The revelry spilled through every deck of the Phoenix. You couldn’t escape it. Someone had found and rigged an old pair of speakers to the intercom system in the cargo module, and the music—a wild fusion of Eylerian war drums and Bower Latin jazz—pulsed through the metal bones of the vessel. Myrmidons and pirates alike had abandoned their usual territorial posturing in favour of toasts and raucous laughter.
At the centre of it all, they glowed.
Halyr couldn’t look away, even though every second was exquisite torture. Achilles had his arm around Eveline while she leaned back against Captain Delgado. The three of them swaying to the music like they’d been doing this dance their whole lives. Delgado bent his head towards Eveline’s ear and said something that made her laugh—bright and genuine—and Achilles looked at them both with such naked adoration that Halyr had to consciously loosen his grip on his glass to keep from shattering it.
He’d seen Achilles in battle, covered in blood. He’d seen him in the quiet hours of Recess bathed in nothing but glory. He’d seen him in victory and defeat, in rage and in serenity.
He’d never seen him like this. Incandescent with joy.
The approach of footsteps sounded beside him as someone invaded his solitude. Halyr didn’t bother looking, keeping his gaze fixed on the trio instead. “What do you want?” He’d been aiming for icy, but the words just came out sounding tired.
“You looked like you could use some company.”
Halyr made a small, bitter sound of dismissal. He didn’t need anyone’s company, least of all Archer-fucking-Lee’s. The man was everything he despised. Undisciplined. Irreverent. A walking disaster who somehow kept failing upward through sheer luck, charisma, and an unfair amount of resources. The man acted like he could buy his way out of the afterlife. There was a legend currently circling the outer parts of the Third Ring that he already had.
Archer leaned against the wall beside him, close enough that Halyr could smell the faint trace of sandalwood and clean sweat that always seemed to cling to him, like he’d just come from the training mats. They stood in silence, watching as Achilles spun Eveline in a dramatic dip while Delgado laughed.
“In all the years I’ve spent warming his bed…” The words tumbled out before Halyr could stop them. “He’s never looked at me like that. Not once.” He took another drink, welcoming the stringent burn. “And I was fine with that. I was. Just so long as he wasn’t looking at anyone else that way. I suppose it made it easier to tell myself that he just wasn’t the romantic type.” His laugh was hollow. “It was a pretty lie while it lasted.”
Archer made a neutral sound beside him, carefully nonjudgmental. Somehow that made it worse.
“You wipe that look of pity off your face.” Halyr finally turned to glare only to find Archer watching him with his steady, perceptive eyes. Not a trace of condolence to be found.
“What pity?” Archer’s mouth quirked then, in that infuriating half-smile he wore like armour. “I wouldn’t dream of wasting your time with something so useless.”
“Then why did you come over here?”
“Because you are way too fucking beautiful to be a wallflower.” He extended his hand with a flourish that was pure Archer: theatrical and sincere in equal measure. “I was gonna ask you if you wanted to dance.”
Halyr stared at the offered hand like it might be poisonous. “I’m not really in the mood,” he said, injecting as much venom as he could muster into the words. A thought struck him and his eyes narrowed. “Where’s Joss? Shouldn’t you be attached to him at the hip, now that you’re all reconciled?”
Archer snorted. “You know him. He’s probably holed up in his quarters hiding from all the noise and people.” His expression softened. “That, or he got cornered by some bureaucratic bullshit with the faction leaders. But my money’s on hiding.”
The fondness in Archer when he spoke about his antisocial partner made something twist inside Halyr. Even Archer had someone who looked at him like he hung the stars.
“You sure you don’t want to dance?”
“Very.”
“Okay.” Archer shrugged in acceptance, but he didn’t move away. He just stood there, like he was waiting for something. The music shifted to something slower, sultrier. Across the room, Delgado, an accomplished dancer, had traded places with Eveline and was guiding Achilles through a complicated and intimate series of steps.
Halyr’s chest ached.
“You wanna spar?” Archer’s voice cut through the pain, casual as anything.
