That's terrifying. That is incredibly attractive. Zoe is going to kill him and she's going to be right --

"Okay," and he's audibly a little bit nervous but only a little bit. "So --"

"Do you like knives?"

She still has the murdersmile, like she's very curious what exactly is inside his body.

"Never tried them," nervous, god she's beautiful --

"I won't, unless you like them."

She flicks open a butterfly knife from the nightstand.

"But I do."

"I," fuuuck this is such a bad idea, "would like to find out."

And he does.

She's very careful with his safety and very terrifying.

There's a certain-- lack of restraint in her behavior, a certain amount of giving herself over to ripping him apart, making him hurt.

But it's very striking that, when she holds a knife to his throat, she's careful not to cut him.

Mordred has been beat up before. He's hurt himself, carefully in closed rooms where no one would notice; he's asked for boxing lessons from boys he liked; he's even gotten Lev to hit him, a few times.

He has never been hurt like this. The boy who gave him boxing lessons was holding back, trying to teach him; Lev was holding back, trying to be careful; last time they'd done this even Inaaya had been holding back. And -- she's still holding back, some, when she puts a knife to his throat it's terrifying in the way that's fun and not in the way where he's genuinely worried he might die -- but it's not the same.

It had been fun before. It had been a lot of fun. And now he knows what it's like when it's enough.

And when they're done she kisses his forehead and strokes his hair and tucks him under the crook of her shoulder and grabs a notebook and starts making notes in incoherent shorthand and muttering to herself.

Mordred drapes an arm over her waist and buries his face in her shoulder.

"Love you," he says when he can get words to work, which takes a while. He's floaty and warm and euphoric and Inaaya is so good.

Some time later, Inaaya puts away her notebook and kisses Mordred and says, "do you want to have a threesome?"

Blink blink. Mordred.exe is not yet online.

"With who?" is the first thing out of his mouth.

"Joan or Louise."

"I sometimes fuck Mariam, but it's pretty strictly a Nectar thing."

Wow that's not a sentence with horrifying implications or anything!

"I don't know either of them very well?" he says, instead of any of the things he's thinking, which are mostly about Lev. "Not that I wouldn't like to know them better, but --"

"Reasonable," Inaaya says. "I guess I don't know how much you like"-- she gestures-- "sex with random people."

She thinks about it. "I guess you don't either."

"It has not really come up, no," he agrees. "And I think I'd like trying it out to be --" vague gesture -- "low-stakes."

"That makes sense."

Teasing: "and is another thing that'd get fixed by taking Bangkok Nectar."

"See, I feel like adding more violence and trying a new drug for the first time would not make the experience lower-stakes."

"Sure, but once you're on it you wouldn't care."

"Nectar's great like that."

"Sober preferences count more than other preferences. At least according to me."

"I guess."

Different topic different topic can they be on a different topic please-- "I don't actually think I've ever talked to Joan?"

"Huh. Probably you should, at some point. If we're going to be--"

She gestures.

"Yeah. I should. --most of the people I'd want to introduce you to aren't here, but. It's nice meeting people who are important to you."

He's tracing absentminded patterns over her side with his fingertips.

"Who'd you want to introduce me to?"

"My brother and my best friend. And you've met Lev."