Chapter 210: Chapter 210: Right pay.

Dean didn’t bother denying it.

He dragged his fingers slowly through Boreas’s fur again, more for the rhythm than anything else, and stared at the line where sunlight cut across the ceiling like something clean and distant from the rest of it.

“I’m thinking,” he said, because there was no point pretending otherwise, “that you’re going to disappear into something ugly again and expect me to sit here and behave about it.”

Arion’s hand tightened once, almost imperceptibly, over Dean’s knee.

“That’s not what I expect,” he said.

“No?” Dean tilted his head, looking down at him. “Because historically, that is exactly what you expect. Everyone stands still. Everyone trusts you to come back. No one interferes with the Crown Prince while he goes to solve problems with violence and very bad odds.”

Arion opened his eyes.

There was nothing soft in them now. Not cold either. Just… clear. Focused in that way, it meant he had already mapped the argument three steps ahead and decided which parts he would allow to exist.

“I expect you,” Arion said slowly, “to not walk into something you are not prepared for.”

Dean moved his hand from Boreas fur to Arion’s dark, soft hair. “I guess it is fair.”

Arion went still in a way Dean had already begun to understand meant danger of a different kind.

Dean felt it under his palm, the faint tension at the base of Arion’s neck, the measured way he did not immediately lean into the touch even though the bond gave him away anyway. The want was there. So was the caution. Arion treated tenderness like he treated battle plans: seriously, with suspicion, and only after considering every possible point of weakness.

Dean’s fingers moved once through his hair, slower this time.

“But I want to be with you, Arion. Even if from a distance,” he said, more quietly.

Arion looked up at him.

For a second he said nothing at all. The summer light caught against the sharp line of his face, against the dark lashes, and against that controlled, impossible expression that always made him look as though he had already survived the worst version of any conversation before it even began.

“That,” Arion said at last, voice low, “is not the same request.”

Dean’s mouth twitched faintly. “No?”

“No.” Arion’s hand shifted against his leg, not gripping now, only resting there with a weight that felt deliberate. Grounding. “Asking to fight beside me is one thing. Asking not to be shut out of the idea of being in my vicinity is another.”

Dean looked at him for a beat, then away, because hearing his own thoughts arranged so neatly by someone else was irritating in ways that felt uncomfortably personal.

“Well,” Dean muttered, “you have an infuriating habit of stripping the drama out of my arguments and filing them into something… organized.”

“You will want to fight eventually,” Arion said quietly, his eyes closing as he leaned more fully into Dean’s hand. “I saw you fight Nero. You fought me. It’s only a matter of time before you ask it plainly, or decide not to ask at all and intervene because you can help.”

Dean’s fingers stilled for half a second in his hair.

“You—”

“I’m willing to negotiate,” Arion added, a faint smile touching his mouth, eyes still closed.

Dean stared down at him.

There it was.

Not the Crown Prince. Not the man who walked into councils and rearranged outcomes like pieces on a board.

This… this was worse.

This was Arion, aware of exactly what he was doing, choosing softness like a weapon and resting his head in Dean’s lap as if that alone could tilt the entire conversation in his favor.

Dean resumed the slow movement of his fingers through his hair, more out of instinct than decision, and narrowed his eyes slightly.

“You’re unbelievable.”

Arion’s mouth shifted faintly beneath the weight of Dean’s accusation.

“Yes,” he said.

Dean let out a slow breath through his nose. “That is an infuriating answer.”

Arion did not dispute that either. He remained where he was, head in Dean’s lap, one hand still over Dean’s knee, the other loose near his own chest, as if this entire negotiation had somehow become more effective once he stopped pretending dignity needed furniture.

Boreas, great useless brute that he was, shifted again and settled even more broadly across Dean’s lower legs, the canine equivalent of a military checkpoint being reinforced without approval.

Dean scratched absently behind one thick ear and looked down at the man using softness like a tactical weapon.

“You’re doing it again,” he said.

Arion opened one eye. “Doing what?”

“Winning while horizontal.”

Arion hummed. “Let’s say that for the right pay you can come with me.”

Dean stared down at him.

For one full second, he simply stared because there were many unacceptable things Arion could have said in that position, and somehow he had still managed to find a new one.

Then Dean’s brows rose slowly. “I’m sorry?”

Arion did not move from where he lay half-sprawled against him, one eye still only partly open, as if he had not just introduced negotiation into a bed already occupied by a giant dog and a deeply compromised balance of power.

“You heard me.”

“That,” Dean said, “is not a sentence that should ever be delivered with your head in my lap.”

Arion’s mouth shifted faintly. “And yet.”

Dean looked at the ceiling briefly, as if perhaps some god of reasonable mates would descend and take over from here. No such mercy arrived.

Boreas, sensing no immediate danger but significant emotional instability, thumped his tail once against the mattress.

Traitor.

Dean looked back down at Arion. “For the right pay.”

“Yes.”

“You’re auctioning battlefield access.”

“No,” Arion closed his eye again, apparently content to be monstrous in comfort. “I’m evaluating your seriousness.”

Dean let out a slow breath through his nose. “You’re unbelievable.”

“That’s already been established.”

“Yes, but now I mean it in a more legally actionable way.”

Arion’s hand, still warm over Dean’s waist, shifted just enough to make the contact feel deliberate rather than incidental. “You want to come with me.”

Dean narrowed his eyes. “That is not currently in dispute.”

“You want me to treat the request seriously.”

“I do.”

“Then I’m treating it seriously.”

Dean hated, with exhausting familiarity, that there was logic in it.

Arion would not be baited into yielding on sentiment alone. Not with the season turning. Not with beasts and infected cases beginning their ugly rise again. Not with Dean’s second ability now sitting inside too many conversations with too much weight behind it. If Dean wanted a place near that world, then Arion would demand terms.

Dean scratched once through Boreas’s fur more sharply than necessary and said, “Fine. What is the ’right pay’ for the privilege of not being treated like decorative palace furniture?”

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