgiven?”

Dick sighed—a low, heavy thing—and turned to face him, ducking his gaze to the ground and scuffing the heel of his boot against the dirt.

“I don’t mean to sound ungrateful,” he offered awkwardly, sending a small, oblong rock skittering into the grass along the edge of the path.

“Well, buddy, I hate to tell you, but you’ve got a real knack for it.”

Dick smirked and lifted his head, tilting it back in an acquiescent nod and then following the trajectory until he was squinting up into the sun-bleached sky.

“Graduation in two weeks,” he said. Lew blinked at him, frowning curiously and rolling his cigarette gently between his teeth.

“Unless you plan to wash out,” he agreed a few long seconds later when Dick failed to elaborate. “I didn’t figure you for an aspiring doughboy, what with the way you’ve been hitting the books like they insulted your mother, but what do I know?”

He was rewarded with a faintly exasperated smirk.

“I’m not washing out.” Dick glanced at Lew out of the corner of his eye, there and gone. “At least, I don’t intend to. And neither are you.”

Lew huffed a laugh, blowing a thin stream of smoke past his teeth.

“You’d be surprised what I can manage in two weeks,” he offered and earned himself a swat on the arm for his trouble.

“I’m trying to have a conversation here,” Dick said sternly, though there was a ghost of a smile haunting the flat line of his lips.

“Well, there you go,” Lew drawled with a nod. “I would hazard that your mistake to that end is in your choice of partner.”

“Nix,” Dick admonished, fighting back a laugh.

“Alright, alright.” Lew held up his hands and took a calculatedly off-kilter step, shifting his weight in just such a way that the movement let him brush their shoulders together and grinning at the flush that bled up past the crisp line of Dick’s collar. “Spit it out before you strain something.”

“Well,” Dick said, and reached up to scratch absently at a sideburn the way he sometimes did when he was nervous, gaze dropping back down to the gravel at their feet. “I’ve been thinking about it.”

“About graduating?”

“Yeah,” Dick nodded and peered over again, meeting Lew’s eye this time instead of letting his attention skim away. “And about what comes after.”

The lazy ease in the air around them seemed to swell and expand for a slow, taut moment until it reached capacity and burst, drenching them both in a sudden, uncomfortable stillness.

“Ah.”

It was not, perhaps, the most heartening of responses he might have supplied, but Lew felt sure that cautious brevity was the optimal tactic of approach here. Dick must have agreed, because all he had to offer on the subject was another muted, “Yeah.”

“Well,” Lew sighed affectionately, after a few long seconds of awkward silence had stretched to the ends of their tethers between the two of them, “you really know how to stick a pin into an afternoon, don’t you, sweetheart?”

“Nix,” Dick reprimanded immediately, voice low. He skimmed a worried glance over their immediate surroundings—well out of earshot of any parties that might take undue interest in a passing endearment traded between two soldiers—while the slight, sheepish flush under his skin glowed even redder with the heat of his embarrassment. He shook his head and frowned austerely down at his pristinely polished field shoes. “We don’t have to talk about it.”

“Oh, come on, now,” Lew coaxed, cupping a hand around Dick’s elbow and steering him gently back into motion. “Don’t go getting maudlin on me, alright? One popped balloon never ruined a party.”

“I suppose you’d be the expert,” Dick sighed, glancing up and mustering a subdued smile.

“You’re damn right I am,” Lew agreed, slinging an arm around Dick’s shoulders and tugging him in companionably close. Dick stiffened for a moment, wary as usual of doing anything that might look untoward, but when nobody stared or pointed or started hollering about queers he let himself relax against Lew’s side. “We Nixons have never met a to-do we didn’t ride to roaring.”

He waved a hand in the air for emphasis, fingers arcing sharply up toward the warm blue sky overhead, brushed with a few gauzy clouds that crept in candyfloss wisps across its sprawling expanse.

Dick ducked his head and pursed his mouth against a laugh, which Lew was content to claim as a victory on this lazy afternoon, strolling so near to Dick that their knees brushed with every step while the sunshine licked sticky summer heat against their sweat-damp skin. Whatever dimestore cologne Dick swabbed behind his ears every morning smelled just as good as any of the fragrances in the sea of expensive, jewel-toned bottles riddling Kathy’s side of the bureau back home. Better, really—for all their cloying sweetness and dizzying floral bouquet guaranteed to overwhelm a man’s senses, Lew had never been particularly inspired to run his tongue along the soft skin behind Kathy’s ears to discover whether her perfumes tasted like they smelled, as he was often tempted to do with Dick.

Lew’s stomach twisted a little at the unwelcome reminder of the world beyond the gates of Fort Benning and he surrendered his grip on Dick’s shoulders reflexively, without a word. It was just as well—they were only a handful of steps from their shared barracks, even if the sudden abandonment made Dick quirk a curious eyebrow in Lew’s direction.

Untitled AU Where Harry is a Sobriety Counselor Who Gets Swindled into Helping Nix Out
The title, I think, is fairly straightforward.

There was some kind of hullabaloo going on in the lobby of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Community Center when Harry finally shuffled his way in from the bus stop down the block, exactly seventeen minutes late according to the time-stamps on Webster’s increasingly irate string of texts—which he hadn’t bothered reading—and half-drenched in icy October rain to boot. A familiar cluster of men was crowded in front of the door to Side Room B, where the E.A.S.Y. Sobriety Support Group’s Wednesday evening meetings had been taking place every week at 7 PM sharp practically since the center first opened, excepting holidays, inclement weather, or the frequent catastrophic failure of the Seattle public transit system.

The regular attendees were all in evidence, still decked out in their damp, rain-speckled outerwear for the most part and packed into a little, teeming knot. They appeared to be embroiled in some cacophonous argument that Harry couldn’t quite suss out the subject of from his position in the entry alcove. The blue-hairs from the quilting club were watching the scene unfold with unabashed curiosity through the window in the small conference room opposite, as though in attendance at their own private zoo. Harry raised a hand in greeting, offering a thin, apologetic smile, and one of them flipped him the bird.

