The Bear and Barnacle

"Poetry." Blaise wove long, slender fingers around one knee. They were dripping silver, rubies, and small bones, one ring showing a rat ducking back low, snarling and ready to attack. "How very... Pottery, eh?"

"I know!" Draco was practically neighing. "Poetry! He's so amusing. I swear, I laughed so hard I got a nosebleed."

"That's because your wiring is shit, love."

"My wiring's the best, thank you very much. It's because Potter is a work of great and shining stupidity, that's why." Draco flopped back into the vintage beanbag and fumbled for his drink.

"Yes, that too." Blaise smiled beningly, allowing his lenses to widen a fraction.

***

The picture in front of him is... well, bleak. Sad old LEDs, sooty like ancient oil lamps. How on earth could Potter ever find beauty in that? How pretend he was listening to the poetry of binary entities, flashing away their lonely, cyclopic signals, their off on off like a last, wheezing SOS? "Save Our Souls."

Oh bons dieux, now he's starting to sound like Potter.

With an angry grunt, Blaise switches off the computer.

He might have to kill to port.

It's too cold.

Blaise grunts and digs deeper into his furs after poking a probing toe out past the edge of the bed. Morning, probably; he can't tell without looking at the LEDs, what with the windows still spraypainted black. He should add some insulation. Industrial foam, something like that. Man oh man, is it cold or what.

He refuses to leave on the read-outs over night, stress on the contacts be damned, "for, my sweet flashy friend," as he's always telling Draco, "there's vital technology, and then there are gadgets."

The computers wake up before him, as always, and as always Blaise is tempted to throw a bottle into the whole bleeping pile. He longs to be back in Haiti, if only to be able to wake up and not hunch, not shrink back into his skin, and he mouths a few sullen warming charms, heaping them on until he feels it's safe. Another grunted command and the lights come on - gentle, friendly lights, not the glare of gas, and that's when he sees it.

His loft is a mess. Merde. Well, a mess in reverse.

The stalagmites of multicoloured wax - gone. The knotted chimes of bones and shards, lovingly assembled and acquired via buckets of fried chicken, as well as much throwing of things at Draco's retreating back - gone. Not a single feather on the ground where he twisted and slit the last cockerel's neck only yesterday - all his signs of devotion gone, all the talismans, jujus, artefacts, stains and souvenirs, together with the scrap metal he'd shaped into something quite artsy. Gone.

Blaise's head whips around. His sensors snap on, scanning the area for intrusion, for any attempts at breaking and entering sneaky or crude enough to outmanoeuver his security. Unlikely as that is.

"Draco!" he yells. His voice soars, then dips and dives. "Draacooo!"

Not a sound beyond the familiar whisper of contacts. "Draco!?"

Putain.