“Hey, man?” Fang began hoarsely, trying to peer around the man. There were two others behind him, a chubby guy and a man flexing his biceps. “I think the door’s the other way. Wanna head out and let me throw my garbage away?”

The man shifted, lower lip jutting out a little as he lifted his chin. “What the fuck is this brat doing here? Didya escape from your daycare pen?”

Ignoring him, Fang bent down a little, pretending to be searching for something. “I mean, I could probably duck under your legs if you spread them a little,” he said thoughtfully. “If you don’t want to move, that is.”

There was a deep chuckle, then the shadow shifted. Fang tensed, tightening his grip on the trays as he saw the man grind his fists together. His two lackeys had straightened, too, grins on their previously drooping expressions. “You aren’t scared at all, are you? Just like that little bitch, Rai. Let’s see if your ass is as good as his –”

“Walk away.” The man’s arms moved forward, but a hand planted itself firmly on Fang’s shoulder before he could react. He recognized the silky voice immediately, and a sudden tingle ran through his spine as the hand on his shoulder tightened its grip.

The man paused, then straightened with a grin on his face. “Aris. What’s this, finally crawled out of your cage to defend your new woman?”

“Whoah, hold it,” Fang interrupted with a growl, eyeing the large man in intense dislike. “Do I look like a woman to you?”

“You, shut up,” Aris’s voice muttered beside him. Despite their situation, the man looked perfectly at ease. His voice was calm, his eyes narrowed and his other hand relaxed in his orange pant pockets. “Don’t cause trouble on your first day.”

Fang gave him a side-ways glance, still unconsciously marvelling the man’s sculptured cheekbone. “It’s my second day,” he protested distractedly.

It could have been his imagination, but he thought he saw a chuckle huff through the man’s chest and flicker at the corner of his lips. Whatever it was, Aris quickly tensed it back into a nonchalant frown.

“Leave the kid alone, Tao. He’s my cellmate and it’d be a pain in the ass to have him crying all night,” Aris said casually, removing his hand from Fang’s shoulder.

Tao’s expression scrunched up into a look of bitter anger. Seeing that the man’s fists had clenched up incredibly tight, Fang also stiffened – but the man didn’t move any closer. His lackeys were exchanging wary glances behind him.

Eventually, the man lifted his head, scoffed tersely, and started to turn away. “I never thought this day would come. You, bothering to even lift a finger in someone’s defense? So you finally found yourself another bitch, huh. Congratulations.”

“Oh, for fucks sake!” Fang sighed, squeezing the edges of the uppermost tray with one hand and flinging it forward. It hit the side of the man’s waist, right where the pelvis bone jutted out, with a crack that almost drowned out the rest of his sentence. “I’m not Flower-boy’s woman!”

The man was frozen for a moment, his lackeys wide-eyed and staring at Fang in both awe and delight. Then, with a magnificent roar, Tao turned and lunged forward at him.

Flipping one tray up into the man’s face, Fang then ducked forward, grabbing the man’s legs and pulling them off-balance as he skidded to one side. He straightened and then had half a second to stare at the other two men before they were on him, too.

Ducking their clumsy punches, Fang got down and swiped the chubby man off his feet with a low kick, then reached up and grabbed the arms of the second man behind him, wrenching his elbows out and using them as support to leap to his feet. By then, the first man had gotten up and was swiping at him again, letting Fang grab his wrists and step forward to knee the man’s well-endowed stomach. That didn’t seem to do much – the man jerked easily away from his grip and swung forward again. At the same time, Fang became aware of something coming from behind. He ducked, placed both hands on the ground, and kicked upwards at the chubby man, sending him skidding straight into a table this time. Then, springing quickly from all fours back to his feet, Fang side-stepped the second man’s punch, grabbed his arm, and stepped forward to smash his elbow forward. Soon, he became aware of shouting, and an alarm going off somewhere underneath the howling excitement in his ears, but he couldn’t stop himself. He kept swinging forward, a sweet taste on his tongue as he punched the man’s blocking arms until finally the man stumbled back and fell flat on his rear end.

Satisfied, Fang straightened and lowered his burning fists with a heavy pant. Then a shadow fell over him, but this time as he whirled around, pain shot through his ankle and he faltered.

Next thing he knew the pain had spread all the way to his face, rekindling the burning sting that had been bothering him all morning, and the sweet taste on his tongue turned sour.

“Tao!” Dimly he heard a half-familiar voice shout, followed by several rough barks in Chinese. Stop! Stop now! – or something along those lines. Mostly he was preoccupied with his own rasping breaths.

Dizzily, Fang made out a row of blinding white lights – then the shadow fell over him again and he flinched, arms twitching up to his face instinctively to block the next blow. But it didn’t come, and after an extremely slow second in which his heart thumped at least a hundred times, Fang opened his eyes.