It was no real surprise to find that, without supervision, the men of E.A.S.Y. had taken to yammering and howling at each other—they were a contentious bunch and emotions ran high in group therapy. There’d been a minor fracas just last week when Liebgott opined that classic pulp comics like Dick Tracy and Flash Gordon ought to be considered fine literature and Webster nearly gave himself a hernia in his haste to disagree, but they hadn’t gotten into it en masse like this since way back in July, when Babe admitted that the drink he missed most in his sober life was Zima, of all godforsaken things.

That, Harry thought grimly, had been a dark day for alcoholics everywhere.

He dutifully wiped his feet on the broad black floor mat sitting askew in the entryway, though it didn’t help much. The damned thing was pilled and matted and rubbed halfway to bald, already soaked through with the comings and goings of various visitors. Harry resigned himself to a lengthy e-mail from management about tracking mud all over the place and made his way in out of the fall chill.

A quick, questing glance around the room revealed the familiar form of one Floyd Talbert, lounging placidly against a far wall and surveying the scene at hand with his usual vaguely befuddled attention. Harry started in Talbert's direction as discreetly as he could manage, wondering precisely what kind of trite horseshit had gotten the men stirred into a lather this time.

“ - just bust the goddamn door down!” Guarnere was saying, flat Philly drawl rising loud over the din. He had abandoned his walking crutches against one of the decorative pillars bisecting the lobby and was holding himself up by virtue of having slung an arm around Lipton’s shoulders. Lipton looked decidedly less enthused by this experiment in vertical stability. Panic flooded his normally stolid features when Guarnere darted forward, nearly toppling them both with the sudden lurch of motion, and slapped a palm against the door so hard the whole thing shook ominously on its hinges.

“Easy,” Lipton warned, at the same time that Guarnere crowed, “Look at it! Damn thing’s halfway to fallin’ down already!”

Harry briefly considered intervening to try and talk Guarnere off the ledge of his own destructive sensibilities, but he didn’t especially want to wade into this mess of squabbling assholes before he had all the information. He’d given up fighting five years ago when he’d given up drinking, and while he wasn’t quite as committed to preserving his pacifism as he was his sobriety he didn’t need to go breaking his current six-month streak for the likes of Wild Bill Guarnere. Thankfully, Martin spared him the trouble of engaging on this particular front.

“That’s destruction of property, you mook!” Martin bawled, hand appearing from somewhere in the amorphous mass of worked up idiots to swat a reprimand none too gently against the back of Guarnere’s head. “You want to get your stupid ass arrested?”

“Oh, yeah?” Guarnere spat back, rubbing at the freshly abused curve of his skull and cutting a dark glare over his shoulder. “What d’you think we should do, then, huh, Johnny? Bend over and take it with our eyes closed while that bastard dry rails us?”

“That’s homophobic!” Webster accused hotly. He was standing on a gently battered folding chair with one hand on his hip while he jabbed an accusatory finger toward Guarnere.

Liebgott didn’t even let him finish his thought before he was throwing his head back and groaning at the ceiling, “Jesus fuckin’ Christ, Web, give it a rest!”

“Oh yeah, Web?” Guarnere protested at the same time. “You tell me how, exactly, demanding the courtesy of a little lubricant is homophobic!”

Everything dissolved pretty immediately from there into an unintelligible chorus of bad-tempered caterwauling and carefully restrained shoving.

“Tab,” Harry greeted when he finally managed to make his way past the spectacle and post up against the wall at Talbert’s side. “Wanna tell me what’s going on?”

“Sobel locked us out,” Talbert provided with a shrug. He had his arms crossed over his chest and was wearing the vaguely confused expression that so frequently led others to dismiss him as dim-witted, gaze wandering placidly over the assembled mass of his wildly gesticulating peers. “The boys’ve been trying to figure a way in for the past ten minutes.”

“What the hell?” Harry frowned at him. “That son of a bitch locked us out? Why?”

“Dunno.” Talbert shrugged again. He pointed in the general direction of the throng and the door that was rattling just beyond it. “There’s a notice up on the door but I couldn’t get close enough to read it before Web started going on about the blighted ethics of capitalism or whatever and Wild Bill got them all jonesing for a brawl.”

“Son of a bitch,” Harry muttered again, scrubbing a hand across his face. He sighed under his breath and then heaved himself up off the wall, shooting Talbert a rueful grin. “Guess I better get in there before one of these idiots breaks the damn thing down. We’re still not paid up from the last time Sobel fined us for destruction of property.”

Talbert lazily extended a hand toward the milling men, arching a solitary and deeply judgmental eyebrow over his smirk that very clearly invited Harry to proceed unto the fray at his own risk.

Harry sidled up next to Luz, who was lingering on the periphery of the debacle, slumped forward with his arms folded casually across the back of Joe Toye’s power chair. He appeared to be amusing himself by cajoling Guarnere to kick the door in while Toye periodically snorted and rolled his eyes.

“Go on, Bill, give ‘er the ol’ Guarnere roundhouse! Or, hey! Lay a scissor kick on ‘er! That oughta do the job!”

“Kind of a tasteless thing to say to a man with only one leg, isn’t it?” Harry observed. Luz laughed and waved a mollifying hand at him without bothering to look over.

“Ah, Bill doesn’t mind,” he said easily, cuffing Toye affectionately on the shoulder. “Does he, Joe?”

“The fuck should I know?” Toye grumbled. “Just ‘cause I got shit all goin’ on below the knee don’t mean I got the hot take for every guy out here missing a stem.” He glanced over and nodded a greeting at Harry. “Welsh. You gonna break this shit up anytime soon or you just looking for a ringside seat?”

