AN: This story contains oblique description of sexual acts and attempted coercion or sexual assault. Discretion is advised - I wouldn’t say anything is crazy explicit, it’s all more implied, but still, if it give you the ick you may want to ask someone else to summarize it for you.
“Oh, sweet fuck!”
It took fewer syllables to say than that; Cole wondered if he could count them, as a measure of success.
His lover-of-the-moment – what was his name? N-something. Niall? Niall, for sure – took several moments to turn his short, rasping breaths into long, ragged ones, thighs quivering, body still twitching, as Cole extricated himself.
His hands were dirty, and he wanted to clean them, but at least had the presence of mind to keep his body close until Niall’s stopped shaking beneath him.
Careless of whatever might now be on the floor, Niall turned to lie on his back, mouth open to take in more breath. It was an okay mouth; it bent into something of a crooked smile, reminding Cole it could be charming.
Niall let out a stuttering little laugh. “Where’d you learn that?”
Cole only smiled down at him, definitely charming.
Or, at least, Niall appreciated it and the lack of answers. This was part of what made him attractive. Unlike Van, Cole was certain of Niall’s lack of complicated commitment. Niall had, after all, made as much clear when he covertly and frankly obscenely offered to fuck Cole some evening when Van wasn’t feeling up to it.
Normally, the more direct approach – not to mention forward nomenclature – didn’t appeal. Actually, it turned Cole off (most of the time – he was learning he had exceptions to every rule, it seemed). Yet, there was something…
Niall wasn’t particularly attractive, except he was nice looking once you got his clothes off. Then again, most of the cadets had hardened up in a way Cole appreciated from their weeks of exercise and solid diet. Never one for the waifish, Cole was delighted to be able to explore what exactly some muscle allowed one to do in bed.
Not that they were in bed – certainly not. One: his roommates wouldn’t appreciate it; two: Van would almost certainly find out and be upset about it which would only accelerate Cole’s diminishing attraction (he was trying to let Van down easy – hoping he might find his own alternative partners if Cole wasn’t as available). Three: well –
It had started as a kind of reconnaissance. A matter of practicality. Cole wanted to know the field of battle, the way any good strategist (or tactician – he considered himself a strategist) would. What had begun as an exploratory mission after routes of retreat and places to hide from marauding Second Years had turned into an obsession.
Cole explored the grounds of the Academy more thoroughly than the body of any lover. He often found as much or more enjoyment in it, too. And it had doubled its profit, in that he now knew of innumerable out of the way places to take any lover-of-the-moment who might be willing to go, at the moment the mood struck them.
They seemed to find it exhilarating – most of them, anyway. Right now Cole was working through a few who weren’t bothered by Van’s overt signs of desiring a deeper relationship; others had indicated interest, but were unwilling to gain a potential enemy in Van. These were, logically, less titillated by the feeling of trespass generated by Cole’s introduction to the many hidden nooks and crannies of the Academy buildings (Some of them got more titillated if they allowed themselves to be persuaded to visit those out of the way places – just to look, of course – minds changed by just how surely anything they got up to wouldn’t be seen – how weak-willed some of his classmates were!).
He hadn’t technically broken any rules, yet. Technically, he hadn’t gone anywhere forbidden directly. Visited nothing they had been explicitly told was off-limits, at least, in so many words.
It was a matter of time.
“Sweet Peace,” Niall said, stretching, his hands touching the stone wall above his head. “I guess if I were Van I would be a bit jealous, too – that is if I didn’t know how freely you shared.”
“The things you don’t know,” Cole said, keeping his expression pleasant as he sat back on his knees, rubbing his hands in the dirt of the floor to scour them clean, “would keep us here all day.”
Niall hesitated before he laughed, unsure if this was a playful insult, as he would undoubtedly had tried to argue his statement was, if Cole had appeared upset. As Cole was not upset – why be upset about being called an easy lay from an easy lay – he was forced to try to accept it as such. That is, if he ever wanted Cole to make him make such noises as the ones he had just shouted into the ground again, he would accept it.
