Poison didn’t remember how they had ended up on the floor, but it had happened at some point. Orion was wedged between couch and coffee table, and she was squatting next to him in what was shaping up to be an extremely uncomfortable position.

It didn’t matter. He needed her right now. What Lilly had said…

Orion had made mistakes, clearly. She didn’t know how many. She didn’t know that boy who had worked for Max Rivers, and so she didn’t care who he had been. His childhood, his circumstances, that had led him. The pressure, both emotional and psychological, the intimidation, that had driven a fifteen-year-old to kill for the first time.

Maybe his alternative had been starvation or a more immediate demise. Maybe it had been a slightly less comfortable life, or boredom.

But from the way Orion sat huddled there, sobbing, Lilly’s accusations were nothing new to him. He had likely condemned himself over and over before, without the outside prompt. She remembered feeling like that, and it didn’t fit someone who killed for sport. It fit someone desperate, and hurt. It meant guilt.

‘Why did you stay?’

Orion’s voice was brittle and almost resentful. Hate at himself, Poison reminded herself, not directed at her. Guilt and sorrow, but no anger.

She sighed. ‘My father beat me for years. Almost my entire childhood.’

Orion’s eyes shot up to hers, and she smiled weakly at the concern and surprise in his expression.

‘I blamed myself. I hated my mother for leaving, and for not taking me with her. I blamed myself for that, too, later. Someone tells you something is your fault often enough, it starts to sound true. Since I believed it was my fault, I didn’t tell anyone. When child services came by, I hid my dad’s booze and covered my bruises and lied.’

She found herself detaching, telling the story of someone that wasn’t her any more, so that it didn’t hurt as much.

‘I ran away later, and it was hard. Life on the streets isn’t forgiving for a scrawny girl ready to feel at fault for everything bad that happens to her. But it was better than home.’

She forcefully pushed the welling memories away, yanked herself back into the present, to who she was now. She managed to smile.

Orion was silent for a few seconds. His mind was probably going back to what Lilly had said, that if you didn’t leave, everything that happened after was your own fault. It was something Poison had always told herself, that many of the people she had met told themselves when they had been abused. That they should have done something, should have gotten away sooner, should have been strong enough. Poison didn’t believe that any more, and it had taken a long time to get there.

‘You never told me that,’ Orion whispered.

‘You didn’t tell me about you, either.’ She tapped him on the nose and stood, stretching out her aching legs. ‘I’m gonna make some coffee. Then you can help me unpack the kitchen. It seems we’re not moving, after all.’

Keeping Orion occupied, talking and hydrated should work fine for now. And he seemed grateful to have something to do with his hands, to keep them in motion.

Thankfully, the coffee machine had been one of the last things to go in a box, so they had it set up and happily brewing way within a few minutes.

The rest of their stuff was more difficult. Despite having packed just a day ago, it took them an astounding, and infuriating, amount of time to sort through the boxes and locate all of their things.

How could plates she had packed away with the cutlery yesterday be gone now, and then reappear in one box with the stereo in the living room?

For most things, Poison had simply forgotten which box she had packed them in, and she went through them all a dozen times. She found at least three boxes with a mixed assortment of tiny things that had been leftover and that she had simply thrown together, too grouchy to sort them into categories. It would be a nice opportunity to sort them out. Theoretically.

Unpacking kept them busy, though. Busy enough for Orion to regain his composure to a degree. The coffee helped with that, too. And the cookies Poison had found in a box.

They kept the conversation light, on comics and books, movies, and Openers. An hour in, Orion gathered enough confidence to dare address the elephant in the room again.

‘Thank you. For listening. And for sharing.’ He suddenly had a bunch of cutlery to re-sort. ‘How long had you been on the streets for when we found you?’

Poison tilted her head back and stared at the ceiling. ‘Uh… I joined you two years ago. I left home at fifteen. So, three years, about.’

Orion gave an appreciative grunt. ‘You managed well.’

Poison grimaced, remembering their conversation from two months ago, their simple banter to alleviate another tense situation.