“Thought I might get lucky if I gave it another minute,” Harry shrugged with a grin. “Figured maybe Liebgott and Webster might finally kill each other so I’d have two less of you dumb bastards to worry about.”

“If they don’t, it’s not for lack of trying,” Luz supplied, low and absent, mouth dropping halfway open and curling up with delight on one side as something cracked worryingly in the distance. Harry couldn’t see precisely what might have caused the sound—or any resultant damage that went along with it—from his position at the back of the crowd but it couldn’t be anything good.

“A man can dream,” he said wistfully. Toye snorted again and Luz groped blindly in the air until he managed to clap Harry on the elbow. Harry took a breath, steeled himself, and shouldered his way forward. It didn’t take too long to make it to the door once the guys realized it was Harry trying to force his way through, and he rode their murmured wave of sheepish recognition to the front of the crowd in short order.

“You get a load a’ this bullshit?” Guarnere asked by way of greeting, hooking a thumb toward the piece of computer paper taped to the observation window in the middle of the door.

“Haven’t had the chance,” Harry said. “Couldn’t see past your fat head.”

Lipton pursed his lips against a grin while Guarnere threw his head back and bellowed a loud, exaggerated laugh.

“You’re a funny guy, Harry Welsh,” he announced. “Anybody ever tell you that?”

“Every damn day of my life,” Harry replied agreeably. He reached out and clapped Guarnere on the shoulder, nodding toward the back of the clustered group. “Why don’t you go get your legs back under you before Lip slips a disc or somethin’, alright?”

“Oh the man’s got leg jokes!” Guarnere said. Lipton smirked at Harry and started slowly guiding Guarnere away while Guarnere craned his neck, calling out over his shoulder, “You hear that Georgie? Welsh is hornin’ in on your turf! He’s doin’ a better job of it than you, too!”

“Nah, he ain’t got a leg to stand on!” Luz replied, and the force of the collective groan it inspired nearly rattled rafters. Harry ignored it all in favor of skimming the little typed sheet, which read:

The E.A.S.Y. Sobriety Support Group’s
weekday meetings are suspended
until further notice.

Unauthorized use of Side Room B or
any other community space on the
premises to facilitate a support meeting
on E.A.S.Y.’s behalf will merit swift
and decisive punishment, including
a fine of up to $100.

Management appreciates your
cooperation in this matter.

Herbert M. Sobel, Director

“That son of a bitch,” Harry muttered.

“Right?” came a taut, angry voice from the vicinity of Harry’s shoulder. He glanced over to find Martin standing there with his arms folded across his chest, glaring at the notice as if he could light it on fire with the power of his mind. He swept a hand toward it and asked grimly, “I mean, what kind of monster evicts somebody using Papyrus?”

“I kinda like Papyrus,” Babe offered from a little further back.

“Yeah, well it ain’t no big secret you got shit taste,” Martin replied without hesitation.

“Hey!” Babe protested.

Martin turned to glower at him. “It’s true.”

“Says you!”

“I’ll go talk to him,” Harry interjected over top of them both, before the heated back-and-forth could gain enough traction to really get going.

“To who?” Babe asked, attention sufficiently diverted. The kid was like a goddamn goldfish sometimes—Harry made a mental note to check in one-on-one later, make sure the recent spate of forgetfulness was a natural inclination of Babe’s character and not a symptom of heavier substance reliance than usual. “Sobel?”

“Who else?” Harry agreed, plucking the notice off the door and folding it into uneven quarters.

“You really think he’s going to be open to polite discussion?” Martin asked.

“Probably not,” Harry admitted, shaking his head. “But maybe if I let him yell at me for awhile he’ll open the room back up on some kind of installment plan for punishment served.”

“Yeah, sure,” Martin snorted, patting Harry’s arm with no small amount of patronizing reassurance. “Good luck with that.”

“Give him hell,” Babe added as Harry stepped past.

“Just make sure nobody breaks anything while I’m gone,” Harry sighed. He paused after a few steps, turning to add over his shoulder, “Oh, and keep Webster away from the blanket bitches, would you? Mrs. McElheny’s gonna lay him out but good if he comes at her with another rant about the goddamn gray reef shark.”

“He would deserve it,” Martin grumbled.

“Sure,” Harry agreed, “but I don’t need Liebgott getting arrested for assaulting an old lady.”

Martin waved an absent hand at him, already muttering something to Babe, who squawked unintelligibly in response and trailed after Martin with a look of comically exaggerated offense warping his features. That was as much of an assurance as Harry was liable to get, and besides, he knew Martin was good for it, so he squared his shoulders and continued into the dank underbelly of the community center where its bad-tempered director begrudgingly kept his office.

* * *

Herbert Sobel was the most singularly unlikeable individual Harry had ever had the displeasure of meeting, which made his moderately storied career in the field of social work all the more baffling. He was particular far beyond the point of fussiness and so paranoid that he suspected everyone except his beady-eyed assistant was secretly out to get him. That he was frequently correct about that—at least insofar as the motivations of E.A.S.Y.’s attendee roster were generally concerned—was neither here nor there.

Sobel wasn’t alone in his office this evening, which Harry only realized when he was already halfway across the threshold, loudly demanding, “What is it this time, Herbert?”

There was an unfamiliar man in a sleek, dove gray three-piece suit hovering in front of Sobel’s desk. He glanced up when Harry walked in, just long enough to drop a dour, disapproving gaze from Harry’s face to his feet, and then peered back down at his iPhone, commenting casually to Sobel, “This the guy?”

“Yes,” Sobel sighed. “It is.”

“Doesn’t look like much.”

Harry frowned, glaring at Sobel when he agreed patronizingly, “I am vastly aware, but I assure you, he - ”

“Alright,” Harry interrupted, rolling his eyes and stepping further into the room. He held up the paper, pinched between his middle and forefinger. “Care to tell me what this bullshit is all about?”

Sobel turned a flat gaze on Harry and said with serene condescension, “I believe my notice was perfectly straightforward, Mr. Welsh.”

