The Administration Series (54 page)

"Warrick —"

"Shh," Warrick whispered against him. "Just . . . shh."

Toreth didn't want it to stop, anyway. He nodded and the hand flat against his back pressed him closer, acknowledging the surrender, urging him to move a little faster. Not much, just enough to change close to the edge into right on the edge and then tipping, slowly, deliciously over into orgasm.

As Toreth came, he found himself biting his lip, trying to keep quiet, somehow not wanting to spoil the moment. Warrick must have been pacing him, holding back, because he came only a breath behind, not crying out either but just stiffening in Toreth's arms and then, gradually, relaxing completely against him.

Neither of them said anything. Warrick lay against him, breathing slowing, heart settling down to a slower rhythm against Toreth's chest. Part of Toreth's mind, irrationally unsettled, wanted to get up and leave, right now. In the end, the rest of him ended the debate decisively by pulling him down into sleep.

The sound of a drawer closing woke him. He found Warrick standing near the window, fully dressed and packing clothes into a small suitcase. Toreth propped himself up on one elbow and blinked at him.

"Uh?" he managed.

Warrick looked round and smiled briefly."I have things to attend to, as I think I mentioned. I shall miss Dillian's shuttle if I don't go now. I've set the system to lock the door after you, but it won't let you back in again, so take everything with you."

Toreth nodded.

Warrick looked at him for a moment longer, then finished packing the last few bits and pieces. He zipped up the bag and turned to leave, pausing briefly in the doorway. "I'm going straight on to Mother's house with Dilly, and I'll be away for five days. When I get back you may call me, or not, as you wish." He hesitated, considering, and Toreth might have guessed the next words even if he hadn't said them. "I should like you to call."

Toreth nodded again and lay back down. By the time the outer door of the flat had closed, he was asleep once more.

Hours after Warrick's departure, Toreth woke up to silence, and sunlight slanting onto the pillow beside him. He felt warm, relaxed, and deeply contented, lying there and watching flecks of dust dance in the sunbeam as he breathed. The unscented oil on his hands now smelt of Warrick, and so did the pillow, and the whole bed where they'd . . . where they'd fucked.

Where they'd fucked.

And the contentment drained away, leaving something cold. He felt slightly sick, as though he was standing next to a long drop with no safety railing. That was the hangover coming back.

He showered and dressed quickly, and then, when he got home — because it was too late to go in to work — he had another shower. After that the soap-scent on his skin wasn't Warrick's.

More water and something to eat didn't chase the queasy feeling away. So he decided to try hair of the dog instead and went out to a bar he liked — coincidentally, one he'd never visited with Warrick. During the course of the evening he picked up an attractive woman with dark hair whose name he'd forgotten by the morning. They went back to her flat and she proved a very effective distraction from the things he wasn't going to think about anyway.

The next morning Toreth felt fine, until he got in to work and thought: only four days until he gets back.

Toreth didn't call.

The five days went past, and in that time he discovered Warrick had been right. There was corporate nastiness somewhere at the back of his latest case. Toreth backed off from the investigation as far as he could without raising suspicions and waited to see what crawled out of the woodwork. He wanted to be very sure what answer he was supposed to find before he found it. The success of the Selman case had entirely cancelled out the fuck-up with Psychoprogramming, and Tillotson seemed once more happy to send the nastiest, trickiest cases his way.

Warrick had mentioned there was a file, and he'd said he hadn't managed to get hold of it 'yet'. Had he done so now? He should be back from his little family visit by now.

But Toreth didn't call him.

He didn't know why, and he didn't think about why, any more than he thought about what had happened in Warrick's flat.

I should like you to call.

If Warrick liked it that much, he could call. Toreth had his days filled with Chevril's offloaded prisoners, explaining to Justice representatives why it was possible to seriously interrogate prisoners or it was possible to guarantee they wouldn't die, but it wasn't possible to do both. Or rather that the guarantee wouldn't make them any less dead if things went wrong, which was why he sure as hell wasn't putting his name on it.

