That realization arrives and detonates quietly. The beast is looking down at him. Lethe can feel it, the angle of the gaze, the proximity. Zazyrus's exhale stirs the hair at Lethe's crown, warm and steady, and Lethe's skin prickles from his scalp to the nape of his neck and down his spine and he keeps wrapping. He keeps his eyes on the linen and the knuckles and the claws and he does not look up because if he looks up Zazyrus's face will be right there, inches away, and Lethe is not confident in what his expression will do.
The tendons of Zazyrus's hand shift beneath the wrapping. Lethe smooths the linen over his knuckles and his thumb traces the ridge of a tendon and the hand flexes, slightly, under his touch. Lethe swallows. His throat clicks.
He thinks about these hands. About the clawed fingers that wrapped around his wrist with controlled precision. About the strength in them, the devastating, restrained power that could crush bone and chose not to. He thinks about how these fingers could wrap around both of his wrists at once and hold him still and he should not be thinking about that, not now, not here, kneeling between this creature's legs with heat crawling up his neck and pooling in his stomach.
Don't think about that.
He finishes the right hand. Ties off the wrap. Reaches for the left.
Same process. Around the knuckles, between the fingers, across the back, over the wrist. His hands move on autopilot and his breathing is carefully measured and the heat between them is a living thing, expanding with every second, filling the narrow space between their bodies until Lethe can feel it on his face, his throat, his chest.
"Be careful," he says.
The words are out before he can stop them. Not clinical. Not professional. Just honest and worried and entirely useless, and the moment they leave his mouth he rolls his eyes at himself. "That's useless advice. Ignore me."
He ties off the left wrap. Tucks the end under. His hands are finished but he doesn't pull away immediately because pulling away means leaving this space, this warm, close, charged space between Zazyrus's thighs, and his body is reluctant in a way that his brain finds mortifying.
He pulls back.
Or he tries to. He leans away, shifts his weight to his heels, and Zazyrus catches the edge of his sleeve.
Not his wrist. Not his hand. The fabric of his sleeve, pinched between the tips of two claws, a grip so light that Lethe could break it with a twitch. He stills. His eyes drop to the claw pointsholding his sleeve, the dark curve of them against the white linen, and then he raises his gaze.
Zazyrus is looking at him.
The expression is different from anything Lethe has seen on his face. The flat, empty assessment is gone. The predatory focus is gone. What's there instead is something that Lethe doesn't have a word for, something intense and searching and almost, impossibly, uncertain. His dark eyes hold Lethe's and the cage is very quiet and the air between them is very warm and Lethe's heart is beating so hard he's certain Zazyrus can hear it.
He knows the fight is important. He knows Demos has been down here to see Zazyrus, has heard the guards talking about it, though he doesn't know what was said. He knows the stakes are high and the money is significant and the pressure on Zazyrus to perform is enormous. He thinks maybe Zazyrus is worried. The thought is strange, almost alien, because Zazyrus doesn't worry. Zazyrus catalogs and calculates and endures. But there's something in his expression right now, in the way he holds Lethe's sleeve with claws that could shred it, that looks terribly close to a creature who needs something and doesn't know how to ask.
Lethe covers his hand.
He doesn't think about it. He just does it. His palm settles over Zazyrus's knuckles, over the fresh wrapping, warm and firm and deliberate. He curls his fingers around the beast's hand and holds on.
"You'll be alright," Lethe says. Quiet. Sure. The voice he uses for frightened creatures, the voice that doesn't break, except this time it isn't technique. It's true. He believes it. He has to believe it because the alternative is unbearable. "You always are."
Surprise flickers across Zazyrus's face. Lethe sees it, the brief widening of his eyes, the fractional parting of his lips, the way his entire body goes still in a manner that is different from his usualstillness. This is not vigilance. This is shock. As though, in all his cataloging and calculating and reading of human behavior, he didn't predict this. Didn't predict that the boy kneeling between his legs would reach out and hold his hand and tell him he'd be alright.
His claws release Lethe's sleeve.
Lethe lets go. He sits back. He picks up his satchel and packs it and stands and his knees ache and his hands are steady and his heart is doing something unsustainable.
"I'll be here when you get back," he says from the cage door. "I'll have everything ready."
He lets himself out. Locks the cage. Walks up the corridor.
He makes it to the top of the stairs.
He presses his back to the corridor wall and his hand flies to his chest and he can feel it, the hammer of his heart beneath his palm, violent and insistent and completely, thoroughly beyond his control. His face is hot. His breath is coming too fast. He closes his eyes and presses the back of his skull against the stone and stands there, one hand over his racing heart and the other gripping the strap of his satchel, and he tries to assemble the pieces of himself back into the configuration that functions.
Don't get attached.
The command is familiar. He's been issuing it to himself for weeks, a standing order from the part of his brain that knows how the pits work and what happens to the things he cares about and how efficiently Demos weaponizes affection. Don't get attached. Don't care. Don't let yourself want something that can be found and used and broken.
You can't trust anyone but yourself.
This one is older. Carved into him by years of evidence, by every kindness that turned out to be a transaction and every offered hand that turned out to be a leash. Trust is a luxury. Trust is a crack in the wall that someone will eventually find andpry open and pour poison through. Trust no one. Rely on no one. Keep the walls up and the distance maintained and survive.
He presses his hand harder against his chest. His heartbeat is slowing. His breathing is evening out. The wall is going back up, brick by brick, the practiced reconstruction that gets him through every day in this place.
