Three chapters! There's much to be said for setting yourself a challenge, apparently.

—-

Khashoggi was watching the changing colours of the sunrise spreading across the ceiling, a flush of reds and oranges fading to paler pinks as the minutes passed.

He was lost in thought, and hadn't noticed Meat stirring until she propped herself up on her elbows, smiling crookedly at him, face still crumpled from the pillow. "Morning."

He looked down at her, and smiled back. "Good morning." The sunlight was catching her cheek, her hair; she glowed in the morning sun.

Meat studied him. "You look deep in thought, what's on your mind?" She shot him a quick grin. "Or don't I want to know?"

He laughed, and rolled his eyes at her, making her smile again. He paused to take a sip from the glass on the bedside table before replying, "Nile."

The grin on her face disappeared immediately, with a flash of sadness passing across her face, though only for a second before she merely looked inquisitive. "Why?"

Andrei sighed. "Scara was asking about him yesterday. She seems to have got half a story from somewhere - Paul, I'd imagine - and she thinks I've got the rest."

Meat's head tilted to one side. "Do you?"

"Some of it," he admitted. "Fragments from the police, and then whatever we got - later." 'Later' meant, 'when we had all of you rounded up in cells and tortured you for information'; a euphemism they both knew and both ignored.

Meat turned over so that she was lying on her back by his side, pulling the covers closer around her. He smiled, and reached for her shoulder, rubbing his thumbs into the dip of her collarbone, a soothing gesture.

"Are you going to tell her?" Meat asked, and her voice was muffled by the duvet. He tilted his head, looking up to the ceiling, and sighed.

"I don't know."

"What do you think made her interested, though?" Meat frowned, turning over again. Andrei huffed a little, and lifted his arm so that she could make herself comfortable again.

"Honestly, you're such a pain in the arse to share a bed with." He told her, stroking her hair back from her face once she'd snuggled back down again, facing him once more. "I honestly don't know how she's come across it, but she was absolutely enthralled."

"Get a bigger one then," Meat scraped her teeth playfully across his hip, and grinned dirtily up at him when it drew a gasp, then dodged a swat aimed at her head. "She's not been interested in drugs, has she?"

Andrei shook his head. "Not that I've been aware of. Weed, obviously, but that's par for the course with you lot." He stretched his arms up, leaning his head each way to loosen up, and glanced over to check the time on his phone. "I should be off in a bit."

"Hmm," Meat agreed, checking her own phone. "Oh! Ha, look," she showed him the screen, with a text from Scaramouche:

make sure A comes in 2day, need him to finish a story

—

A story thought Andrei, on his walk to work. He'd left Meat in bed, begged her not to try cooking anything, and promised that if she wanted a hot breakfast he'd order it for her. The last thing he wanted was a repeat of the last time she'd tried to cook (although they did go halves on the new kitchen, and it had been very enjoyable watching her standing on a ladder to paint the kitchen ceiling).

A story was one way to describe it. Scaramouche's generation of bohemians (this accounted for about half of them) was a mass of young, bright-eyed hopeful kids, whose eyes widened almost comically when they heard the tales of the older cohort. Paul's story of Nile would certainly stir up interest if Scara shared it - but then, she'd never been one for gossip. He glanced automatically across the road before crossing it, and it wasn't until Moxy fell into step beside him that his train of thought was interrupted.

"Morning, sir," said Andrei's underling, shifting his bag on his shoulder and grinning cheerfully up at him. "Nice day for it."

"Is there ever a nice day to work two levels underground?" Andrei queried drily, and it was a mark of how well he and Moxy had come to know one another that the younger man only grinned wider.

"Ah, don't be like that, sir. Look, the sun's shining, we're nearly finished with the Oxygen stadium plans, it's all coming together!" Moxy shot him a hopeful look. "Like, it's going so well, we could easily finish by tonight, and then I guess we wouldn't have much to do on Friday…"

Andrei laughed. "Don't push your luck. We'll test your structure today, and if it passes, we'll see."

"Awesome," Moxy beamed. "I'll shoot Paul a message and see if he fancies a drink." Andrei raised an eyebrow.

