"You need not act so polite, Your Hi - er, Culver. I know your language is more colorful than an elven workshop on Christmas Eve."

Culver shot Orion a rebellious look. "I do what I want," he snapped. "Who says princes don't swear?"

"You don't look the part." Orion looked Culver up and down. "At first glance, you look...dainty."

For a second, all Culver could do was blink. "Twenty-five years of life," he remarked, "and nobody has ever called me dainty."

Orion shrugged. "It's true. At first glance, nobody would consider you capable of carrying someone my size up so many stairs."

"Okay, okay, my ego is satisfied. Now, back to your claim that I'm gay. What makes you say that?"

"When I first asked if you were gay, you looked like you wanted to rip my throat out. That sort of reaction comes from a man who is either deeply closeted or homophobic. I decided between the two when I considered that a homophobic man would never bring a gay one into his home."

Culver couldn't help but panic. All his life he had hidden his sexuality with mechanical perfection, and now it had been discovered by a shaggy, coke-stuffed giant with miniature feet who couldn't hold on to his job. "I won't tell anyone," said Orion, having noticed the anxiety in Culver's eyes. "I'm gay too, remember? I know how terrifying it is to have someone know."

"No point in hiding it anymore," Culver groaned, burying his face in his hands. "Fucking perceptive little canary."

"Canary? Little?!"

"What else, then!" Culver looked up to glower at Orion. "You're yellow because of the bath bomb, and it doesn't help that your skin is paler than a cloud! How can you even walk in the sunlight?"

Orion blushed a little, making his cheeks turn orange. "I was born with porcelain skin," he said. "And it's gotten much paler since I got addicted."

Culver dipped his head down and sideways to look into his companion's downcast eyes. "You need to stop, you know," he said gravely. "It should take less than a Prince to make you realize that."

Orion's mood changed as fast as a scene in a movie. "You think I haven't tried to stop?" He snarled, the anger in his eyes not outrage at being misunderstood, but manic fury at being told to stop his dependency. "Excuse my impudence, Your Highness, but what do you know about me? Just because you gave me a place to shower, you have the right to preach to me?"

"I saved your life!" Culver stood up, partly in agitation and partly to look larger in front of the much taller Orion. "If it weren't for me, you'd be fish food, fine-ground by the rocks at the bottom of the Taia! And how dare you talk to me like that?"

Orion gave a bitter laugh. "Oh, let's drop the appearances!" He spat. "And what gave you the right to talk to me the way you did? How much fun would it be if Mevinje's people find out their beloved Prince is a potty-mouthed dick-sucker?"

In a flash, Culver had delivered a stunning punch right on Orion's nose, twisted his arm behind his back, grabbed his hair in a single fistful and with one excruciating yank, forced him to bend backwards at an unnatural angle. "I will tie you up from top to toe," growled Culver viciously, "and leave you to rot without food or water. My chambers are big and soundproof, so nobody will hear your calls for help. And when you reach the end of your miserable, drugged-up life, nobody will come in to clean that filth even if if the whole castle stinks. And you know why?" Culver tugged even harder on Orion's hair, eliciting a pained groan. Bringing his mouth right to Orion's ear, he bit his earlobe hard. "Because I will have told them to."

"You," Orion barked, his hoarse voice breaking even more due to pain. "You're a piece of shit, and nobody knows."

"Shouldn't you know that being gay is a secret worth killing to protect? You're gay too," Culver mimed.

"What is wrong with you!" Orion tried to struggle, but every movement hurt. "Mevinje...is about the safe - ack! - safest place...for people like us! Your father...made it that way! What are you afraid of?"

Culver suddenly let go. Orion whipped upright, his long torso tracing the trajectory of a catapult. Raising a grumpy foot, Culver delivered a sharp kick to Orion's hindquarters, sending him stumbling into the closet door. "Those orders are issued in my father's name," he said over the sound of a large body colliding with wood and the dull thunk of a head hitting a brass doorknob. A shrill yelp of agony followed. "Just because he signed the bill doesn't mean he supports it personally. Besides, this kingdom might not be ready for a gay King."

"Urgh." Orion swayed as he got back on his feet. "How can you be so sure?"

"... it's clear in the way people in this castle talk. You know, as if they don't mind homosexuals in other families, but they're still glad they don't have one in their own."

"Don't I know it." Orion rolled his shoulders and gingerly touched his throbbing wrist to see if it was broken. "You pack quite some power in that little body of yours."

"I've served in the military, you know." Culver sat down on the bed again and patted the space next to him. "Was your family disappointed? Is that why you took to drugs?"

"I'll stay away from those hands of yours." Orion sat in the chair Culver had roused him from a few minutes ago. "Yes to your first question, no to the second. And you really are being too candid with a person you've just met."

