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Half-shot dry vermouth

Half-shot sweet vermouth

(handwriting: if can get them, else use half-shot either not both. Try sherry?)

Double-shot gin

Shake, garnish with orange peel.

Miss Dora’s was busy tonight. He’d probably be working till sunrise.

Some nights were slow, some nights he only served a handful of miners not long after sunset and the boss closed down the bar around 2 AM, and he’d wander dark streets that were meant to hold a much larger population to a dark house meant to hold a much larger population, but tonight the place was full.

He made the somber-looking bear an old-fashioned.

He was making cocktails almost too fast to smile at the regulars—not the regulars in the sense of the people he knew, he saw often, who always came back—the ‘regulars’ in the sense of the men with whom he had an understanding, the ones he knew knew who he really was, the ones it was safe to talk with, really talk, to wink, to smile a little sideways, to enjoy looking and be seen to enjoy and enjoy being seen.

The ones interested in “a different kind of drink, I simply must insist,” as someone had once said, what felt like eons ago.

He made a pair of bicardis for the hyena and the rat in the back corner.

But he liked it busy. He liked tending bar, it turned out, though this wasn’t work he’d ever expected he’d do. The Proprietress hadn’t thought he’d be suited for the role, at first, but he’d proved them both wrong. As nice as it was to be trusted to manage by himself, he missed, on the slow nights, the company that her supervision provided, but of course it was always better if she stayed upstairs, managed the hotel, so that if the need ever finally arose she could claim to have no knowledge of what was being done in the back cellar. She could claim no knowledge of the customers who knew to come around under the back stairs, turn where the previous barman’s office had been, and answer, when they knocked at the basement door, that they were here to see Miss Dora. It was a new version of a trick they’d been using, at the Saguaro’s Hip, even in the days when the bar had been open and legal, for other things.

He made a tequila old fashioned for Mr. Dunbar, who was one of the people it was—relatively—safe to flirt with, when he had time, which he didn’t tonight.

Not that there was a huge need for secrecy. Sheriff Adler wasn’t just a regular patron, he was a friend. That had also, some said, been the case in the old days, for other purposes. But still, you had to do the song and dance, you always had to do the song and dance, even in a room full of people all dancing together, because even if the people who didn’t want you around couldn’t get rid of you, they could usually be content with knowing they’d forced you hide, so you made hiding it’s own game because if you had no choice to play you might as well have fun, and he stopped that train of thought in its tracks before it got to the station named ‘You Don’t Just Mean Alcohol Do You?’

He made a Bourbon and seltzer on the rocks in case Will showed up—Sheriff aforementioned Adler, that is—but if he wasn’t here by now he probably wouldn’t be showing tonight. The Sheriff, even at the best of times, didn’t like mingling with crowds. So he kept it at his elbow until the ice began to melt, at which point he had it himself, because if people were going to walk away from something then it was better he should enjoy it than nobody, right?

Still, he couldn’t help but miss the old days. At the Stag, for example. As much as he liked working the speakeasy, you lost something when you had, to, well, speak easy. He missed the loud roar of all the men there. And how long had it been since he’d sung?

“Good evening.”

He looked up at a face he recognized, but didn’t know.

“Good evening yourself,” replied Murdoch Byrnes, “Nicholas, right? What can I get you?”

The badger tapped his thumbs together and averted his eyes, as if looking for a menu on the wall, which there wasn’t. “I… used to usually just get beer.”

“I can work with beer!” Murdoch tilted his head. “Maybe… something with ginger beer? And celery cordial?” What was he thinking, he didn’t have time to invent a recipe now, not with the house as busy as this, but-

The badger, a huge guy, really, took the glass cautiously, as if he were afraid that by doing so he was betraying some covenant. “Nikolai,” he said, as if to the drink.

“Sorry?”

“To my friends,” he sipped the drink cautiously, seemed to enjoy the results, and actually smiled, “I am Nikolai.”