‘I got by fine on my own before you came along, you know.’

‘Yeah.’

His answer had been dripping with sarcasm, disputing her.

Orion wasn’t all that complicated. Whenever the situation got heated, he slipped into another mindset, cold and steady, and sometimes relentless. Like that night they had found Yoshua. And then, when he realized it, he shrank away again, just a little, as if he had gotten burned. As soon as he caught himself, he’d cover it with humour.

Right now, Orion was different. He was hurt and vulnerable, and he appreciated her company. Kind of sad that this was the only situation he managed to show genuine kindness, without a quip or joke. Was he so afraid of his own emotions, of showing what he saw as weakness? She knew the feeling, though she’d gotten better at opening up.

Maybe Orion had simply been hurt too many times, and he was waiting for the next disaster to go down.

Yeah, she was one to talk. If she had let herself believe that crap, if she had given up on good things happening to her, she wouldn’t have survived the streets.

Poison grimaced again, then forced a quick smile for Orion’s sake. She decided that she liked this version of him better. It was genuine.

Maybe she should tell him that.

‘Thank you for saying that. Working in a group proved a lot more effective, especially since you channelled my temper down the right paths. I was a bit of an adrenaline junkie.’

‘Just a bit.’ He grinned, and it was less hiding and compensation now.

Poison snorted. ‘You weren’t much better on our first run out. Remember, the lasers.’

She poured the last of the second batch of coffee into their cups.

‘I’ll admit I’m curious, though. How did the name “Hounds” come to be? I’d say Orion and his two hounds from the myths, but you got the name before I joined, and you don’t count yourself in on the name that way. You wouldn’t be a Hound.’

Orion shrugged and finished his half-cup of coffee in one go. He rinsed the mug in the sink. ‘I worked for hire for a while. When Lilly joined, we needed a new concept, not “Lilly and Orion working for hire”, or “Breaking and Entering Inc.”. Lilly came up with the name because we made trouble for some people and he like the hunting reference of it, since I already had my nickname. With you, we became a pack, I guess.’ He grinned again.

Poison nodded. They did feel like a pack. Part family, part hunting partners. Though she suspected that the name they had made for themselves both in criminal and official circles hadn’t exactly displeased Orion’s ego. Well, she guessed he had every right to feel proud about some of his plans.

‘What’ll happen now?’ Orion’s voice was quiet again, and he wouldn’t meet her gaze. He had lost that bit of security gained by humour again so quickly. Now he was unsure of his footing, carefully testing the ground.

Admitting he was at a loss, she realised. Asking for help. He wasn’t used to that. At least, she’d never witnessed him doing it before.

She felt strangely honoured to have him confide in her like that.

Poison shrugged. ‘Lilly will calm down. Give him some time. He’ll be angry for a while, and we’ll have to accept that, I guess. But he’ll come ‘round eventually.’

Orion nodded. Huffed. Smiled. ‘I guess we kinda blew your plans for today, huh.’

Poison frowned at him.

‘At least I hope we did. Or not. It’s confusing. Anyway, I thought you were finally going to introduce us to your girlfriend.’

Poison felt heat rise in her cheeks. ‘I… uh...’

Damn. How had he known? Sure, her excuse of drinking tea had expired a while ago, but how in the hells did Orion know she was seeing someone? And a girl at that? She didn’t make a secret out of her sexuality, but she didn’t exactly advertise it, either, and they’d never discussed romance. Lilly was quite obviously smitten with Eliah, so that much was clear, and Orion…

There seemed to be no designated space in Orion’s life for someone like that. Maybe by necessity, maybe by circumstance, maybe by lack of interest. But it was rather clear that he didn’t care to have a romantic relationship of any sort.

The question was, how had he found out about Poison’s views on the matter?

‘Come on, every time we go to that Irish pub, you check out the barmaid.’

‘Maybe I’m interested in both.’

‘Are you?’

She blushed.

‘It’s also quite obvious you’re seeing someone. Why did you feel you needed to hide her?’