Niall was fun, not particularly smart, and not particularly complicated. His seduction was crude, but his body was nice, and when he inevitably got angry on the future date when Cole declined to keep seeing him, Cole could hand him his ass without breaking a sweat.
He also wasn’t particularly threatening, rank-wise, although they had yet to be officially ranked, meaning any disturbance Cole caused in that section of the class wouldn’t reach him. Cole was getting a sense for the rankings, though a whole half of the class was cut off from his experience. His explorations also gave him opportunities to observe that missing half at work, easily explained away should anyone spot him.
For this was now his plan – his persona:
Cole was easy-going. If Maoilin was stringent, and asshole, a constant measurer-of-success-and-failure, then Cole would be nice, relaxed, talented-but-slightly-lazy. Since recognizing the power of Maoilin’s self-styling as a supremely judgemental dick, beyond whatever personality defects it might rely on, Cole had taken seriously the task of considering what his presentation would be – what would benefit him most.
And what would benefit him most was already benefitting him. That was that he could rely on Maoilin and the circle of hungry, arrogant, striving assholes he surrounded himself with to do most of the work establishing and maintaining rank – social, as well as actual, as in class rankings. Cole, in fact, had to do very little, except every once in a while back Maoilin’s play and beat down a personal challenger.
He could reduce the number of personal challenges by being affable, something he was inclined to be anyway, to some degree (he at least wasn’t an asshole directly, most of the time – he certainly wasn’t willing to work at being an asshole the way Maoilin was). People were less likely to want to take him down on their way to Maoilin, not matter how much they wanted to take down Maoilin. It would be personal – between Maoilin and them – and Cole wouldn’t be that important of a stepping stone.
He could even be an ally; after all, Cole was willing to work with cadets, let them test their skills, see how they measured up casually. This worked for Maoilin, too, in that Cole could convince challengers not absolutely fuelled by hatred that challenging Maoilin wasn’t worth it, or that they would be beaten. If Cole could beat them in practice, or in a casual bout, then Maoilin certainly could in a serious fight, and that serious fight would have serious consequences.
It balanced. Cole didn’t have to put himself out too much. As long as he was willing to tolerate Maoilin – and there were many practical benefits to doing so – it could last. They could dominate the class, or at least, definitely dominate the half Cole had seen up close. The other half, though unknown, was presenting no serious challengers, but that was something Cogadh would be good for. If they were lucky, any serious challengers could be folded into their established hierarchy, instead of challenging them for dominance.
The only trouble was that Cole had to put a great deal of effort into being careless. The few Prep cadets that had known him complicated this, but on the one hand, very few of them knew him at Prep – very few cadets knew him very well at Prep at all – and on the other, he could overcome this difficulty by keeping them close. Particularly Maoilin, the only one who had thus far implied dangerous knowledge of Cole’s past (and a willingness to use it against him).
And again, if he was relaxed, pleasant to be around, they would be less likely to want to bring up old embarrassments. People changed, particularly between fourteen and seventeen, and his behaviour at Prep was simply old news. Logically, with maturity would come calm, less emotional behaviour, fewer outbursts of strong feeling, less recklessness.
Cole could be easy-going. He liked being pleasant. There wasn’t really any reason to be so easily upset, so obviously striving, so deeply affected in what was, at least in these first years, an arena of puppies squirming and biting for the softest bit of blanket or biggest bit of food. As long as he was assured his position – and he would make that assured – and that position was at the top – and he would make it the top – he didn’t also have to sweat to show his worth. That was part of his problem at Prep; he showed his sweat. He was too high-strung, too obviously able to be influenced – he too obviously cared.
So he had mellowed. Like some cheeses.
Which was another benefit of his exploration, though he had yet to quite find the way to them. He was pretty sure there was more than one way down to the storerooms, and many storerooms to get into. Right now, a great deal of the contraband food-and-drink market was dominated by cadets who had either managed to sneak in rare treats with their luggage, or could have it sent to them, meaning the same old rich cadets held sway.