“Nikolai, then!” Murdoch nodded, and turned to the next in line because whatever he worked at he wasn’t capable of slacking off at it, but that name sounded familiar, too, in the same way he’d looked familiar. He definitely knew the man from somewhere, but where?

When he finally did close up and head home, to his empty house, the east horizon was already turning from light grey to lighter pink. But he stayed up long enough to add an entry to his notebook:

Half-glass lager

Half-glass ginger beer

Float half spoon celery liqueur (or maybe celery seed and salt rim?)

Call it The Big Nick?

Juice & zest of half lemon

Shot raspberry syrup

(handwriting: too sweet, make it a half)

Four dashes orange liqueur

(handwriting: 3, got to make it last)

Two double-shots rum

(handwriting: huckleberries work for garnish)

“Do we know a Nikolai?” Murdoch paged idly, in the corner of the boss’s office, through pages of lightly cyphered receipts, because while bookkeeping was as important as ever you couldn’t exactly have written records lying about that openly proclaimed all the illegal drinks you were buying and selling.

“That depends what you mean by ‘know,’ probably.” The proprietress answered without looking up. “There’s been a lot of people, over the years.”

She wasn’t wrong.

“He seemed vaguely familiar last night, is all,” Murdoch explained as if it wasn’t particularly important, because it wasn’t, was it? Just an idle curiosity that had circled him in bed all morning, leaking in to his interrupted dreams like light under the heavy curtains. “Like… someone who was once at the same party, but you never actually learned their name.”

“Well,” the Proprietress set aside her letter and leaned forward with her chin in her hands, “what did he look like?” Miss Tsosie maintained a flawless icy veneer of professionalism and unconcern in public, in front of clients. But in private, Murdoch had come to know over the years, she had a strange, ironic familiarity, as if you and she were fellow passengers on a train, who initially had nodded to one another without speaking, but now the train had been halted for an unaccountable length of time, and the conductors were refusing to answer any questions, and since there was nothing else to do we might as well chat, I suppose.

“Big guy,” Murdoch, once upon a time, would’ve reached for a witticism, but flirting was a young man’s game, and even when she hadn’t been his boss, Cynthia Tsosie had never been within his range of interests. “Deep voice. Badger. My first instinct was to call him Nicholas but he didn’t let that stand.”

“Oh.” Cynthia’s face fell, which was concerning, what answer to the question ‘Who is Nik’ could possibly warrant that expression? “He used to be a regular.”

“Used to be?”

“One of Sam’s.”

Oh.

Murdoch noticed his arms were crossed and his jaw clamped shut, and hurriedly undid both before the implications of those being his reaction could sneak up on him, in the labyrinth of implications that Cynthia had just unveiled, and stab him in the back. “You mean ‘used to be one of Sam’s’ in a way where it’s good he’s back, then,” he asked, cautiously, “or where we’d be glad to see the back of the man?”

“Nik was always polite, if that’s what you mean,” Cynthia was staring at, or through, the upper corner of the room, “But he was clearly in love with Sam. Only reason he used to come here. I wasn’t surprised at all that once Sam left we never saw him again. I don’t know what on earth he’s doing back. It’s not like we have anyone anymore that caters to,” her eyes darted from Murdoch’s face to his toes, and back, faster than it would’ve taken to say ‘men like you.’ “You know,” she said instead, “I always thought that if Sam was going to run away with anyone, it was going to be Nik.”

“I guess we can do worse, as far as customers go,” Murdoch shrugged, because maybe if he pretended the question he’d asked had been light and inconsequential it still could be, somehow, “than ‘worth running away with.’”

But Cynthia’s orders, as he left, still sounded grave: “Keep an eye on him if he comes back. Who knows what’s changed since he’s been alone.”

Spoon pineapple syrup

Spoon lemon juice

Two shots Rye

Two shots Tokay

(handwriting: as if we’re ever going to have any of that)

Stir over ice

Top with seltzer

Nik proved easy to keep an eye on, in the same way that a mountain on the horizon is not difficult to keep track of.

