The Administration Series (140 page)

"Then why did you run off?" Despite Toreth's numerous retreats, subtle and otherwise, it wasn't a question Warrick often asked.

Toreth blinked at him, then shrugged, whiskey sloshing dangerously. "Dunno. Getting my retaliation in first?"

"So what made you think I'd run?"

Anger flared up. "I'm pissed, not stupid — I know how you feel about I&I. It's gutless fucking corporates like you who make . . . " Toreth trailed off, then ran his hand through his hair and sighed. "Look, do you want a drink?"

"Thanks."

By the time Toreth had retrieved a glass, examined it, taken it into the kitchen and cleaned it and returned, some of the tension had dissipated. Warrick took the generously-filled glass and settled back. Toreth sat beside him.

"Carnac asked me once how I could bear knowing what you did for a living," Warrick said.

"Yeah?" Toreth waited, then asked, "And? There is an 'and', right?"

"And I said I didn't think about it. Which is true. However, I know what your job entails — I have enough self-respect not to delude myself entirely. I've read parts of your security file, and some of the Procedures and Protocols as well. I know what happens at I&I. I won't deny that meeting a — " no point sugar-coating things, " — a victim doesn't improve my weekend, but it's hardly earth-shattering."

"Victim?" Toreth frowned. "He was a fucking resister, and she knew it. Sanctimonious prick."

Warrick wasn't sure which of them he meant. "Does it often happen?"

"Being stalked or running into people I've interrogated?" His voice had begun to slur. "Helen's the only fruitcake I've picked up, luckily. Some of the psych specialists have packs of the fuckers — Augins reckons his have a rota. Generally, yeah, it happens from time to time. Bound to."

"It doesn't bother you, does it?"

"'Course not. Shouldn't have done whatever the fuck they did."

"And the ones who hadn't done anything? The ones who were innocent?" Something he'd always wanted to ask, although he was sure of Toreth's opinion.

"Life's a bitch and shit happens." He grinned suddenly. "Sometimes it's me. That's what keeps all the little corporates safe in their beds. Or whoever's bed. D'you want to fuck?"

The all-purpose makeup and apology. How ever would they manage without it? "Do you think you're up to it, to coin a phrase?"

Toreth peered thoughtfully at the bottle, then shook his head. "Not a fucking chance. I feel like shit. Don't — don't go, though."

To produce a request like that the bottle must have been full to begin with. "I didn't plan to."

"Good. Thanks. I — " Toreth finished the glassful, then leaned back, abruptly pale. "Oh, Christ. Room's spinning. Shouldn't have drunk so much, so fast. Why don't I ever fucking learn? How old'm I? Sara asks me that, you know. She says — "

Warrick stood up and offered his hand. "Go get rid of it. You'll feel a lot better — it can't all be in your bloodstream yet."

"Yeah." Toreth let Warrick pull him up off the sofa. "Right as usual." He headed for the door, then stopped and held his hand up as Warrick started to follow. "I c'n manage."

"Very well."

Resisting the temptation to follow, Warrick tidied up — which in Toreth's flat was more a matter of rearranging the mess into more aesthetically pleasing piles — and listened to the faint sounds of retching from the bathroom.

After five minutes, Toreth reappeared, looking brighter but also visibly unsteady on his feet.

"Jesus, my gag reflex isn't what it used to be." He swayed and put his hand out, connecting with the door then looking somewhat surprised by the success. "'Spect it's all that time with your cock down my throat."

"Why don't we go to bed?" Warrick suggested. It was early, but he'd rather get Toreth there while he could still walk.

Toreth leaned on the door frame, apparently requiring the support of both hands while he considered the question. It took rather longer than usual.

"Yeah," he said at length. "Yeah, why not? Be better in the morning, huh?"

Something woke Warrick — a noise. He lifted his head and recognised it. Snoring.

Snorting breaths, catching in a throat relaxed by alcohol. Or possibly by the accumulated effects of too much fellatio. Warrick smiled and ran his hand slowly down Toreth's chest, over his stomach and hip, moulding his fingers over the lines of bone and muscle. Back up again, lightening his touch to a tickle. Toreth murmured an incoherent semi-protest and turned away onto his side.