“Sure. E.A.S.Y.’s meetings are canceled until further notice.”

Sobel inclined his head and turned his palms up, fingers splayed, as if to say ‘There you go.’

“The hundred dollar fine was a nice touch,” Harry nodded, wagging the paper back and forth. “Only problem is, last time I checked, we pay a rental fee and signed an agreement just like everyone else, and if I’m remembering that contract right you’re supposed to give us 48 hours’ notice of space changes and a reason for any suspension. You know, in case we wanted to do something crazy like contest it.”

Sobel clenched his jaw and adjusted the lapel of his suit jacket, the ill fit of which seemed markedly more pronounced when viewed in comparison with the much more finely tailored wardrobe of the man hovering in front of him.

“The posted notice was a courtesy,” Sobel said briskly. “I left you a message the day before yesterday explaining the situation at length.”

“Bullshit.” Harry shook his head, tucking the paper back into his pocket with an incredulous laugh. “I got three phone calls since Saturday and none of them were from you.”

Sobel shrugged and flashed a smarmy little smirk. “I can hardly be held responsible for the failures of your cellular service provider, Mr. Welsh.”

“Well, I’m standing right in front of you now,” Harry said hotly. “Why don’t you go ahead and enlighten me again?”

Sobel pressed his lips into a thin, unamused line and rested his elbows on his desk, steepling his fingers in front of his chin like he was a wayward school principal about to tell off a young hoodlum. This, Harry considered absently, was very likely exactly how Sobel himself pictured their current situation.

“I’ve received several anonymous complaints over the past few weeks about the way the attendees of the E.A.S.Y. Sobriety Support Group comport themselves both during and outside of meeting hours while they remain on the community center grounds,” Sobel explained sharply. “In light of your failure to adequately supervise your charges, I took it upon myself to intervene in the interest of assuring that all parties who rely on our community center feel safe and that offenders of the community guidelines are held accountable for their behavior.”

Harry clenched his teeth so hard he could feel the grind in his temples, jaw working and nose flaring as he wrestled with the urge to lunge across the desk and wring Sobel’s scrawny neck. It would only take a few seconds to lay the bastard out cold on the floor, blood chokes were nice that way. He took a couple of slow, deep breaths, reminded himself that his roommate would not be best pleased if he had to interrupt his volunteer shift at the Second Street Soup Kitchen to come bail Harry out of county lock-up again, and snapped, “You can just say it was the blanket bitches. They’ve hated us since we booted them to Side Room C.”

“As I just stated,” Sobel drawled, “all complaints were anonymous. I don’t know who made them and, frankly, I wouldn’t tell you even if I did. But back to the matter at hand, I assure you, Mr. Welsh, that I gave ample notice of your suspension per the terms of your rental agreement, and now it falls to you to honor that same contract or see it terminated permanently.”

Harry narrowed his eyes, glancing suspiciously from the man posted up in front of Sobel’s desk to Sobel himself, lounging casually behind it.

“How, exactly, were you anticipating I might do that?”

“I’m so glad you asked,” Sobel replied, with a little approving tilt to his mouth. Harry wanted to slap it right off his face. “It just so happens that, at this particular moment in time, one of our donors has need for a man of your specific talents.”

“That so?” Harry crossed his arms over his chest, flicking a curious and irritated glance at Sobel’s nameless visitor, who remained ensorcelled by his cell phone. “How lucky for us both.”

“My thoughts exactly,” Sobel agreed flatly. He stood up and held a hand toward the man lingering across his desk. “Allow me to introduce the esteemed Mr. Stanhope Nixon. He’s the backbone of commerce in our fine city and the center has benefited tremendously from his philanthropy in the past. Naturally, we were his first thought when his son wandered astray.”

Stanhope Nixon snorted loudly, finally finished whatever business he was getting up to on his phone, and slipped it into an interior pocket in the breast of his jacket. He rolled his shoulders back with the air of jovial confidence endemic to all men possessed of particularly potent conceit and flashed Sobel a wry smirk.

“There’s no need to sugarcoat it, Herbert,” he said, clicking his tongue. He turned to face Harry, pinning him with a shrewd, dark gaze and tucking his hands casually into his trouser pockets. He had an unpleasant sort of face, with vaguely pinched features and a permanent divot on his brow that suggested he spent most of his time scowling. His neatly cropped hair was streaked liberally with gray, he was trim in the way of most men of excessive vanity, and his suit really did fit exceptionally well. The gilded face of a Rolex winked garishly at his wrist. Harry loathed him immediately.

“My boy’s been dicking around since he was shipped back stateside six months ago,” Nixon explained, gruff and clearly unimpressed by his wayward child’s recent exploits.“His mother died shortly after his return. It was an unfortunate turn of events but hardly unexpected, and he’s been using it as an excuse to piss away all my money and shirk his responsibilities to the family business. Mr. Sobel here assures me that you’re just the man to put paid to this little temper tantrum.” He reached up to adjust the knot of his dark silk tie and lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “I’m not convinced you’ll do me any good, especially now that I’ve seen you, but I’ve already changed the locks on all the family properties within state lines and the little bastard is still refusing to knuckle under, so I find myself short of remaining options.”

Harry stared for a long, silent second as his eyebrows made a break for his hairline.

“Well,” he scoffed when the phantom sensation of being slapped repeatedly about the face with the sheer force of his own loathing had faded to a manageably uncomfortable tingle of immense dislike, “with that kind of reception waiting for him, it's no wonder the kid’s not sprinting back home.”

“Welsh - ” Sobel started warningly, but Nixon interrupted him with a raised hand and a pointed look.

“I’m not here to justify my parenting choices, Mr. Welsh,” Nixon said smoothly, “and if I were it certainly wouldn’t be to the likes of you, but trust me when I say that my son’s descent into the bottom of the bottle has been more than a decade in the making.”

