In the ozone-heavy air, divested of all his armour and raiment—all the pomp and circumstance of his station—Flynn looks much more like the boy Yuri used to know.

This is the Flynn with whom he is most familiar—the Flynn with whom, as a boy, he would build tree-forts and throw apples and swordfight with brooms; now Flynn trembles beneath his hands, cold-skinned and hot-faced and hard as hell.

“Yuri,” he says, breathless, cheek up against the brick wall and mouth full of rainwater.

Flynn’s clothes are wet and strong with the slick-pavement scent of perpetual rain, and Yuri’s spit sticks to him on his stomach and the fly of his uniform’s slacks; Yuri’s hair sticks to his mouth and his cock and his hands like tar wherever Flynn touches him.

“Yuri, we can’t, we can’t,” Flynn gasps; his hips twitch and wheel and Yuri slides a hand down his own thighs, cock straining in his pants.

I was only trying to help, Flynn thinks, and look where we’ve ended up, an alley in a sleazy port town, Yuri on his knees like a lower quarter whore, what has he been doing since I’ve been gone, where did he learn to do that—

He comes hard clenching his fists and jerking his hips, face flaming, eyes shut tight.

When he opens them again Yuri is grinning his well-cultivated slum-charm grin, dirty water slicking his mouth and teeth along with other things.

“Happy to see me now?” he whispers against the line of Flynn’s jaw, and Flynn shoves him away, groping in the dark and the damp for his scattered pieces of armour; greaves and gloves first, then the breastplate.

“What, you’re not gonna arrest me, solider boy?”

Flynn says nothing.