"He fancies more than that, I think."

"Ughh," Moxy covered his eyes with his hands and shook his head. "Don't do that,"

"Do what? I think it's wonderful that Paul has taken the time to build such a close relationship with you. It must be wonderful to have him there to support you." Andrei was occasionally glad of his ability to keep a straight face under almost any circumstances, and Moxy's acute embarrassment was certainly worth it. The young man's face was flushed red when he lifted his hands and ruffled one through his hair, rolling his eyes at his boss.

"It is so gross when you do that."

"That'll teach you to try and skive off on mosh Friday." Andrei told him shortly, but without much bite. He gestured to the door. "After you."

—

The morning passed quickly, with Andrei agreeing to let Moxy choose the music, which only boosted his ever-ready good humour. Every so often, Moxy's green hair would fly into Andrei's line of sight over the top of their respective monitors, as Moxy nodded his head enthusiastically in time with whatever nonsense was playing at the time.

"Oh, hey, so - I meant to ask you," said Moxy after a few hours of mostly no conversation between the pair. "Do you know what the plan is for next - "

He was interrupted by the door banging open, and Scaramouche appeared in the doorway, hair a messy purple halo around her face, which looked unusually happy. "Hey, gang,"

Andrei rolled his eyes. "Are we really still doing the "gang" business? I thought we agreed on "team", if - "

"Yeah, yeah, if I absolutely have to quantify it, I know," Scaramouche had already started shifting piles of papers off a nearby chair onto the floor, and collapsed into it, swinging her legs up onto the desk next to her, and pulling a bottle of water out of her bag. "Are you busy?"

Andrei, finally accepting that he wasn't going to end up getting much more done before midday, waved a hand across the top of his monitor to trigger its shutdown sequence, and turned to face her. "You can take your lunch now, if you'd like," he told his assistant, who needed no encouragement whatsoever, and after gathering his phone off the desk and high-fiving Scaramouche, was out of the door in a remarkably short time.

"So!" Scaramouche was almost rubbing her hands together in anticipation. "You got to the bit where he left a note."

"Yes," he steepled his fingers, and leaned back in his chair. "First, though - where has this come from?"

"Eh?"

"I mean, where did you hear about Nile?" He raised an eyebrow, in no small part because he knew it would annoy her.

"Ugh. Did Meat put you on to this?" Scara demanded. "I bet she did, the nosy cow. I mean, ok, sorry -" Andrei had pursed his lips at the insult, "sorry, that was uncalled for. It's just. Never mind. It was Paul that mentioned him."

"Which one?"

Scaramouche cocked her head, looking confused. "Uh…"

Andrei sighed. "Which one did Paul mention? Nile or Iggy?" Scaramouche wrinkled her nose. "Nile. Why? Who's Iggy?"

Andrei watched her for a long moment, then said "If you know about Nile, sooner or later you'll find out about Iggy."

"Paul didn't mention him."

"No." Andrei agreed, gravely. "I wouldn't have thought he would."

Scaramouche sat up straighter, brows furrowed. "Well hang on then, who's this Iggy?" She looked deep in thought. "I've not heard the name before, even from Pop."

"I don't believe he was around during Pop's time. I understand that Nile's time in the Heartbreak was while Pop was in prison." Andrei slipped a hand into his pocket and withdrew his communicator, tapping at the screen and watching as lines of text began to scroll across the screen. She watched eagerly as he read through it, eyes flicking from side to side on the screen.

Presently, he raised his head again. "Yes. Pop was in prison during the time that he - Iggy - was known to be residing in the Heartbreak Hotel."

Scaramouche narrowed her eyes. "So, Iggy."

He sighed. "If you actually want the whole story, we need to carry on with Paul, first."

She rolled her eyes theatrically. "Fine."

—

Paul hadn't really thought this through. The packs of dried food he'd brought with him relied on distilled water to make them edible - and the water filter he'd brought, relied on him being able to find a water source at all.

It had been over a day since he'd left home, and several hours since he'd finished the (stupidly small, now he thought about it) supply of water he'd brought with him.