“Oh, right, sure,” Harry replied dryly. “So good of you to finally be seeking help on his behalf.” He congratulated himself silently when Sobel’s eye twitched.

Nixon snorted again.

“Lewis is an ungrateful brat,” he supplied genially. “He gets it from his mother, God rest her soul. I couldn’t force him into a program if I tried—and believe me, I have. Arranged one of those snatch and grabs when he was sixteen. They nabbed him alright, carted his ass all the way down to some hippie camp out in Arizona without any trouble. Cost us nearly ten grand to get him into that shithole but the little bastard turned right around, skimmed a set of keys off an orderly, and took a joyride up to California before the week was out. ”

He sounded almost proud, which inspired in Harry a series of deeply unkind considerations regarding the relationship between rotten trees and the fruits they inevitably bore. He’d seen plenty of alcoholics in his day, and while Nixon didn’t seem like the falling down type, Harry would put good money on his tippling a snifter with regular practice. Hell, he’d probably had a fortifying nip of something strong and expensive before slumming his way down to the center.

God knew Harry was dying for a drink, just sitting here listening to him prattle on about his son, the poor son of a bitch.

“The boy’s had his time to grieve,” Nixon continued. “He needs to clean up his act and settle down, accept his responsibilities, shoulder the load, as it were. There’s a merger on the horizon that’s taken the better part of two years to facilitate and I’m going to need him to keep things balanced.”

Harry snorted and shook his head. “So, what, you want me to go drag the kid out of a bar, pour him into a suit, and send him up to a board meeting? I mean, I can do it, but I don’t see that ending well.”

“Lewis is twenty-six, Mr. Welsh,” Nixon corrected, arching an imperious eyebrow. “He’s hardly a child. Certainly more than old enough to appreciate that his actions have consequences and learn to adjust his behavior accordingly.”

“Yeah,” Harry sighed, “that’s not really how addiction works.”

“I don’t care how it works,” Nixon informed him coolly. “That business is for you to coddle him over while he dries himself out. All I want to see are the results, Mr. Welsh. Measurable results, and soon, or, regrettably, Nixon Nitration Works will be forced to pull our funding from this fine, upstanding institution.”

He held his hands out and gestured demonstratively to the neat but dated confines of Sobel’s office, the water stain in the far corner of the ceiling and the crack in the molding near the door where Harry himself had kicked the wall too hard one afternoon following a particularly fruitless financial negotiation with Sobel’s bug-eyed little minion, who was conspicuously absent this evening. Harry had paid to repair the damage out of his own pocket but obviously that money had never been put to proper use.

His gut boiling, Harry glowered at Nixon and clenched his fists so hard his fingers started to go numb. “Are you serious?”

“Certainly. Why would we continue funding a program with an unreliable success rate?” Nixon asked, brow knitting with clearly affected confusion. “Our charitable donations reflect directly on public perceptions of the company, after all. It wouldn’t do to have our money tied up in an institution with a less than stellar reputation.” He turned to peer thoughtfully at Sobel and added, “Remind me again how much of the center’s budget comes directly out of the Nixon Nitration coffers, Mr. Sobel?”

“Thirty-two percent,” Sobel provided with a thin smile. He had blanched gray underneath his usual waxy complexion and his confusion, at least, seemed genuine.

“Thirty-two percent!” Nixon repeated brightly. “That’s a decent portion, wouldn’t you say Mr. Sobel?”

“Yes, sir,” Sobel agreed. “But - ah - when we were discussing matters earlier we were talking about allocating additional resources to the center, not the cessation of current provisions.”

“Too right,” Nixon confirmed, meandering across the small room to curl a palm amiably over top of Harry’s shoulder, grasping persistently when Harry tried to swat him away and shift out from under his grip. “Fortunately, this illuminating conversation with Mr. Welsh has reminded me that a carrot is always a sweeter prize with a significant stick behind it. Seeing as you were already well familiar with the carrot, Mr. Sobel, I thought it only fair that the both of you become properly acquainted with the stick.”

He gave Harry’s shoulder a pointed squeeze, a mocking facsimile of fatherly affection, and it took everything in Harry’s power not to turn and sink his teeth into the self-aggrandizing son of a bitch. Sobel sat down heavily, yanking at the collar of his shirt and swallowing like he had something painful and nauseating caught in his throat.

It served him right, Harry thought meanly as he shrugged Nixon’s hand off, for climbing into bed with the Devil and assuming he wouldn’t get fucked.

“I’d hate to keep you boys too late. I’m sure you have a few things to discuss, so I’ll be on my way,” Nixon supplied, fishing a business card out of his coat pocket. It had something scrawled in ballpoint on the back in a crisp, slanting hand. He held it out in front of Harry, wagging it shallowly back and forth as he explained in a bored, lazy tone, “You can start at this address. I don’t know whether they’re on or off at the moment but if he’s not already sleeping his way back into her good graces, Kathy ought to at least know where Lewis is holed up.”

Harry grunted and snatched the card mutinously out of Nixon’s hand.

“Gentlemen,” Nixon didn’t bother turning to look at either of them while he strolled out into the hall, “I’ll be in touch.”

Harry stared at the sturdy little card in his hand for a long, silent second and then glared over at Sobel.

“You stupid, selfish son of a bitch!” he snarled, stalking toward the desk. “What the hell kind of bullshit game do you think you’re playing here, huh?”

Sobel, who had been peering miserably into the middle distance since he collapsed into his tacky, faux-leather wingback rolling chair, blinked twice and shook himself back into focus just as Harry slapped both hands down on the desktop so hard that everything from Sobel’s computer monitor to his carefully assorted array of paperclips rattled and jumped.

Sobel startled at the impact and leaned back, looking up into Harry’s face and somehow excavating the fortitude of will to sneer, “He wasn’t talking about pulling his funding until you came in here being rude and uncooperative!”