Soon, however, the stashes would empty, and the rich cadets – already facing limited supplies as the Academy Relay officers cracked down on any incoming packages they deemed too luxurious or too overstuffed for what were supposed to be the humble lives of aspiring officers – would fail to capitalize on logistical restraints.
Cole knew the cycles of city produce, and when a little missing mead would be hidden by the influx of seasonal shipments. And unlike the rich cadets, he understood the greater goods bought with the currency of generosity, as opposed to coin (coin would do them no good anyway until they were let out regularly into the city, which wasn’t going to happen for some time).
When they did their chores they were only allowed down to the storerooms rarely and with supervision, when it was absolutely necessary. Cole felt on the threshold of discovering the wealth of the kitchens, if only he could find the right passageways, and convince himself the steep risk of trespass into actually forbidden territory was worth it (it was – there was no real question – but he wasn’t going to be stupid about it).
“Is this part of the plan to conquer the Cogadh?” Niall asked, reaching for his pile of clothing. “Should I be sharing tactical secrets as pillow talk?”
Cole laughed and thank fuck Niall interpreted it as laughing at the idea in general rather than laughing at the idea that Niall’s team warranted covert observation. Niall was one of the better cadets on his team, and Niall’s best idea thus far had been to walk up to Cole and imply he had obtained an improbable degree of sexual prowess, offering as proof his status as King Fuck of the Tumbledown Nowhere village he came from, and the suggestion that jerking each other off by the Library was going to be an experience for the ages.
“Perhaps I should have brought some pillows, at least – I’m afraid there’s no comfort here on this occasion to prompt the sharing of secrets, though if you would like to, I won’t stop you…”
Niall seemed to think this very clever, or at least, somewhat charming – probably looking forward to the next time implied in Cole’s words, whether there were pillows or not.
Simple. Delightful in simplicity. And pliable. Virtue’s Tits, Niall would be lucky to still be at the Academy by the end of the year.
Was that thought a little depressing? As they both retrieved their clothes, got dressed, swatted dirt from each others’ knees, backs, elbows – exchanged absolutely meaningless bits of gossip, which seemed to be something else Niall assumed he had of disproportionate value to contribute to their interactions – Cole wondered if it bothered him.
It did – or something did – but maybe not enough. He wasn’t sure, and to examine whatever his discomfort or dissatisfaction was would be to invite it to grow; to give it credence would be to give it strength. This was his strategy, after all: he didn’t care.
He ignored it. It was just as likely annoyance as anything else.
“All right, I’ve no idea how to get out of here.” Niall said, pleasantly, then with a leering grin, “Must have fucked it right out of my thoughts.”
Fuck’s sake. It was probably annoyance.
“Allow me,” Cole said, just as pleasantly.
Despite the griminess of the little hideaway they had used suggesting they were underground, they weren’t quite. Underground was almost no good, as things got extremely dark, extremely quickly, between the grey stone and the twisting corridors. Instead they had tucked themselves under a disused wooden stairwell for some semi-completed basement perhaps intended to serve as secondary storage for the classrooms above.
Like many of the newer classroom buildings, the walls had plentiful window placements, a half-bricked one nearly a floor up providing just enough light to ensure both privacy and enough visibility – enough for what they were up to, anyway. And because it wasn’t actually convenient to the floors above, sunken about half a floor into the ground and turned around an awkward spiral, and the classrooms half a level up all had much more easily accessed storage (or very little need for it), this quiet corner leading nowhere went all but untrodden.
No classes were currently being held (most of the Third Years were off on bivouac) in these rooms, and the doorway to this half-stairwell was not only thick but also behind a heavy tapestry, so they could make as much noise as they liked. It did mean, however, that if they left through the proper channels they would be traversing another class’s territory, so a quick dart through the proper hallways took them to another (essentially) servant’s path, buried behind the wood panelling of a wall. This took them dangerously close to one or another of the Council’s meeting rooms, but as there was nothing in session, odds of running into servants or (unfathomably worse) Councilmembers were low enough to risk the utter catastrophe.