He had been walking through the night, having made the assumption that it would be safest to at least already be on his feet if he encountered anyone unsavoury, and he could see the faint blue light of dawn beginning to fade in at the horizon. He checked his watch (a manual relic, handed down through generations - he'd been careful to leave all of his electronic possessions at home) and saw that it was nearly six in the morning.

Yawning, he looked around him, trying to get a decent guage of his surroundings. There was a lot of green, but he could still hear the humming sound of e-transport from not too far away. With no way of calculating how far he'd walked, and having walked away from the main roads to avoid being collected by any hyper-vigilant cops, he realised he had absolutely no idea where he was.

And also, no idea which way he was meant to be going.

He sat down, and dropped his head into his hands. Fuck.

"Well," he said, "I guess if I was going to get ambushed by Bohemians, this would be the time for it to happen."

"Brilliant," said a delighted voice, from right behind him.

—

"Oh, for fuck's sake! You're just taking the piss now!"

"Well, this part isn't exactly highly documented. You wanted the backstory, and unless you want to go and get a more detailed version from anyone else, you can bloody well shut up and listen to this."

"FINE,"

—-

Having been nearly shocked out of his wits, Danny turned, and felt his mouth fall open. Standing behind him was the most outlandishly dressed person he had ever seen -

—-

"Not saying much, is it."

"Scaramouche I swear to god -"

"Ok, ok, sorry, shutting up now,"

—-

-the most outlandishly dressed person he had ever seen. Their hair was dyed a variety of colours, and knotted into fantastic braids that reached down their back. Their clothes were worn loose, and were quite shabby, but it was clear from the person's stature and posture that they wore these clothes with enormous pride.

"Looking for the bohemians, lad?" Asked the man, and Danny blinked.

"Yeah. Um. Hello?" He scrambled to his feet, and found out that even from a standing position, the man still towered above him by at least a foot. The man clapped him on the back.

"The name's Bob." He scrutinised Danny, then offered him a hand to shake. Danny did. "Danny".

"Hmm," Bob nodded, still shaking Danny's hand and looking alarmingly closely into Danny's face. "Yeah. Good base, that. We can do a lot with 'Danny'."

"Er, sorry, what -"

"SEAL," shouted Bob, ignoring Danny completely, but still gripping his hand. "I've got you a protege."

The sound of someone approaching at a run reached Danny, who tried to spin around to spot the source of the noise. He'd unfortunately neglected to remember that his bag was still on the floor, however, and he promptly fell over it, and swore loudly.

"Oh, excellent," said Bob, delightedly, "you'll do nicely."

—

Seal, it turned out, was far more normal than Bob, although Danny thought later that the word 'normal' wasn't really doing any of the bohemians that he'd come to meet, much justice at all.

Once he'd got himself back up off the ground, he'd come face to face with Seal, who introduced herself very kindly, and had offered him a bottle of water which he'd accepted with almost delirious gratitude, and she hadn't minded at all when he'd drained over half of it in one go. She'd patted him on the shoulder, and had told him not to worry about Bob, and explained that he didn't get out very often, because of the immense patience it took to get him to stay on track.

"Excuse me," Bob's head appeared over the top of a nearby bush, which he'd apparently been investigating for what he called 'materials', "Seal, you're painting me in a terrible light there. If I only ever kept to the plan, I wouldn't have found this lovely young man, now would I?"

Seal rolled her eyes good-humouredly. "Bob, you're being a prat. Ignore him, Danny. Anyway. Do you fancy telling us what you're running from?"

Danny scuffed the floor with the toe of one of his once-white (now stained almost completely beyond repair) trainers, and shrugged a bit. "How do you know I'm running from anything?"

Seal and Bob exchanged grins. "It's what we deal in," Seal explained. "If the bohemians pick you up and you don't run a mile, then you're most likely to stick with us."

"The runaways," Bob elaborated, waving his arms dramatically, while Seal looked amusedly on. "The disenfranchised youth, the rebels, the dreamers."

Danny coughed. "I guess - I mean, you could say I was. Escaping. Does escaping work?"

Seal threw an arm over his shoulder. "Oh, honey. Escapees are the best ones."