“Because you were trying to blackmail me!” Harry hissed. He clenched his fists for a long, dangerous second, and Sobel froze, watching him with the wide, terrified gaze of small game after hearing a telltale snap in the woods.

The IntoABar D&D AU
I missed the deadline and I frankly don't love the plot enough to finish it, soooo.

The sun had meandered high into the windswept skies over Arabel by the time that Lewis Nixon, first son of the great mercantile House Nixon of Amn and reluctant intelligence officer of the Amn Militia’s 506th Infantry Regiment, managed to drag himself out of bed.

He had vague memories of cursing out a sallow-faced runner who had likely been sent to retrieve him just after reveille and hoped blearily that he hadn’t done the boy any grievous injury by barking at him in Infernal. Lew had a tendency to slip into the language of devils when he wasn’t paying attention, and while he had never found the gravelly, guttural syllables particularly bothersome, he knew the demon’s tongue could be somewhat jarring to your average human.

With any luck the runner would keep it to himself, either way—it was no big secret by now that Lieutenant Nixon, aside from being a bit of a drunk, was practically nocturnal. The boy ought to have expected some not insignificant reluctance on Lew’s part in being summoned well before noon. Lew had been demoted from his captaincy recently enough that the shame still smarted, and the last thing his deservedly contentious reputation needed was for a water-kneed private to go crying to the higher-ups that the tiefling officer tried to lay a hex on him.

He heaved himself into a seated position, reaching his arms up over his head and groaning contentedly at the stretch in his back while his tail coiled and uncoiled behind him, arrow-pointed tip arcing up toward the ceiling.

Despite the official stance welcoming half-breeds and other non-standard humanoids to their ranks, the militia could be a tricky sea to navigate with a visage as unsettling as Lew’s. Folk didn’t always take kindly to his burnished red skin or the horns curving lazily back from his brow on either side, and he’d been informed more than once that flat, glowing yellow of his gaze was off-putting, particularly when it reflected unexpectedly through the dark.

Stranger still than all the men who held him in contemptuous suspicion were the few who considered it lucky to have a tiefling in the regiment. Lew had rarely felt himself particularly well-favored by the Lady or any of her consorts, though he could admit that his unusual features occasionally gave him a leg up when it came to matters of intimidation. He generally preferred to employ a gentler hand where it was at all possible, but it would be foolishness of the highest order to turn away any advantage in a war that spanned the entire continent, however little Lew may care for it.

He gave himself a cursory scrub-up in the ceramic basin on the washstand in the corner, trying with limited success to slick his hair into something resembling tidiness and debating whether it was worth having a shave. Dick would shave, but then, Dick had gone to the trouble of keeping up with his morning ablutions even when they had been functionally abandoned in the frigid wastelands of the High Forests, defending the city of Karse. They’d spent weeks trapped in that impermeable fog, cut off from reinforcements and supplies with enemy spell-casters dropping ranged attacks on their heads at ceaseless, heart-pounding intervals, and still Dick had gone to the trouble of making himself presentable for the troops.

Lew could imagine the intrepid Major even now: long awake and neatly pressed and polished, tucked into the cozy darkness of his much-loathed office, mourning his promotion to battalion XO and attempting to disapprove a pile of paperwork into submission the same way he would a company private who stepped out of line. Lew snorted and scrubbed a hand thoughtfully over his jaw.

He was digging lazily through his toiletries kit for a fresh razor when the clock in the town square tolled the hour in a series of long, doleful peals. He swore under his breath and shoved the little bag aside in favor of tugging on his brigandine.

The shave would have to wait. He was late enough as it was.

Thankfully, the regimental command post wasn’t far from Lew’s billet—most of the officers had opted to rack in with the more well-to-do locals, snatching what little privacy they could and availing themselves of the limited finery at hand, while the enlisted men were stuffed unceremoniously into shared rooms at one of the many inns and boarding houses in the commerce district that the militia had seized for use upon their entry into the fortified citadel.

The CP had likewise been shoehorned in where it wasn’t especially welcome, taking up all four floors of a surprisingly genteel tea parlor that had catered to the elite mercantile guilds prior to its forcible enlistment by the Amn Militia. After a moment’s curious searching, Lew discovered Colonel Sink, the regimental CO, and a handful of his support staff on the second floor, milling busily around a map of the Sword Coast, which they had spread out across a low table in what had once been a private dining room. He slouched to attention in the doorway without bothering to announce himself and was unsurprised when his presence was noticed immediately.

“Ah, Lieutenant Nixon,” the Colonel greeted, waving him in with an absent wag of his fingers. “Glad you could finally join us.”

Sink was a gray-haired human man in his later years who strutted about the battlefield with all the youthful vigor of a man less than half his age, wielding an impressive claymore with the easy brutality of a well-seasoned warrior and smiting his enemies with roaring pillars of holy fire courtesy the great dragon god Bahamut. Dick was tremendously fond of the Colonel, which was enough to recommend him respect in Lew’s estimation, despite Sink’s open disapproval of both Lew’s general disposition and his numerous, unapologetic vices.

“Sir,” Lew nodded, and stepped into the room. He peered over the shoulder of a dwarven sergeant, taking in the detailed map of Waterdeep and its surroundings. “I take it our tip panned out?”

“Well guessed,” Sink confirmed wryly. “Official word came back last night. The Neverwinter Bureau of Defense has confirmed that they have an agent embedded in Waterdeep with the codex needed to crack that map of yours and lead our forces to the location of the weapon known as the Phoenix Fire Gauntlet.”

“Great,” Lew said, eyebrows quirked with surprised pleasure. The Gauntlet was a relic of rumor that had been lost somewhere in the mountains just off Waterdeep nearly a century ago, after the last Great War had rocked the continent. If the Alliance could find it—assuming the damn thing was still functional, if it even existed at all—the playing field would be immediately and drastically leveled. It was a hell of a gamble to take, but then the Alliance had done more with less in these past awful months. “When do we leave?”

