'You're being quiet about all this,' Klaus noted.

Taki unbuttoned his cuffs.

'Enough has been said today.'

'That's for sure.'

Klaus glanced at the scotch on the dresser nearby, itching for a glass. But Taki's tone hinted at the need for solitude.

He longed for the simpler days before his foolhardy promise of sexual abstinence when all he needed for inspiration was a glance at the devil's peak at the nape of Taki's neck, a place whose taste and texture he knew well, and he could push him against any surface, horizontal or vertical, and reveal the pale flesh beneath his uniform to eyes and fingertips alike.

Alas.

He was about to take his leave when Taki asked quietly, 'How well did you know Regenwalde?'

Loping gait. A school uniform that seemed to hang too loose on his frame. Steely grey eyes that always hurriedly turned away. A slow, nervous smile.

'Well enough. We were in the same year. He was bright but quiet.'

So Hasebe was right?

'So you knew him enough to be friends?' Taki hoped he had succeeded in keeping his tone casual.

'We ran in the same circles a few times but I never had much to say to him. He never had much to say to anyone. Why?'

Taki felt his pulse pick up just a little. He felt ridiculous.

Klaus sighed.

'If you're asking whether I know him well enough to know whether he's lying, you can bet your life he is.'

Relieved, Taki slid off his belt and didn't reply.

'True, I didn't think he'd join the army, let alone become a Lieutenant General,' Klaus continued, turning to look out the window. 'He never seemed like the flag-waving type. But it doesn't mean he hates our country enough to defect. He's a snake in the grass. As if you'd need to pull a stunt like this just to become an informant.'

'Stranger things have happened.'

Klaus sensed danger. 'Please don't tell me you believe him.'

'I'm far from believing him. But you should remember how it feels to be mistrusted by everyone around you.'

Klaus fancied that he could see a thin wisp of cloud changing colours in the sunset. As he watched it, a response to Taki's remark formed in his mind, ready to fire, but he suddenly felt weary. He couldn't be expected to fight his sexual impulses and fight about politics at the same time. He was only human.

'I'll see you in the morning,' he said, turning to go.

Again, there was no reply. Wondering if he had heard, Klaus looked over his shoulder in time to see Taki's shirt slip off his back to the floor, leaving him standing in the half-light fully naked.

Aware now of the likelihood that he had in fact dreamed everything, including running into an old schoolmate during a raid, Klaus blinked and froze.

Without a word, Taki walked into the en suite. He left the door resting lightly against the frame.

Klaus was almost completely undressed in a few seconds.

In the en suite, steam was already rising from the shower and Taki had stepped inside. Simultaneously fuelled and restrained by the memory of their last scene in a bathroom, Klaus wasted no time lifting Taki up and pressing him against the wet tiled wall. They kissed for long moments. His weight was ideal, Klaus thought, feeling the pleasant tension in his muscles. Now he could hold him the way he'd wanted when they were under siege. Here, he would erase the memory of bullets ricocheting off walls not far from Taki's head.

Taki, for his part, felt weak again. When his feet were on the ground and Klaus was elsewhere, he managed to convince himself that his memories of their intimacy were somehow exaggerated; surely he had enough strength and dignity to prevent being thrown about like a weightless doll. And yet, it took only a few steps into the shower before his memories were vindicated. Here he was at another's mercy, cornered, defeated, his feet now struggling to maintain an ankle grip behind another's back for fear of slipping.

Klaus pushed him harder into the wall so only his hips supported Taki's weight. His hands were free to tilt Taki's face for better access to his mouth, to run through Taki's wet hair. Every touch was possessive. Taki had lost. He was the spoils of a battle he'd barely even fought.

A battle he'd barely even fought. Was this the same as losing on the battlefield? Or in hand-to hand combat? Did he ever before experience this surging in his chest, the breathlessness, the thrill of total abandonment, the bittersweet of surrender? Taki could recall but one sensation to rival Klaus – when he was four or five, standing on the banks of a white, coursing river that ran along the border of his family's property. He had stared for ages, minutes, and then almost without thinking, he'd turned, stretched out his arms and fallen backwards. His minders discovered him almost a kilometre downriver, soaked to the bone but altogether unharmed.

It's fucking ridiculous, Klaus meanwhile thought, to be so moved by another man's eyes. The water had flattened Taki's hair over his eyes where they glistened like polished rock. By then, Klaus was painfully hard and he nudged almost unconsciously against Taki's entrance.

