“Fuck!”
The shout woke Sebastian with a flailing start. His arm reached automatically down the side of the mattress, to the knife he kept beneath it.
It wasn’t there.
Alarmed and disoriented and still half-asleep, Sebastian scanned the room. This wasn’t his bed, his flat—
—and then he remembered the hotel, and last night.
Jay sat cross-legged at the foot of the bed, wearing the loose t-shirt and boxers he’d gone to sleep in. His attention was entirely on the phone in his hands; he tapped furiously at the screen, muttering a long string of invective.
He wasn’t hurt, or scared, and Sebastian’s pounding heartbeat began to slow. He groaned and rubbed his eyes. “What’s wrong?”
“She leaked it!” Jay snarled, without looking up from his phone. “She leaked her own fucking show!”
Sebastian hauled himself into a sitting position and said, “What?”
Jay shoved his phone at Sebastian.
Anya Clay
@theanyaclay
Delighted to announce that I will be producing the Wings of Grimpeak series for SFV+! Production starts in Canada next year. I’m so excited to finally bring Grimpeak Eyrie to life!
“Must’ve sold her a little too well on the Canada thing,” Sebastian said. “We can handle this, right?”
“It gets worse.” Jay pulled his phone back and typed for a moment, then turned it again so Sebastian could see the screen. On it was a headline:
Canadian Actors’ Guild Boycotts SFV’s Wings of Grimpeak
Sebastian squinted at the phone. “Why the fuck would they do that?”
“Well, it turns out they’re having a big pissy dispute with SFV.” Jay threw his phone to the bed, where it bounced slightly. “When Clay announced the show, CAG figured they could use it as leverage. They slapped a ‘do not work’ order on the whole production.”
“How did this sneak up on us?” Sebastian stared at Jay in disbelief. “You didn’t check to see what was going on in Canada?”
“Nobody cares what’s going on in Canada!” Jay hopped up off the bed, pacing rapidly around the room. “And now SFV’s put a statement out. They can’t take back the announcement, but they’re denying any plans for a Canadian production.”
“Shit,” Sebastian muttered. “Where does that leave us?”
Jay’s fingers tapped restlessly against his thigh. “It’s eight hours’ difference between London and LA, right?”
“Yeah,” Sebastian confirmed. “Nobody at SFV will even be awake until this afternoon.”
“Then we need to talk to her before they do.”
Anya awoke to a deluge of alerts about Grimpeak and the Canadian Actors’ Guild. Her inbox contained two emails of note; one was strongly-worded lecture from some solicitor at SFV, telling her off for breaking NDA and warning her not to reveal any more information about the show. The other was a terse meeting invite for later in the week to “discuss our options for filming locations.”
They’d left her in the dark yet again. And it would be well into the evening before she had even the barest hope of getting them on the phone.
But as Anya scrolled through the headlines and fumed, her phone pinged. It was an email from Owen Ingram, asking to meet.
If she couldn’t get any useful information from SFV, she could at least wring it out of Ingram.
Anya found him waiting in Eliot House’s lounge, perched in an armchair as he scrolled through something on his phone. She sat heavily in the chair across from him. “I assume you’ve seen the news?”
“I have.” Ingram tucked his phone into his jacket. “Honestly, it’s not the first time CAG has botched a deal like this.” He sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “The whole industry would be better off without the fucking unions. Sometimes I think the government should just dismantle them, like New Zealand did.”
Intrigued, Anya said, “What happened in New Zealand?”
“There was a big production, like yours, stalled out in a union dispute,” Ingram explained. “The producers were about to pull out, but the government wanted to keep it in the country. So with some, ah, ‘encouragement,’ they passed a law declaring that film workers were independent contractors and couldn’t bargain collectively.”
A solution began to percolate in Anya’s mind. “Is it possible the Canadian government would agree to a deal like that?”
“It’s an interesting thought.” Ingram leaned forward in his seat; his voice dropped to a low murmur. “I have a friend in the Canadian parliament. He might be able to help.” He glanced around the room, checking to see whether anyone was listening, and went on: “The payment would need to be, er … discreet. MPs aren’t exactly supposed to take big donations from foreign nationals.”
“Easily done,” Anya said, waving it off. “Have him invoice a consulting fee to the Scriptus Foundation.”
For a moment, Ingram looked surprised—impressed by Anya’s decisiveness, perhaps. With a nod, he said, “I’ll pass it along.”