Much as Murdoch enjoyed collecting and using cocktail recipes, most of the patrons at Miss Dora’s, under the Hip, weren’t interested in anything fancy. “Fancy” was, still, what one went upstairs for: downstairs was utilitarian intoxication. There had been a time when the bar at the Hip would be asked for Gin Fizzes, Lime Rickies, Remember the Maines… but along came that damned Volstead Act and now if Murdoch ever got to make anything more complicated than whiskey and water it was usually his own idea and after considerable persuasion.

“Where did you get something like Celery Cordial?"

“Who knows?” Murdoch shrugged at Nik. “These days you kinda have to take what you can get and not ask questions. Have to be inventive behind the bar. Do you mean to say you want another one?”

Nik’s face fell.

“Or… I could whip up something else, if you prefer!”

“You do not have to!” the badger frowned in a way that made his whiskers stiffen, “mostly I wished to talk.”

“Well, they pay me to tend bar,” Murdoch could taste the professional patter rising like bile in the back of his throat but there’s no helping one’s training, “so if we’re gonna talk I’ll have to make a drink while we do it.”

Nik looked like he’d been asked to lead a charge at the battle of Ypres.

“This one’ll be on me,” Murdoch offered.

Nik sighed heavily. “Very well,” but he relaxed visibly.

“And what was it,” Murdoch’s eyes and paws danced different directions over the pitifully few options available, “you wanted to talk about?” Not enough on hand for a blackthorne, but slow gin, lime, and huckleberry syrup might yet add up to something.

“Have you worked here long?” said Nik, which was a disappointing opening but Murdoch had heard worse, and if this badger used to be here for, well, for him why a fox could work with whatever opening he got.

“Few years now. Since they sold the store.”

“The store?”

“Red’s general store and pharmacy? Used to be not far.”

“It looked open when I passed it yesterday!”

“Oh it’s not closed, just sold! I used to work there, is the point.” He used the necessity of turning to retrieve a bottle of absinthe from under the bar to change the subject. “If you came here just to talk about me I’ll be real flattered, though!”

“Well,” Nik eyed the dark goblet set before him somewhat dubiously. “I wondered if you had ever met a friend of mine.”

“Could be,” Murdoch said cautiously, because who knows if someone’s working for the revenuers, “known a lotta fellows, in my time. Couldn’t say I’d remember them all.”

“You would remember this man.” Nik tasted the nameless cocktail like a soldier biting a belt for an amputation, “Hm. Bitter, but… better than last time.”

“Glad to hear it. So, shall I just start listing all the men I can remember? Because if that’s the idea it’ll take long enough I’d need to make another drink, and I don’t tend to stand a man two drinks in a night.” Not unless there was something in it for himself.

“His fur was all white. He was beautiful, but of course I did not tell him this, it would only make him embarrassed.” Nik shook his head at the glass like it was an unruly child. “Red eyes. And a way of looking at you, from just sitting beside you, as if you were on the deck of a ship, departing, and he standing on the shore.”

“You mean Sam, then?” Murdoch wiped the counter, idly, which is a useful thing to have to do when you need your paws busy.

“So you do remember him.” Nik’s lower lip moved, restlessly, back and forth behind his whiskers.

“Sam,” Murdoch allowed, “was memorable. Look, I need to get to some other customers, but you enjoy the drink, and if you come back some night when it’s less busy? Maybe we can talk a little more.”

“Thank you,” Nik said, but Murdoch was already escaping to the other end of the bar.

But before he went to sleep, that morning, he updated his notebook:

Half-glass lager

Half-glass ginger beer

Float half spoon celery liqueur (or maybe celery seed and salt rim?)

Call it The Big Nick?

Shot sloe gin

Shot bourbon

Juice of half lime

Splash simple syrup

Dash absinthe

_Top with soda wate_r

Big Nick number 2?

Shot Absinthe

Shot Chartreuse

Shot Apricot Brandy

(handwriting: regular brandy will have to do, not like they can taste the difference.)

The quilt was sewn by his grandmother, but it wasn’t cool enough yet. It hung, unused, over the foot of the bed, waiting for someone to need it.