The siren stopped, but the shouting became louder and more alarmed in its place. Not just the guards’ voices, but other men’s voices too. Sitting up groggily, Fang saw orange blurs running across his field of view. In front of him, the big blob that was Tao cast him an ugly look, turned, and lumbered away. Then someone grabbed his arm and pulled him to his feet.

“Damn,” Fang said in a slurred voice, wiping something slick and warm off his lips with the back of his hand and glancing hazily down at the deep red stain. “Why’d he stop? It was just getting fun.” He opened his mouth to speak more, but a warm hand clamped over his lips. Surprised, Fang blinked, his vision finally clearing properly as he realized he was being dragged rapidly through the aisles. Eyes flickering around the cafeteria, he spotted the guards dragging a man off in the opposite direction, towards the dark glass wall. It looked like the coughing man from earlier, except now he was limp and his tank top stained entirely in blood.

“Don’t breathe.” Aris’s low murmur gave his bewildered thoughts a strange buzz of pleasure. But wait, what – how was he supposed to hold his breath when his heart was racing and every muscle in his tense body was screaming for oxygen?

In his struggle for breath, Fang noticed distractedly that the man’s hand smelled good. It was warm, clean-smelling but with a hint of musk and a tinge of tomato soup. Well, at the very least he could suffocate to something nice.

Half-dragged, half-stumbling, Fang managed to make it out of the cafeteria, but Aris didn’t stop there. Pulled down the hall, past several groups of anxiously chattering men, Fang saw blurred windows flit past, then metal doors. He faded a little at some point – then returned to the echo of a slamming metal door and a soft darkness.

Aris finally released him. He fell onto something hard, scraping his elbows but not caring because he was trying to get as much air into his lungs as possible. While he was gasping, the darkness turned into a warm orange glow and Fang started recognizing the concrete floor of their cell.

“After this, take off your clothes,” Aris’s voice snapped coldly somewhere above him.

“W… What…?” Fang panted, laughing breathlessly as he managed to crawl onto all fours and lift his head to look at the man. But Aris had his back turned – the man was at the small sink in the corner, running a white facecloth under the tap.

“Don’t touch your face,” Aris continued, ignoring his broken, bewildered chuckles. He turned off the tap, wrung out the cloth, then turned and knelt down in front of the boy with an exasperated growl. “Take it off,” he growled, setting the towel over his own shoulder and pushing Fang onto his back.

“Okay, okay,” Fang huffed, still struggling to control his panting giggles as the man reached forward and swiftly unbuttoned his uniform shirt. But when Aris started rolling his shirt off his arms, reality kicked in and Fang fell silent real fast.

The man glanced up, his green eyes glinting in the dim lamplight. What, they demanded – but his thin lips remained silent.

Once Fang’s shirt was off, Aris took the towel off his shoulder and slapped it instead onto Fang’s chest, then started rubbing fiercely.

“After this, wash your hands for two minutes. Don’t touch your face until we get to shower,” the man grunted, eyes lowered in apparently concentration as he scrubbed the towel over the boy’s bruised collarbone. “Here’s a tip if you want to survive. Don’t touch anything that other people have touched.”

“That’s a bit hard to do,” Fang huffed, lips twisting into a pained smile as he stared at Aris’s eyebrows and thought about how weird it was to have another man washing him with a towel.

“You can start by not touching the floor outside of this cell,” Aris growled irritably, flipping the towel over to its fresh side and lifting it up to Fang’s face.

Fang winced as the rough cotton touched his wounds, instinctively grabbing Aris’s wrist. The man stopped, their eyes meeting. For some reason, Fang’s ragged breath stopped in his chest. The man’s throat bobbed – it looked like he’d swallowed hard, too.

“… One week?” Fang rasped, feeling one side of his lips twitch into a grin.

A flash of something strange lit the man’s exotic green irises, then Aris lowered his head. His shoulders shook a bit – maybe a laugh, or just an exasperated sigh. Then he slapped the towel onto Fang’s chest and got up, turning his back before the boy could catch a clear glimpse of his expression.

“Hurry up, I’m supposed to guide you through your daily schedule after this,” the man said roughly, sitting down on the edge of his mattress with a heavy sigh and looking off to the side with a scowl.

“Come on, more than one week,” Fang said cajolingly, leaning back and smirking at the man.

Aris cast him a brief glance. “Two weeks,” he said icily. But despite his indifferent tone, there was the unmistakeable shadow of a smile on his pretty lips as he turned away.

Even though it stung, Fang felt his grin stretch a little further. “Three.”

At that the man turned back to him and leaned forward, grabbing the towel and slapping it over the boy’s face instead with a growl. “Don’t push your luck.”