Niall probably didn’t know any of this; if he was being serious in his earlier statement, he probably didn’t even know they were in the Third Years’ area. And he was too dumb to not be serious.
They could traverse these back passages (there was an alternate path that really would go underground that Cole was fairly certain could take them some of the same places, but he had yet to observe or test it) back to the main hallways used by the Second and First Years. Taking the open path through those hallways put them a little bit more on display than Cole really wanted (he didn’t want to insult Van, after all) so they wended their way up another of the innumerable small spiral staircases to the floor above. This floor should be fairly quiet, as it was lunch time, and these were all classrooms.
Despite the potential for conflict, with all the cadets converging to eat between classes, lunch generally could be counted on to be, if not safe, rather tame. As one of the few considerable breaks during the day, cadets crammed as much as they could into lunches, be that eating, resting, completing minor chores, or frantically studying to be ready for their next classes. Or, in Cole and Niall’s case, relaxing.
So they walked down the hall of classrooms at ease. Cole hardly attended to what they were talking about – Niall truly enjoyed making lewd allusions, and knew he would have to stop once they emerged in ‘public’ again so he was doing his best to unleash them all at once – instead figuring where the nearest water pump was.
There wasn’t time for a full shower before his next class – well, maybe there was, but he really just wanted to scrub his hands and rinse his face and neck. Niall wasn’t overly affectionate, so he didn’t feel slobbered on, exactly, but having someone hold on to your neck like that was a little uncomfortable. The building did have way stations for washing, somebody had experimented with plumbing and a few of the pipes still worked as intended, but his best bet was the fountain basin outside nearer the Long Hall that had a proper sand bucket for scrubbing.
They turned a corner, where halfway down the hall a set of Second Year cadets walked the other way. Cole and Niall noticed – well, Cole noticed – but there was little reason to be concerned. Neither set should really be up here, whether the Third Years were around or not, but it was a way above the crowds below, so could be understood. They weren’t even the only ones passing through, as individuals jogged by or little groups moved through at their own pace to make use of the clear corridor.
Niall leaned over, as they passed each other (with as much distance as the First Years could manage) to mutter some filthy jest about something they could try next time he seemed to think was very exotic, but which had a regular and rather low ticket cost on the Street of Dreams.
Trying to be relaxed, smiling along to Niall’s allusion, Cole saw the bigger Second Year’s head turn to listen. Just as his breath let clear some of its tension, several steps passed away–
“Grubs,” came the call from behind them.
No real question who was meant – and no real point in running. Running meant you deserved to be beaten down, whereas obedience might mean you just got a little humiliated and sent on your way. Cole turned and stopped, Niall a step after him.
The Second Year who spoke was broad-shouldered, wide-set in his stance as if his natural width might not be sure enough without emphasis. Brown-haired and blue-eyed, he had a square jaw, a black eye healed enough to leave only a light yellow-brown smudging under it. His companion, shorter and black-haired had cultivated one of those resting expressions that spoke of disapproval, though he was round-faced enough it could have been quiet friendly.
This was not friendly – but also not yet quite hostile. The taller Second Year looked the two First Years, his tongue finding its way thoughtfully to his lip as he surveyed. He quickly discarded Niall in favor of Cole.
“What have you been up to around here?” he asked.
All cleverness choked out of Niall, Cole replied smoothly, “Passing through.”
“You don’t look like you’re passing through,” the Second Year observed, though this was – at least for Cole – patently false.
“And yet,” Cole said, catching his own flippant tone before it teetered this encounter right over the edge into violence, “that’s all we’re doing – just passing through.”
“Huh,” said the Second Year, glancing back at his friend, who crowded forward in response, but did nothing else but stare. The bigger cadet took another step in and theatrically sniffed at Cole, who thanks to Niall’s cowering, was now pointedly in front.
“Awfully worked up for just passing through,” the Second Year said, “don’t you think, Pan?”
His companion, with a minute raise of his shoulders, indicated ambivalence and also the realization that his opinion didn’t actually matter. The other Second Year hadn’t even taken his eyes off Cole to look back.