“But what I’m saying,” the voice in his dreams sounded like his own, “is that it wasn’t just another roll in the hay, right?”

Murdoch slept late, fairly regularly, he worked late after all. Only a single thin sheet between him and the empty room, heavy curtains between the room and morning light. He had slept in this room a very long time ago, and now that life has led him nowhere and everyone else away, now he slept here again.

“It was thrilling,” he remembered protesting to someone, once, “and damn right special.”

His feet, moving in the night, had pulled the sheet far enough down that when his paws groped for something, anything, they found only his own chest fur.

“You’d like to keep doing…” the words echoed in his head, in a forest, in a lakeside cave, in a groom-to-be’s hired rooms, “...things like that, right?”

But in his dreams there was no answer. His was the only voice. The echo returned with different words, but only in Murdoch’s own voice: “This was a fun diversion, but the future…”

What other voice could an echo be, after all?

He didn’t bolt upright in bed, of course. Didn’t lurch into wakefulness as if there would be some threat in his room. There was nothing in his room but him, of course, why would there be? No reason to do anything, on waking, but rub his eyes and snort his nose clear, swing his legs over the edge of the bed, bury his face in his paws for a long moment.

He didn’t bother putting on anything, on his way to the bath.

When he’d been, well, not a boy, because he’d stopped being able to be one of those some years too early, but a young man, Murdoch had used to hear people say his family’s house was haunted. Mostly from schoolkids, mostly referring to it as ‘their teacher’s’ house, ignorant that the shopkeeper had once called it home as well. There were many places, in town, he’d have believed haunted. Not here. This house had proved to be the most solitary place Murdoch had ever been. At least a ghost would’ve been some company.

It wasn’t time to go into work, yet, wasn’t not even noon, but he’d no more appetite for sleep. He’d just have to find something to do to occupy his time till opening. Eat something, take his ‘medicine,’ have a bath. Maybe flip through his notes for a recipe, see if he could throw together a special for tonight?

Big Nick number 2? his own handwriting asked him, when he lifted the notebook from where it lay face-down on the kitchen table.

Murdoch clicked his tongue.

He was tired of asking himself questions.

Half-spoonful sugar

Juice of half lemon

Half-glass gin

Shake, strain in tall glass, top with seltzer

“I was under the impression,” Sheriff Adler didn’t look up from his paperwork, “that accounts between my office and the Hip’s were settled, up to the current month.”

“Oh, uh,” Murdoch adjusted his tie. “I’m not here on, uh, the Proprietress's business.”

Will didn’t say anything at that. But he did sit up straight and look Murdoch in the face, and you could work with that.

He hadn’t been surprised to find the Sheriff in his office. There wasn’t much work, any more. The mines hadn’t been what they’d once been, not since Hendricks had gone wherever he’d gone, since Briggs had died, since the remains of the company had nearly bankrupted itself by suing itself over the scraps. What work there was, why, there were deputies to send, when they weren’t busy doing odd jobs for Cynthia.

The only deputy here now was Bronson, who had let Murdoch in, but that made sense. He was the only deputy who was, strictly speaking, official.

“Well, you don’t usually have your own business worth coming on,” Will scratched at this whiskers.

“Not entirely sure,” Murdoch replied, “I’m on my own business now.”

“Well whose business would you be on?” In the old days Will wouldn’t have had any patience for playing around like this.

“That’s what I’m hoping to find out.” Murdoch finally found his way to the point. “Do you know a man named Nikolai Krol?”

Will looked like a man who’d been told his father had come back from the dead, and was not yet sure if that was good news.

“Miss Cynthia says,” Murdoch couldn’t resist the sheer force of Will’s unstated expectations and was explaining before he meant to, “that he used to be a client of Sam’s.”

“Go on.” If Will knew that to be true he gave no hint of confirmation.

“I got the impression,” shit, how much should he tell? “that once Sam wasn’t… around anymore, neither was he. This would’ve been before my time at the Hip, of course. I only knew of Sam by reputation.”

