“What is … that?”
For a moment, Marco doesn’t seem to be sure of what Fray is asking about. Fray can’t imagine how. There is a moth the size of his head in his lap. Surely this draws all kinds of stares. He gets it when Fray adds bug?, though. “Artemis?” Marco signs.
“It has a name?” Fray signs back.
Marco gives him an uncertain half-smile. “Do they not name ___ in the Old World?”
Fray squints at him. There was a sign in there he couldn’t read, though it looked like a modified sign for insect. Marco catches on after a moment and finger-spells: “K-I-N-S-E-C-T?”
“A what?”
“They don’t have them at home! How was I supposed to know?”
“Because it’s a Guild-sanctioned weapon, you worm,” Proxy says with a yawn. She’s sprawled on what is supposed to be Fray’s bed, but turned into Fray-and-Proxy’s bed within two days of their arrival. The weekly ecology writeup is in her paws. “Like, it’s kind of recent, but it’s approved gear.”
“Are we calling bugs gear now? Is that what we’re doing?” Fray snorts as he signs this. He’s doing a bad job of sorting his hunt supplies out in a timely manner, but gossip is more important. “It’s bad enough when I have to listen to the longsworders talk about how their steel thirsts for blood. Now we have actual animals registered as gear.”
“Yeah, I can’t believe I had to register you as gear when I joined the Guild. Really disrespectful, I think.”
“I’m the best gear you have.”
“Obviously. Did you know you can buy the bug powder, just like, in a jar?” She taps a toe against the magazine, as if Fray is anywhere close enough to her to see it. “Apparently you can mix the stuff off their wings with different compounds and get about a zillion effects. I bet Marco is high just all the time off it.”
Fray considers this, rolling a jar of clover honey between his palms. “Might expl—ain some things,” he says in his shitty voice, quiet enough that it’s only a little unpleasant on his throat. Thank goodness for felynes’ sensitive hearing. He puts the honey down in his lap and signs, “What kinds of effects?”
“I know exactly where your mind just went, you fucking slut.”
Artemis is infuriatingly effective. The monsters don’t even seem to notice when she’s attached herself to them, a property Fray envies immensely. The powder she returns to Marco with gives him a discernable edge. The two of them work together even more seamlessly than Fray does with Proxy, which is something to be impressed by. The New World is full of surprises.
It’s just full of them.
“Yo, Fray, you’re tight with that other mute guy with the bug, right?” another Fiver asks him in the canteen one day. She drops down next to him, and it takes Fray a moment to recognize her in her hunting gear; he’s more used to seeing her in the strappy black leather of her domme gear at the play den. Yoona shakes a little glass vial of what looks like those incense cones sold in the tradeyard at him. It’s nearly empty. “Do you know if he’s the one selling this stuff?”
Fray blinks owlishly at her and shakes his head. He points at the vial questioningly. “You haven’t tried this?” she says, eyebrows hiking up her forehead. “You? The Guild bicycle?”
“I don’t t, take every dr—ug I’m offered.”
“You should. You’d love this stuff. It’s kinsect powder and crystallized honey, and some secret third thing. Makes you stupid horny. I got this from that Fourth cartography guy, but he fucked off on another expedition and I have no idea how to get more. You sure it’s not your friend?”
“First hit is free,” Marco signs with a grin, and rolls the vial across the table. Or, tries. The table in their shared room is made of planks, and it gets stuck in the middle, ruining what was otherwise a very smooth move. He frowns at it and mouths fuck.
When Fray picks the vial up it’s surprisingly heavy. Upon being uncorked it wafts out a sweet, dusty smell, tinted with the snap of something like ginger. The incense cone falls out easily into his palm when he shakes it. “You burn it like normal,” Marco signs. “Somewhere enclosed. It loses effectiveness if it’s spread too thin.”
“Wouldn’t smoking it work better?”
Marco gives him what is a distinctively pouty look. “It’s about the mood.”
“I’m gonna smoke it.”
“You damn well will not, give me that.”
Marco’s not charging him for this first cone, so Fray relents and hands it over. With ease Marco sets the incense on the lid of the vial, produces a lighter from one of ten thousand hidden pockets, and sets it aflame. “Takes about fifteen minutes,” he signs after blowing it out. “I like it better with a partner, but it’s fun by yourself too.”
Fray had not thought this far ahead. His usual partners are not people he keeps track of outside of the den. “Want to stay, then?” he signs absently, and Marco looks pleasantly surprised.
“I need,” Fray is trying to sign, but it’s hard to get his fingers to be quite as precise as he needs them when so much of his brain is now focused on his dick. “I need a full trunk of this stuff.”
It’s questionable if Marco catches a word of it, since he’s currently using Fray as a grinding toy. Fray gives up on signing and fumbles to grab Marco’s hips where they spill over the hem of his pants, plush and appealing. He squeezes and Marco opens half-lidded eyes to grin at him. “Good, right?” he signs, with considerably more control than Fray is able to find at present. Above him, peering down at him through the scented smoke with flyaway hair and pinked cheeks, Marco looks fully in his element. “If I ever drop hunting I’m just going to make kinsect incense full-time.”
Fray wants to answer, but that would mean letting go of Marco’s hips. The thought is shoved out of his head anyway when Marco rolls a certain way and rubs a new spot, leaving Fray to whine and buck up against him. He’s stiff and straining in his trousers, a familiar feeling that leaves him wild with anticipation. He hopes Marco is the taking-charge type. Fray can approximate a decent service top, but he’s at his best when he’s being ordered around.
“I like your scars,” Marco goes on, as if he hadn’t just personally become responsible for another wet spot in Fray’s underwear. His eyes dance over Fray’s bare chest. “Tell me about them.”
It’s hardly an order, but with his head full of smoke and fantasy Fray chooses to interpret it as one. With great reluctance he pulls his hands away and looks blearily down at his chest. “Surgery,” he says hoarsely, drawing a finger under each pectoral. “Anjanath,” he goes on, placing a hand on the burn on his side, and then moves it to the uneven, healed-over punctures just to the side of his stomach. “Great M—accao,” he says, and has to stop to catch his breath when Marco’s motions trap his cock in a new spot.
“What’s that?”
“B—bird wyvern,” Fray gets out weakly. “Pretty. Kicks.”
Marco has just lifted his hands to answer when the door swings open, followed immediately with, “—go in there right now! Proxy—damn it, sorry, Marco—”
This is from Alex, standing in the threshold and looking deeply distraught. Through the hazy air Fray mostly glimpses the way the felyne averts his eyes and bushes his tail. “I told her not to come in.”
Because of course it’s Proxy. She’s trotting right in like she owns the place (she does, sort of, she owns a quarter of it the same as the rest of them) and making for the chest that has all her things. “I won’t be a minute,” she calls to Fray, and lets her eyes rove unabashedly over the two of them in their compromised position. “You guys finally fucking to see who’s the alpha male?” she goes on as she pops the trunk open and starts digging around inside. “Good for you. Dibs on the loser. That means you, Fray.”
Fray means to tell her to go get treed, but Marco laughs and starts to take off his shirt, and that’s too much of a prize to focus on anything else.