Poison opened her mouth to respond, but all of her good arguments, her well-founded fears, seemed silly, and stupid. In the end, she settled for a meek ‘I was afraid you wouldn’t like her.’

Orion laughed and squeezed her shoulder. ‘If she can make you run off for tea this often, she must be one hell of a girl. I can’t imagine we- I would dislike someone like that. Bring her around some time, yeah?’

‘With Max Rivers’ hit-men coming to visit.’

‘Good point. But he can’t watch constantly. Wait, it’s Rivers, I guess he can. We can meet her at the Stove or something.’

He tiled his head, regarding her. ‘Does she know?’

Poison blushed again.

‘There you have it! At least you don’t have to do a big reveal where you tell your girlfriend that you’re a thief working against a government conspiracy, while also telling her that you have cops and gang leaders on your back and a contract killer watching your every move. You only have to tell her the last part.’

Poison chuckled despite herself. ‘You make our life sound like a bad action movie.’

‘You mean damned fantastic action movie.’

She laughed. ‘Your taste in movies is horrible.’

‘No more than yours, sweetie.’

There it was now again, that small, mocking smile she so loved. That bit of well-meant humour that showed he enjoyed himself. She had finally teased that out of him again.

They worked in silence for a bit, comfortably quiet, filling cabinets and shelves.

‘So…,’ Orion started, ‘About that hickey...’

She swatted him with a towel.

It was half past four in the morning when Lilly found himself back at the apartment. He stood in front of the door and hesitated, fighting against his desire to bolt and not face the mess he had left behind. The whole argument of murderer-victim started up in his head again, and he groaned and unlocked the door before it could get going full speed. For hours he had debated the arguments and facts and viewpoints and gotten nowhere.

He had no answer. No solution. No idea whether he should forgive Orion or even trust him, or work professionally together or split off, or have a gods-damned fist-fight.

What he did know was that he’d made an ass of himself. He’d known, on some level, of course. He had teamed up with a thief-for-hire, no questions asked, a guy with a mysterious past and connections to ugly parts of the city. That they had never explicitly talked about Orion’s past was no excuse. Lilly had known, or at least suspected, that there was something in there, something dark and hurtful, or at least that there could be.

Instead of dealing with his own qualms and problems, he’d feigned a surprising degree of innocence and naiveté.

A small part of him piped up that he was sliding from self-reflection into self-loathing, but it was a very small, very quiet part.

Poison had reacted intensely to his last statement before she’d thrown him out. He knew that what he had said was bullshit, but for her to react that way, there was something in her past he didn’t know. Hells, there were probably hundreds of things. How had Poison ended up on the streets? How long had she been there? What had she been doing before Orion had found her?

He realised he’d never asked the other two about their lives before Hounds. Maybe he had assumed that since he had lived a rather normal, comfortable, safe life up until college, everyone else had, too. Maybe he just hadn’t cared about their pasts.

No, that wasn’t it. He was interested enough. He just hadn’t wanted to deal with any potential unpleasantness. He wanted simple, boring answers, or none at all.

And now, five years and a fight later, he still had to deal with it. No avoiding problems for him. He had to deal, and he had no answers.

He knew he was tired. He knew he was cold and wanted to go home, back to a blissful ignorance and normalcy that didn’t exist any longer. And he could feel the bags beneath his eyes.

Lilly entered the apartment.

A quick shuffle of steps from the living area, then Orion’s head poked around the corner, dishevelled hair and wide eyes. They stared at each other for a few seconds.

Orion’s eyes had the same bags beneath them as Lilly’s, and he looked just as tired. But even more than the obvious signs of distress was a feeling of familiarity. This was the same Orion Lilly had lived and worked with for the last five years. But he was not just that. There was something else in his features, something raw and ragged that had been hiding in the background. Something with a past, and regrets, and guilt, and-

Lilly swallowed around the lump in his throat. He interrupted Orion as he opened his mouth to speak.

‘Don’t, please.’

His voice was hoarse and quiet, but Orion flinched.

‘I can’t do this right now. I have no answers. No decisions. I just want to go to sleep.’