“It’s a long way,” Cole replied, as neutral as he could make it.
Other individuals or small groups still passed occasionally in the hall, but most ignored this entirely typical scene – other First Years scuttling along so as not to get caught up in it, cadets in higher years barely registering it. Cole, used to such little confrontations himself, felt his back prickle, his skin brushed with cold but his blood heating, on its way to hot. Something was not typical, something was not like the little confrontations before – but if Niall felt it, too, Cole couldn’t tell. Niall had shrunk even from Cole’s peripheral vision.
Useless coward.
“Is it now?” the Second Year said, raising his head in mock thought before fixing his gaze on Cole again. “Or could it be you were up to something else. Sometime a little more... stressful.”
Cole said nothing.
“See, I heard,” the Second Year said, starting off with the same boisterous, remonstrative tone all such encounters seemed to have, but quieting to a murmur as he stepped forward again, a bare foot in front of Cole.
“...that one of the First Years...”
He leaned forward, face to face, quieter than ever, “is very friendly.”
“We’re a friendly bunch, on the whole” Cole said, again treading the line between flippant enough to earn a blow and steadily inoffensive, meekly agreeable – well, at least agreeable. He held his ground, arms hanging at his sides, careful not to even suggest self-defense. He couldn’t break eye contact with the Second Year to look at Niall, but in his periphery, he could catch the way his feet held their position lightly, body pivoted slightly back, ready to run.
The way the Second Year kept approaching, pivoting, was separating them, putting Cole’s back to the wall, closing off the rest of the hall to him. Cole’s refusal to give ground meant he wasn’t being backed into the wall, but it didn’t mean he wasn’t being cornered.
The Second Year withdrew just enough to look Cole up and down again. “Surely not all of you. Or, not all of you are equally talented at being very friendly. Very popular.”
The cadence of bullying remained, but had lost its loudness; he insinuated, suggested, demanded. He looked again into Cole’s eyes. Cole held the gaze.
“I should say we get along well, as far as friendliness,” Cole said, casually, “but popularity isn’t mine to judge.”
“It isn’t that hard a contest, little grub,” the Second Year said, then turned to his companion, “wouldn’t you say, Pan? There’s certain personalities everyone here can appreciate. Should appreciate.”
“Is there?” Cole said, mostly to keep at least some external part of him moving, but it didn’t matter.
The Second Year turned back to Cole. “Should get to appreciate – you know, as long as it’s on offer, broadly. Not that there’s not benefits to both sides. Could be quite beneficial, especially to a new cadet, to share some skills. There’s things to be learned about this place that aren’t in books, that only experience can teach – a useful exchange can benefit both sides.”
As the Second Year had turned his gaze back to Cole, his companion, Pan’s, face broke from its neutral unhappiness in a disgusted disapproval. Cole couldn’t do much more than register it, as he had to meet the taller Second Year’s gaze, but it and the careful lowness of the Second Year’s tone told him all he needed to know about what was happening.
“Niall,” Cole said lightly, but clearly, “you should go.”
He heard Niall’s feet shift – he was ready to run – but kept his gaze steady on the Second Year, holding it to him as much as he meant to hold Cole.
“Uh,” Niall said, desperate to get to go, but at least proud enough to try not to seem desperate to go.
“Remember what you said earlier, Niall? About sharing too freely?” Cole said. “I think I stand accused.”
“Oh, no – not accused, grub – that’s no bad thing – it’s more like... not freely enough,” The Second Year said, glancing back at his companion with a mocking little laugh before looking Cole up and down again. His tone eased, dropping lower.
“You seem smart – and your friend there, you’re right, he can go. But you – you’re smart enough to profit from such a proposition. You know, you can get a lot a farther on your knees than you might think, if you know who to kneel for.”
The Second Years preyed on weakness, on ignorance, and it was perhaps this Second Years’ misfortune – no matter how much Cole would be made to suffer it – that he happened to try this on Cole, neither weak nor ignorant.