Well, that solved the snoring problem.

Warrick slid up behind him, fitting himself against Toreth, trying for the maximum skin contact. No protest this time, although there certainly would have been if Toreth had been awake.

This broke their carefully delimited rules of touching, which seemed so ridiculous when he considered all that they'd done together. After all this time, sex was encouraged, foreplay was permitted, but too close an approach to a simple display of affection still triggered something between anger and panic.

Would it ever be different? Warrick smiled wryly, feeling Toreth's hair against his lips. The shock of a sober Toreth turning over and saying anything like 'hold me' would probably kill him.

He did wonder what lay behind the fear. Sometimes he wondered enough to consider the merits of a more careful study of Toreth's psych file. He'd looked at it just the once, not long after Marian Tanit's death, wanting to know that Toreth was a safe choice for a longer-term liaison. Or rather, just dangerous enough but in control of himself. He'd read no further than the summary, mindful of the risks of knowing too much. If he'd ever let something slip which proved that he'd read the file, Toreth would be furious. Perhaps furious enough to do serious damage and under those circumstances Warrick wouldn't blame him.

The psych file remained a temptation, but one he could resist when he considered the possible backlash. Besides, it was an unfair advantage to hold over Toreth, who was already at such a disadvantage emotionally.

And that line of thought was taking him somewhere he didn't want to go, but knew he should. Better to get it over with.

Deliberately, he called Helen to mind — her halting, broken speech, the awful scars, her husband's despair. Toreth's earlier defensiveness hadn't been regret for what he'd done to them. Embarrassment over his professional lapse as a new para-investigator, an inarticulate fear of the practical, personal consequences — that Warrick might be driven away — and nothing more than that.

He tortures people, Warrick thought, forcing himself to focus on the words. Real people, guilty and innocent. Perhaps some people who've said no more against the Administration than I have occasionally, and certainly no more than Tarin has.

He orders rapes, he stands and watches, and he doesn't care. He kills whenever the Administration decides a death would be convenient. He killed when
we
decided it would be convenient. Politics, justice, individual pain: none of it matters to him, just as Marian said. None of it touches him. I know all that, and
I
don't care about it enough to give him up. Just enough not to want to hear about it and to blame him for what I feel when he mentions I&I.

Still, somehow, not real enough to banish the warmth of the bed. Not as real as the body against him. Marian's death had sickened him and then, only an hour later, he'd welcomed Toreth's aggressive passion in the office.

He pressed his face against Toreth's neck, touch and taste and scent, letting the warmth wash through him as it always did.

A couple of weeks ago they'd been at Sara's party and for most of the time it had seemed like any other office event. Warrick had spent half the evening anticipating his little trick with the notes, and the next half anticipating the consequences when they got home. He hadn't thought . . . and he'd rarely even had to try not to think. He was getting good at it.

I fuck Toreth, not his job, he thought. My defense.

What does that make me?

Perhaps not very much more of a hypocrite than anyone else who deplores I&I and does nothing about it, or who pretends that what happens there doesn't happen because that's easier than facing up to what the Administration has become.

But still, a little more.

The shop wasn't large, but its stock was comprehensive and for the most part expensive. As they entered, it occurred to Warrick that he really couldn't imagine a more unlikely setting in which to find Toreth.

Toreth apparently agreed, because he looked round and shook his head. "Sara once said I'd end up like this, you know."

"Really?"

"Yeah. Can't remember what we were talking about, but she said, 'You'll be buying curtains with him before long'. Or something like that. Mind you, that was a while ago now, and she probably only said it because she thought it would wind me up."

Warrick was willing to bet the windup had succeeded. He also took it as a sign of progress that Toreth sounded more amused than horrified by the memory.

"She's a very perceptive woman," Warrick said. "As I've mentioned before, I've always thought that she's wasted as an admin."