Sink considered Lew with a glittering gimlet eye, leaning forward to brace his palms against the edge of the table. “After lengthy deliberation,” he said pointedly, “I have agreed to let you act as lead on this operation, lieutenant, seeing as it was your contact that led us to the discovery of this codex and your hard work that suggested the map was not so blank as it appeared in the first place. However,” he raised a hand and jabbed a finger sternly in Lew’s direction, “I expect a certain amount of professionalism to be in clear evidence on this assignment. You will slip into Waterdeep under an assumed identity, retrieve the codex from the B.o.D. agent, and fall back to the Forlorn Hills northeast of Secomber to await further instruction. No lingering, no deviating, no improvisation.”

“Sir,” Lew said agreeably. He canted his head and pressed his mouth into a thin, thoughtful line. “Permission to speak?”

Sink arched an eyebrow and waved a hand, beckoning Lew to continue.

“All due respect, sir, but the Gesellschaft des Lichts isn’t going to let a tiefling just waltz into the Crown of the North to take a business luncheon,” he said, gesturing to his person. His tail thrashed irritably at his back, as though to punctuate his point.

“I had considered that, yes,” Sink drawled with a smirk. He straightened up and folded his hands behind his back, explaining brusquely, “Regiment has agreed to outfit you with a ten-charge wand and all the necessary components to maintain the polymorph spell for an extended period of eight hours. I will be donating my personal driver to see you into and out of the city, equipped with a ring of teleportation should you require immediate emergency extraction.” His grin widened, conspiratorial, and he added smugly, “Lucky for us all, there’s enough displaced nobility hunkered down out here that we managed to scare you up a decent change of clothes and commandeer a carriage.”

“Yeah,” Lew agreed with a grin that felt more like a sneer, just barely managing to land on the deferential side of polite. “Lucky.”

“Regimental S-4’ll see to your equipment needs,” Sink continued. “Pay him a visit after we’re done here and he’ll get you all kitted out and walk you through your first polymorph.” He gave Lew a long, narrow look and added approvingly, “It’s a good thing you’ve got some casting experience under your belt. Polymorph’s a tricky one—wouldn’t wish it on a first-timer.”

“I’ve used polymorph before, sir,” Lew supplied. Granted, it had been years ago, in the interest of youthful mischief rather than as a tool of wartime espionage, and despite subsequent schooling and practice Lew still couldn’t cast the damn thing on his own without focus or aid, but he felt it must count for something.

“Well,” Sink said genially. “In that case, I expect you’ll do just fine.”

With that comforting remark he leaned back in over the map and spent the next hour and a half walking Lew through objectives, positions, and timelines with a familiar harried efficacy interrupted only by informative interjections from the assembled aides and the occasional sly aside from Lew himself.

The plan was fairly simple, as military maneuvers went. Lew and Sink’s driver, one PFC Gerald Cadwhalk, would pile into the newly appropriated carriage—a modest brougham number tastefully done up in dark wood and rich burgundy leather—and travel by teleportation circle past the Storm Horns and the Sunset Mountains and the Reaching Woods to the last stretch of the Trade Road leading into Waterdeep. Lew would polymorph just before they came within sightlines and maintain the disguise until such a time as he managed to swindle his way past the guard station at Waterdeep’s gate and make contact with the B.o.D. agent living covertly in the city at a prearranged meeting point.

“Who is this guy, anyway?” Lew asked, after the third time that one of Sink’s staff officers stressed to him how integral this operation could be to the ultimate success of the Alliance defense, as if he weren’t already well aware of just how much was at stake here. “Do we know his name? What he looks like? Anything?”

Sink shrugged, holding his hands out and giving his head a brisk little shake. “His callsign is Junior. The Bureau wouldn’t tell us any more than that, other than to confirm that he’ll be waiting for you at the Horn & Feather in the Dock Ward.”

“Junior,” Lew echoed. “At the Horn & Feather. Right. So, all we’ve got to do is sneak into an enemy stronghold to find a man we don’t know so that he can decode a blank map that might lead us to a long lost weapon that could change the course of the war as we know it.” He scrubbed a hand over his face and huffed a soft, rueful laugh, shaking his head. “Well. This should be fun.”

“Hold onto that optimism, lieutenant,” Sink said, smirking. “You’re going to need it.”

* * *

(The following is a bit that would have been placed slightly later in the story, only I didn’t get to the filler portion so you can just have this instead. You’re welcome.)

Lew was just doing up the last of the throat fastenings on his vest when Dick came tromping up the stairs, armor clinking softly with each careful step. He paused at the top, one gloved hand curling over the banister, and caught Lew’s eye in the full-length mirror propped haphazardly in the corner.

“Major Winters,” Lew greeted with a prim flourish of his wrist, and Dick smirked with amusement.

“You’ve already changed,” he observed, something very like disappointment shallowly dimpling the line of his brow. Lew’s stomach twisted unpleasantly to see it.

“That I have,” he agreed, knowing very well that Dick was referring to his freshly human countenance as much as his outfit.

He smoothed his hands down his torso, skimming the brocade velvet of his pilfered vest and thumbing at the fine opal buttons. The cut was a few years out of fashion, the cinch at the waist a little too narrow and the neckline too high, but Lew thought it rather lent an air of credence to his character. It wouldn’t do to appear too well-off—the rationing necessitated by the War of Nations that had so bitterly embroiled the many kingdoms and city-states of Faerûn these last few years would leave even a merchant in good standing struggling to appear de rigeur and Lew’s cover identity was meant to be decidedly on the down and out.

He glanced back up and arched an eyebrow, holding his hands out expectantly to his sides as he flashed Dick as winsome a grin as he could muster. “What do you think?”

“Very fetching,” Dick assured him dryly, mouth tilting up on one corner. He crossed the room in a few swift strides, footfalls muted by the thick rugs carpeting the drafty attic floor.