Cole grinned, the ferocity of it driving the Second Year back a little.
“Certainly not you, who must be a mediocre bully indeed to be in search of a cross-class catamite. Niall, run.”
He had to say this last quickly, not just for Niall to get the imperative of it, but to be ready for the Second Year to try to punch him directly in the face. Niall turned and ran; Cole barely got his forearms up to take the blow, which landed with enough force to bounce his own hands off his face.
The Second Year grabbed the back of his collar around his still-raised right arm, but Cole ducked to get a blow from his left into the Second Year’s stomach. It wasn’t very effective, but it mattered – if this would turn into a beating, it would at least start as a fight. The Second Year had a great deal of superior force to muster, and all but picked Cole up by his collar to fling him into Pan’s arms.
Pan’s disapproval didn’t extend to taking shit from a First Year cadet, but Pan wasn’t the problem, either. Though he seized Cole’s arms, trying to force them behind his back, Cole kept the fight focused on the other Second Year, dropping his weight so suddenly into Pan’s grip he almost dropped them both to the floor, so he could get a foot up to shove the other Second Year away.
“Fuck, Tom,” Pan said, exasperated, hauling Cole up and reaffirming his grip. Cole twisted in his grip like a salmon fighting the current, spinning them both nearly half-way around. “Not really worth it, this one.”
He managed to get them both facing Tom again, and Cole dropped his weight a second time, eliciting another curse but not unseating the grip. Tom, red-faced in fury, seized the front of Cole’s jacket and slugged him directly in the face.
“We can’t accept such disrespect,” he said, his second punch catching Cole in the gut. Pan’s grip, fighting both Cole’s wild resistance and the force of the blows Tom was landing, shot acid through Cole’s shoulders with every twist, but he refused to stop pulling. Tom got a punch in that, thanks to Cole’s wild struggling, landed not in the soft of his stomach but on his ribcage.
Cole’s next fiery breath fuelled a half jump that pushed Pan off-balance. He landed and slipped a foot behind Pan’s unsteady legs, throwing his whole body into a twist to yank Pan’s leg forward that sent them both to the ground, Pan on his back, and Cole on top of him.
“Fate’s fuckery,” Pan wheezed, losing his grip. Cole stumbled away to the center of the hallway, but before he could pull himself upright, Tom was on him again. The Second Year seized Cole’s collar again, to yank him upright.
The smart thing – the Academy training thing – to do would have been to put Cole into some kind of hold, set up a grapple; Second Years had such a combat training advantage over First Years, it could be easily done and Cole would likely have no counter.
That was not what Tom wanted, however, as had become clear from his punches. However violent the bullying of the First Years got, it was still meant to be unserious; they knew to pull their punches.
Tom was not pulling his punches. Cole’s ribs screamed at him; his nose already bled. Tom hauled him upright not to put him in a restraining hold but to better land his next blows on Cole’s face; the world blurred, his brain jarred against his skull.
Tom had been embarrassed; had embarrassed himself. Cole – Cole should have had some strategy. Some thought. It had started that way – a few quick thoughts. He had known he would lose – that it would be bad – but instead of struggling, of strategizing, of stripping his thoughts down to sheer defense, he was furious.
Fury filled every pocket of his body, a bald, righteous heat that burned away at least half the pain of the beating, and had him throwing himself into Tom’s grip, like he could gore out his middle like a bull. Utterly foolish. He was getting his ass kicked. It hurt quite badly, and he was frothing at the mouth like his insides weren’t being rearranged like olives in bread dough during kneading.
And then it stopped. And he almost fell, but somebody got his arm, and slowly cradled him upright again. Cole could see, despite the tears and now blood running into his stinging eyes, but it took him a moment to actually recognize what he saw.
Well, the first thing he saw was Tom, which was all he could see, and he let out pathetic little roar and tried to fling himself wholly at him only to have the firm grip on his shoulder spin him half around and his own ludicrous injuries collapse him into that cradling grip again.