Halyr’s head snapped toward him, fast enough to cause whiplash. Archer was grinning now. It wasn’t his usual cocky smirk, but something almost conspiratorial, like he understood exactly what Halyr needed: not comfort, not pity, but the clean simplicity of combat.
“Makers, yes.”
Archer’s grin widened. “Good. Because I’ve been dying to knock that pretty face of yours around since you called me an ‘undisciplined waste of potential’ at last Prime’s planning session.”
“You are an undisciplined waste of potential,” Halyr shot back, already feeling the tension in his shoulders shifting from heartbreak to anticipation.
“And you’re a prick with a chip on your shoulder and a stick so far up your ass, you can probably taste the fucking wood.” Archer started walking backward toward the training deck, somehow managing to not collide with any of the celebrating crew. “But you do at least know how to throw a solid reverse punch.”
Halyr followed, leaving his drink abandoned on a crate. As they made their way through the crowd, he caught one last glimpse of Achilles—his commander, his everything—pressing a kiss to Eveline’s temple while Delgado’s hand rested possessively on his hip.
It still hurt.
It would probably always hurt.
But right now, he had Archer Lee’s insufferable face to punch, and sometimes that was enough.
“No weapons,” Archer called over his shoulder as they entered the training deck. “Just hands. Unless you’re scared you can’t take me without your fancy sword?”
“Please.” Halyr was already stripping off his chiton, rolling his shoulders to loosen up the joints. He didn’t need Swan Song to best this son of a bitch. “I could take you with both hands tied behind my back.”
“Kinky.” Archer’s laugh echoed off the walls as he kicked off his boots. “But I’ll have to pass—I’m a married man, after all.”
The training deck was empty, the noise from the party muffled to a distant pulse through the bulkheads. They both stepped onto the mats barefoot, Archer already bouncing on the balls of his cybernetic feet like he couldn’t contain the energy coiled in his muscles.
Halyr circled him slowly, assessing. Archer was an asshole, but he moved like mercury. In hand-to-hand combat he was the more skilled fighter, and underestimating him was a mistake that Halyr wasn’t going to make twice. He had the edge of technical perfection, but Archer’s was a barely controlled aggression, only ever temporarily leashed. They’d sparred before, of course, but never like this. Never when Halyr wanted to hit something so badly, his teeth ached.
“You gonna dance around all night, or are we doing this?” Archer taunted, dropping into a loose stance that looked deceptively casual.
Halyr’s answer was a lightning-fast combination—jab, cross, hook—that would have dropped most fighters. Archer slipped the first two and caught the hook on his forearm. He used Halyr’s momentum to spin him around and his counter-strike would have connected with Halyr’s temple if he didn’t block at the last second.
“Better.” Archer grinned, and Halyr wanted to rip the smirk off his face and force feed it to him.
He snarled in response, and they exploded into motion.
Without his Nyacil blade, Halyr was all military precision—textbook strikes and calculated aggression paired with the speed he was famous for. Archer fought like chaos incarnate. He’d flow from Capoeira, to Karate to some bastardized street style that shouldn’t work but somehow did. Every time Halyr thought he had him figured, Archer would shift styles, keeping him constantly off-balance.
A brutal knee to the ribs sent him stumbling. He recovered in time to catch Archer’s follow-up kick and got in close enough to sweep the other man’s standing leg. They both went down hard, grappling on the mats in a tangle of limbs.
“That all you got?” Halyr gasped, even as Archer managed to take his back.
Shit.
Haylr’s hands flew to Archer’s grip before the man could settle into a choke hold. He pulled down with all his might, vying for inches of space, but it was like trying to bend metal bars.
“That was poor timing on your part,” Archer’s voice sounded victorious next to his ear.
Shitshitshit.
He wrenched one arm away from his neck, only to have it replaced with the other. Finally, as his world started to narrow to sensations of constriction and the rushing sound of blood in his ears, something primal ignited in Halyr and he arched back, pushing all of his weight onto the man behind him. The unexpected move was enough—just enough—to give him the space he needed. He found his opening, slipped Archer’s confining arms and twisted into his guard.