Not yet.

A sharp intake of breath stopped him.

Klaus groaned in frustration and was startled by the resounding echo in the bathroom. He laughed and stepped back a little, keeping his head close to Taki's. They were both breathing heavily.

'This is taking years from my life.'

Taki knew it was a joke. But the words twisted into an old tattered knot in his gut.

He remembered a great deal from that day when he had fallen willingly into the frothy embrace of the river; its deep, gurgling voice, the surprising jolts of salt water that occasionally rushed into his mouth and nose, the feeling of being both submerged and buoyed. He remembered the fleeting, childish epiphany that perhaps his family had lied to him. Perhaps there was no such thing as duty and code. Perhaps this was all there was. But more than any of it, more than the river itself, he remembered the looks on his minders' faces when they found him, the endless chastising, the scars on his honour, the promise that he would never do it again.

Klaus dropped to one knee and swallowed Taki's cock. Taki's haggard cry echoed, sounding pitiful in the wake of Klaus' visceral grunt. He hung his head, one hand bracing against the wall behind him, another in Klaus' hair. Presently, Klaus pulled back to spit liberally on his fingers. He glanced up with an unreadable expression.

'Tell me when it hurts.'

It sounded like it hurt him just to say it. Taki had never heard such a concession from him – he hadn't believed Klaus to be capable of any nuance beyond all in or all out.

His finger probed gently, gentler than he had ever been. The intrusion nevertheless sent a reflex jolt throughout Taki's body and his tongue curled around the word 'stop'. He bit it back, knowing that this time Klaus would listen. One word from him and everything would fall away and he would be left alone against a cold, wet wall. His hands gripped Klaus' hair which the water had turned dark. He felt Klaus go deeper and old scars protested. Taki moaned through his teeth. His body rocked slightly back and forth.

Klaus rested his forehead on Taki's abdomen and closed his eyes. He didn't care that his own cock was ignored and leaking steadily. He only felt the heat and tightness, heard the groans his hands were eliciting, felt the grip tightening on his hair. He waited for a word from Taki that would end it but it never came. He pressed his face and nose into Taki's skin just above his pubic hair, kissing, biting. He pushed even further.

Taki cried out and covered his own mouth with his hand. There. Klaus smirked and pressed.

'Ah! Klaus…'

Taki was again on the precipice of telling him to stop, not for pain this time but for its devilish counterpart. He realised in dismay that Klaus could tell the difference. Without removing his finger, and in fact while maintaining his assault on Taki's prostate, Klaus stood and kissed him, forcing him to moan into his mouth. Without thinking and almost without looking, Taki felt for Klaus' penis and gripped it hard. Klaus dropped his head onto Taki's shoulder.

They came almost at the same time.

'Can I stay?'

Taki didn't think his head incline was observable let alone interpretable. Yet he wasn't overly surprised when Klaus grinned and settled back against a pillow with a huff. Taki watched his still wet hair dampen the pillowcase. It was the second night in a row he had allowed it.

'Should we start tomorrow?' asked Klaus, eyes closed.

Taki tugged self-consciously at his loose nightshirt and slid between the sheets.

'Yes.'

Somewhere between the shower and the bed, the topic had turned back to Hans Regenwalde. Despite the glaring lack of information regarding the would-be defector, they had somehow devised a plan of action.

'We wouldn't have to resort to deception if the fucker is telling the truth,' Klaus said thickly, already succumbing to his climax-induced stupor.

'Even if he is telling the truth, he won't tell us certain things for a while until he feels he can trust us.' Taki stared into the distance, calculating. 'That's what he'll say anyway. It's our chance to get as much tactical advantage out of the situation as possible whether he's lying or not.'

'Mm,' said Klaus indecipherably.

Taki lay close to edge of the bed with his back to Klaus, a position which somehow felt a lot less safe than he had figured at first. Klaus opened one eye to look at him. Taki's uneasy, defensive figure reminded Klaus of his first day at the academy when he had retreated into a cocoon of bedsheets.

'You know,' Klaus murmured, sliding a hand behind his head. 'This is practically marriage. We had something that passes for sex and now we're having work-related pillow talk.'

Taki didn't know how to reply, but heat rose to his face in the darkness.

The curtain hadn't been drawn the whole way across the expansive bedroom window. A sliver of moonlight fell on the dresser, illuminating the scotch whose siren call Klaus had evaded earlier (only to submit to a far more alluring siren not long afterwards, he thought). He recalled from last night that it had been quality scotch.