As Anya leaned back in her chair, all the tension from that morning drained away. She couldn’t wait to tell those smug bastards at SFV that she’d solved their little labour spat for them.
As he departed Eliot House, Jay received a pair of texts from Moran:
Need you to meet me at McMurdo’s, 1400. Bring gym clothes.
It’s important.
The blinds over the gym’s windows were drawn when Jay arrived. A sign on the door read “Closed for Private Event,” but the door itself was unlocked.
Inside, the gym was completely empty. There wasn’t a soul in sight except for Moran, waiting patiently at the edge of the boxing ring. He took one look at the laptop bag slung over Jay’s shoulder and said, “You brought your computer?”
“It’s adorable that you think I own a gym bag,” Jay shot back. “Are we the private event?”
Moran nodded. “Called in a favour with the owner.”
“Why?”
“Because the next time you’re in danger and I can’t help, I need to know you’ve got a fighting chance.”
He was so deadly serious that Jay immediately clamped down on the urge to laugh; it came out of him as a quiet snort. “You expect me to beat someone like Reeve in a fight?”
“No,” Moran replied patiently, “I expect you to sucker punch him and run.” His voice was level, but there was a desperate look in his eyes.
Jay said, “I’ll go get changed.”
The changing area wasn’t much—just a row of lockers and a shower room. Despite the fact that he was utterly alone, Jay couldn’t help the old apprehension at the thought of stripping down in such a relatively public place. It wasn’t safe to wear his binder while exercising, so he took it off and quickly pulled on the t-shirt and shorts he’d shoved into the laptop bag.
When Jay left the changing rooms, he found Moran waiting by one of the practice bags that hung along the wall. He rolled his eyes. “I know how to throw a punch, Moran.”
“The last time you punched someone, did you break your fucking hand?”
Jay glared at him, which was all the answer Moran needed.
Stepping forward, he took Jay’s hand and turned it palm-up. “Next time, you’re going to use the heel of your palm.” He tapped the spot in question. “Don’t ever hit someone with a closed fist.”
“You hit people with your fists all the time.”
“Because I’ve conditioned my hands to take that kind of punishment,” Moran replied. “And even then, I wouldn’t fight bare-knuckle unless I had no other options. Now,” he moved behind Jay, positioning him, “hit the bag.”
He had Jay practice the same strike, over and over again, correcting him with the occasional “step forward,” or “turn your waist into it.” Once he was satisfied with Jay’s form, he took his hand again.
“When you hit someone, focus on the soft tissue around the head,” he said, and ignored Jay’s childish snicker. “Right up under the jaw, or the arteries in the neck, or the throat—” he used Jay’s hand to point out each spot on his own body, “—the eyes or the eardrums—”
“Or the bollocks?” Jay suggested with a vulgar smirk.
“As a secondary target, sure.” A brief twitch of the lips was Moran’s only reaction to Jay’s ham-fisted flirting. “It’ll hurt, but not enough to take your opponent down. You need to follow it up right away with a blow to the head—your goal is to put the other guy on the ground and run away.”
“And if I can’t run away?”
“That’s the next part.”
Over the next few hours, Moran took him through a handful of ways to break a hold—how to lever all of his weight into the weakest part of his opponent’s grip, how to twist free rather than pit strength against strength. He guided Jay to lie on the floor, and there was a brief thrill of fear as he straddled Jay’s waist, pinning him to the mats—but then he began to talk Jay through the steps needed to throw him off, and the sense of danger passed.
They went through the whole process, step by step—bracing his hands and feet at Moran’s weak points, levering his hips up to roll them both over—until Jay had them memorised. Then, Moran had him do it at full speed.
Moran’s back hit the mats far more easily than Jay had expected, breath puffing out of him in a soft grunt. Jay’s hands instinctively went to Moran’s wrists and pinned them to the floor. Moran stared up at Jay, mouth hanging open just a little, but made no effort to throw him off.
Right. He was supposed to run away. Jay pulled back, easing his weight off Moran’s wrists.
Something suspiciously like a whine escaped Moran’s mouth, and Jay’s brain stuttered to a halt.
Sebastian was flushed, his eyes wide. His throat bobbed in a nervous swallow. For the first time since Jay had met him, he looked uncertain about what would happen next.
Slowly, Jay leaned forward and shifted his weight back onto his hands, tightening his grip on Sebastian’s wrists.