He drew up at Lew’s back and spent a moment quietly studying his ensemble—the sleek, high-waisted trousers in a fine, dark wool; the soft linen shirt, with its gilt-embroidered sleeves billowing foppishly around Lew’s wrists; the buckles and the braiding and the supple suede boots, which were the finest article of the outfit by far and which Lew had half a mind to keep for himself after this ruse was finished, decorum be damned. Dick frowned, seeming vastly unimpressed by such a showing of sartorial finery, and absently touched his fingers to the curve of Lew’s waist, the thick leather belt banded high around his hips.

Lew’s breath caught behind his sternum and stuck there for a long, silent second, until Dick seemed to come back to himself and pulled away with a sigh, face flushing vaguely pink. Lew was gripped for a heartbeat with the mad and desperate notion that he might reach out and guide Dick’s hand back, tuck his fingers over the belt, cut him a smile in the mirror and invite him to explore at his leisure, but Dick had already turned away, shoulders drawn high and tight and foreboding. Lew tried not to let the familiar shard of disappointment cut too deeply.

“I prefer you in leathers,” Dick said.

“Why, Major,” Lew cooed, batting his lashes coquettishly at Dick’s reflection. “How forward of you.”

Dick rolled his eyes and snorted through his nose.

“You know what I mean,” he chided, unhooking the sword at his belt and carting it over to the unlit fireplace, where he propped it up against the sooty brick facing, scabbard and all. He settled himself on the edge of Lew’s narrow mattress and began the tedious business of coaxing his gloves off without removing his vambraces. Each gleaming plate was painted with the sleek, red chess piece of his patron god and Dick hated to divest of them unless absolutely necessary, lest he commit some affront of irresolution upon his beloved Red Knight. “It doesn’t have to be leather. I’d prefer you in any kind of armor, rather than all that velvet.”

Lew huffed a sigh through his teeth, irritation and fondness catching behind his sternum in a hopelessly tangled knot. He fussed at the ruffled cuffs of his shirtsleeves to give himself something to do with his hands.

“As I’ve explained several times,” he said pointedly, and was rewarded when Dick flicked him an amused, knowing look in the mirror, “walking into Waterdeep armed to the teeth is as good as taking out an ad in the newspaper announcing that the Alliance is trying to slip agents into Gesdelicht territory.”

“They probably know that already,” Dick pointed out. “We are at war, Nix.”

“Maybe I’d like to credit myself with a little more subtlety than that,” Lew replied haughtily, reaching for the narrow silk cravat laid out atop a small set of drawers. He tugged it irritably into place, crossing it over itself and tucking the tails into the frilled collar of his shirt where it puffed up out of his vest. “Besides,” he scowled, dissatisfied by the end result, and yanked the cravat free, “I know you’re only complaining because you miss the horns.”

“They suit you,” Dick replied. Lew glared at him in the mirror and he shrugged. “What? They do.”

All his life Lew had been fielding couched, cutting remarks about how well his demonic attributes spoke to his sly and changeable nature—never mind that the horns and the tail and the devil-red skin were an unfortunate symptom of a well-earned family curse older than Lew could even guess after. His father had been suitably disappointed to discover that the traits, which often skipped generations, had manifested quite so thoroughly in his firstborn, and made no qualms about expressing said dismay to Lew at frequent and vulgar length. It was a particularly favored topic when he’d been drinking, which made visiting for family holidays a bit of a chore.

The difference was that where his father’s opinion was an indictment of his character, general sensibilities, and overall existence, Dick’s was a benign observation offered in the spirit of camaraderie and fondness. It prickled under Lew’s skin all the same.

“Well, if I wore them into Waterdeep I wouldn’t need to take an ad out,” he grumbled, smoothing his dark hair back from his pale human forehead and trying not to miss the calcified ridge that would ordinarily be creeping up from his brow. “I’d be shot before I even crossed the gate. You know the Gesdelicht policy.” He twisted to the side, considering himself in profile. Deciding that the high, braided collar of the vest was accessory enough, he threw the cravat unceremoniously back onto the dresser. “Every one of those bastards would piss himself for the opportunity to bag a tiefling. Especially a specimen as fine as me.”

He turned and met Dick’s eye for real, flashing him a sardonic smirk that did little to brighten Dick’s expression, which had taken a decidedly dour turn.

“That’s exactly my point,” Dick said. His blue eyes were blazing over the red slivers of quilted cotton peeking between the metal splints studding his doublet, so ethereally bright that Lew was convinced, not for the first time, that Dick must have elf in his lineage somewhere. Not enough to mark him for racial cleansing by the measure of their most hated enemy, but elven blood all the same. Dick furrowed his brow over his grimly pinched mouth and continued, “I don’t like this, Nix. It’s bad enough you’re going in there at all. You shouldn’t be going alone.”

“I won’t be,” Lew assured, waving off Dick’s concern with a lazy hand, an appropriately ostentatious gold signet ring glittering on his little finger. “The good Colonel is lending me his personal carriage boy for this excursion, haven’t you heard?”

“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”

“I’m told that he’s a very competent navigator,” Lew replied, and grinned when Dick rolled his eyes.

“Great,” he drawled, unimpressed. “A solid sense of direction should come in handy when you’re fighting your way out of a Gesdelicht stronghold.” He sighed and rested his elbows on his knees, staring up at Lew with that imploring sapphire gaze. “Tell me you’re taking your sword, at least.”

“Oh, sure,” Lew snorted, crossing the room so that he was standing a spare foot or so away from Dick with his fists resting against his waist on either side. “Because showing up with an épée at my hip just screams that I’m an untrained civilian.”

Dick shook his head and glowered down at the floor, jaw set in the way that suggested he had more to say on the matter but recognized that any further observations would not be especially well-received. Lew sighed, kicking a foot out to nudge the toe of his boot against Dick’s, and said gently, “It’ll be fine, Dick. This is what I do, remember?”