“Fuck this,” Archer grunted. With a vicious movement, he kicked Halyr off of him and rolled to his feet.
They were both upright and circling each other again in seconds.
Sweat dripped into Halyr’s eyes. His lungs burned and his ribs screamed where Archer’s knee had connected, but he felt more alive than ever. The heartache was still there, but it was buried under adrenaline. Eclipsed by the simple violence of two skilled fighters giving their all.
Archer feinted left, then came in low with a takedown that Halyr barely sprawled out of. Halyr’s elbow caught Archer in the shoulder, shoving him away. Praying for distance to reset. Recalculate. But instead of falling, Archer turned the momentum into a cartwheel, his foot catching Halyr across the jaw before he landed neatly on the mats.
“Flashy bastard,” Halyr spat blood, grinning despite himself.
“And you love it,” Archer shot back, then had to dodge as Halyr came at him with a combination that wasn’t contained in any of the standard training logs.
They went at it for what felt like hours but was probably only twenty minutes in reality. Time melted into a blur of strikes and counters, takedowns and scrambles. Archer’s meditation-honed focus met Halyr’s warrior discipline in a perfect storm of controlled aggression. By the time they finally collapsed on the mats in mutual concession, they were both covered in rapidly-forming bruises and grinning like idiots.
Halyr lay on his back, chest heaving, staring at the ceiling. Every muscle hurt, his lip was split, and he was pretty sure Archer had bruised at least two ribs. He felt fucking fantastic.
“I still don’t like you,” he said to the ceiling, although the now-habitual words lacked any real heat.
Archer’s laugh was breathless. “But you like my form.”
Halyr turned his head to look at him. Archer was sprawled on his stomach, one eye already swelling shut, still somehow managing to look insufferably smug. “I wish I could say it’s not the best I’ve ever seen, but that would be a lie.” The admission came easier than expected. “Thank you.”
“My pleasure.” Archer pushed himself up to sitting with a grunt. “Any time you want me to wipe the floor with your ass, you let me know.”
Halyr bristled automatically, but he was too wrung out, too pleasantly exhausted to start another verbal sparring match. Instead, he deflected. “Ugh. Get out. Go… find Joss and take care of him or something.”
Archer’s smile turned wicked. “Yeah, that’s not a bad idea. A good party. A good spar. A good fuck. That’s a well-rounded evening right there.”
“Maker’s blood, just go.” Halyr threw a dramatic arm over his face, although he was pretty sure Archer could hear his smile in his voice. “I’ll clean up here.”
“You sure?” Archer was already heading for the door, but there was something in his tone—a genuine offer to stay if needed.
“Go,” Halyr repeated, softer this time. “Your reluctant saviour will be wondering where you are.”
Archer shook his head. “Nah, he’s probably been plugging Nina’s new data set for the gate into the test array for hours and has no idea what time it is. But I’ll make it worth his while when I interrupt.”
Halyr groaned. “I did not need that mental image.”
Archer’s easy laughter echoed back as he left, and then Halyr was alone with the distant music and his pleasantly aching body. He stayed there for a long moment, feeling the endorphins course through his system, the sharp edge of his earlier pain dulled to something manageable.
Eventually, he rolled to his feet and started wiping down the mats. His reflection in the training room mirror showed him exactly how thorough their sparring had been—blood, a split lip, a swollen cheek. Developing marks that would be yellow and purple by Prime.
He looked like hell.
He felt better than he had in weeks.
The noise from the party faded to welcomed silence as Archer made his way deeper into the Phoenix’s personnel quarters. His body sang with that particular satisfaction that only came from a good fight. Muscles loose, senses heightened, the taste of copper still faint on his tongue. He touched his swelling eye experimentally and winced.
Worth it, he thought.
The door to their quarters slid open at his touch, and Archer’s whole body relaxed at the familiar sight inside. Joss sat cross-legged on the recessed bed, surrounded by a fortress of texts and data pads, completely absorbed in whatever he was reading. The warm light from a small square panel set in the overhang caught the silver threading through his dark hair, and Archer felt that familiar punch of want mixed with something softer.
“Hey, beautiful,” Archer said, leaning against the doorframe.