Sebastian’s eyelids fluttered, and he tipped his head back to expose his neck. A shuddery little sigh worked its way up from his chest as he went pliant and still under Jay’s weight. There was an expectant look in his half-lidded eyes.
Jay understood just enough of what was happening here to know he was in over his head.
He bent low and brushed his lips lightly against Sebastian’s, a wordless question that Sebastian responded to eagerly, opening his mouth under Jay’s in another short, soft sigh.
Jay pressed in harder, deeper, inhaling through his nose as he thoroughly claimed Sebastian’s mouth. Sebastian’s wrists flexed under Jay’s hands, his fingers closing into fists, but he didn’t push back against Jay’s grip. His hips arched up where Jay’s weight pressed them to the floor, and Jay quickly had a full understanding of just what this was doing for him.
He couldn’t touch Sebastian and keep him pinned at the same time—but his hands weren’t the thing holding him down. Not really.
Jay broke away from the kiss, panting into Sebastian’s open mouth. “Keep your hands where they are.”
Sebastian nodded immediately, something hot and needy in his eyes.
Jay released his wrists and leaned back, slowly dragging his hands down Sebastian’s chest. He eased off Sebastian’s hips, moving instead to kneel between his thighs, and hooked his fingers into Sebastian’s waistband.
Sebastian was breathing in deep, ragged pants, eyes darting between Jay’s face and his hands—but his wrists didn’t move where Jay had pinned them.
A fierce kind of satisfaction shot through Jay’s body, all in one scorching rush. He felt dizzy, giddy. Sebastian Moran could kill just about anyone he wanted, and here he was laid out beneath Jay’s hands, and he wasn’t going to move until Jay said he could.
Jay’s fingers shook a little as he pulled Sebastian’s waistband down and bent to draw him into his mouth.
A hoarse shout ripped from Sebastian’s throat; he writhed against the mat, but even now stayed where he’d been put. Jay’s pleased hum made Sebastian gasp and twitch, so he did it again.
He was, admittedly, a little out of his depth; the only pricks he’d sucked up until now had been of the silicone variety, and those could endure much more rough handling than Sebastian probably could. Jay knew enough to keep his teeth out of the way, and the rest was experimentation: testing his own limits and teasing Sebastian, filing away every little reaction because he absolutely planned to do this again.
No matter how long Jay toyed with him, and even as Jay finally pushed him over the edge, Sebastian kept his wrists pressed to the mat.
As Sebastian gasped and trembled in the aftermath, Jay crawled back up the length of his body. Sebastian groaned and nuzzled weakly against his jaw.
“You can move now,” Jay murmured.
Sebastian’s fists unclenched and flexed against the mat, and then his arms came up around Jay, pulling him in close until they were tangled together on the floor.
After a moment, Jay said, “Think that’ll work on Reeve?”
Sebastian snorted a laugh into Jay’s neck.
Anya’s repeated attempts to call SFV never got past anyone’s assistant. Every time, she was told the producers on the Grimpeak project were absolutely swamped and she’d have the opportunity to ask all the questions she wanted during the meeting later this week.
Meanwhile, Ingram’s contact in the Canadian parliament had pulled through. He was all too happy to help, and had sent an invoice to Scriptus.
It was while she was reviewing the invoice that Ellis Reeve walked into her home office and said, “There is no Owen Ingram at the Canadian Film Commission.”
Anya blinked at him. “What?”
“I did some digging,” Reeve explained. “The real Owen Ingram died five years ago in a car crash.”
“Then who have I been meeting with?”
Reeve handed her the tablet he was carrying. “Tamsin Glass.”
Anya focused her attention on the tablet, sifting through the files Reeve had collected. First among them was a post by one Aidan Glass of Plymouth, begging for information about his missing daughter. Beneath it was a photo: a teenager with an unmistakable resemblance to the person she knew as Owen Ingram.
“Looks like Glass ran away from home at 14,” Reeve explained. “Got mixed up with a bad crowd. No actual convictions, but suspected involvement in quite a few data breaches and scams.”
Anya reread the post and noted the timestamp. “This is only a few days old,” she observed. “Tamsin’s family are still looking for him—her.” She sifted through the other files—mostly correspondence with Reeve’s contacts, as well as the real Owen Ingram’s death certificate—until she came across a photo Reeve must have taken himself. In it, Ingram stood outside a hotel in quiet conversation with a tall, ruggedly handsome man who had three long scars across the side of his face. “Who’s this?”