Lilly opened the door to his room and locked it behind him, not bearing another look at Orion’s sad, hopeful eyes.

Three hours of fitful sleep later, Lilly stumbled over a box and unlocked his door. A delicious, tempting smell wafted towards him from the kitchen, mixed into a jumble of welcoming, wonderfully normal sounds. The sizzle of oil in a hot pan. The first gurgle of the coffee machine.

Lilly wandered mindlessly towards the nice smells, and stopped when his over-tired thoughts caught up with his nose.

Orion stood at the stove, pouring batter into a pan. He glanced up, and quickly back down at the pan.

‘Sorry. Did I wake you?’ His voice was quiet, meek, as if he was afraid to anger Lilly. The bags under his eyes were even darker now than they had been a few hours ago, and he didn’t look as if he had gotten any sleep since then. Suddenly, Lilly felt very bad about the way he’d acted the night before. He gave a weak shrug.

‘I couldn’t sleep.’

Orion nodded, flipping the pan’s contents. ‘There’s some finished pancakes over there on the counter, and the coffee should be almost done. Help yourself.’

The whole correspondence was halting, stumbling, They were dancing around each other. Lilly so badly wanted to go back to the way things had been, even if only for the time being, but that wasn’t going to happen.

Hesitantly, he grabbed a plate and shovelled two pancakes off a stack. A spoonful of honey on top, perfect. He took a tentative bite.

Fluffy, sweet, hearty. Delicious. And surprising.

‘I didn’t know you could cook,’ Lilly observed around a mouthful of pancake.

Orion smiled. ‘It’s limited to a single dish, so I’ve had some practice with it.’

Silence again, uncomfortable, stringy silence. The seconds ticked by like slow drops of syrup off a spoon, or so it felt to Lilly. Normally, their silences were breezes of fresh clean air. Not this clammy, sticky, awkward quiet.

Normally, they hadn’t fought like this the night before, and weren’t as careful not to step into dangerous territory, onto thin ice and problems. They even preferred clumsy silence to that.

The coffee machine sputtered and hissed, signalling that it was done with its job. Lilly didn’t wait for the little red light to turn off and poured two cups, returning the pot to its place to let the last dribble of coffee run through. Orion’s smile of thanks eased some of the tension out of Lilly’s shoulders as he heaped two more pancakes onto his plate.

Small gestures seemed safe enough. And now Lilly had a mug to wrap his hands around so they didn’t dangle uselessly at his sides. What did you normally do with your fingers?

‘Where’s Poison, anyway?’

‘Still asleep.’ Orion flipped a pancake. ‘I gave her my room for the night.’

Lilly nodded and took another bite, chewing thoughtfully. ‘I take it you’ll be switching permanently now that she’s got a girlfriend?’

Orion practically pounced on the topic, a grin spreading readily on his face. ‘You noticed, eh?’

Lilly rolled his eyes. ‘Of course I did. How could anyone not notice, with that lame excuse of tea. Besides, she always checks out the barmaid at that Irish pub.’

Orion laughed. ‘That’s what I said! Wonder if that’s the lucky girl. But yeah, I’ve given over the room. Poison’s been on the couch long enough, and you are the only one who does any work in his room, so that leaves me.’ He turned off the stove.

‘Are you okay sleeping on the couch?’ It sounded conveniently uncomfortable. Lilly knew what it felt like to punish himself for his actions, and Orion looked like that right now.

But Orion just shrugged, either ignoring or not noticing the indirect remark. ‘Poison did it for two months. I don’t mind. It’s closer to the coffee machine. And anyway, I don’t run the risk of bringing home a lady, neither a barmaid nor a certain cute mechanic.’

Lilly felt himself blush as hope whirled through him and left an uneasy stomach behind when logic chased it back out. Eliah wasn’t interested in him. She hadn’t reacted to any of his advances, and he preferred not to pester her with them. It stung a little when Orion dangled the impossible fantasy before him, because he knew it was just that. A fantasy.

If Eliah liked him, he would have known by now. She would have reacted to him differently. And besides, he was more than okay with simply being friends.

