Page 27 of Cassian is Getting Out

The smell hit Cassian a full second before his brain had time to prepare his face for it. He picked up a pistachio macaron instead and bit into it while Ivar pulled the sardine dish closer to his own plate.

Fallon had trotted over to investigate, her nose twitching at the edge of the table. Ivar held a sardine out to her at floor level. Fallon took one sniff, then reversed so fast her claws skittered on the terracotta as she fled back to Felix’s lap.

“More for me, then.” Ivar lowered an entire sardine head first into his mouth.

Felix clutched Fallon to his chest like a mother shielding her infant, watching Ivar gnaw on a sardine head.

Cassian had news. Excellent news, actually, worthy of an announcement and possibly a standing ovation, but the Lumineer had always taught that a Vessel should offer others the same treatment they wished to receive. You balanced the scales of the Universe by listening before you spoke, by making space before you filled it. Cassian had been the best listener in the compound, which the senior women had praised as evidence of his extraordinary Receptivity.

He straightened in his chair. “What’s new with both of you?”

Felix’s fingers worked behind Fallon’s ears. The Pomeranian’s eyes slipped shut, her body melting into the crook of his arm.

“I started going down the left side of our street instead of the right this week,” Felix said. “And I went a whole street further during my walk than I usually do for three days in a row.”

Cassian clapped loudly enough that Fallon’s eyes snapped open, but he didn’t care. This was enormous! They were meeting here, in Felix’s house, since Felix couldn’t come to them. He hadn’t left his house without his brother or his father for five years.

“Yay, Felix. Yay!” Cassian pressed a passionfruit tart onto Felix as a reward.

Felix narrowed his eyes, taking in Cassian’s beaming face. He bit into the tart without breaking eye contact.

Cassian swung towards Ivar, who had moved on to his third sardine and showed no signs of slowing down.

“I have a job now,” Ivar said, laying another sardine spine-to-spine on his rye bread. “At Everett Global. My alpha’s family business. I participated in a capitalistic ritual called ‘ideation’, where I took pictures of the sticky notes on their whiteboard. It was very, very boring. So I took my alpha to his office, and we had sex on his desk.”

Cassian let out a reverent ‘wow’.

Ivar was so worldly. He had a job and a desk and an alpha whose office he could just walk into and have sex in, like a person in a television show about people who worked in glass buildings and wore blazers.

Cassian tried to give him a passionfruit tart. Ruari had instilled in him the belief that achievements deserved pastry rewards, but Ivar murmured a ‘no thanks’ and lowered another sardine into his mouth.

“And you, Cassian?” Ivar asked. He’d stopped eating, and his pale eyes were on Cassian.

“I have an alpha,” Cassian said.

The words came out at a volume that startled Fallon off Felix’s lap for the second time.

“He’s a baker. He used to be a professional footballer — Aston Villa, which is a very big deal apparently, although I don’t know much about football yet. Nobody in the compound watched it. He made those.” Cassian pointed at the pastry box. “Aren’t they good? I’m going to tell him they were a huge hit, since I can tell you think they’re good.”

Felix bit aggressively into his kouign-amann, which Cassian took as agreement.

“Look.” Cassian took his mobile out and began thumbing through to the photo album he’d titled with a row of heart emojis. “This is us at the markets.”

He turned the screen towards them. The photo showed Cassian at full wattage while Ruari loomed behind him, one arm slung around Cassian’s shoulders, his grin lopsided beneath three days of stubble.

“He’s very good at taking selfies,” Cassian said, flicking to the next photo. “He’s so tall, his arms can get both of us in without doing the weird chin thing. You know the weird chin thing? Where your face goes all round and strange because the camera’s too close? Ruari’s arms are so…so…”

His thumb hovered over the screen, where the next photo was a candid he’d taken of Ruari leaning over the counter at Proving Ground, forearms dusted with flour, sleeves rolled to the elbow. The muscles in them stood out where he was shaping a piece of dough, and his hands were enormous around it.

Cassian licked his lips. “They’re so…”

Ruari’s arms were rock hard. They could break things easily. But when those arms came around him and Ruari’s hand was on the back of his neck, he felt like he was the safest, most cherished omega in London.

“His arms are so what?” Felix asked.

“Strong,” Cassian said faintly. “All bumpy with muscles. It feels nice when he holds me.”

Felix snatched the mobile out of his grip and began flicking through the photos. “He looks like a footballer,” he said.