The representatives listened, and nodded, and went back to their superiors and returned the next day with a carefully reworded demand for exactly the same impossibilities. Fucking annoying internal politics, which put him in a filthy temper and made him snap at Sara over nothing.

He had to put up with it for the five days Warrick was away, and for a couple of days after that, until finally he managed to get the case transferred to someone else. Chevril had had the right idea, because as far as Toreth could tell the prisoners stood every chance of dying of old age before they saw the inside of an interrogation room. It had been an insane waste of time and money all round.

Still, it had kept him busy, during the day at least. At night he found other things to keep him occupied, one night blurring into another.

Then, on the first day free of Justice irritations, Sara's voice came over the comm, sounding intrigued. "Warrick wants to speak to you. Shall I transfer him?"

She was wondering, no doubt, why Warrick hadn't called him directly.

"No," he said without thinking about it. "Tell him I'm out."

"Oh. All right." Now she sounded piqued. She'd probably been planning to listen in.

An hour or two passed, and then a file arrived unexpectedly on his screen. It had a password requirement, which read:

One guess only. Clue? What don't you want to hear?

Toreth thought it over, imagining the words in Warrick's voice, then smiled and entered 'plastic duck'.

It proved to be the file Warrick had mentioned. Very interesting reading it made, and best of all, it told him the answer he was supposed to find.

When he tried to take a copy, the file vanished, deleting itself so neatly and thoroughly that he could find no trace it had ever existed. Fair enough. He'd been the one who had warned Warrick against getting entangled in Int-Sec files. Warrick had taken a risk to get it, and a risk to send it. So . . . it would only be polite to say thank you.

He got as far as putting the call through to SimTech. Then he cancelled it.

'What don't you want to hear?'

He dismissed the thought. He had a lot to do.

Sitting in his own office across the city, Warrick waited, unable to concentrate on anything else until the message came back that the file had been read and safely deleted. Interesting, since Toreth was allegedly out of his office. Deciding to carry out a small experiment, he called I&I once more.

"Sara? It's Keir Warrick again. Is Toreth back yet?"

He waited, counting seconds, until her voice came back.

"Still out, I'm afraid. Do you want to leave a message? I can take it, or —"

"No, no message, thanks. No, wait. Just ask him to call me, please, if he has time. Thank you."

He cut off the call. She had been gone for twenty-seven seconds. Longer than she would need to make sure Toreth was out, but plenty of time for him to tell her that he was. His original hypothesis was now confirmed, or at least strongly supported. Toreth was avoiding him.

Warrick leaned back, watching his system running a final check to make sure that his illegitimate presence in Int-Sec had evaded notice. He was well aware of the dangers involved, although if he hadn't been confident of success he wouldn't have done it, not even for Toreth. He considered that phrase for a moment. 'Not even'. Mm.

He started to plan things out. He'd call again tomorrow, after lunch. Then once more, in the evening of the next day, perhaps. And after that . . .

After that the sensible thing to do would be to drop it and not try again. He smiled wryly. Somehow it felt a little late in the day for being sensible. Five days away, surrounded by people he loved, and he had missed spending time with Toreth. They'd gone without seeing each other for much longer than that before.

Something had changed.

He could put his finger on the exact moment the change occurred: as he stood in the darkened bedroom, looking down at Toreth in the light from the door and realising that he liked it. Liked seeing him asleep in his bed. Liked the idea of watching him wake up. Liked the way that the flat felt different, warmer and more alive. And he'd felt a sudden need to make pancakes, which was a clear warning sign. The last time he'd felt it had been with Lissa. It meant an incipient urge for domesticity, and this time with such an unlikely object.

After all the trouble he'd taken never to extend an invitation to the flat, it had been a strange experience. Before that morning, he'd thought that he didn't want his time with Toreth — and the game they played — intruding into his home. He'd thought it was better kept separate. Apparently, he'd been wrong. He didn't mind admitting his mistake, especially when the process of discovering the error had been so very pleasant.