Still, he decided not to argue. Even if just to humour the possibility.

Orion stretched, popping his back with a sigh. ‘I’ll wake the turtle-dove. Could you get the pancakes to the table, please?’

Lilly nodded mutely, a bit confused. That was unusually polite. Orion was strangely careful and not as… brash. Maybe that was an improvement.

A different part of him flared up at the thought. Was a simple “please” enough to change his view of a person? Was it all right for Orion to kill as long as he did so politely?

He was being harsh. Unreasonably so? Maybe their conflict didn’t negate that simple well-meant act. Could Orion be genuinely nice and guilty at the same time? To which aspect should Lilly react?

His head was swimming as last night’s argument threatened to repeat itself and countless more connected thoughts sprang up and competed for space in his mind.

This had all been easier when he had pretended nothing could possibly go wrong. Ignorance had its perks. Still, if dealing with Orion right now was this confusing, all the better Lilly finally confronted the issue.

He carried pancakes, honey, coffee, and juice over to the coffee table. Orion was back from his wake-up call and had flopped onto the couch.

Lilly ran a hand over his face and his fingers brushed against day-old stubble around his chin. He stroked it thoughtfully.

‘Hey, you think I should grow a beard?’ It would look pretty cool. Good for thoughtful stroking, too. And a conveniently easy, distracting topic until Poison showed up.

‘Dunno,’ Orion answered. ‘You can always try it out and shave if you don’t like it. But beware: if it looks dumb, Poison will make fun of you for eternity.’

‘Yeah. Me. And just me,’ a rather unnerved voice commented from the hallway. ‘No other people in the room that would ever think of making fun of anything at all.’

Poison had emerged from her new room in sweatpants and a too-large shirt. She rubbed her eye below a pair of glasses. They were back-up for her contacts, since glasses were inconvenient for a lot of their kind of jobs. Poison only wore her glasses on the way to get her contacts, or towards a stack of pancakes waiting for her.

‘Wow, you’re grumpy today,’ Orion teased.

Poison growled. ‘Shut it. It’s early. Which direction is the food?’

Orion laughed and guided her to the couch where she promptly snuggled into the cushions, eyes closed, nibbling on a pancake. Orion sat next to her and busied himself with his own breakfast.

Lilly was acutely aware that though Orion and Poison’s way of acting around each other had changed, it was for the better. There seemed to be a new, deeper understanding between them. And it probably stemmed from Lilly distancing himself. It hurt a bit to realise that.

‘They’re almost as good as mine,’ Poison commented. ‘You’re learning.’

‘Hey! They’re at least as good. Look how fluffy I got them!’

‘Yeah, but I’ll need a whole bunch of them to get full. They simply lack substance.’

‘They do not!’

‘Do, too.’

‘Do not!’

Watching them was like watching a different world, as if Lilly were invisible, separate. He yearned to step into that world, to be part of it again, and at the same time he wanted to stay apart, afraid of the consequences. His heart twisted in his chest, pulling him forward, held back by reason- no. Not reason. Fear. Of what? Of Orion, of what he might do?

Orion had become less predictable, his actions and reactions uncertain.

Well, nobody was asking Lilly to trust blindly. This was no different from when they had first met. It had been even riskier then, because they hadn’t known each other at all.

Lilly had chosen to work with someone he knew nothing about. He was just late with realising it.

And in the end, he didn’t have to let Orion do whatever he wanted and go along with it. They would make decisions together, as they had in the last five years. He had to admit that Orion had done nothing in the past years that didn’t warrant trust and respect. That ought to count.

‘Lilly?’ Come on, sit. Your coffee’s getting cold.’

Orion was grinning at him, but then that grin faded to wariness as he seemed to remember the awkward tension, the fight they were having.

Lilly did sit. He would think this through later. For now, they had plans to make.

The conversation stumbled around the subject for a while, poking then retreating, waiting for a good moment or the right thing to say. Awkward small-talk and forced jokes. Finally, Lilly sighed. So much for thinking it through.

‘Fuck it, let’s cut the crap. Let’s talk. What do we do about the whole Ten-Jordan-whatever-mess?’