“He went on that expedition with you, didn’t he?”

“I was just the photographer!”

“You were just the photographer for me too, once.” Will rumbled.

“The point is,” Murdoch fought to keep the yip out of his voice, “I don’t believe I ever met the man, myself. Before the other night, that is. All of a sudden he’s back, and Miss Cynthia seems concerned but I’m not sure if for him or about him, and I thought, well, maybe I ought to find out if she ought to be?”

“If you’re asking if Nik,” Will crossed his arms and turned sideways in his chair, “is dangerous, then you oughta be more worried about Todd.”

Murdoch resisted the urge to glance behind him at Will’s office door. He suspected it hadn’t been shut all the way behind him. “I just can’t help but wonder where he’s been all these years? And why is he back now?”

“There’s not that many things he could’ve been up to that would worry me,” The Sheriff shrugged. “I could ask Dunbar or Diaz, they might know, though I suppose at this point they spend more time for working for your operation than mine. But yeah, I wouldn’t mind finding out why did he came back.”

“You’re not curious why he left?”

“Why wouldn’t he?”

Murdoch had no answer for that.

“You got anywhere to be?” Will cricked his neck and leaned back in his chair. “We could settle next month’s account, get it out of the way, since you’re here already.”

“But…” the urge to glance at the door gripped like a spasm, but there was also the urge to step around Will’s desk, to sink to his knees… But Murdoch just leaned forward and whispered, “...Bronson is still right there!”

“You think he doesn’t know?” But Will half-grin only grew more smug. “He likes listening in.”

Well. He did have some time to kill.

Half-glass sherry

Half-glass vermouth

Dash bitters

(handwriting: use orange bitters if you can get them)

Stir over ice, garnish with lemon wedge

(handwriting: with the substitutions couldn’t tell difference w. a Blackstone)

“I was wondering when we’d see you again,” Murdoch leaned forward, both palms planted on the bartop.

“You saw me last night,” Nik said, matter of factly. “We talked.”

“And I wondered,” Murdoch rallied, “if we’d talk again tonight!”

“What did you wish to talk about?”

Fortunately, Murdoch had a strategy prepared for exactly this opening. “Why, I’ve got another drink for you to try, of course!”

Nik lifted the glass stein and considered the contents. Murdoch had been silently jubilant that the hip still had clear glass steins, because the color, when he’d tried his latest idea, had been amazing. “It smells like beer,” Nik squinted at it, “but it looks like wine?”

“Technically it’s a shandy,” Murdoch couldn’t resist the urge to explain. “I was lucky enough to learn of a local housewife who makes prickly pear jam, and it’s a pretty simple step from that to syrup.” He did manage to resist the urge to explain the implied pun.

Nik took a drink. A mug of beer looked more natural, in his paw, than a cocktail glasses previous experiments had been, but that wasn’t relevant either to the recipe testing Murdoch was pretending to do or to the questions he actually meant to ask. But still: worth noting. “It is good!” Nik announced, after an appraising mouthful.

“Glad to hear it!” First phase of the planned strategy, then, had succeeded. Time for phase two. “Glad some of the things I’m doing to keep up standards, around here, are working. This place isn’t what it used to be, though don’t tell anyone it was me that said it.”

Nik paused before taking another drink. “What do you mean by that?” Which wasn’t the kind of thing you say when you actually don’t know what someone means by that, it’s what you say when there’s a certain thing you hope they don’t mean by that.

“Absent friends, mostly, I guess!” Murdoch smiled, didn’t let his thoughts show on his face, which was a skill he’d learned long before he tended bar. “So many of the folks you used to see here all the time have moved on.”

“That’s true,” Nik’s eyes lost their hold on the fox, wandered off into memory.

“Like take this one fellow, used to work here, by the name of Sam.”

The badger’s gaze was locked back on Murdoch again.

“Kept to himself, I guess,” Murdoch went on, as if he hadn’t noticed, “I always kinda wanted to get to know him, but I only ever got the chance once. Didn’t manage to stick.”