In his last moments before sleep, an insignificant but obvious piece of the Reizen puzzle fell into place. Taki's code prohibited the consumption of alcohol. In fact, in all the time he'd known him, Klaus had only once seen Taki lift a glass to his lips - the day they had mourned the loss of a cadet in Luckenwalde. And yet there was always a bottle on that dresser, sometimes containing whisky, other times a mature wine or brandy. Drinks that had always been to Klaus' taste.

Which means, he thought before promptly falling asleep.

Hans Regenwalde was awake when they arrived the following morning, giving the appearance that he had remained thus, sitting poised and upright on the edge of his cot, for the entire night.

They spent upwards of two hours in front of his cell. Taki did most of the questioning. Uemura and Hasebe were nearby. A second lieutenant hunkered near the doorway, out of Hans' sight, examining a large, creased map that was spread over his lap and listening through speakers to a transceiver.

Their plan worked beautifully. Under the guise of basic interrogation, Taki had Hans speaking continuously. Though everyone in the cell was aware that each word was carefully weighed beforehand, Taki and Klaus hoped Hans would be guarding himself against the wrong thing. Misdirection. It had been Klaus' plan originally, honed and revised by Taki.

'Whether he's lying about his allegiance or not,' Taki stated bluntly to Uemura and Hasebe on their way to the cell. 'There must be another Brass special ops team nearby, if only to gather intelligence about yesterday's raid. I'm going to get Regenwalde to tell us where they are.'

Hans steadily outlined his military past, his missions, accomplishments, promotions, political inclinations. He only hesitated when names were demanded. Taki feigned mild frustration when he hit these walls and artfully dived back into questions about Western Alliance special ops tactics as if they were a consolation prize. Hans seemed happy to divulge.

A small hand gesture from Taki would make the second lieutenant twist the dial, murmur orders.

Klaus watched him work with new reverence. It seemed there was nothing the young prince wasn't capable of.

Towards the end of the second hour, Klaus, whose grasp of military strategy wasn't as advanced as his master's, nevertheless understood that a triangulation of sorts had taken place. The second lieutenant had hinted from the shadows, with mouthed words and gestures, that he needed one more piece of information to make the call.

Taki, however, appeared to have exhausted his diagonal questioning skills. Perhaps this needed a less delicate touch.

Klaus waited for the perfect moment to interrupt Hans' steady dialogue. Then he laughed once, short and loud.

'Sounds like you slept through advanced raid tactics,' he intoned. 'Everyone knows you need a reliable vantage point. Told you he was full of shit, Taki.'

Hans' gaze was both calm and piercing. Not unlike someone else I know, a thought barrelled into Klaus' mind out of nowhere.

'A vantage point does not necessarily imply from ground level,' Hans replied with the air of a patient teacher correcting his wayward pupil. 'The team on the ground would only need a means of communicating with the team in the air. A combined…'

Taki didn't wait for him to finish. The second lieutenant gave a swift nod of confirmation and Taki was out the door with Uemura and Hasebe hot on his heels.

For the first time, Hans seemed surprised. He stared after Taki and then glanced uneasily at Klaus who had sacrificed a few seconds away from Taki to reap the satisfaction of that expression.

'Still smart, Hans,' he stated. 'But not smart enough. You're in Reizen territory now.'

A FEW MOMENTS AGO, WHILE HANS WAS TALKING
The second lieutenant had sent out a transmission requesting information about any air activity, both enemy and friendly, that had flown near the fifteenth armoured division compound that morning. Most were reports of their own airforce on routine patrols. But there was one report about a single civilian aircraft, technically a friendly, that had unexpectedly flown off course before correcting itself. Rookie error, they'd thought.

A vantage point from the sky, Hans had inadvertently told them.

They'd intercepted this plane's single innocuous transmission and decoded it. It was the third point of the triangulation. There was indeed another special ops team, four clicks out, several hundred strong. All this had been gathered in under a minute and a half since Hans' slip of the tongue.

Taki and his crew gunned Murakumo to life and Klaus blazed a trail before them.

Lieutenant General Hans Regenwalde sat back down, host to a strange mix of feelings.

The black ants were good but, with the element of surprise, Taki's offensive was better. Klaus' rifle and grenades blew holes in their formations and sent them scattering right into the path of the tanks.

