DETERRENT - Apply Fic

23

Working on Benji's farm is far preferable to slaving their hands to Holly Lee's dairy. It is worse than George Rooney's fantasyland of fruits and flowers. More workers are arriving as they are closing in on the harvest, doubled to a dozen tilling the fields and spraying pesticides. The air is stained sour, polluted by the trucks which drive them to and from the outpost, and each day is long and then it is the weekend.

They are halfway through their stay.

On the Saturday morning, Harvey gets to sleep in. Typically, he rises before the others to make breakfast, and the habit carries through to the weekend. His internal clock is the same as any other.

He is awakened by a jolt.

Harvey's eyes snap open. Titus stands above him, arms crossed and a smirk on his face.

"Should've made my getaway while you were asleep," he muses.

Harvey ducks his head out from the bunk to try to peer above him.

"Faris is gone," Titus kneels down next to Harvey. "You really think I'd come in here if I was expecting to be interrupted?"

"And yet I interrupt your escape every time," Harvey grumbles.

Titus rolls his eyes, "come on, farmer's made breakfast."

Harvey creeks out of bed. He walks, resting his weight on the cane more this morning than usual, and begins to switch into his day clothes.

"You're shameless," Harvey says as he pulls on a pair of trousers. His back is to Titus, but he knows exactly where the man looks.

"Not true," Titus grins. "I'm just flashy."

~~~

The day is quite like most other Saturdays. They lounge, cooling themselves with scrapes of paper folded into fans. They lick iced juice with fresh fruit inside. George Rooney stops by and teaches them something he calls lawn games.

"No, Gale, like this," George takes Gale's wrist and holds it steady. "You're spinning your hand too much."

He guides Gale's hand, and Gale knocks down three blocks of wood on the ground. George cheers. Norbu practically jumps on them both, arms wrapped around their necks tightly and laughing. Gale grins widely.

Faris has forced Eurydice to be on his team. She is unsurprisingly perfect, gliding through each step on the tips of her toes, throwing with perfect accuracy. Kae has near-perfect aim as well, and Faris blunders. Smiling isn't enough to get him through the game, but that is not the point.

He has been watching her, all week. Eurydice and Kae, always an eye on one if not the other. As Harvey has asked of him, he has become the panopticon. Faris is used to masquerading as the enemy. To camouflage is to know. Faris is practiced in the art of acting. Never before has it been a challenge.

His eyes sting. The same sentence runs through his brain over and over again. It wraps around his mind, squeezing it tighter and tighter.

"Your turn," Eurydice pats him on the back.

Her nails are sharp and he is thankful for it, because then he feels the sun's slice as well. The sharpness of reality, not the muddled feeling of a too-heavy hand.

Faris is a rotten shot. He misses wide, and his smile is wider.

"Not fair that you've got an expert on your team," he laughs. "Gale should be just as bad as me."