Nik was chewing his lower lip. Time to see if this hand was a winner.

“Said you came here looking for him, as I recall. I hear you used to be a friend of his.” He could see, in the badger’s stance, that he was ready at a moment’s notice to push away from the bar like it was a sinking ship, so he hastened to add. “I wouldn’t mind being a friend. If you’re looking for one.”

“What… are you saying?” Nik was almost whispering. He loomed over the bar like a mountain, like a volcano ready but unable to blow, because if it did blow, if he did shove the barstool back and erupt to his feet, everyone would notice, how could they not notice a bulk that blots out the sun?

“I’m saying… if the friend you cam looking for isn’t here, well, I’m pretty… friendly. Well. I used to be. Wouldn’t mind being friendly again, with a man like you.” You know, the fox left unsaid, the kind of man that used to be friendly with Sam.

“I do not know,” Nik rumbled. But his arms bent, his shoulders relaxed, his huge palms lifted from the bar and part of Murdoch was amazed they hadn’t left craters there. “I do not feel that I know you.”

“That can be fixed!” Murdoch grinned. “Listen, work on that drink, and I’ll back with another once I see to some other fellows… and then we can talk a bit more, if you like.”

“I don’t know if we could talk here…” the badger glanced aside.

“Doesn’t have to be here.” Murdoch shrugged, nodded, moved away down the bar.

This recipe seemed to be coming very satisfactorily.

Juice of quarter orange

Two shots dry gin

Shot sweet vermouth

Sprig of mint

Shake well, strain

(handwriting: shake very well, ice bruises the mint for you)

“You work very hard,” said the voice in the darkness.

The breath that Murdoch released, long and slow, through his hand felt like it was going to be a laugh while it had been still in his chest, but by the time it reached his muzzle there was no mirth in it.

“There was a time,” he confessed, “when I would’ve given just about anything to hear that.”

Nik had waited, very patiently, all evening. He’d kept to himself, at the end of the bar, nursing each prickly pear shandy as gently as if it had been a baby duckling, for as long as it took Murdoch to work through another throng of thirsty customers and return to check on him. By three in the morning, though, the fox would’ve dared say that he was the more intoxicated than the badger.

“Why would you need to do that?” The mattress creaked as Nik shifted his weight, but it was too dark to make out whatever movement he’d down to cause that. “Was it not true?”

“Just because something’s true doesn’t mean people will say it.” Murdoch admitted.

At some point, Murdoch couldn’t help but notice, Will had loomed in. Nik had shrunk into the corner, head down, eyes lowered.

But the sheriff hadn’t spotted him, apparently. Will had crossed the room, crowd parting like waterweed before a rowboat, and fallen into conversation with Dunbar, who was lurking by the rarely-touched piano as usual.

Murdoch sent over the customary bourbon on the rocks, and Will hadn’t bothered ordering anything else. After about fifteen minutes the two of them left together.

“Is…” Whatever Nik wanted to ask was apparently very difficult. “Is this your room?”

“Not usually, no,” Murdoch admitted, “I asked Miss Cynthia if there was any room that wasn’t being used tonight, she said feel free with this one, if I liked. I have my own place, most nights.”

“Ah.” That seemed to be a relief. “I… recognize the room, you see.”

“How would-?” Oh. “This was his room?”

His eyes must have adjusted a little to the darkness, because he saw Nik nod, slowly. “I have spent the night in this room before.”

“We don’t-” Murdoch started to say. But a massive paw, strong, calloused, and heavy, found his chest, laid there very gently, and he stopped.

“You have been lonely.” Nik said. It wasn’t a question.

“Don’t worry about me.” Murdoch said. Which wasn’t a denial.

“I know what it is to be lonely,” Nik carried on as if Murdoch had said nothing. “Even in a comfortable life, where I have my daily meal and my roof over my head and my friends around my table. I still…”

“You really had it bad for him, huh?” Murdoch would’ve liked to pretend that he could help but feel the hot water around his knees, smelled the minerals and sweat, tasted the cougar’s tongue between his lips, felt the weasel’s breath between his legs, but they were an effort to recall. And he had other things to put effort into tonight.