Culver fixed Orion with a penetrating stare of his own. The tetra-colored eyes he was famous for demanded nothing but the absolute, unadulterated truth. "Am I wrong?" He asked.

Orion couldn't even blink. Still, he sat up straight, squared his shoulders and raised his chin. "No," he answered, his voice more sonorous than Culver had ever heard before.

That single-worded answer was so raw, so pure, so absolute it shook Culver's very soul. He would never forget for the rest of his life how much that single "no" saved him. It took a man very sure of his actions and ethics to promise that a person with so much to lose wouldn't regret being open with him, and that conviction gave Culver the courage to once trust the world a little. At that point in time, he had no idea how much he would need that trust in the days to come.

"It's true." Culver, still too busy reconciling himself with Orion's response, couldn't move a muscle as the latter rose to take a seat next to him and leaned forward till their faces were inches apart. "Your eyes really do have four colors."

"Does it freak you out?"

"Not at all. I'm glad it wasn't one of my coke-induced hallucinations."

Now it was Culver's turn to blush. Born with both sectoral and iridum heterochromia, his right eye was amber and dark blue, while the other was green and grey. "Somehow, I feel really lucky for getting to see these from up close," Orion said in a half-whisper.

Face aflame all the way up to the roots of his hair, Culver turned away to hide his smile. His scrambled mind desperately searched for a lighter topic to discuss. "Your job," he ultimately said. "Don't you have work today? You shouldn't get late if you're almost fired."

The little spirit Orion had been showing vanished. "I've been suspended," he admitted. "The only reason I didn't get fired is that my boss and I were very close before I developed a drug habit. He told me not to come back until I was clean."

"And that isn't enough incentive to quit?"

"It is. It's the detox that's the hard part. Last night was the fifth time I failed to last through detox."

"I'm sorry," Culver sympathized. "Look, if nothing else helps you get through, remember that you almost died last night. That drug isn't worth losing your life."

"About that." Orion awkwardly cleared his throat, dropping his gaze. "Your verbal assault is oddly clear in my memory, but I can't remember how I ended up at the river."

"I don't know what you were up to before I saw you on Amsterdam Drive. I followed you after you attacked a parking meter, almost exposed yourself, set off a small riot and then stumbled about for an hour before waltzing off a ledge and almost dragging me into the water with you."

With each word, Orion shrunk more and more out of utter mortification until he looked like he wanted to dig a hole for himself to crawl into and die. "Like I said, rock bottom," he bleated.

"No, you would have been at rock bottom if you'd fallen in."

Orion raised an unimpressed eyebrow. "Anyway," he said with a deliberate drawl, "what is so dangerous about that patch of river? I understand that being high means I wouldn't have swum properly and could have drowned, especially when the water is so cold, but the Taia's surface is frozen over."

"How heavy are you?"

"A hundred and ninety pounds."

"The ice in that particular area isn't thick enough to support a hundred and ninety pounds slamming into it from a height of ten feet. There is a bottleneck in the channel there. It forces a large volume of water through a narrow gap, so the water flows faster. The current is so fast there that not much ice can freeze, so you'd fall right through. And once the current pulls you under, it's impossible to return to the surface. The bottleneck doesn't open for about half a mile until it reaches Three Points Bridge, and it opens straight into some really violent rapids."

"And what about the ledge? I remember you being very desperate to get off it."

The currents have been cutting into the rocky bank for years. That ledge juts out over some eight feet of water. That ledge is about fifteen feet long so that's...twelve hundred cubic feet of rock just hanging there. It could collapse into the water at any moment."

Orion had turned green by now, and he had started fidgeting as if suffering from physical discomfort. "I'm officially terrified," said he, "of how close I came to dying four times in under twelve hours."

"Four? How is it four times?"

"The river was one. Plus you've already threatened to kill me thrice."

Chagrined, Culver lowered his head. "Who's keeping count?" he mumbled.

"I am! The way it's going, if the coke doesn't kill me, you surely will!"

"I will if you tell anyone about me," Culver promised. "I'm being serious, Orion. It can't get out."

"I understand," said Orion, and gave Culver a small, sad smile. "Well, I think I should go now. It's been an extraordinary experience, Your Hi - Culver."

Cover chuckled at the fumble in the end. "The feeling is mutual," he said. "If you must go, you should probably fix that rat's nest sprouting from your head."

"Can't. My hands are shaking too much."

Culver glanced at Orion's hands, and indeed, they were trembling harder than the weight on a pressure cooker. There was no way he could grip a doorknob, forget a executing a fine maneuver like combing his hair. Culver bit the inside of his lip, mulling over a rather bold move in his head.

It couldn't be worse than the discovery of his taste for men, he thought. Quickly, before he could convince himself of the contrary, he went to the dresser and grabbed a comb before turning to the mystified and slightly scared Orion.

"Well," he said, raising the comb like an executioner's ax, "yours is not the only pair of arms in this room, is it?"