“Blood ‘n Honor, boy, get off it,” rumbled up from the chest behind him directly into his neckbones, which rested against it. “You’re done now.”
By then, other cadets – several of them, big ones, what was happening? – had not just stopped Tom, but put him into some kind of strange half-standing submission hold – that was quite painful by the look of it. Then somebody entirely filled his vision, grimacing as they brought both hands up to poke at Cole’s face.
“You fucking Second Years take it too far,” somebody else – not the one in his face, who was enormous and out of focus – was saying.
Cole didn’t recognize any of these cadets, but they were unmistakeable in their stance, their bearing, the way they ragdolled Tom from one to the next, and controlled Pan with a single hand clamped around the back of his neck.
Fourth Years.
About four of them (So many! So large!).
Cole had never met any Fourth Year cadets; they were so often out at the specialized trainings they received, or occupied with their own, much weightier business than that of the cadets in lower years, one hardly saw them. This was his first chance to meet any, and it was strangely exhilarating, like seeing a herd of wild horses always at a distance suddenly up close, or perhaps he was just very addled from the bleeding and the blows to the head.
“It’s not that,” one of them boomed, a cadet best described as barrel-shaped in both body and limb. “It’s worse.”
He turned on Tom. “I heard what you said, you little rat fuck. You should be bounced, this instant. You should go straight to the Quartermaster and have your back stripped for Guide bindings. You should get served up on the Long Hall table like Faerfallen at Byng’s Road. We ought to crush you like a bug right here on this stone and smile at the beatings it gets us, you piece of shit.”
The other Fourth Years looked at one another – there would be discussion, and soon – but business first. The big one turned and helped Cole out of the grip of the one who had been holding him up. He raised Cole’s face in both hands to look at the wounds, patted his shoulders, touched his side, where he had been punched in the ribs, and watched him wince, concern drawing his brows up.
“You gotta go to the Medics,” he put a large, comforting hand on Cole’s neck and pushed him gently towards another of the Fourth Years. “You take him, Tig. We gotta handle this.”
Cole, thoughts still slightly fuzzy, stumbled towards Tig, who gently laid a hand on his shoulder to help him stay upright. There was no hesitation; he started to lead Cole away immediately, the other three Fourth Year cadets turning their combined attention to an ashen-faced Pan, and nearly cowering Tom.
Cole’s thoughts were confused, but even had they not been, he had no idea what ‘handling this’ meant to the Fourth Years. It couldn’t be good – at which though a ferocious and strangling wave of furious pleasure rose in Cole. He nearly stumbled, but the cadet holding him kept him upright and walking slowly.
Academy adjudication was bad enough; punishments laid outside that, that these Fourth Years seemed to think was their duty, their responsibility – might be awful. Then again, trying to coerce sexual favours from a cadet in a lower year was awful. Very awful. Expulsion-awful. Career-ruining awful. It was a very sensitive subject to the Military, in particular, to try to take advantage of the ignorant, young, the beholden.
Beloved.
A wave a sickness replaced the fury and Cole’s steps wobbled again. He wasn’t walking very fast – the cadet guiding him seemed reluctant to let him totally stop. Maybe Cole had missed a few steps of the fight, but there did seem to be a lot of blood, so his memory might be forgiven its lapses, and the cadet his concern. But Cole had held his ground. His loss was a victory, cooling both fury and nausea, leaving him mostly tired, but still too jittery to fully be in pain.
Tig, guiding him, let him stop a moment, with a few comforting pats on his shoulder.
“We’ll fix him,” Tig muttered, looking back towards the others. “Don’t worry.”
At the very least, official adjudication would mean expulsion, immediately, unquestionably.
But expulsion was, to some cadets, in some cases, the easy way out.
Taking the chance of stillness – and it still made him wobble – Cole cast a glance over his shoulder, too, trusting Tig to keep him upright. He watched the big Fourth Year cadet who had laid large, callused hands so softly on him, until he caught his eye.
He was busy, preoccupied, furious with the Second Years before him, but had time for softness in his look back at Cole.
Coercion was bad. Choice was another thing entirely.