“For who?”

“You know who.”

Nik said nothing in response, so Murdoch let his paws follow the badger’s thick arm up from the paw near-smothering his chest till he found a soft cotton shirt, traced the outline of it over a shoulder, toward where he supposed the heart to be until he struck buttons. Nik made no objection, just kept his hands on the fox’s body, as Murdoch began unbuttoning them. But when Murdoch reached through and touched the badger’s thick chest fur himself, Nik shuddered.

“It’s ok,” Murdoch whispered. “I only barely got a chance to know him, and I understand. Sam was something special. You’re not the only one who wishes he could’ve had another night with-”

“I loved him,” Nik blurted.

Murdoch fell silent.

“I never told him,” the badger’s voice was somewhere between whispering and pleading, like a child in the confessional fearful he is doomed to hell for stealing a peppermint candy. “He knew I had feelings, that I was fond of him, he would arrange to see me even when I was short of pay, but still, I never…” He pushed Murdoch back against the end of the bed, gently, as if the bartender were made of porcelain and the badger feared he would break. “Now he is gone, and I will never see him again, and I never said the words.”

Was that why he’d come back? Part of Murdoch’s mind rattled the question around the inside of his head like dice in a cup. Had Nik hoped Sam would somehow be back? That Cliff would have grown tired of him, or died in the war, and Sam would have had nowhere else to go?

But the rest of his mind, and all of his body, instead said, “don’t worry about him tonight. He’s not here, you are.” He pushed back against Nik’s stiff arm, and after a moment the badger relented and let Murdoch crawl back across the matress, “And I am.” Until there was no more room for hands between them and the only thing to do was to put both arms around the fox.

His fur was very soft.

He remained courteous to the point of bashfulness. Murdoch had to steer Nik’s fingers under the hem of his shirt, and down the back of his trousers, as he unfastened and slid out of both. Nik moved, still, like a man not yet convinced that he was allowed to do what he’d already begun to.

But when Murdoch leaned forward Nik’s kiss ambushed him, caught him off guard. The badger’s mouth was hungry, and his tongue forceful, in a way that made Murdoch understand for the first time ever all the casual acquaintances, over the years—Will, for example—who’d confessed to seeing the appeal of the idea of a man having his way with you by force.

“If you don’t let go,” Murdoch felt like this had been meant to be a laugh, but by the time it emerged from his mouth it was only a gasp, “then how am I supposed to do anything about how stiff you are? Cause I promise,” he licked his lips and hoped Nik’s eyes were used enough to the dark to see, “I can feel that.”

“I do not care,” Nik panted, and kissed Murdoch again, as forcefully as ever. “I do not care if you never touch me. I do not care if you have Will run me out of town in the morning. I do not care if you poisoned my drinks tonight and I will not live to see the sunrise, just let me keep holding you.”

Prudence, of course, said that this was too much, too fast. Murdoch knew he ought to say something to the effect that he wasn’t Sam, and that it was a dangerous thing to fall in love so quickly so Nik had better not be going and doing that.

But fuck prudence.

Eventually, of course, Nik did tire enough of the long, slow, and dizzyingly deep kisses, enough to release Murdoch enough that the fox could finally strip the badger, too. At which point Murdoch busied himself kissing his way down Nik’s chest till he got his between the two oak-trunks that Nik was apparently passing off as thighs.

Nik actually whimpered when Murdoch ran his tongue, from tip to base, along the underside of his cock.

He was piping hot tea, thick and sweet with dark sugar, on a midwinter night. He was ice water from a sunset-shaded spring after a long afternoon. He was sacramental wine, consecrated, entheogenic, ecstatic. He was a punch cup, overflowing with bountiful fruits too numerous to guess and spices too exotic to name. He was intoxication and delight. He was craving and satisfaction both.

What more satisfying drink could be imagined?