"I know. People keep telling her to take the investigator late entry course, but, lucky for me, she won't. Mind you, the way she was whipping those fucking pool investigators into shape last week, she really ought to be a para."

He thought, very briefly, of Sara in an interrogation room. "I think she'd make a better investigator. And not, of course, that there's anything wrong with being an admin — it's a job that requires intelligence and dedication."

"Good breasts and a nice arse. God, I never thought there could be so many different kinds of crap for making curtains." Toreth looked round the shop and then at his watch.

Something of a record, even by his standards, but only to be expected. The surprise was that he'd come along at all. "Bored already? You didn't have to come."

"Yes, I did. It's got to be absolutely perfect. If it's not, you'd only have to get them done again. Besides, I'm the one who does all the standing around without a blindfold, so it's got to be something I like." He looked around the shop again, then squared his shoulders. "Let's get on with it."

They spent a while looking through swatches, then Toreth asked, "Why are there two prices on everything?"

"The top one is fabric alone, the lower is the price for made-up curtains. That includes the lining and so on. It's all in square metres."

"You live and learn. Jesus f — " Toreth stopped and lowered his voice. "Jesus fucking Christ, have you seen the price of
this
stuff?"

"Curtains are largely a decorative anachronism, so they lend themselves to expense." Warrick examined the tag. "Ah, no wonder it's pricey — it's natural cotton velvet. Beautiful. Feel it."

Toreth obediently ran his hands over the fabric, then smiled. "Mmm . . . not bad. Not bad at all. But I still think that's a fuck of a lot of euros for something you don't need."

"Nobody
needs
an antique wardrobe with chains, either, and you didn't object to spending what was no doubt a ridiculous amount of money on that."

"That's different." Toreth's voice lowered again, but in a quite different tone. "And it's also bollocks. You do need it — you know you do."

He saw the calculation in Toreth's eyes as he gauged the very deliberate effect of the words. Warrick kept his voice as even as he could. "That's wanting, not needing. Very like curtains, in fact."

"Really?" Toreth drew the word out. "Just wanting, is it? Shall we stop using it, then? Sell it?"

He shook his head, suddenly breathless. The cabinet was one of only two things in his life to which he'd ever felt in danger of becoming addicted. And, like the other thing, that only made it more dangerous and so more desirable.

The other thing smiled. "God, I can see you in it now. Could you get off like that without it? Without the chains?"

Without the absolute surrender. "No. And not without you. You more than any of it."

"Of course." The smile broadened. "And I'm free, if you don't count the dinners." He turned his attention back to the fabric. "Well, you're paying for it. This is nice. Green's wrong, though."

Warrick sucked in a quick breath, trying to drive the pictures from his brain. "They'll dye it to order — any colour you want."

"Mm." Toreth stroked the velvet again. "How much do we need?"

Warrick took out his hand screen and paged down until he found the dimensions. "This is for completely enclosing the cabinet and enough floor space around it to — " He stopped, suddenly aware of where they were.

"Do whatever we want to do," Toreth said, unexpectedly tactful.

They'd spent a long time in Warrick's bedroom, measuring and discussing, and pausing halfway through to fuck because the subject of the discussion made it inevitable. Finally they'd settled on a space large enough to let them move freely but small enough to create the effect they both wanted: somewhere enclosed, confining. Constraining. A larger version of the cabinet. It would cut the space off from the rest of his bedroom and make it somewhere different. Somewhere special. Somewhere —

A touch on his back pulled him out of the reverie as Toreth looked over his shoulder at the proposed designs. "You know, if they're going to go against the wall, we could put some bolts behind them. They'll be hidden most of the time and then when you pull the curtains round they'll be exposed."

"Mm." He considered the idea, trying to think of it as a sim room design problem. Having Toreth standing right behind him, touching far too much and not enough, didn't help. "Not bad. But . . . "

"You don't like the idea of gear at the flat. I know. I could bring the chains round from my place when we need them. Or you could keep them in the cabinet."

"No."

Toreth had suggested that before and he'd refused before, but this time Toreth asked, "Why not?"