The trees were unfortunate casualties. Taki and Klaus had never engaged in open combat in such a thickly wooded area before. Klaus felt small tugs of guilt every time a grand chestnut was blasted to its roots to clear the way for tanks or branches snapped in the aftermath of grenade explosions and hung in sad drapes. The foliage was small, cheerful and green, quite different to the swaying clumps of wisteria that featured so often in his dreams, but their suffering hurt him regardless. Inside his tank, Taki was struggling with the same thought.

Just as the final few enemy soldiers fled in retreat, a huge blast shook the ground behind the first line of tanks. Taki instinctively issued orders for half the tanks to continue their offensive before swinging Murakumo's trunk around to face these new attackers.

It didn't take long to figure out that the attackers weren't behind but above.

'It's an air strike!' Klaus yelled through the radio somewhat unnecessarily. 'At least a dozen. Go! Go!'

The planes roared above them like wasps, tailing their retreat. As they rumbled back to the compound, fearing a blast that would break them apart, Taki tried to get in touch with headquarters to ask whether they were mounting an air defence. Yes, he gathered, but with such little notice they'd be outnumbered for some time. Taki gritted his teeth.

'Klaus?'

'I'm here.'

'I –'

Taki hesitated. He suddenly realised he hadn't called for Klaus with an order in mind, or, for that matter, for any kind of useful purpose at all. Klaus' uncanny psychic abilities seemed to carry on the radio waves. He chuckled.

'Just calling to say hello?'

'Watch for the special ops soldiers,' Taki said, furious with himself. 'Don't lose your focus on the ground.'

'You're on the ground. No chance of my losing focus.'

And yet with every new detonation, Taki's heart leapt to his mouth. Every spattering of gunfire was a tan coat drenched in blood. Every blast was an upturned motorbike, a man lying on his back, face turned away, surrounded by Taki's countrymen who were afraid to touch him. Taki shook off the memory as Murakumo rolled past the main gates of the compound.

The planes turned in the sky and left.

'I know where they're going,' Hans said.

Given the events of that morning, Taki had been sure that Hans would finally confess he was no defector. After all, a combined air and land raid had been launched a mere twenty-four hours after Hans' raid. To top it off, Hans' own interrogation had led to the discovery, and forestalling, of this new strike.

Instead, without skipping a beat, Hans had impassively told Taki that his hunch about a combined land and air strike was simply that; a hunch. He'd had no knowledge of the strike and certainly didn't think the Alliance would follow up so soon with another raid.

Whatever the case, Taki felt himself fall neatly into the trap of wanting to know what Hans knew about the planes' destination.

'There's a good chance they're heading for a secret base near the Atlantian Sea. We have several bases near the shoreline that we've managed to keep hidden from you and the Euroteans.'

The room, containing the usual crowd plus several soldiers, held its breath. This would give them more information than their best spies had been able to deliver in months.

'Where?' Taki demanded.

It depended on a range of things. Maps would be needed. Taki would need to be specific about where they were spotted last, what bearing they were heading in, what kind of insignia the planes bore. Klaus smelt that it boiled down to the fact that several personnel, Taki included, would have to go into Hans' cell with equipment.

A snake slithering around the paws of a small black cat. Klaus' hackles rose. He tried to catch Taki's eye but Taki was ahead of him.

'Guards,' he commanded quietly.

The soldiers near him, four of them, raised their guns at once, all pointing in a fan towards Hans. Hans glanced at them and then back at Taki. Message received.

Klaus' hackles remained raised as Taki and Hans consulted the map and made calculations on opposite sides of a small table that had been placed in the middle of the cell. The soldiers stayed outside, guns held up without so much as a quiver. Even so, Klaus was uneasy. He hovered at Taki's side, remembering the way Hans' black grip had pulled Taki to the ground.

'Are you sure they were spotted there?'

'One of my colonels was certain he saw them.'

A memory suddenly surfaced. Once, in seventh grade, Hans had spent an entire lesson folding origami under his table. Klaus remembered watching him out of the corner of his eye for a long time. He'd found that look of intense concentration strangely hypnotic. When the teacher caught him, Hans was sent out of the room amid hearty sniggers. His dark hair, redder than it was now, didn't hide the welling tears. Klaus remembered feeling a juvenile twinge of guilt. As though he ought to have prevented his humiliation. Warned him somehow.