Still, it was definitely not sensible. In fact, it came very close to impossible. Was it worth pursuing? Standing there in the semi-dark, he'd thought so, and so he'd called I&I to tell Sara that Toreth wouldn't be in.

Investigation and Interrogation — that was one part of the impossibility. The rest of it was simply Toreth. Impossibility didn't even begin to describe the idea of trying to have anything that might reasonably be called a relationship with him. However, was it impossible to want something more than . . . whatever the hell they had?

Eventually he realised that he was staring blankly at the screen, where a message informed him the checks had been completed and no problems reported.

He was daydreaming and planning to build on foundations which might not even be there any more. For now, it was simple. He wanted to see Toreth again. If it was over, then he wanted to hear it, not have things dragged out into a growing list of unreturned messages. And if it wasn't . . . well, he'd have to see.

If the comm proved fruitless, he would find another way.

Anonymous dark hotel room, not one of Toreth's regular places. Anonymous hands on him, anonymous cock inside him. He liked it. He wanted it. Doing, not feeling. A safe, familiar thing and it was good. Or at least it stopped him thinking.

When they had finished and were dressing, the man whose name he hadn't asked said, "Tell Warrick I said hello."

Toreth nearly choked. "What?"

"After hearing his name so many times, I feel like I know him."

He didn't have an answer to that.

Sara had been unnaturally polite and formal all week. It was probably something to do with the fact that he'd forced her to come in over the weekend, when he knew she had other plans. If he'd had to come in to work, now that his case was active again, he didn't see why she shouldn't.

Then, on Wednesday afternoon, she put her head round his office door without knocking and asked, "Are you doing anything tonight?"

"I was planning on going out."

"Well, I'm stunned. Makes a change from the last fortnight. But the married men and women of New London will just have to manage without you. I've got tickets, for the theatre."

He looked at her blankly. She rolled her eyes, then produced a bunch of lurid pink flowers, which she'd been holding out of sight of the doorway, and said, "It's your birthday."

They had an arrangement about birthdays. On Toreth's birthday, Sara would buy him some flowers, because he hated them, and take him out to some suitably weird venue for the evening, usually a strip club of some kind. On Sara's birthday, Toreth would forget to arrange anything at all, so she would do it for him and he would pay. For her birthday they usually went somewhere classier and considerably more expensive than they did for his. Every year he complained, and every year she told him that if he wanted something cheaper he should organise it himself.

This year he'd managed to forget his own birthday as well as hers.

"Why the hell are we going to the theatre?"

"Good question. The mood you've been in I don't know why we're going anywhere. But a friend had some tickets and couldn't make it. So I'm getting a bargain. Pick me up at seven."

"Are you ready to —" Toreth stopped dead inside Sara's flat doorway and sniffed. "What's that smell?"

Sara appeared out of the bathroom, wearing a robe. "What smell?" she asked unconvincingly.

He pointed to the hall behind her, where the door to the bedroom had opened silently. "And what the fuck is
that
?"

"It's a cat, of course. What does it look like?"

Toreth studied the apparition from a safe distance. "It looks like a badly-stitched-together traffic accident in a scabby black fur coat two sizes too large. Why are its teeth sticking out like that?"

"I think he must have been malnourished when he was a kitten."

Toreth doubted it. Nothing could grow to that size on an inadequate diet. A more likely explanation seemed to be that it had evolved in some deserted back street in the old city to hunt something large and slippery. Wet dogs, perhaps.

Sara picked it up and kissed the top of its head between its tattered ears. "Were you, sweetie-pie? Were people cruel to you when you were a baby? But it doesn't matter, does it, 'cause
I'm
going to feed you from now on." The cat looked profoundly embarrassed, then started to purr.

"It's
living
here?"

"
He
is, yes." She proffered him the cat. A near-visible miasma of unneutered tomcat surrounded it. "Here, stroke him. He's really friendly."