“Sebastian Moran.” Reeve said the name with no small amount of disdain. “He’s former SAS. Supposed to be a legitimate citizen these days, but it looks like Glass has him wrapped around his finger.”
Anya set the tablet down on the desk, a cacophony of thoughts whirring through her head. All of this—the production plans, the Canadian MP, the invoice—had to be an elaborate scam of some kind. An attempt to rob her. And she’d nearly fallen for it. “What do we do now?” she asked. “Call the police?”
Reeve’s immediate response was a contemptuous snort. “The Met have had years to catch Glass. They’re useless. And the moment we involve the police, we lose control of the situation.”
Anya had to admit she also found the idea … dissatisfying. She turned her attention back to the tablet, and the missing persons post. “Can you get me in touch with Tamsin’s parents?”
Jay fumbled for his phone on the bedside table and checked the time, squinting at the sudden brightness in the dark of his bedroom. It was nearly one in the morning.
He slumped back against the mattress, groaning quietly. His eyes ached, his limbs heavy with the need to just pass out and sleep—but his mind wouldn’t stop working, turning over each possible outcome of everything he’d done for the last few days.
Sebastian lay next to him, stretched out on his back and fast asleep. He’d dropped off with no effort at all; he always did. Maybe it was an army thing.
Jay would be the first to admit he was a bit protective of his own space; for most of his life, he’d had so very little of it. Most of his ill-gotten gains went toward acquiring and keeping a place of his own—one he didn’t have to share.
At first, allowing Sebastian into his flat had been an unfortunate necessity. Then it became a privilege Sebastian had earned, albeit one Jay offered with some reservation. Now—and more quickly than Jay expected—it was starting to feel like Sebastian had always been here, occupying the space as naturally as Jay did.
Even if he did keep complaining that Jay never had anything edible in the flat.
Jay grabbed the phone again and propped himself up against the pillows. His e-mail and texts were both quiet this time of night. His feeds were a little more active—the ones based in America, anyway—but not enough to distract him.
Sebastian could distract him. But then they’d both be exhausted in the morning.
Jay rolled carefully out of bed and wandered out to the living room. Restless energy compelled him to circle the flat, automatic and mindless, but it wasn’t enough. He huffed in frustration and threw himself onto the sofa, reaching for his phone yet again.
He’d scrolled through his contact list and hit the call button before he remembered the time, and winced as the phone started to ring. Surely she’d be asleep. She’d see the missed call in the morning and worry. He’d just leave a voicemail, something unimportant, and—
Ruth’s voice came down the line, confused and sleepy: “Jay?”
“Fuck,” Jay mouthed silently—then, out loud, said, “Did I wake you?”
“No, no, I’m watching telly,” Ruth lied. “You all right?”
“I’m fine.” Jay slumped forward and settled his elbows on his knees, phone to his ear. “Can’t sleep, is all.”
“You’re worried about something, then.”
Jay choked back a laugh. “You could say that. I’ve, er …” he took a breath. “I’ve taken a big risk on something. Don’t know how it’s going to play out, yet.”
Dry and weary, Ruth said, “You’re not getting into more trouble, are you?”
“Do you really want me to answer that?”
“I suppose not,” Ruth said. “I just hope you’re doing this—whatever it is—for a good reason.”
“… I don’t know.” Jay sniffed and rubbed his eyes. “I don’t really know why I’m doing it.”
“Then maybe you shouldn’t.”
“I have to.” It came out more desperate than Jay intended. “The whole world fucking hates me, Ruth, and I can’t do a thing about it. Except this.” He took a shaky breath. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have called—”
“No, no, no,” Ruth interrupted. “I’m glad you did.” She was quiet for a moment. “You have someone looking out for you, yeah?”
Jay glanced toward the bedroom. “Yeah.”
“And you trust him?”
An image flashed through Jay’s mind: Sebastian, baring his throat on the floor of the gym. “… Yeah.”
“Then you look out for him, and let him look out for you, and it’ll be all right. No matter what happens.”
“Okay.” Jay eased back against the cushions and closed his eyes. “Thanks.”
“Now go to bed,” Ruth said. “And be safe.”
“I will,” Jay promised. “Goodnight.”
“Goodnight, pet.”
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