Joss looked up, and his expression shifted from distracted focus to alarm in an instant.
“What happened?! O’soani, your face—”
“It’s fine. Just a bit of sparring.”
But Joss was already moving, work forgotten as he crossed the room in three quick strides of his long legs. His hands came up to frame Archer’s face, gentle despite the disapproval radiating from every line of his body. “This is not ‘just a bit of sparring.’ Your eye is swelling shut.”
“You should see the other guy,” Archer tried, but Joss wasn’t listening, his eyes cataloguing every mark.
“Halyr?” Because of course he knew.
“He needed to hit something. I volunteered.”
Joss’s thumb ghosted over Archer’s split lip, making him hiss. “The next time he needs to hit something, ask him how he feels about fifty milliamps,” he growled, eyes flashing electric for an instant before he tempered his emotions.
Archer caught Joss’s wrist and he pressed a gentle kiss to his palm. Quieted the storm. It was new, this fierce, knee-jerk protective instinct in his partner. It hadn’t been there before they’d been separated. Before Joss had spent five excruciating years thinking he was alone in the universe once again. Archer’s heart did a flop in his chest, and when Joss motioned for him to sit on the stool beside the bed and take off his shirt, he didn’t argue.
He tried to tell himself that Joss’s grumpy fussing over him wasn’t the sexiest fucking thing in world as he watched him retrieve their med kit from its storage container. The argument didn’t stick
“You don’t have to—”
“Shh. Yes, I do.” Joss sat on the edge of the bed in front of him, already opening the antiseptic.
He was gentle as he cleaned the cut on Archer’s lip and then moved to the other myriad of bruises and scrapes on his body. Archer closed his eyes, letting himself sink into the familiar ritual. Joss’s hands were warm and steady, treating each mark with a care that made Archer’s chest feel tight. This was their dance—Archer coming back banged up from training or missions, Joss patching him up while pretending to be more pissed off than he actually was, both of them pretending Archer didn’t lean into the touch like an affection-starved cat.
“There,” Joss said finally, sitting back. “That should—”
Archer kissed him, cutting off whatever practical thing he’d been about to say. It was careful because of his split lip, but thorough, and when he pulled back, Joss’s eyes had gone dark. Blue like an Akiran midnight sky.
“You taste like blood,” he observed, burrowing his hands into Archer’s dishevelled hair.
“Does that bother you?”
“No. It reminds me you’re alive.”
Archer’s heart stuttered. Joss’s honesty was always devastating. “I’m very alive,” he said, dropping his voice to a rough whisper. “Want me to prove it?”
Joss’s answer was to pull him in for another kiss, this one hungrier. Archer went willingly, ignoring the protest from his lip and bruised ribs. He returned that hunger, pouring everything he couldn’t say into the contact—how Joss was his sanctuary; the one fixed point in a universe of chaos. How there was no limit to what he would do to help him in this batshit crusade of his. How every resulting bruise and injury was worth it if it meant they could have one more moment like this.
He wasn’t sure how many more of them there might be.
Don’t think about that right now.
“Bed,” Joss murmured against his throat. “You’re hurt.”
“I’m fine—”
“Bed.” Joss’s tone brooked no argument, and Archer found himself obeying, letting Joss arrange them more comfortably among the pillows. “Better.” He straightened momentarily to pull his shirt over his head. Archer tugged him back down to his arms, drinking in the warmth of his skin.
So much warmth.
“I love you.”
A deep, satisfied hum sounded from Joss. He pulled back to run his fingers gently along Archer’s jaw, and his smile was radiant—an unguarded jewel reserved for Archer and nobody else in the entire fucking universe. It was the only response he needed.
The overhead lamp stayed on, casting a weak golden glow across the wall as they lost themselves in each other, the distant sound of the party nothing but white noise against the quiet gasps and murmured endearments that filled their quarters. From now until next Prime, Archer had everything he needed right here, in his arms. And he intended to worship every inch of him.
Copyright © 2025, Heather Ford. All content is owned by me and cannot be reproduced, distributed, or adapted without permission.