Now Hans stood calm and tall, a pillar of self-assurance in the midst of enemy territory. Everything and nothing had changed.

'So if we head them off before the border of No Man's land here,' said Taki intently, 'we could –'

'You can't. There will be lookouts here and…' Keeping one finger on the map, Hans moved swiftly around the table until he was behind Taki. His arm grazed Taki's as he pointed to a different region. 'Here.'

In one sudden stride, Klaus seized Hans roughly by his collar and thrust him backwards. Hans stumbled against the wall but regained his footing easily enough. His face registered mild surprise. The guards yelled a few warnings but were silenced by Taki's raised hand.

Klaus stood between them and stared Hans down; a tamer repeat of their meeting the previous day.

More memories. Beyond origami, outside the school, ringing bicycle bells, a dusty football field, glancing up from his game to see Hans being thrown off his bike by older students, being beaten. Kicked. Indignation flaring.

Had he always been a snake? Had Klaus simply missed that fact years ago?

'I didn't mean any harm,' Hans said carefully.

Taki stared, wondering how Klaus so effortlessly managed to escalate any situation he was in.

'Leave us, Klaus. You're overreacting.'

It took several heated seconds before Klaus moved out of the way. As Hans approached the table again, Taki squared his shoulders.

'I'll remind you,' he said curtly, 'of the guns pointed this way.'

'I assure you I didn't forget,' Hans replied.

A few minutes later, when everything was packed up and the cell door clanged shut, Hans once again watched Taki and Klaus leave the building together. He smiled gently, suspicions confirmed.

Klaus waited outside the main building for what felt like hours. Taki had told him to wait there with a tone that could have been directed at a disobedient retriever. He sulked. He angrily imagined Hans fucking Taki on all fours. He then angrily imagined fucking Taki on all fours while Taki choked on Hans' cock. He kicked a dry branch and it went skittering across the dirt.

Finally, towards evening, Taki and Uemura emerged followed by several soldiers Klaus hadn't seen before. They piled into four jeeps, three soldiers per vehicle, and drove out of the compound. Klaus sat up front beside the driver and Taki took the rear.

Klaus didn't muster the energy to ask where they were going. In any case, he couldn't be sure Taki would even have replied – his half-lidded gaze was trained out the window.

Eventually, after about an hour, Klaus sighed majestically and climbed over the front seat and sprawled in the back, his right leg pressing against Taki's left. The driver didn't glance back but Taki pulled away all the same.

'I get it,' Klaus announced. 'You had a big meeting where you all decided you'd drive me to the middle of nowhere and shoot me. Is that it?'

The landscape shifted outside. The trees were replaced by moors, wild and overgrown.

'I'm flattered you think you need twelve soldiers and three jeeps for the job.'

'If you are ever to interject in one of my meetings again like you did today,' Taki began icily, 'it will only be when my life is in immediate danger. Do you understand?'

Klaus felt a surge of anger.

'And what if your honour is in immediate danger? Should I just sit back and watch?'

Taki looked at him in disbelief. He met Klaus' searing gaze for several moments. Of all the people to be talking about my honour –

He took a deep, silent breath and calmed himself. There were more pressing matters. Klaus had yet to be briefed about the new mission.

'Listen.'

Despite everything, Taki felt a strange, simmering excitement when he imagined how Klaus might react.

He detailed his lengthy conversation with headquarters. Their new plan of action was to follow up on Hans' information about the Alliance's secret airbases near the sea. He outlined what Klaus would need to do. Klaus listened, his incredulity mounting. There was no way Taki could possibly have been clearer. And yet, surely it couldn't mean…

The airfield swam into view out of the gloom of dusk. Klaus' heart thudded audibly.

He still couldn't believe it even when Taki and Uemura led them around the hangar to where a row of Beaufighters waited in silence. Through a whirlwind of emotion, Klaus took in the twin-engine heavy fighter, her pointed nose, her sleeping propellers. He was already weightless, the wind, like a real thing, a live animal, was already whipping past his goggles, whistling urgently in his ears.

One of the soldiers – a pilot, Klaus realised – strode past him, buckling in his helmet. While Klaus had been busy gaping, the others had donned their gear.

'Taki…'

Klaus glanced down to see Taki holding out a pair of goggles to him. Klaus took them mutely.

'I assume you remember how to fly,' said Taki. He looked up with a small, dazzling smile that took Klaus' breath away. 'Lycanthrope.'