as kindred should

thirteen

The stairs felt a lot shorter on the way back up. Dorian emerged from the lower level and stretched, his lungs creaking and his back aching pleasantly. He had not realized how stiff he was. Facing the Bowles' corpses seemed to have aggravated the fact, and Dorian directed a quick, silent, thank you at the ceiling, suddenly very grateful that he was breathing at all. There was a fifty-fifty chance he had been heard. That was enough for him.

Three steps down the hall and Dorian halted, Norwood's warning ringing in his head.

"Avoid Bayard," he repeated to himself, the words bookended by a groan at the pop of his back. "Alright. I can do that. Avoid Bayard. Avoid Bayard. Easy. I can avoid Bayard.

"Oh, Christ. I'm talking to myself again," Dorian said, face reddening.

Meandering down the hall, one elbow braced against his wrist in the shape of another sweet stretch, he must have looked like a fool, like a great walking tree. Nobody stood within sight, such a rare occurrence within the Elite building that he felt nearly at peace, a crooked feeling that did not so much soothe him as it drew a veil over the head of his immediate embarrassment.

Dorian would eventually have to return to his desk to rummage through paperwork he hadn't yet done, for Pip and for the case that preceded hers, an apparent cut-and-done that had a body count to rival the amount of trees its record had been printed on. Before meeting Pip, he had completed a grand total of three pages; the work was like counting flies.

For now he'd enjoy his illegitimate freedom. There was a book in his locker, he remembered. And Then There Were None, its pages frayed and its spine torn in several places. He had read it five times before, had memorized the first quarter of the book.

He started for the locker room, deciding on the go that he would read it again. What page was he on this go around? Fifty, right. Why had he started it again? Why not? To hide, to warm himself after a bout of cold, breathless fear, simply because he had not wanted to take a case. It could have been anything.

Today it was fear. He could tell himself anything, could try to convince himself that it was laziness or annoyance, but he knew the truth: he was afraid. Of Bayard, of what he had to say, of what might happen in that office.

The locker room door swung open, knocking him into a drunken stagger and his heart into a stutter, and he turned his gaze to the floor.

Ronan Castor watched him with a lopsided smile.

"How long have you been lurking back here? I thought you wouldn't show at all today," he said cheerfully. Purple smudges still darkened his lower eyelids, but his unintentional dishevelment had been filtered back to his traditional measured scruffiness.

Not a single word came to Dorian in that moment, every last letter scrubbed from his brain by the awareness that he was a half-step from what he'd set out to avoid: a tongue-lashing, a beatdown, a fresh helping of paperwork for cases he knew absolutely nothing about.

Am I a punching bag or a receptionist? He'd asked once. Bayard had only stared, those piercing eyes of his narrowed a bare fraction. Thirty seconds had gone before Bayard had shaken his head and, with his lip curled back over his upper teeth in a facsimile of a smile he had said:

That's up to you, Dor.

"I- I was on the lower level."

"Ah, right. The case with the kid. What was their name? Bowles?"

It was said flippantly, as if the Bowles family had not been people but dogs at their inevitable end, put down to preserve old memories. Ice trickled down the back of Dorian's throat. A sudden, immense desire to lunge rose in him. He wanted to hit Ronan, send those words right back through his teeth, consequences be damned.