Orion seemed both relieved and nervous that the subject had finally been broached. ‘We’ll continue looking for Michael, I think we can agree on that. With Jordan’s resources, it should be easier.’

‘And when we’ve found him?’, Poison asked. ‘I personally have no attachment to Michael, but I do have a rather serious attachment to my life. On the other hand, I guess Lilly has other priorities.’

Lilly snorted. ‘You could say that. I agree that I’m not willing to die for Michael. At least, I’ve never thought about it like that. But I’m not just handing him over like that, either. For one, he’s my friend. And I think giving Rivers something he wants so badly might not work out in a pleasant way for anyone. Do we even know why everybody is looking for Michael?’

‘No,’ Poison huffed. ‘Which is infuriating enough. But what options do we have? Cheat Max Rivers?’

‘It might work.’

They both turned to stare at Orion. Poison breathed in a bit of pancake and coughed. ‘S’cuse me, what?’

Orion shrugged and looked up at Lilly. ‘I have no intention of working for or with Max Rivers again. But I think this is turning out to be way over our heads, especially since we don’t know what’s happening. We need outside help. We need more information on what Michael is worth to these people. For Yoshua, too, if those two messes are connected.’

Lilly felt a pang of guilt and grief at that. He hadn’t known Yoshua all that well, but his sympathy for Eliah alone made the loss painfully tangible.

‘I could be wrong, but I don’t think Rivers will give us information on how to cheat him, and I doubt Ten- Jordan will, either.’ Poison switched her empty plate for a cup. ‘Where are we gonna get that outside help?’

Orion shrugged. ‘We’ll keep looking. Maybe Lilly can contact that Agency women, Pike?’

Lilly nodded slowly. ‘Worth a try, but I doubt she’ll tell us anything, and there’s the risk she’ll tell on us to the cops.’

He doubted it, though. Sarah’s inquiry into their activities had seemed genuine to him. At the same time, he knew the others would be on the look-out for deceit, not that he could blame them for it. And it could be a trap.

Meeting with her was still an option. At best, they would cooperate, or maybe Pike would let something slip. At worst, Lilly could always leave.

‘Let’s keep that in mind,’ Orion nodded. ‘In the mean time, I want to know what’s going on. What was Michael working on, what did he find, why did he run. Why are so many damn people after him. I bet most of them don’t know themselves. But I’m sick of chasing after everyone blindly. So, first step, find out more about this research project you were working on. It might even help out with our other problems.’

Lilly nodded ‘I agree.’ Information was good, finding Michael was even better. Dealing with Rivers… later.

Poison shrugged and picked at something on her finger. ‘I don’t care, but I’m in. What about Rivers?’

Orion shrugged. ‘We could just wait and see, cross that bridge when we get to it, that crap.’

Poison snorted, looking up from her finger.’ Yeah, no. It would be less crossing a bridge and more stepping off a cliff. I don’t think we can do this spontaneously. We gotta plan! And how are we going to do that right under the nose of Rivers’ pet killer?’

Orion looked at Lilly. Strange. It was a bit uncomfortable to be paid so much attention. Normally, he stayed in the background during these things and only joined in when it came to the technicalities, the strategy details. He hadn’t noticed, but now it was obvious, and jarring.

Apparently, Orion wanted him to participate in the broad-range decision-making. A gesture of trust? Showing that his input was valued? Maybe. Lilly felt more awkward at the attention than anything.

‘I, uh, I think we should look into Dan Shio. That’s what Jordan wants us to do, right? If it concerns him so much, maybe it’ll give us a hold over him, maybe there’s something personal about it. We could use that to make him work for us, to sabotage Rivers’ plans. Or at least not tell him everything we do.’

‘Good, nice idea,’ Orion nodded. Lilly felt like a child.

‘Okay,’ Poison said. ‘So we’ll look into Shio. We still got those files, right? From the police station grab? Bound to be something in them. And we can ask Pike about it, eventually.’

Lilly shrugged. ‘I’ll get right on it.’